Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure - Matthew Algeo [15]
To Truman the cuts were reckless and irresponsible. He believed America needed to project strength with muscular armed forces, not just bombs. Truman was sure the Soviets would regard Eisenhower’s cuts as a sign of weakness and would seek to expand their influence even further. The Republicans, Truman believed, were sacrificing national security—for tax cuts.
Harry Truman was tired of holding his tongue. It was time he spoke his mind. What better place than the Reserve Officers convention? Truman accepted the invitation. It would be his first major speech since leaving the White House.
And he was determined to drive to Philadelphia to deliver it. He’d been wanting to give his new Chrysler “a real tryout” anyway. He would make a vacation out of it. First he and Bess would drive to Washington—just to visit friends, he insisted. Then they would go up to Philadelphia for his speech, then on to New York to visit Margaret and do a little sightseeing. Then they would drive back to Independence, just the two of them, like they used to do back in the old days when he was in the Senate.
Harry was even convinced he and Bess would “enjoy the pleasures of traveling incognito” on the trip, even though theirs were two of the most recognizable faces in the country. To help preserve their anonymity, he would closely guard their schedule and route.
Bess had her doubts. Unlike Harry, she was not under the illusion that they could drive around the country just like any other retired couple. She also knew it would be a physically demanding trip, especially for Harry, who always did all the driving when they traveled in the car together. Yes, back when Harry was in the Senate, they had driven between Independence and Washington all the time. But, as she surely reminded him, that was a long time ago. They hadn’t taken a long car trip together since 1944, when they drove home from the Democratic convention in Chicago—the one at which Harry was nominated for vice president. That was nearly nine years ago.
“Nobody worried much then,” Harry countered, “and we made it all right.” Why not now?
Bess knew she was fighting a losing battle. She consented to the trip under one condition: Harry must drive no faster than fifty-five miles per hour. She always thought Harry drove too fast.
Harry agreed to Bess’s speed limit. The trip was on, and over the next several days he planned it as meticulously as if he were returning to Potsdam. Maps were spread out on the dining room table. The route was planned, the mileage calculated. “I took out the road map and figured the distance—exactly 1,050 miles from my garage door to the door of the Senate garage,” he wrote. “I decided on the best places to stop over on the way, as I always used to do.” He couldn’t have been happier. “I like to take trips—any kind of trip,” he wrote. “They are about the only recreation I have besides reading.”
The trip would not only give Harry a chance to satisfy his wanderlust. It was also part of his effort to make the transition, as he put it, from Mr. President to Mr. Citizen. Truman saw no reason why he shouldn’t go back to being “just anybody again.” “Cincinnatus knew when and how to lay down his great powers,” Truman wrote of the Roman general. “After he had saved the Republic he went back to his plow and became the good private citizen of his country.” But since his return to Independence, he’d found it difficult to escape his fame. Old friends were reluctant to call on him. Even Harry himself was having trouble adjusting, trouble becoming a “normal guy.” Stanley Fike, an aide to Missouri Senator Stuart Symington, remembered visiting the Trumans in their home shortly after they returned to Independence. “The president started to walk in front of a lady and Mrs. Truman said, ‘Harry, just a minute, let the lady go first.’ Of course, when he was president he always went first, this