Transcript: Chapter 2.14

ALONZO HAMBY: The last two years of the administration are, by far, the toughest of Truman's presidency. He really begins to feel the stress... And in early 1952, when he's still toying around with the idea of running for president, Bess tells him she doesn't think he could survive another term. She says she doesn't think she should could either.

DAVID MCCULLOUGH: She had been biding her time, gritting her teeth, from the time he first took the oath of office in 1945. I think she would have left him, had he chosen to run again.

NARRATOR: On March 29, 1952, Truman told his fellow Americans what many already suspected.

TRUMAN ARCHIVAL: "I shall not be a candidate for re-election. I have served my country long and I think efficiently and honestly. I shall not accept a renomination. I do not feel that it is my duty to spend another four years in the White House."

NARRATOR: With his Fair Deal and Civil Rights programs crushed, the war stalemated in Korea, Truman knew it was time to go.

WALT BODINE: His ratings were lower than Nixon's on the day he resigned. I mean it was probably as low an approval rating as any president ever had.

NARRATOR: Only one person responded with unadorned glee. "When you made your announcement," an aide told the president, "Mrs. Truman looked the way you do when you draw four aces."

GEORGE ELSEY: She'd had enough, and she thought Harry Truman had had enough. He'd done his duty. He'd done it well. It was time to call it quits.

NARRATOR: That July, the Democrats convened in Chicago to nominate Adlai Stevenson for president. Truman told Stevenson: "Adlai, if a knucklehead like me can be president and not do too badly, think what a really educated smart guy like you could do in the job."

But the Republicans had already nominated the hero of D-Day, General Dwight David Eisenhower. The Democrats, Truman knew, didn't stand a chance. When the campaign was over, Truman's Democrats had suffered a devastating defeat. After twenty years in the wilderness, the Republicans had re-captured the White House.

DAVID MCCULLOUGH: The spotlight was on the new president. And the outgoing president was suddenly a citizen, again, driving away in a car, having to stop at a red light for the first time in seven years.

NARRATOR: After the ceremony, Truman had lunch with his staff and cabinet for the last time.

ROBERT DONOVAN: And when his old friend, the retiring secretary of the treasury John Snyder arrived, he saw the president standing looking out the window. And Snyder went over and said, "What are you looking out the window for?" And Truman turned around and said, "An hour ago if I had said something, it would have gone around the world in 15 minutes, all around the world." He said, "Now I could talk for two hours and no one would give a damn."

NARRATOR: On January 20th, 1953, Harry Truman, private citizen, set out for home.

DAVID MCCULLOUGH: I'm not sure they expected anybody would turn up to say farewell. But when they saw the immense crowd that had come. And the cheering and the affection that was expressed by the crowd. They were simply overwhelmed.

ROBERT DONOVAN: And I went back to Independence with them, and it was a scream. He would walk through the train and someone would be sitting in a compartment reading a paper and all of a sudden -- hello there - here's Harry, here's President Truman. We'd come to a stop and he'd go up and buy a newspaper at the newsstand. And -- ha! ... the newspaper guy. And he was having a high time of it. And so, I think, were they. It was just a joyous ride back to Independence.

NARRATOR: After nearly 20 years in Washington, Harry and Bess Truman came home.

WALT BODINE: What with his popularity rating being so low and all of that, the general assumption was...there would be maybe a few friends at the railroad station to greet them. Instead, as I recall I think, the crowd was 10,000 people.

ARCHIVAL FILM OF TRAIN ARRIVING IN INDEPENDENCE ARCHIVAL (SOF)

"Welcome home, neighbor."

DAVID MCCULLOUGH: The biggest crowd ever turned out in the little town. Mrs. Truman was so touched by this that she said, "This makes all these last years in the White House worth it."

NARRATOR: Truman went on to live in the old house on North Delaware Street that had once been his mother-in-law's. There he would spend the rest of his life.

In the years to come, Americans grew accustomed to seeing Harry Truman pictured walking the streets of Independence or hearing him bluntly speak his mind. Now he was one of them. And they seemed more fond of Citizen Truman than President Truman. Gradually his reputation revived. Americans began to remember the former president as that feisty man from Missouri who worked hard and wasn't afraid to speak his mind. They remembered the Truman who said, "The buck stops here."

DAVID MCCULLOUGH: He's a believable man. That's one of the reasons he is so appealing to us. He has no privileged background. He has no great voice. He isn't handsome. He has no glamour. But in that makeup is iron. Real iron.

NARRATOR: In 1961, eight years after he had left the White House, Harry Truman was invited back by President John Kennedy. Once again Truman sat down at his old piano and played the music he had practiced every morning as a boy. Truman passed his final years still rising early, still taking his morning walk -- just as he had done all his life. "I tried never to forget who I was and where I'd come from and where I'd go back to," Truman said.

MARSHALL SHULMAN: Harry Truman was a vindication of the democratic idea of leadership. Here is a man out of the heartland of America, an ordinary guy, not a high-powered intellectual, but a man of common sense and a man of personal decency.

NARRATOR: On December 26, 1972, Harry Truman died. He was 88 years old. Ten years later, Bess was buried beside him in the courtyard of the library that was named in his honor.

"When Franklin Roosevelt died," Truman said, "I felt there must be a million men better qualified than I, to take up the presidential task. But the work was mine to do, and I had to do it. And I tried to give it everything that was in me."

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