The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [68]
Warren had joined the Young Republicans as a freshman because he was attracted to a girl who was a member. But instead of becoming her boyfriend, he became the group’s president when he was a sophomore. Warren took over at an exciting time—the fall of a presidential election year. In 1948, the Republicans were supporting Thomas F. Dewey against the weak incumbent Harry Truman, who had become President on FDR’s death.
The Buffetts had grown to hate Truman. Though he had created what was known as the “Truman Doctrine” of containment, which was meant to prevent the spread of Communism, Howard, like many conservatives, felt that Truman and General George C. Marshall, his Secretary of State, were playing palsy-walsy with Soviet premier Stalin.38 Moreover, Truman had implemented the Marshall Plan, which sent eighteen million tons of food to Europe after World War II, and Howard was one of seventy-four Congressmen who had voted against it. Convinced that the Marshall Plan was another version of Operation Rat Hole and that the Democrats were wrecking the economy, Howard started buying gold chain bracelets for his daughters so they could feed themselves when the day came that the dollar was worthless.
Howard was running for reelection to his fourth term that year. Even though Warren had been present when Howard was hissed and booed after he’d voted for passage of the Taft-Hartley “slave labor” bill, he, like the rest of the family, considered Howard’s Congressional seat relatively safe. Nonetheless, Howard had placed his reelection in the hands of a campaign manager for the first time—family friend Dr. William Thompson. Well-known and admired in Omaha, Thompson knew the pulse of the town and was a psychologist to boot. Day after day as the campaign progressed, people in Omaha would come up and say, “Congratulations, Howard, you’re in again, and I worked for you,” as if the election were over.
Dewey, too, appeared to be a shoo-in. The polls showed that Truman was trailing him badly—in fact, so badly that the Roper organization, a polling research firm, simply stopped taking polls. Truman ignored this, and for months had been traveling around the country speaking from the back of his train on a “whistle-stop” tour, advocating what he called his “Fair Deal” policy: universal health insurance, broad-based civil-rights legislation, and the repeal of Taft-Hartley. He had whistle-stopped in Omaha, marched in a parade, and dedicated a park, looking as cheerful as if he hadn’t read the newspapers predicting his defeat.39
As Election Day approached, in happy anticipation of his father’s reelection and of Dewey’s victory, Warren made arrangements with the Philadelphia Zoo to ride an elephant down Woodland Avenue on November 3. He envisioned it as a sort of triumphal march, like Hannibal entering Sardinia.
But on the morning after Election Day, Warren had to cancel his stunt. Not only had Truman won the 1948 election, but his father had lost. The voters had thrown Howard Buffett out of Congress. “I’d never ridden an elephant before. When Truman beat Dewey, the elephant went down the tube. And my dad lost an election for the first time in four campaigns. That was a really lousy day.”
Two months later, just a few days before the Buffetts left Washington at the end of Howard’s term, Warren’s great-uncle Frank died. Frank had boomed “IT’S GOING TO ZERO!” about every stock down at Harris Upham when Warren was a boy, and when his will was read, the family discovered that he owned government bonds and nothing else.40 He had outlived “the gold-digger,” and the terms of his will placed the bonds in a restricted trust that required that, upon maturing, they could only be reinvested in more U.S. government bonds. As if to convince his nephew and trustee, Howard, Frank had