Truman & Pendergast (review)

118 Rhetoric & Public Affairs Sloan's book is weU written and it supplies ample facts to support its contentions. Yet, the assumptions that guide the author, namely the uniqueness of his insight a decade after Reagan left office, is not ftxUy materialized. Most of the corrective insights have already been researched and presented by several other scholars. At the intersection of public policy and rhetoric, the author would have benefited from existing sources that advance simüar claims. The book is of value to those not famUiar with the Reagan presidency and to open-minded readers who are wüling to alter their previously held opinion of Ronald Reagan. Amos Kiewe Syracuse University Truman & Pendergast. By Robert H. FerreU. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999; pp. xii + 162. $24.95. The Kansas City Pendergast machine, like the Huey Long regime in Louisiana, or any big city political machine, buUt its power by serving constituent needs. But like almost aU organizations, power corrupted. Some constituents were more worthy than others. EventuaUy, in Kansas City, Pendergast went too far. With wry stories, Robert FerreU teUs us many tales of how things went: Some of the machine's behavior bordered on the humorous. Unusual services were provided. If tires disappeared from a voter's car, and he reported the loss to the police department, it was possible to have the tires put back on the car during the night. The police would get in touch with 'Fat Willie,' who had the tire-stealing concession in the city, and inform him that his men had taken tires from the wrong car. Fat Willie would arrange for the tires to be reinstalled, which his concession required. The machine thus did a favor for a voter, and the voter could feel that being a part of the machine provided a kind of free insurance (13). Pendergast had the city votes in his pocket; the surrounding semi-rural county could not be so easüy organized. There Pendergast needed a respectable and straightshooting aUy; Harry Truman fit that definition. When Pendergast's requests were reasonable, Truman accepted them; when not, he did what the public interest demanded. Since Jackson County roads were a disgrace when Truman became County Judge (an administrative, not legal post), he employed a nonpartisan panel of two engineers, one Democrat and one Republican, to supervise the construction of a road system. He could later brag that the 300-müe system of concrete roads was one of the finest in the country, and he pushed it through with conspicuous honesty. The road program, among other things, brought him in conflict with Pendergast. As FerreU describes it, Truman gave the largest contract "to the American Road Book Reviews 119 Buüding Company of South Dakota, and the result was a meeting with Pendergast in the boss's office. . . . There he encountered three . . . crooks, . . . friends of Pendergast. The judge (Truman) told the group he had to give contracts to the lowest bidder. Pendergast pressed the issue but Truman was firm. Tom Evans happened to be sitting outside the boss's office and Pendergast had the door open. Tom heard the boss's decision, addressed to the crooked contractors: Ί told you he was the hardheadest , orneriest man in the world; there isn't anything I can do. That's it, gentlemen . You get the price right and get the best material. You heard him say it; you'U get thebusiness'"(8). After establishing a solid record in Jackson County, Truman won an empty U.S. Senate seat in 1934. His industry, integrity, and fairness impressed his coUeagues; his chairmanship of the "Truman Committee" to investigate military contracts in his second term won widespread praise. But the second term was not assured; in 1939, Pendergast went to Leavenworth, and the machine coUapsed. In the senatorial election of 1940, Lloyd C. Stark, Missouri's governor and one of the state's patricians , played the Pendergast connection against Truman and had the help of Franklin Roosevelt. FerreU teUs us how this crisis fell out; it is a fascinating story. Before focus groups and "scientific" campaign management, politicians held up a finger to see which way the wind was blowing...