Harry Truman was out to see the people, to be seen by the people, and to put on the act at which he has no current peer.
The occasion was a trip to St. Paul for the 100th anniversary of Minnesota as a territory. Truman ordered the presidential train hitched up, happily climbed aboard his private car, the Ferdinand Magellan. He would make a "nonpolitical, bipartisan speech," he declared with a grin. What was that? Said Truman genially: "It is a speech that throws no bricks at any other political party." Big Bill...