Harry Truman and Herbert Hoover A Partnership Created by History and Courage by Thomas Fleming

Well thank you. I want to thank the Library for inviting me here. For me it’s a, a trip
back in time; as you will soon see. And it’s a great privilege to be able to talk about
this, I’ve never written about it, and it’s about the partnership between Mr. Hoover and
Harry Truman. Let’s start with a little perspective.
There have not been many presidential partnerships. Perhaps the most noteworthy in the country’s
early history was Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Their great triumph was the Louisiana
Purchase with Jefferson as President and Madison as his Secretary of State. But the outcome
of their collaboration throughout – all the way through – into Madison’s term
was in other areas not happy at all. Their 1807 embargo inflicted terrible economic damage
on the nation and inculcated a New England suspicion and hatred of the South which had
not a little to do with starting the Civil War. President Madison’s War of 1812 was
a series of military disasters, mostly caused by President Jefferson’s, former president
Jefferson’s antipathy to professional navies and armies, which brought the nation to the
edge of dissolution. That’s a misunderstood war, not a really happy story at all.
Andrew Jackson, on the other hand, seemed to have found an ideal partner/successor in
Martin Van Buren. But the super slick, totally political New Yorker waffled fatally on a
major Jackson goal, bringing Texas into the Union in 1840 and “Old Hickory,” as they
called Jackson, watched with grim indifference while Van Buren’s run for a second term
ended in a rout. In 1844 Jackson endorsed James K. Polk for president, making it cruelly
clear that he agreed with those who called Van “a used up man.”
[laughter]
Theodore Roosevelt also seemed at first to have found a happy partner in his successor,
William Howard Taft. They were such wonderful friends. But this soon proved to be an illusion,
as Taft turned out to be much more conservative than Roosevelt, and pretty soon Roosevelt
was running for a third term as a Taft-denouncing Progressive.
In 18— In 1945 you could see why Americans were justifiably amazed to see a partnership
between two presidents from opposing parties that worked without recriminations or regrets.
The presidents, as I’m sure you already anticipate were Herbert Hoover and Harry S
Truman. What makes this story especially fascinating to me is the opportunity I had to hear Mr.
Truman and his wife Bess and his daughter Margaret talk about it.
The year of this was event, you might say, was 1970. Having published a successful memoir
of her White House years, Margaret Truman decided to write a biography of her father.
Mr. Truman had been out of office almost twenty years. His presidency seemed eclipsed by the
turmoil of Vietnam and the youth rebellion of the 1960s – what one historian has called
“America’s national nervous breakdown.”
Margaret asked her father if he had any suggestions about whom she might find to help her with
the writing and research. “Try this fellow Thomas Fleming,” Mr. Truman said. “I just
read his biography of Thomas Jefferson. It was a good job.”
That remark was soon translated into contracts and deadlines and I found myself on a plane
to Kansas City with Margaret Truman, whom I liked immensely, I might add, from the day
we met. Within an hour of landing, I was sitting in the tiny room that the Trumans called the
library in their rambling 19th Century house in Independence, Missouri. Mr. Truman proved
– excuse me – Mr. Truman poured me a dark bourbon and water, and handed glasses of a
somewhat lighter hue to Mrs. Truman and Margaret. He raised his own dark glass and said: “Young
man, there’s one thing I don’t know about you. Have you always been a Democrat?”
[laughter]
His tone was wry, almost joshing, but I instantly sensed it was a serious question. I gave it
a serious answer. “Mr. President,” I said. “My father was chair of Hudson County and
leader of the Sixth Ward in Frank Hague’s Jersey City. As far as I know, no one in the
family has ever voted anything but the straight ticket.”
[laughter]
“That’s exactly what I wanted to hear!” Mr. Truman said. We clinked glasses. There
was no need for us to discuss the similarities and the differences between the Hague political
machine and the one that had politically baptized Mr. Truman – Boss Tom Pendergast’s Kansas
City enterprise.
So began two of the most memorable weeks of my life. My Democratic Party bona fides convinced
both Mr. Truman and his wife that I could be trusted as a semi-member of the family.
More than once, during lunch or dinner, Mrs. Truman would put down her knife and fork and
beam at me across the table. “Tom,” she would say. “And you never voted anything
but the straight ticket. I like that!”
