“His name is Finch, Mr. President. Aaron Finch.” As a good press secretary should have, Short had the facts at his fingertips. “He drives a truck and installs appliances for a local company called Blue Front.”
“Oh. Blue Front. That’s Herschel Weissman’s outfit, isn’t it?” As a good politician should have, Truman recognized a prominent contributor to his party.
Short nodded. “I believe it is, sir.”
“Okay. Maybe we can play it up. Is this Finch a veteran? That’d help.”
“No, sir. He served in the merchant marine. The military wouldn’t take him-he can’t see past his nose without Coke-bottle specs.”
“He served his country, anyhow. That’ll work,” Truman said.
As the plane taxied over to the terminal and stopped, the props spun down to stillness. Airport workers wheeled a portable stairway to the door. Truman expected it to be warm when that door opened. This was Southern California, after all! But it was still only April, and the airport lay close by the Pacific. The air that came in was chilly and moist. He set his fedora on his head before he stepped outside.
Reporters and photographers stood on the runway. So did National Guardsmen. The military was practically running the West Coast these days. It was in decent working order and could get directions straight from Washington. That put it several steps ahead of the battered state and local governments. Putting the Humpty-Dumpty of civilian administration back together when peace came back-if peace came back-might not be so easy. Well, the country had managed it after the Civil War. It could again.
Truman shoved such worries out of his mind-one more time. Flashbulbs popped. The President waved to the members of the Fourth Estate. “Hello, boys!” he called. They were vultures, hoping he’d trip halfway down the stairs or do something else stupid so they could write a story about it.
A couple of Secret Service agents pushed past Truman, hurried down the stairs, and took stations near the base of the wheeled platform to keep the newshounds from coming too close. They no doubt felt virtuous about that. But if one of the gentlemen of the press pulled out a pistol and started shooting, he could fill the President full of holes before the Secret Service men knocked him down with their guns.
No one fired. Truman had been seventeen, almost a man but not quite, when that crazed anarchist shot William McKinley. No one had assassinated a President since then. A nut had taken a shot at FDR, but he’d only managed to kill the mayor of Chicago. And those Puerto Rican independence fanatics had hunted Truman himself, but they hadn’t made it into the White House.
Truman’s mouth twisted. Other, even worse, madness was running wild now. He wouldn’t be visiting this ravaged city if that weren’t so. How many had died here, in the two blasts? Hundreds of thousands. Put a President’s life in the scales against so many and it didn’t seem like much.
“How did those Russian bombers get through, Mr. President?” a reporter called. “Up and down the West Coast, sir, how did they get through?”
“I wish I had a good answer for you,” Truman said, a reply that came from the heart. “I wish I did, but I don’t. The best I can tell you is, they must have used the same kind of tricks we’ve used to strike at their territory. And I promise you, we’ve hit them harder than they’ve hit us.”
“That doesn’t do people here a whole lot of good,” another man said.
“I understand that. I’ve come to see the damage with my own eyes. I’ll go up to San Francisco and Portland and Seattle afterwards, too,” the President said. “I want to make sure this can never happen again.”
“The Russians are still advancing in Germany, too,” said a fellow with a loud necktie. “How can they be doing that if we’re hitting them with fire and brimstone like you claim?”
“Because there are swarms of them. It’s the same trouble we had in Korea facing the Communists from the North and the Red Chinese,” Truman snapped. “We cut our military to the bone after we whipped the Germans and the Japs. Joe Stalin didn’t. We probably put too much faith in the power of our atom bombs, and didn’t look for the Russians to build theirs as soon as they did. We can see all that now. We couldn’t then, no matter how much I wish we’d been able to. Hindsight is always 20/20.”
Behind him, Joe Short had to be pained. To a press secretary, admitting you’d made a mistake was an unpardonable sin. Truman couldn’t see it. The Führer was always right. He’d said so, repeatedly. Teachers had taught German schoolkids to believe it. Stalin was the same way-Mao, too.
Hitler hadn’t turned out so well. Stalin and Mao killed anybody who dared disagree with them. Truman had wanted to punch a reporter in the nose a time or three, but that was as far as it went. He knew damn well he wasn’t always right. The people deserved to know he knew it.
“Will we drive them back?” Mr. Yellow-and-Orange Necktie persisted. “Why can’t we smash their army with more A-bombs?”
“Because that army is on the soil of a land we’re allied to, a land we’re committed to defend,” Truman said. “We use atomic weapons as a last resort, not as a first one. We don’t want to wreck our own friends.”
Another reporter found a different kind of question for him: “Do you think anybody in the whole country will want to vote for you in 1952 after…this?” His wave took in all of shattered Los Angeles and, by extension, all of the shattered country.
“I don’t know. I don’t care. I’m not worrying about it right now,” Truman answered. They’d proposed the Twenty-second Amendment, limiting a President’s tenure to two terms of his own and half of a predecessor’s minus one day, in 1947. They’d got enough states to ratify it just weeks earlier. But it didn’t apply to the President in whose administration it was ratified. If he could get people to keep reelecting him till 1976, it would be legal.
For now, though, he tended to agree with the snoopy reporter. He’d have a hard time getting elected dogcatcher next year, let alone President. That didn’t necessarily prove anything. A lot could change in a year and a half. The USA might have won the war by then.
Or the Russians might have dropped one on the White House, the way the United States had dropped one on the Kremlin. The American effort hadn’t got rid of Stalin, which was too bad. Maybe the Russians won’t get me, either, Truman thought. If they did, the USA would have an easier time going on than Russia would without Uncle Joe. If the United States could get along without Roosevelt, it could definitely get along without Truman.
He held up both hands. “Boys, I didn’t come to chew the fat on the runway,” he said. “I came to see what Los Angeles looks like now, and how we can get it back on its feet as soon as possible.” He’d also come to eat rubber chicken at a banquet that would swell Democratic coffers, but he didn’t mention that.
He’d hoped for a convertible so he could see better, but they put him into a sedan. The fan was uncommonly noisy. That turned out to be because it wasn’t just a fan. “This car has an air-conditioning and filtering system, sir,” explained the Air Force colonel who played tour guide for him. “Some of the dust in the air is still radioactive in the damaged regions. We don’t know how much long-term harm it can do, and we don’t want to experiment on the President.”
“No, eh?” Truman said. “Well, thanks for that much.”
In the air-conditioned car, he got close to ground zero. Nothing much stirred there. The area had been comprehensively flattened. But a crow hopped around on the glassy ground before flying off in search of a place that offered better eating. The bird didn’t worry about radioactivity.
The bird also didn’t have to decide whether and when to launch new strikes against the Soviet Union. All it worried about were cats and hawks. It didn’t know how lucky it was.