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DEVOTION TO THE CHIEF

President Harry S. Truman relied heavily on Dean Acheson for his most significant foreign policy achievements.

by Robert L. Beisner

When he assumed the office of president of the United States in April 1945, Harry S. Truman possessed limited knowledge of international affairs. During his almost eight years in office, therefore, he relied heavily on Dean Acheson, an imposing figure who was at the president's side for his most significant foreign policy achievements–notably, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization–and his most difficult problems, including the Korean War.

Truman, the accidental and undervalued president, and Acheson, first as America's most influential undersecretary of state from 1945-47 and then as secretary of state from 1949-53, constituted one of the oddest matches in American history. No other president and secretary of state team seemed so poorly matched in background and personality–the former, a bourbon-drinking mid-Westerner with a homespun disposition, and the latter, a mustachioed Connecticut lawyer who preferred perfect martinis–yet, no such team ever worked better together.

The close association enjoyed by Truman and Acheson started in the wake of the 1946 congressional elections, when the Democratic Party, tarred by the brush of the unpopular president, was driven from the majority to the minority side of Congress for the first time since 1929. Crestfallen over these results, Truman, who had cast his vote in Missouri, boarded the train in Independence with wife Bess and daughter Margaret for the long trip back to the capital. "It had for years been a Cabinet custom," Acheson later wrote, "to meet President [Franklin D.] Roosevelt's private car on his return from happier elections and escort him to the White House. It never occurred to me that after defeat the President would be left to creep unnoticed back to the capital. So I met his train. To my surprise and horror, I was alone on the platform where his car was brought in, except for the station master and a reporter or two. What the President expected, I do not know."

Truman did not ignore such a manifest display of fidelity, and soon, with Secretary of State James Byrnes–and later, George C. Marshall–constantly traveling to international conferences, Undersecretary Acheson became an indispensable adviser, keeping the president informed and weaning him from his prejudices against the State Department.

Shortly before Acheson left the department in 1947, Truman wrote to him: "With you and our incomparable Secretary, the General [Marshall], over there I don't have a worry in the world." When Acheson returned to the administration as secretary of state, he brought back with him his formula for sticking close to the president. He anticipated Truman's needs and offered advice when he thought it welcome. He ensured that Truman "had an opportunity to influence policy before it congealed into flat alternatives" and sought to make certain that the two of them marched to the same cadence and to the same music. He "never did anything without touching base with Truman," reported Charles Bohlen, a State Department official. His unstinting public dedication to an uncertain, often unpopular president was reciprocated with deep gratitude and loyalty.

Acheson, who died in 1971, would not have applauded Ronald Reagan's don't-worry-about-the-details brand of presidential leadership. The nation's chief executive should, he believed, have considerable mastery of what his men–they were virtually all men then–were doing. Combining supreme self-confidence with a rapid eight-cylinder intellect, Acheson also thought that the president should support his secretary of state's advice after receiving it, which Truman usually–but not always–did. Although Acheson knew that Truman had an independent mind, he often seemed a bit irritated when the president exercised it.

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