FDR had nicknamed Rosenman “Sammy the Rose.” The judge had helped fine-tune FDR’s public voice over the years. (According to some, it had been Rosenman who had coined the term “New Deal.”) Now Truman wanted Rosenman to do the same for him.
One evening in the president’s cabin aboard the Augusta, as the two men huddled alone, Truman told Rosenman, “Sam, one of the things I want to do after we get home . . . is to get busy on my domestic program. I would like to submit most of it at the same time instead of on a piecemeal basis. Ordinarily that would be done in a State of the Union message next January, but I cannot wait that long.”
“Fine,” Rosenman said. “What in general are the things you would like to say?”
The judge leaned his bulky frame forward to reach for a pad and pencil, and he began taking notes while Truman spoke off the cuff on a variety of issues. There in the president’s cabin, with the dull drone of the Augusta’s engines in the background, the Truman presidency began to take shape.
Rosenman’s eyes widened as he outlined Truman’s thoughts. “You know, Mr. President,” he said, “this is the most exciting and pleasant surprise I have had in a long time.”
“How is that?”
“Well,” the judge said, “I suppose I have been listening too much to rumors about what you are going to do—rumors which come from some of your conservative friends . . . They say you are going to be quite a shock to those who followed Roosevelt—that the New Deal is as good as dead—that we are all going back to ‘normalcy’ and that a good part of the so-called ‘Roosevelt nonsense’ is now over. In other words, that the conservative wing of the [Democratic] party has now taken charge.”
Roosevelt had launched hugely controversial, expensive, and interventionist policies to steer America out of the Great Depression and through the war. For the most part, they had worked, but in the process they had inspired bitterness and rivalry—between the White House and Congress, and between the Right and the Left. Now Truman was planning to embrace similar left-wing policies in the postwar world. This was a brave move, Rosenman said, and a dangerous one.
“It is one thing to vote for this kind of a program when you are following the head of your party,” the judge said. “It is quite another to be the head of a party and recommend and fight for it.”
Back in the White House, upon Truman’s return from Potsdam, the West Wing resumed its usual pace of frenetic activity. During late nights and early mornings, bookending the long list of appointments that filled the president’s daily calendar, Truman continued to craft a message to Congress. He consulted advisers and all the major officers of the executive branch, and created in the process a buzz that could be felt throughout the halls of the Capitol. He wanted his message to land with all the weight of “a combination of a first inaugural and a first State of the Union message,” as he put it.
On September 6, three weeks after he announced the surrender of Japan, Truman held his regular weekly press conference at 4 p.m. in the Oval Office, where he evaded questions on everything from the proposed Saint Lawrence waterway to his pick for an open seat on the Supreme Court. Afterward, when the door to the Oval Office closed and he was once again alone, he released his domestic plan, titled the “Special Message to Congress Presenting a 21-Point Program for the Reconversion Period,” via his press secretary, Charlie Ross. It was the longest message to Congress since Theodore Roosevelt’s administration, measuring sixteen thousand words.
“The Congress reconvenes at a time of great emergency,” the message read. “It is an emergency about which, however, we need have no undue fear if we exercise the same energy, foresight, and wisdom as we did in carrying the war and winning this victory.”
Truman asked Congress to create new laws to expand Social Security and unemployment and veterans’ benefits. He asked Congress to raise the minimum wage, currently forty cents per hour. He asked for programs to outlaw racial and religious discrimination in hiring, and for federal aid to farmers and small businesses. He wanted government spending on housing, funding for the conservation of natural resources, and financing of public works—highways, federal buildings, three thousand new airports, and a massive program of scientific research.
“The development of atomic energy is a clear-cut indication of what can be accomplished by our universities, industry, and Government working together,” Truman’s message read. “Vast scientific fields remain to be conquered in the same way.”
Truman asked Congress to maintain a large military “in a world grown acutely sensitive to power,” despite the cost. He even asked Congress to pass a law raising the salaries of its own members. The message ended with the following words:
“The Congress has played its full part in shaping the domestic and foreign policies which have . . . started us on the road to lasting peace. The Congress, I know, will continue to play its patriotic part in the difficult years ahead. We face the future together with confidence—that the job, the full job, can and will be done. Harry S. Truman.”
On September 7, Americans awoke to the realization that their new president was a full-on New Deal Democrat. As the United States’ chief executive, he would safeguard the welfare of the common man. As he once had said, “The President has to look out for the interests of the 150 million people who can’t afford lobbyists in Washington.”
Truman’s 21-Point Program ignited a political firestorm. It