[laughter]
This is how I learned that contrary to the myth of political naiveté that Bess Truman
cultivated to frustrate and confuse reporters, she was, if possible, more of a “pol”
than her husband. She loved all aspects of politics, and it was equally evident that
the president seldom made a political decision without consulting her.
I tell you all this not only because I hope it is good listening. It makes it all the
more astonishing that Harry Truman, a man for whom the Democratic Party was almost a
religion, as it was in my family -- launched a collaboration with Herbert Hoover, a man
whose name had become synonymous with the word Republican used as a combination epithet
and Democratic war cry.
[laughter]
At this point we citizens of the 21st Century might benefit from a brief refresher course
on how Herbert Hoover acquired this awful identity. During World War I, as we’ve already
heard to some extent, he’d won fame as the man who abandoned a successful business career
to rescue battered Belgium and other European countries from starvation. German armies had
rampaged through the tiny nation and the British navy stubbornly refused to alter its all or
nothing blockade.
When Woodrow Wilson took America into World War I in 1917, he made Mr. Hoover his food
czar, a hugely important job. At the end of the war, Mr. Hoover joined Wilson at the Paris
Peace Conference and there he worked additional miracles, feeding a defeated Germany in spite,
again, of this vindictive British blockade in this case. They didn’t raise the blockade
for a year after the armistice and German children were literally starving in the streets.
Wilson’s feud with the Republican Congress over the peace treaty made him a symbol of
political ineptitude. But the engineer – rather the newspapers continued to call Mr. Hoover
the Great Engineer.
All this time, no one knew if Mr. Hoover belonged to a political party. It didn’t seem to
matter. The New York Times ranked him as one of the ten greatest living Americans. One
ambitious young Democrat, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was Woodrow Wilson’s assistant secretary
of the Navy, publically declared that he would be honored to run as vice president on a ticket
headed by Mr. Hoover. He was more than a little mortified when Mr. Hoover revealed he was
a Republican.
Until he became president in 1928, Mr. Hoover seemed to have a magic touch that repeatedly
turned daunting tasks to political gold. But when the stock market crashed in the fall
of 18 – 1929, his luck ran out, seemingly forever. The Democrats assigned a mordant
genius named Charles Michelson to demonize the Great Engineer. The Depression and its
immense suffering was wholly Mr. Hoover’s fault, went this party line. A stream of vituperation
and slander portrayed the former savior of starving millions as the cold, cruel, uncaring
servant of the ruling class.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was an enthusiastic backer of this campaign, and he did not change
his mind when he stepped over Mr. Hoover’s political corpse to reach the White House.
Throughout the 1930s, Mr. Hoover, again I think we’ve seen glimpses of this, remained
a stubborn critic of Roosevelt’s New Deal, repeatedly pointing out his basic idea that
the billions poured into the WPA and other agencies had not solved the Great Depression.
When Europe erupted into another world war, and Pearl Harbor made America a participant,
not a few people urged Mr. Roosevelt to dismiss this ongoing feud and invite Mr. Hoover into
the government to help deal with looming manpower and food shortages. FDR’s response was savage
as we’ve already heard. He said that he was not Jesus Christ and he was not going
to raise Herbie, as he called him, from the dead. So Mr. Hoover remained in limbo for
the duration of Mr. Roosevelt’s third and fourth terms in the White House.
When FDR died suddenly on April 12, 1945, which I will add, I was about 15 or 16 at
the time no, 17 –it was really the greatest political shock of my life. The whole nation
was totally stunned by this. I remember people just talked to each other on the streets saying,
“What do you think? What’s going to happen?” There was no possibility that somebody could
replace this man. And in reality he left Vice President Harry S Truman a two front war that
was almost won in Europe and the Pacific – and also a wrecked European continent teetering
on starvation in the looming shadow of a new tyranny, Soviet Russian Communism.
Only the united voices of the Democratic Party’s leaders had persuaded FDR to jettison liberal
Vice President Henry Wallace, a decapitation about which I’ve been told some Iowans still
brood.
[laughter]
In retaliation, Roosevelt had displayed a minimal courtesy bordering on contempt toward
Mr. Truman. In the angry words of Bess Truman, FDR had told her husband “nothing” about
the inner workings of the war and his dealings with Josef Stalin. The new president did not
even know we were close to acquiring an atomic bomb.
