MISSOURI WATCH: BILL CLINTON IS NO HARRY TRUMAN

By the time Harry Truman was running for another term in the White House, his popularity had dropped from 87 percent approval in 1945, just after he became president, to a lower-than-low 32 percent. The former Missouri senator and then vice president until the death of FDR had presided over the wartime to peacetime transition, had initiated major relief and rebuilding par,s for America's World War II allies and even its enemies, had proposed several sweeping domestic programs including national health insurance, and had written a highly publicized letter to a Washington music critic who didn't care much for daughter Margaret's singing.

Even before the 1948 nominating conventions could be held, Democrats across the country were hinting they were anything but wild about Harry. There was widespread talk of offering up an alternative at the convention, and some extremely conservative Democrats, calling themselves Dixiecrats, pledged to bolt the party if it went ahead with its plans to nominate a sitting president. The party faced the first postwar campaign with anything but enthusiasm, and most members were reconciled to a defeat before the first convention gavel was sounded.

I recall feeling a certain bitterness toward a man I had known since I was seven years of age, wondering why he wanted to stick around for a defeat that was certain and an electoral disgrace that would assuredly become embarrassing not only to himself and his friends but the country as a whole. I don't need to recount what happened in that unusual campaign 46 years ago. Truman not only stuck around for the Democratic convention, he stayed around long enough to be inaugurated as a full-term president in 1949.

I mention all of this, nearly half a century later, because it is being suggested that the incumbent president, also a Democrat, faces a predicament not unlike the one that faced Missouri's favorite political hero. In a sense, the nation is still going through a postwar period, following the collapse of worldwide communism, and as the U.S. converts much of its defense industry to peacetime uses. President Clinton, like President Truman before him, has sought to inaugurate a national health-care program, and also like HST, has had a notable lack of success when proposing it to the Congress. The Clinton-Truman similarity continues, with some Democrats in 1994 suggesting the same retirement for their president as was put forth in 1948.

The conclusion of these similarities is that Clinton, like Truman, can overcome the problems he faces and emerge a triumphant electoral hero in 1996. But I must confess, I am hardly persuaded that Bill and Harry are that similar, nor are their fates so closely entwined. In fact, a word of caution to anyone who seeks to reassure himself through historical footnotes: political miracles seldom have the same ending.

The differences between Clinton and Truman are greater than their similarities. Not only are both men different, the nation of 1948 was far different than the American society of 1994. The casualty lists of World War II are today's crime fatalities. America's families in the 1940s still listened to the radio and read newspapers, while those today spend hours around a television set and often wind up in divorce courts. Veterans returned from war ready to pursue their vocations or attend a college to gain one, while today's workers try to cope with the uncertainty of job insecurity and down sizing. Yesterday's wealth was earned through hard work and savings, and today's fortunes come by way of state-fostered lotteries and illegal drug and securities sales. Men mustered from years of service asked only for an opportunity, while today the principal demand is for rights and privileges, even those that are unearned.

For all his failings, HST was a moral citizen, and while he lacked a college degree, he demonstrated a degree of common knowledge that seems foreign to his successor in 1994. One of Truman's first goals upon taking the presidential oath was to end America's most threatening war since the Revolution, not to make war on behalf of a small sexual minority. HST pursued his best instincts without regard for his political popularity, not promising goals that would never be pursued.

There's a whole lot more than just 46 years that separate Harry and Bill.

~Jack Stapleton is a Kennett columnist for the Southeast Missourian.