Hidden Diary Shows How Much Truman Liked Ike

Harry Truman always denied that while in the White House he entertained the idea of having Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower run for president in 1948 -- with Truman as his running mate.

But a newly discovered diary written by Truman reveals that he did make the offer while talking politics one summer afternoon with Eisenhower. Truman worried that Gen. Douglas MacArthur would run for president on the Republican ticket.

“I told Ike,” Truman wrote, “that if [MacArthur] did that, [Eisenhower] should announce for the nomination for President on the Democratic ticket and that I’d be glad to be in second place, or Vice President.”

“I like the Senate anyway,” the former Missouri senator wrote. “Ike & I could be elected and my family & myself would be happy outside this great white jail, known as the White House.”

The account is among the most revealing of 42 handwritten entries in a diary that was mistakenly catalogued and filed with the book collection of the Truman Library in Independence, Mo. It remained in the stacks, apparently undisturbed, for 38 years until library staff began moving the collection this year.

Sent to Truman as a gift from the president of the Real Estate Board of New York Inc., the slim volume bears the board’s name on the cover, and the first 160 pages contain member listings and advertisements.

“Unless you look at the papers in the back of the book and see President Truman’s handwriting, it doesn’t look like a diary,” said the library’s Ray Geselbrach.

“This finding is a clear reminder that there is no final draft of history,” said United States Archivist John W. Carlin.

Truman had been vice president for only three months when he was sworn in as president after Franklin D. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. He was struggling with low popularity ratings and a Republican Congress when he met with Eisenhower on July 25, 1947.