As various members of the Roosevelt cabinet brought Mr. Truman up to some sort of parity
with the current military and political situation, the man from Missouri realized he would soon
be facing crises that involved the future of Europe and Asia. Josef Stalin was greedily
turning every East European country that his armies occupied into communist satellites
of Moscow. He had agents active in every nation in Western Europe preaching the Soviet line,
and was casting greedy eyes toward China and Japan.
On the day Mr. Roosevelt died, Mr. Hoover sent President Truman a telegram, saying he
joined all Americans in wishing him the strength to deal with “your gigantic task.” A second
sentence hinted that he was eager to help solve this daunting challenge. “You have
the right to call for any service in aid of our country.”
Mr. Truman replied with thanks for those good wishes – and an additional sentence that
almost certainly raised Mr. Hoover’s hopes. “I assure you I shall feel free to call
upon you. Thanks for the offer.”
Both these evidences of good intentions soon became entangled in politics. When Mr. Truman
told the members of his White House staff, all inherited from Mr. Roosevelt, that he
was thinking of discussing the chaos in Europe with Mr. Hoover, there was an ideological
explosion that almost blew out the walls of the Oval Office.
[laughter]
Steve Early, the press secretary, virtually screamed his hatred of Mr. Hoover. He descanted
on the way Mr. Hoover had never deigned to visit the White House to pay his respects
to FDR when he visited Washington. A pretty absurd idea, I might add, as you know, they
were attacking each other in public constantly.
But another item was Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes was equally vociferous about
not welcoming Mr. Hoover to do anything. With malice aforethought Ickes had taken Mr. Hoover’s
name off the huge dam on the Colorado River that had almost completed when he left office
in 1933.
Mr. Truman retreated in face of this explosion. He told friends of Mr. Hoover, such as Secretary
of War Henry Stimson, in his cabinet, that it might be better if the ex-president came
to the White House on his own. He could assure him of a cordial welcome.
Mr. Hoover stubbornly – and understandably – rebuffed this idea when it was suggested
to him by Stimson and millionaire Bernard Baruch, who had made a career of advising
presidents. When other Hoover advocates tried to influence Steve Early, that gentleman snarled
that Hoover would be welcome in the White House only if he crawled in on his hands and
knees.
[laughter]
Some of this filtered into the Oval Office, and on May 24th 1945, President Truman decided
to solve it in an entirely original way. That evening, in his little office in the presidential
quarters, he wrote a two sentence letter to Mr. Hoover in longhand. “My Dear Mr. President”
he wrote, “If you should be in Washington, I would be most happy to talk over the European
food situation with you. Also, it would be a pleasure for me to become acquainted with
you.”
Mr. Truman found an envelope and a stamp, and slipped out of the White House and dropped
the letter in the nearest mail box.
[laughter]
No one, including his Secret Service escort, noticed the maneuver.
[laughter]
On May 26th Mr. Hoover responded to President Truman’s invitation with a longhand letter
of his own. “Dear Mr. President: “I have your most kind invitation of the 24th –I
will be glad to come to Washington anytime to meet with you at your convenience and I
am asking one of your secretaries to fix an hour.”
Two days later, Margaret Truman, she told me this in her own lively words, was rushing
out the front door of the White House, on her way to a class at George Washington University.
She was in her senior year, majoring in history. At the door she almost collided with a heavy-set
man with a rather cheerful expression on his face. He stepped aside and she zoomed into
a waiting car, driven of course by a Secret Service agent.
That night at dinner, Margaret told her father about her encounter and wondered who this
stranger was. He looked important, she said and she assumed he had visited Mr. Truman.
The President’s eyes twinkled. He loved to tease his daughter. “It’s not often
a mere high school graduate gets a chance to teach something to a history major,”
he said.
[laughter]
“Before they start serving dinner, why don’t you go downstairs and take a look at the portraits
of the presidents in the main hall?”
[laughter]
Margaret, always obedient at least up to a point, rushed downstairs and in less than
a minute was face to face with a handsome painting of the morning’s visitor. “Herbert
Hoover?” she cried, when she regained her chair at the dinner table. “Why in the world
is a Democratic president talking to him?”
“Because he knows a lot about some matters that could save tens of thousands of people
from starvation,” Mr. Truman said. “Also, it may give me a chance to right a great wrong
that certain professional liberals in the Democratic Party did – have done, to Mr.
