Chapter 10

Helen’s prodigious bust line aside, there was the Department of Defense and my role as Secretary. The world according to Harry S. Truman was a black and white, zero sum game, played behind closed doors and by rules that were never fully disclosed. Looking at the first six months I served as his Secretary of Defense, Truman managed to enrage Churchill, while sucking up to Stalin and making overtures to the newly formed Italian government.

Mussolini was executed by popular demand, shortly after the complete collapse of the Axis. The interim government was dealing with starvation, disease, political mischief, and a brewing popular uprising. Truman seemed to believe that propping up a failed dictatorship was the winning path to restoring peace in the region.

Had drugs been part of the popular scene in nineteen-forty six, I would have emphatically stated that Truman was on something, but the truth was that he had spent his brief time as Vice President being kept completely out of the loop by Roosevelt’s inner circle, and when he found himself President, there was no time for on job training.

Because it was downright impossible to guess where Truman would cast his net next, it was also impossible to move forces to head off any trouble he caused. On the day after Jenny informed me that Helen wanted a threesome, President Truman summoned me to the White House for an emergency meeting.

Shelly, my personal appointment secretary, met me at the front steps of Defense and handed me a folder marked, “URGENT – EYES ONLY.” Shelly Fortunato had paper clipped a note inside the folder giving the briefest of details, because nobody at the White House seemed to know what the crisis was. Her instincts were good. Inside the folder I found all the overnight updates from all over the world. Whatever crisis I was about to be handed would surely be covered somewhere within Shelly’s notes.

My driver and bodyguards were accustomed to hauling me all over Washington, but we were rarely summoned to the White House before eight A.M. As I was admitted through the front door, I was feeling some trepidation about the problem.

Instead of being shown into the Oval Office, I was taken out back through a seldom-used exit and led to the Executive Office Building where almost all of the real work got done at sixteen-hundred Pennsylvania Avenue. The halls were alive with tension as I passed people who were so uptight they didn’t even knew I passed them.

In the far reaches of the complex is a fine suite of offices that had recently been set aside for the Vice President when he needed to work from the White House. It was there I found the President surrounded by his personal circle of influence.

There have been some under whelming Vice Presidents in American history, but few rival Alben Barkley for invisibility. Barkley was a politician’s politician. On the day I was summoned to the White House, Truman was serving without a Vice President. Barkley was still the Majority Leader of the Senate and senior Senator from Kentucky. The Democratic Party was putting pressure on Truman to appoint Barkley to the vacant office, but something held him back. I did notice Barkley was sitting with Truman and his closest advisors when I arrived and was announced.

“Mr. President, Secretary Rasmussen has arrived as you requested.” An obsequious aide stepped aside so that I could enter. Truman smiled with his mouth, but it never made it to his eyes. Something was seriously wrong, and I couldn’t wait to hear about it.

“Come on in Phil. Thank you for getting over here quickly. You are the last one to arrive, because we realized that my staff neglected to call your office until it was too late to catch you before you went all the way out to Defense. There was no insult intended, but it is fortunate that you are here right now.”

Truman paused and looked over his closest supporters. Barkley, the Vice President in waiting, seemed to be the only one not happy with the situation they were about to lay on me. Everyone talked about everyone high up in the government. Even with gossip as the most valued commodity, even I knew that he WAS strange. I’d had so little interaction with him that I never really got a feel for what drove him. His enemies absolutely despised him and his friends loved him to the point of hero worship.

Whatever had him unhappy, I knew I’d be hearing about it any second.

“Phil, The Majority Leader is my choice to succeed me as Vice President and then to be elected President when my next term ends. The only problem with that is that the Republicans are going to put up Dewey against me next year and Alben thinks that I should pick someone besides him to serve until the election so that he can steer things my way until Election Day.

“Now I’m not opposed to a little help, but things are going along fine without a Vice President, so why stir things up? That’s my dilemma. How do you feel about this? As Secretary of Defense, do you think the country needs me to appoint a place holder until Alben and I get elected next year?”

In the silence following his question, every eye in the room was focused on me. “Mr. President, I feel both ways, Sir. On the one hand, the Senate Majority Leader could have a determined impact on your campaign. Legislation could be moved along that shows you in the most favorable light and the public discourse is often shaped by what the Majority Leader does and says.” I had successfully tipped my hat to the second most powerful man in the room.

“On the other hand and ignoring the obvious benefit to you in both the long and short term ... Sir, when President Roosevelt died it set people thinking about mortality and our leaders. You are in perfect health, it seems to me, but we just lost a President. When people think about losing the President and the uproar that followed as you took control of our country during our greatest war, I wonder if you might get a significant bump in public confidence by soothing those who are ... concerned about the continuation of government.

“One other point I would hasten to make, Mr. President, is that the Speaker is a Republican. There have to be people who have figured out that if you were to die, the presidency passes to the other party with no election involved, because the Speaker is next in line.

“Sir, there is very little upside to gain from not appointing a Vice President and several potential electoral bumps that would accompany you doing so.” That was my advice. Take it or leave it, my job was to walk down the center line of that question and not make an enemy out of the next Vice President by saying the wrong thing.