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Episode 144: 18:53 Working Tools Series – The Buck Stops Here · Minnesota Masonic Histories and Mysteries

• 0:00
  He left the White House with a 32% approval rating and a bank loan.
• 0:06
  Much of America believed Harry S.
• 0:08
  Truman had failed.
• 0:11
  History would eventually reach a very different conclusion.
• 0:15
  January 20, 1953, Washington, DC.
• 0:20
  The moment Dwight Eisenhower finished taking the oath of office, Truman gathered his belongings and left.
• 0:28
  There was no grand farewell, no motorcade, No cheering crowd waiting to see him off.
• 0:36
  Harry and his wife, Bess, simply climbed into their own Chrysler and began the drive home to Independence, Missouri.
• 0:43
  No Secret Service protection, no government security detail, nothing.
• 0:50
  Because in 1953, former presidents received almost no support once they left office, and Washington seemed happy to see Truman go.
• 1:00
  He departed with one of the lowest approval ratings in modern presidential history.
• 1:06
  Newspapers used the opportunity to take a final swing at him.
• 1:11
  The popular judgment was already forming.
• 1:14
  At best, he'd been an average president.
• 1:17
  At worst, an embarrassment.
• 1:20
  So Truman went home and became a private citizen again.
• 1:25
  The reality was harsher than most people realized.
• 1:29
  There was no presidential pension, no stipend, no government income.
• 1:35
  His only regular payment was$112.56, a monthly Army pension from his service in World War I.
• 1:43
  $112.56.
• 1:50
  Harry Truman had once made decisions that affected billions of people.
• 1:55
  Now he quietly took out a bank loan to cover his expenses.
• 2:00
  He didn't make a spectacle of it.
• 2:02
  He didn't complain.
• 2:03
  He simply borrowed the money and carried on When the public learned how little support former presidents received, the embarrassment helped push Congress to pass the Former Presidents Act in 1958, creating pensions for former commanders-in-chief.
• 2:22
  It was not simply admiration for Truman.
• 2:25
  It was a shame that a former president had been forced to borrow money.
• 2:30
  While Washington continued debating his reputation, Truman settled into ordinary life.
• 2:36
  Every morning, he walked through the same streets of Independence.
• 2:40
  He waved to neighbors.
• 2:41
  He answered his own telephone.
• 2:44
  He personally responded to thousands of letters from ordinary Americans, often writing back in his own hand and in his own unmistakable voice.
• 2:54
  On his desk remained the same sign associated with his presidency:"The buck stops here." It wasn't simply a souvenir.
• 3:05
  It was a principle.
• 3:07
  Because Truman had made decisions that brought enormous consequences.
• 3:12
  He approved the use of atomic bombs to end World War II.
• 3:17
  He supported spending billions through the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, even when many Americans wanted that money spent at home.
• 3:26
  He signed an executive order desegregating the military and angering Southern Democrats badly enough to threaten his political future He fired General Douglas MacArthur for insubordination while much of the country demanded Truman's removal instead.
• 3:43
  He made those decisions.
• 3:46
  He absorbed the criticism.
• 3:48
  Then when his presidency ended, he drove himself home over time, however, the judgment began to change the Marshall Plan did more than rebuild shattered European economies.
• 4:03
  It helped create decades of stability, transformed former enemies into allies, and reduced the chances of another catastrophic European war.
• 4:14
  The Truman Doctrine helped establish the framework for the Cold War strategy that the United States would follow for decades.
• 4:22
  desegregating the military became an important step toward the broader civil rights movement.
• 4:29
  Removing MacArthur reinforced the constitutional principle that military commanders remain under civilian authority.
• 4:38
  Many of the choices that had damaged Truman politically were beginning to look far better with time.
• 4:45
  Then came July 30, 1965.
• 4:50
  President Lyndon Johnson could have signed Medicare into law in Washington.
• 4:55
  He could have done it inside the White House, surrounded by senators and officials.
• 5:00
  Instead, he traveled to Independence, Missouri.
• 5:04
  There was a reason.
• 5:07
  Twenty years earlier, in 1945, Harry Truman had called for national health insurance.
• 5:14
  The political reaction had been brutal.
• 5:17
  He was labeled a socialist, a communist, un-American.
• 5:21
  The proposal failed.
• 5:24
  Truman was ridiculed for supporting it.
• 5:27
  But the idea did not disappear forever.
• 5:31
  So when Medicare finally became law, Johnson went to the Truman Library.
• 5:36
  There he presented the first two Medicare cards ever issued.
• 5:41
  Card number one went to Harry Truman.
• 5:44
  Card number two went to Bess.
• 5:48
  Truman was eighty-one.
• 5:50
  He had waited twenty years to see something like this happen And he cried.
• 5:56
  There was no bitterness, no triumphant"I told you so." Only quiet tears from a man who had lived long enough to watch history reconsider what people once mocked him for believing Harry S.
• 6:12
  Truman died on December 26, 1972, at the age of 88.
• 6:19
  By then, the 32% approval rating had become little more than historical detail.
• 6:25
  The bank loan was an old memory.
• 6:28
  The president who had left Washington deeply unpopular was increasingly being regarded as one of America's strongest presidents.
• 6:37
  Historians would later place him consistently among the country's highest ranked leaders: the Marshall Plan, NATO, the Truman Doctrine, military desegregation, the early push toward Medicare, decades of American foreign policy.
• 6:57
  So much could be traced back to one desk, one famous sign, and one man who eventually drove himself home Truman's story is not simply about being proven right.
• 7:12
  It's about the price of making an unpopular decision before the public is ready to accept it.
• 7:18
  it's about absorbing ridicule.
• 7:20
  political humiliation, and even financial hardship, then still waking up the next morning and taking the same walk through town, answering your own phone, writing your own letters, and waiting for history to reach its verdict.
• 7:37
  Most people who make an unpopular choice they believe is right never live long enough to see the world reconsider it.
• 7:45
  Harry Truman did He held Medicare card number one in his hands and saw unmistakably that an idea once dismissed had finally become reality He did not gloat.
• 8:01
  He didn't demand apologies.
• 8:03
  He did not lecture the people who had mocked him.
• 8:07
  He cried with gratitude, with grace, with the quiet dignity of a man who had carried the weight of enormous decisions and never tried to hand responsibility to someone else.
• 8:22
  The buck stopped with Harry Truman, and he never passed it on.
• 8:27
  We are still living in the world those decisions helped create.
• 8:33
  Harry S.
• 8:34
  Truman was initiated into Belton Lodge number four fifty in Belton, Missouri, on February nine, nineteen oh nine.
• 8:42
  He helped charter Grand View Lodge number six eighteen in Grand View, Missouri, serving as its first Worshipful Master and later returning for a second term in nineteen sixteen.
• 8:54
  Truman rose through the regional ranks to become the Grand Master of Masons in the state of Missouri in nineteen forty, fulfilling this prominent role while actively serving as a US senator.
• 9:06
  He remains the only US president to have served in this elevated capacity before or during a presidency.
• 9:14
  Harry Truman famously stated that serving as the Grand Master of Masons in Missouri was the greatest honor of his life