Word: trumans
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Some time after the parsimonious days of Harry Truman it became an accepted political fact that Presidents and those around them by right of election were due a voluptuous life-style and great wealth...
With few exceptions, the long line of Presidents right up to Truman took their job with a remarkable purity of purpose, sublimating their other appetites and seeking gratification from their service to the nation. Men like Thomas Jefferson appreciated what money could do, but they designed the presidency to protect it from the corruptive influence of wealth, and their years of service were marked by a modesty that they felt important to democracy...
...perhaps is no wonder that there is a new wave of nostalgia for Harry Truman. When he was in the White House he had a roll of 30 stamps that he had bought with his own money and that he licked and put on personal letters to the folks back in Missouri. The Trumans paid for refreshments on the presidential yacht when they used it on weekends. "If you can't keep the two separate, yourself and the presidency," Truman once said, "you're in all kinds of trouble...
This is an entertaining book to read, more of a curiosity than a valuable historical contribution, though it may be of some use as a handy compendium of Truman's sayings and anecdotes. Miller is a perceptive man and a good interviewer, and he was fortunate in having an extremely responsive subject. He had the chance to produce a unique and significant document and make an important inroad in the relatively new field of oral biography. He shouldn't have stopped short...
Miller originally intended that the interviews be part of a television series on Harry Truman to be shown in the early sixties. But apparently as a result of residual McCarthy era anti-Truman sentiment, he was still too hot a subject for television to handle at the time. The series was never produced. Miller's interviews probably would have made a remarkable television event. But as a biography, Plain Speaking leaves much to be desired...