Hoover.” Professional liberals, I should add, was a term Mr. Truman used to describe
the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party.
The first topic that the ex-president and president discussed was Europe’s imminent
mass starvation. Mr. Hoover divided the problem into three parts. First came the 200 million
people in Eastern Europe who were being turned into unwilling Communists. Feeding them was
now Soviet Russia’s problem.
The rest of Europe was America’s concern. Italy, Greece and some nearby Mediterranean
islands required separate treatment. But most important was northwestern Europe—France,
Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway and the American occupied part of Germany. A hundred
million people lived there, and they were in desperate need of help. They needed a million
tons of wheat per month to preserve them from anarchy and Communism.
There was only one solution, Mr. Hoover said. President Truman had to put the U.S. Army
in command of the situation. They were the only people with the power and know-how to
cut through the red tape and get the job done. He urged the immediate creation of a War Council
composed of leading politicians from the affected countries under the command of an American
general. In the U. S. Mr. Hoover proposed the creation of a three man war council with
similar red tape cutting powers. President Truman seemed to like both these bold ideas
and asked Mr. Hoover to write memorandums outlining them. Unfortunately Mr. Truman – excuse
me.
Mr. Truman then sought Mr. Hoover’s opinion of the American relationship with Russia and
the ongoing war with Japan. We’ve heard already some of what they discussed on this
point.
Mr. Hoover then prepared the four memorandums and made sure they were delivered to the president’s
new press secretary, he was Mr. Truman’s close personal friend and veteran newsman,
Charles Ross. Mr. Hoover told Ross he wanted to avoid having these communications pass
through what he called “the many hands of the current White House mechanism.” In a
word, Mr. Hoover still regarded New Deal Democrats such as Steve Early as enemies.
With good reason, I should add.
Mr. Truman had too much on his mind in the spring of 1945 to do more than write a mild
comment in his personal diary about this meeting with Mr. Hoover. Before he could act on his
recommendations, he was engulfed by events. First came his conference with Stalin and
the new British leader, Clement Atlee, at Potsdam. Entangled with these momentous days
was the decision on whether or not to use the atomic bomb to end the war with Japan.
The New Dealers in the cabinet and on his White House staff who had tried to block his
meeting with Mr. Hoover reacted with even more negative horror when Mr. Truman proposed
to abandon Roosevelt’s policy of unconditional surrender and work out a negotiated peace
with an obviously defeated Japan. This is one of the first examples of Harry Truman’s
ability to think for himself. He was rejecting Mr. Hoover’s advice on unconditional surrender
and of course the great principle which Franklin D. Roosevelt had enunciated. The Navy’s
admirals, and a few other people, supported this idea. But the Army’s Air Force generals
argued for the atomic bomb. More important, the New Dealers in and out of the cabinet
told Truman that he would destroy the Democratic Party if he abandoned unconditional surrender.
Reluctantly, the president chose the atomic bomb as the best guarantee of a swift peace.
General Leslie Groves, the man in charge of the top-secret program, predicted it would
take two bombs to convince the Japanese, and he was right. Although Mr. Truman devoutly
hoped that would not be the case. But his misgivings about the bomb became visible when
he was pushed to use a third bomb, which was the last bomb we had incidentally. Mr. Truman
refused. In a little known letter, he told, he replied that he did not want to incinerate
any more women and children.
These huge events, culminating in what Winston Churchill called an iron curtain across Europe
and the occupation of Japan by General Douglas MacArthur and an American Army, did little
or nothing to alter the crisis that had prompted Mr. Truman to write to Mr. Hoover. By the
end of 1945, starvation at its most demoralizing threatened Europe and Asia. To deal with this
World Food Panic, as it was now called, Mr. Truman asked Mr. Hoover to chair a Famine
Emergency Committee and he accepted.
On March 1st 1946, Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson and Secretary of Commerce
Henry Wallace joined Mr. Hoover and Mr. Truman in the White House to announce the committee’s
creation. Mr. Truman said it was the most important meeting he had convened since he
became president.
Henry Wallace’s presence was particularly significant. As the spokesman for the Democratic
Party’s left wing, where dislike of Mr. Hoover remained intense, it was shrewd politics
to have his apparent approval of Mr. Hoover’s leadership role.
