Missouri Mule: How Harry Truman’s Stubbornness and Determination Helped Win World War II and Led Him to the Presidency
James Tyson “Jim” Currie grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Mississippi with majors in history and political science. He then attended the University of Virginia, from which he received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in history. Dr. Currie is also a graduate of the Army’s Command and General Staff College and the Defense Department’s Industrial College of the Armed Forces, now the Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy. He taught history at Mississippi College, Millsaps College, Jackson State University, and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces at National Defense University. He was the first Historian of the U.S. Department of Education and Associate Historian of the House of Representatives. He worked for Senator Lloyd M. Bentsen, Jr. as speechwriter, legislative assistant (defense and foreign policy), and staff member on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. While on the SSCI staff, he also worked for Senators David Boren and John Glenn. Dr. Currie served a total of thirty years, active and reserve, in the U.S. Army, retiring with the rank of Colonel. His military awards include the Legion of Merit, four awards of the Meritorious Service Medal, and the Army Parachute Badge. His last assignment was with the Army’s Office of Legislative Liaison. He is the author of five books and twenty-five articles, one of which was awarded the Charles Thomson Prize by the National Archives/Southern Historical Association. He is a longtime member of SAG-AFTRA (AFL-CIO) and has appeared as a background performer in the television series House of Cards and Homeland. Currie lives in Fairfax County, Virginia, with his wife Janis. They have one son, Matthew, who practices as a clinical psychologist in Maryland.
On February 3, 1940, Harry S Truman, a freshman Senator from Missouri, held a press conference to announce that he would run for reelection. Truman also said that year that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt should not run for a third term as president because, in Truman’s words, “There is no indispensable man in a democracy.” Roosevelt ignored Truman’s admonition, secured the Democratic nomination, and ran successfully for a third term. Roosevelt punished Truman by pitting the White House political apparatus against him in the Missouri Democratic Senate primary. His plot to defeat Truman failed, however, and Truman was reelected. Four years later, Roosevelt chose Truman as his running mate, a decision that led directly to Truman’s becoming president when Roosevelt unexpectedly died only eighty-two days into his fourth term. Why, then, did FDR choose Truman over all others? The answer to that question is the primary subject of Missouri Mule, prize-winning author James Currie’s new book, which traces Truman’s rise from Senate backbencher in 1940 to Roosevelt’s running mate in 1944. As secondary—and intriguing—themes, this book draws upon extensive original research in the National Archives to expose massive Army and Navy wartime bungling and wastefulness and reveals how some U.S. corporations were more interested in increasing shareholder dividends and corporate profits than in providing the quality materiel needed to defeat the Nazis and the Japanese. As chair of the primary Senate oversight committee that investigated our country’s World War II defense build-up and expenditures, Harry Truman displayed all the best characteristics of the Missouri mules he had worked with as a young man on his farm: the stubbornness and determination that helped us win the war and made him one of our best presidents.
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