This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, April 19, 2011 -WASHINGTON - "A bureaucrat," Harry S Truman once quipped, "is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants."
As a Democratic U.S. senator and later as president, the feisty Truman earned a reputation as "Give 'em Hell, Harry" -- and he often relished giving hell to his Republican opponents in Missouri and around the country.
But these days, many Republicans profess admiration for Truman. And last week, U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., followed in the footsteps of his GOP predecessor, Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, in claiming Truman's old Senate offices for his digs as a freshman senator from the Show-Me State.
"It's his tenacity, his self-education, his courage to do difficult things; that's what people appreciate about Harry Truman," Blunt said. "He was the only Missourian ever to become president. I think he served in a way that Missourians can be proud of, even if you don't agree with everything that he did."
As Blunt gave a couple of journalists a quick tour Monday of the nine-room suite where he now works, the senator -- a former American history teacher -- clearly relished his historic piece of real estate on the second floor of the Russell Senate Office Building. "Lots of Missouri history and lots of U.S. history occurred in these offices," he said.
Truman occupied two different offices in the suite between 1935 and 1945 and kept the office even during his 90 days as vice president.
When Truman became vice president in January 1945, the Washington Post reported that the Missourian "holds the same unexalted opinion of himself others held during eight of his 10 years in the Senate. He wasn't parading an unbecoming modesty when he told the Senate Office Building superintendent he wouldn't move into the streamlined vice presidential suite. ... His old quarters (Room 240, Senate Office Building) were good enough. Besides, he didn't relish moving all his stuff."
"These were the offices [Truman] was using when he became president," Blunt said. On that day, April 12, 1945, Truman was in the U.S. Capitol when he got an urgent phone call telling him to go immediately to the White House, where he learned that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had died.
But Blunt isn't the only Missouri senator who's fond of Truman. So is Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who proudly displays a replica of Truman's famous White House desk sign -- The Buck Stops Here -- on her office desk. She also occupies Truman's historic desk in the U.S. Senate chamber.
In fact, when McCaskill moved into her new office in the Hart Senate Office Building in February, she had her staff hang five 3-foot-long photos of Truman in various poses: with a Missouri mule, in front of the White House and in front of the Capitol.
She also displays the famous photo of Truman in St. Louis Union Station, holding a newspaper with the "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline the morning that Truman defeated a popular Republican and won reelection to the White House. Over the decades, Republicans had lambasted Truman, labeling him "High-Tax Harry" and "the senator from Pendergast" a reference to his early connections to the political machine of "Boss Tom" Pendergast in Kansas City.
As Truman -- always the political partisan -- once quipped: "A leader in the Democratic Party is [called] a 'boss,' in the Republican Party he is a leader."