Words are often a necessary thing, but actions speak louder behind the scenes, and Mr. Hoover
was soon dismayed by Mr. Truman’s inability to deal with various New Dealers who refused
to cooperate with Mr. Hoover. Chester Bowles of the Office of Price Administration for
instance, declined to relinquish his control of food prices. Which it made it practically,
made it impossible for Mr. Hoover to do anything in America. Hoover began telling friends he
had never seen or imagined such a mediocre president. He did not understand Mr. Truman’s
agonizing dilemma, as he tried to strike an impossible balance between his own opinions
and the aggressive New Deal voices surrounding him.
In spite of his pessimism, Mr. Hoover soon discovered his relationship with Mr. Truman
would launch the busiest and most important three months of his life since he left the
White House. Mr. Truman gave him and his staff a U.S. Air Force plane and a directive to
visit nations around the world to discover first hand the help they needed to avoid a
famine.
On April 19, 1946, Mr. Truman made the assignment more than official by announcing Mr. Hoover’s
mission in a speech over all four radio networks. If this was welcoming him back into the government
what was. Mr. Hoover responded with a speech later the same night over NBC radio. Both
men appealed to the American people’s pity and generosity to help them avoid an international
catastrophe.
In the next fifty seven days, the 72 year old Hoover – and the specifics of this we’ve
heard in general discussion of it – the 72 year old Hoover visited twenty two countries,
and conferred with seven kings and thirty six prime ministers. He gave forty press conferences
and made two dozen speeches. It was an astonishing performance for a man his age. Back in the
White House, his presidential partner wondered that the strain might be too much for him.
But Mr. Hoover was having a wonderful time. From Cairo, where he reassured Mr. Truman
that he could keep going, Mr. Hoover flew to Asia. There he visited India, Japan and
several other countries. Finally he winged across the Pacific to San Francisco and on
to Washington.
In the White House, Mr. Hoover brought President Truman heartening news. By pooling surplus
grains from America and other countries, they could reduce the food shortage around the
world by two thirds. When Mr. Truman told him Russia was unlikely to cooperate, Mr.
Hoover promptly embarked on a trip through South America, vowing if necessary to eat
what he called “Argentine dirt,” to persuade them to part with wheat from their overflowing
granaries. He soon talked them into giving him 1.6 million tons.
When Mr. Hoover submitted his final report to Mr. Truman on May 15, 1946, the president
praised it extravagantly. “You and your associates have provided a great service to
humanity,” he wrote.
A still galvanized Hoover spoke to the nation on May 17, again pleading with the American
people to reduce their food consumption to save millions from starvation. It was an inspiring
climax to his mission, and President Truman capped it with another warm letter of praise.
Suddenly, Mr. Hoover realized, “every molecule in my body yells at me that it is tired.”
He left Washington for a well deserved rest. But the momentum he had created with his report
soon acquired a power of its own. Crucial supplies of wheat and other foods began pouring
across the seas to the countries in need. Chaos – and rampant communism -- was averted.
The Truman-Hoover partnership meanwhile, was far from over. One might even say it experienced
a rebirth after the Republicans routed the Democrats in the 1946 midterm elections and
won control of both branches of Congress for the first time in 16 years. Not many biographers
have understood the way this Democratic defeat liberated President Harry Truman. As he saw
it, the voters had rejected the excesses and aberrations of the wartime New Deal, with
its wild multiplication of agencies and federal power and its reckless talk of a New Deal
for the World. He was never a believer in these excesses. He was now free to be president
in his own right.
Early in 1947, President Truman did something that really was a minor matter in the context
of the world crises that we’re discussing, but in the context of our story, it says a
good deal about Mr. Truman’s subtle but real sense of liberation. Several members
of the new Republican majority proposed to restore Mr. Hoover’s name to the Colorado
River dam. Mr. Truman promptly sent word to a New Jersey Republican senator that he would
sign the bill, which he did with great pleasure.
While this restoration was in progress, Mr. Hoover was on another mission for the President,
an extensive visit to Germany and Austria to propose ways to restore economic prosperity
to these defeated nations. Again, he succeeded marvelously. And, behind the scenes, he was
playing a major role in persuading the Republican-controlled Congress to cooperate with these and other
programs.
