Television: The President's Week

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It was like old times. There was Harry Truman ranting away in people's living rooms, almost as if it were 1950 and the old Zenith console with the round eye was down out of the attic.

Predictably enough, Truman was vigorously booting General Douglas MacArthur all over the inside of the tube. At 80, Truman seemed somewhat short of breath, but what there was of it would have curled leather. "Some of them get the big head," he said, assessing the man he fired. "I was the commander in chief, and I had to make up my mind what I would do with an insubordinate general ... He was trying to get himself in good with one of the big parties of the government of the United States ... He didn't fool anybody. Least of all did he fool me."

"Lincoln had to fire five generals. In fact he had to fire McClellan twice. McClellan was about as egotistical as MacArthur—and that's giving him his due, because I don't think he was quite as smart as MacArthur . . . After the surrender treaty, I named MacArthur the head of the occupation of Japan.

And that's where his egotism came out." When Truman and MacArthur met at Wake Island, "some of the boys said he didn't even salute me," Harry went on. "I didn't give a damn."

Arrogant & Conceited. Harry apparently didn't give a damn either when, halfway through taping the two-part MacArthur series last March, he heard that MacArthur was gravely ill. "I'm going to die soon too," he snapped as he ordered the show to go on. "We're both old men. This is history." This free-swinging, give-'em-hell attitude makes Truman's vendetta extraordinarily lively television, at the same time giving the whole series the somewhat dubious hue of yellow journalism.

MacArthur's career is traced in old film clips from the prewar Philippines (young Ike appears as a fresh-faced staff officer running messages for "imperious" Mac) through the Pacific and Korean wars. MacArthur's military accomplishments are somewhat grudgingly acknowledged, but to prove his thesis what Truman seizes on with evident relish are such anecdotes as that of the general who had thought MacArthur's father was the most egotistical and self-centered man on earth—until he met MacArthur himself.

The Trouble with Generals. Decision is the first series ever to star a former President of the United States, and Truman's unreined personality is the whole show. He will be keeping it up for 26 weeks. His program, syndicated in nearly 60 cities, is his ultimate personal soapbox, on which he intends to tell his version of the story—if not for once, for all. In future weeks he will discuss everything from the atom bomb to the Berlin airlift, but mainly he will simply aim his chin at the camera and let fly.

As a historical record, the program is matchless, because no book could give a sense of it nearly so well. It shows Truman at his off-the-cuff best—and worst. In this week's show, for example, he can't resist asserting that generals in general make lousy Presidents. Not only was Grant a bad one, according to Harry, but also "the very recent one, about whom I hesitate to talk now."

He hesitates for about 1½ seconds. "His name was General Eisenhower," says Truman blinking devilishly.