The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [187]
He had served as vice president for a total of eighty-two days, and during that time it had been made plain to him that President Roosevelt was not exactly his best friend. Vice presidents were chosen to help win an election, and Truman was under no illusion that his greatest benefit to Roosevelt’s fourth campaign came from geography. FDR was a New Yorker, an easterner, something that concerned the campaign strategists even though Roosevelt’s election to a fourth term was never really in doubt. But balance had always been the key word, and they had sought a midwesterner to round out the ticket. The previous vice president had been another midwesterner, an Iowan, Henry Wallace, but Wallace had caused rumbles around FDR’s closest advisors for what some said was a kind of bizarre religious zealotry. It was the excuse made behind closed doors why Wallace should go, but Truman knew that the more likely reason Wallace had been replaced on the ticket was that Winston Churchill despised him. Whether Truman, a plain-spoken senator from Missouri, would do any better job than his predecessor seemed not to matter. The key for the political strategists was whether Truman was a liability to Roosevelt’s presidency. Truman had never considered himself a liability to anyone, but then, his own career in politics had been turbulent only on a level that was invisible to anyone outside Missouri. And since Roosevelt’s death, Churchill had surprised Truman by accepting him with far more helpfulness than Truman had any right to expect. It was a sad irony to Truman that Churchill seemed willing to support the new president with even greater zeal than many of the men in Washington, who were now Truman’s subordinates. The grumbling about him in the halls of various government departments had not been a surprise. While Roosevelt was alive, Truman was very much a fifth wheel, kept outside FDR’s inner circle, the president rarely conferring with Truman at all. The vice president’s job had included presiding over the Senate, and Truman was perfectly content in that role. He was comfortable there, the familiar faces, the familiar squabbles. But on April 12, the world had changed. The man who was so much the country’s grandfather had suddenly gone away. Truman had seen clear signs of Roosevelt’s physical decline, but the reality of that had not sunk in until the president’s sudden death. Truman the anonymous was now Truman the president, and more important, to the men who confronted the astounding challenges of waging a world war, he was Truman the Commander in Chief.
The air was warm, the only breeze coming from the movement of the ship, and he treasured the solitude, so rare now. He knew his plush quarters belowdecks was the appropriate place for him to be, catching up on whatever sleep he could. If the sleep wasn’t there, the worries were, so many details about policy and personality, who among his party were dependable, and who were just along for the ride. He pushed his shoulders back, felt the first rumblings of a headache, thought, if my posture was sound before, it is miserable now. People bitch and moan about carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. I can honestly say, I am one of them. But I’ll put my bitching up against anybody’s. Try this job for a few weeks, pal. See how your shoulders droop. FDR suffered through that with more grit than anyone I’ve ever known, and no matter how much adulation or respect he earned, he refused to let it go. I suppose he believed that no one else in Washington could do it, no one had the shoulders for it. He may have been right about that. I don’t know of a single senator or anyone else who was worthy, no one who could have pulled the country together. Well, most of it, anyway. Now, in every corner of the globe, the question being asked is whether I’ve got the shoulders, whether I’m worthy.