His library was interesting, I wasn't sure what was going to be highlighted as the high spots of his presidency. Three things stood out as pivotal: the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, the Truman Doctrine/Marshall Plan, and the Red Scare.
While watching his bio film (narrated by David McCullough, not Martin Sheen who has done several others I've seen [I later found out McCullough wrote a book on Truman] I was struck by the similarities between Truman's challenges and those of our current president - then as now there are some serious partisan splits that ensures that no matter what the president does someone will be seriously unhappy. All the talk lately about how the two sides have in extreme directions really doesn't take history into consideration. Joe McCarthy anyone?
There's an interesting plaque in the courtyard where Truman is buried. It basically thanks him for giving permission for the military to use the atomic bomb on Japan. I understand the two sides of the issues: it saved millions of American military lives on the attempt to invade the Japanese mainland; and the Japanese would have surrendered soon anyway so everyone killed in Nagasaki and Hiroshima were killed violently for no reason. My thoughts have always been: it's kind of good we used it when the bomb was as weak as it was. We (humanity) learned what a terrible weapon it was and have so far not used it again - especially now that the weapon has been developed to be so much stronger. But then again, since we haven't learned our history about the continued partinsanship of the Democrats and Republicans through history we'll probably forget this too. Or am I being too cynical and preachy?
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