Ten days after the restoration of Mr. Hoover’s name to the great dam, he was invited to the
Gridiron Club dinner for the first time in 15 years. This was an annual event hosted
by the Washington press corps, in which politics is the main subject – often mixed with barbed
humor. When the master of ceremonies asked Mr. Hoover his opinion of the Democratic president,
some people may have hoped that there would be a wry remark suggesting Mr. Truman was
finding out how it felt when public opinion turned against his party.
Instead, Herbert Hoover praised Mr. Truman’s “high service to his country.” Amid the
thousands of crises that sweep to America from abroad, he praised Mr. Truman for standing
firm “with his feet planted in American soil.”
A deeply moved Harry Truman took Herbert Hoover’s copy of the program and wrote: “With esteem
and appreciation to a great man.” It was a unique tribute to the deepening friendship
between the two presidents.
But domestic politics still cast a looming shadow. When Mr. Truman ran for reelection
in 1948, he made the Republican Congress his main target. And his speech writers soon began
using some of the epithets against Mr. Hoover. At one point Mr. Truman asked people to remember
the “The Herbert Hoover Cart” of the 1930s. This was a tin lizzie pulled by a mule. At
another point he described Mr. Hoover as a great engineer who had “backed the national
train into the public waiting room, creating ‘panic, depression and despair.’”
It was an enormous tribute to Mr. Hoover’s political sophistication that he was able
dismiss this vituperation as campaign rhetoric. He was helped by a message Mr. Truman sent
him, saying he simply did not have time to rewrite his speeches; which was pretty much
the case. Another reason was Mr. Hoover’s lack of enthusiasm for the Republican candidate,
Thomas E. Dewey.
But most important of all was a job that Mr. Hoover had begun doing before the campaign
began–he had agreed to head a bipartisan commission to reorganize the federal government.
Some leading Democrats tried to persuade Mr. Truman to block Mr. Hoover’s appointment.
Mr. Truman replied that Hoover was “the best man I know of” to tackle this large
task. He was confident that Mr. Hoover would “do the job for me.” Notice that presidential
tone.
As the election of 1948 churned to a climax, Mr. Truman amazed everyone with his gains
in the polls. Some Democrats on this commission talked of junking the whole enterprise, mainly
to get rid of Mr. Hoover. When Mr. Truman won his astounding victory, a Hoover staff
man persuaded a Democratic insider to put through a call to Missouri to find out what
would happen next.
The answer was a strong affirmative from the man from Independence. He would put all his
victorious prestige behind Mr. Hoover’s recommendations.
Over the next year, there was still a lot of arguments across the aisle in Congress.
But more than seventy percent of Mr. Hoover’s recommendations became law, creating what
some historians call “the managerial presidency,” with Congress as sort of a board of directors
and the president as the executive in charge of proposing and working out the details of
the laws they passed. It’s more complicated than that of course, but that’s not a bad
summary.
In the next years, the two presidents disagreed publicly about America’s foreign policy.
We’ve already heard about this too. Mr. Hoover favored creating a fortress America
and so forth and Mr. Truman wanted engagement with the anti-Communists and went for the
NATO and the Marshall Plans.
But, the Truman-Hoover friendship survived these strains. Mr. Hoover joined Eleanor Roosevelt
in the dedication of Mr. Truman’s library. In 1962, Mr. Truman came here to West Branch
to help dedicate Mr. Hoover’s library. Over the years, they exchanged letters on many
topics. The most important of these communications, however, came from Mr. Hoover in late December
1962.
He began by thanking Mr. Truman for the warm handwritten inscription on a copy of his sort
of second memoir, Mr. Citizen. But Mr. Hoover felt impelled, he said, to add “something
more.” Swiftly he summed up his career in public service starting in 1914 and his disappointment
with his offer to help serve during World War II. Then came words that recalled the
roots of their friendship. “When you came to the White House, within a month you opened
the door to me to the only profession I know, public service, and you undid some disgraceful
actions that had been taken in the prior years. For all this, and for your friendship, I am
deeply grateful.”
Mr. Truman replied that Mr. Hoover’s letter left him overcome. “You state the situation
better than I could,” he wrote. “I’ll quote you: ‘For….your friendship, I am
deeply grateful.’”
Americans need to know more about this unique political experience. It’s rich in wisdom
for the politicians of 2012 – and I suspect the riches will be equally evident to the
politicians of 3012.
Thank you very much.
[Applause]