[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book II)]
[September 22, 2000]
[Pages 1902-1904]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at the Dedication of the Harry S. Truman Building
September 22, 2000

    Thank you very much, and good afternoon. Secretary 
Albright, thank you for your remarks 
and your leadership. My longtime friend Ike Skelton and the other members of the Missouri congressional 
delegation, thank you for this great gift to America and to our 
children.
    John Truman and the members of the 
Truman family, we welcome you here. We are honored by your presence. And 
I'd like to say a special word of personal thanks on behalf of Hillary 
and myself to Margaret Truman Daniel 
for her uncommon kindness and concern for the First Lady and our daughter, 
for nearly 9 years now. We are thinking about her in what has been a 
hard year.
    I was telling John Truman when we came 
out here that Margaret came to dinner 
with her late husband several years ago at the White House, and I rather 
cavalierly, along with Hillary, had her to dinner in the private dining 
room on the second floor. And I did a little research right before she 
came and discovered that that had been her music room when she was a 
young lady living in the White House with another First Family that had 
only one child, a daughter.
    And so I asked her, I said, 
``Margaret, how do you like this dining room?'' And she said, ``Well, 
Mr. President, I like you, but I really don't think people should eat on 
the same floor they sleep.''[Laughter] And I felt as if I were in the 
presence of Harry Truman all over again. [Laughter] So I dutifully got 
down my well-worn copy of David McCullough's great biography, and I 
looked at the houses of Harry and Bess Truman in Independence, and sure 
enough, they were two-story houses, where the bedrooms were on the top 
floor and the dining room was on the ground floor.
    I want to say to you, Mr. Elsey, I wish 
you had just taken the whole program. [Laughter] I could have listened 
to you for another hour and a half. And I think I speak for all the 
people in this audience in saying that we are grateful you are here to 
provide us a living account of a remarkable time and a great President. 
And we are grateful for your service to America, as well, and we thank 
you, sir.
    And I want to thank James Earl Jones 
for being here, and also for his friendship to me over these years. I 
was so hoping, before I knew he would come, that there would be an 
African-American in this place at this time who could be the living 
embodiment of the remarkable steps Harry Truman took that put us on the 
road we still travel today.
    You have made quite a showing in your life, Mr. Jones. But I can't help thinking that in more modest and less 
famous ways, there are hundreds of thousands of others whose lives were 
also encouraged and advanced by Harry Truman's courage. And we thank you 
for being here today to embody that.
    Most of all, I would like to thank our Foreign Service and civil 
service employees who are here, who work every day to advance our 
interests and values around the world and to make us more free and more 
secure.
    This is a very good thing we're doing today. Listen to this: In 
1956, at the close of his visit to Great Britain, the London Daily 
Telegraph called Harry Truman ``the living and kicking symbol of 
everything everyone likes best about America.'' That's a pretty good 
reason for putting his name on the State Department. But it really 
doesn't even get into the top 10, for history will credit Harry Truman 
for creating the architecture of postwar internationalism in politics 
and economics; for drawing the line against communism and for democracy, 
setting us squarely on the trail of freedom we continue

[[Page 1903]]

to blaze today; for leading America toward increasing prosperity and 
racial equality here at home; and for laying the groundwork for 
pioneering achievements in meeting America's health care needs, even 
though he paid a dear price for it.
    We are still blessed because President Truman understood the 
importance not just of winning the war but of building the institutions 
and alliances that could maintain the peace. What a job he did: the 
United Nations; NATO; the Truman Doctrine; the Berlin Airlift; Korea; 
and the Marshall plan. Oh, yes, he was committed to military strength. 
But from the very beginning, he knew that peace could not be maintained 
and the cold war could not be won by military power alone. He told the 
National War College, behind the shield of military strength, ``We must 
help people improve the conditions of life, to create a world in which 
democracy and freedom can flourish.'' That's an argument he had to make 
over and over and over again. I can identify with that.
    In early 1947, the House cut in half President Truman's request for 
funds to prevent starvation and disease in occupied Germany and Japan. 
He knew he had to turn that mentality around, but he believed he could. 
He would often say, ``I trust the people, because when they know the 
facts, they do the right thing.''
    So when he went before a joint session of Congress to call for 
emergency aid to keep Greece and Turkey from falling into the Communist 
orbit, he put it this way: ``The United States contributed $341 billion 
toward winning World War II. The assistance I recommend amounts to 
little more than one-tenth of one percent of that investment. It is only 
common sense that we should safeguard this investment and make sure it 
was not in vain.'' With the leadership and support of like-minded 
Members of Congress, the bill was on his desk in 2 months, passed by 
overwhelming majorities in both Houses. And he fought the same way to 
win America over to the Marshall plan.
    Harry Truman's unmatched insight allowed him to see emerging 
patterns in history, to identify new challenges over the horizon, and to 
build the institutions and approaches to meet them. Thanks, in no small 
measure, to President Truman, we have won the cold war and now must 
shoulder a like responsibility for meeting the challenges of a new 
century and a new era in human affairs.
    With global interdependence growing daily, creating ever-new 
opportunities and new and different vulnerabilities, the need for U.S. 
leadership in the world has never been greater. The need for building on 
Harry Truman's legacy has never been greater.
    But the old American pull of isolationism--or at least, in this age, 
cut-way-back-ism--is still there. We should remember what he said: 
``Lasting peace,'' President Truman reminded us, ``means bread and 
justice and opportunity and freedom for all the people of the world.'' 
My fellow Americans, this is a great day, and this is a good thing. But 
we should do more than dedicate this building to Harry Truman. We should 
rededicate ourselves today to fulfilling his vision in the new century.
    To paraphrase what he said so long ago, it means we have to put a 
small percentage of the resources we put into winning the cold war to 
work in the world in keeping the peace, advancing global prosperity, 
reducing poverty, fighting AIDS, battling terrorism, defending human 
rights, supporting free press and democracy around the world.
    We need to move forward with debt relief for the world's poorest 
nations, to give them the lifeline they need to fight AIDS and educate 
their children and become better partners for us in the world. These are 
the kinds of investments Harry Truman proved decades ago could keep our 
soldiers out of war. If we do not want to overuse our military, we must 
not underfund our diplomacy.
    I believe if President Truman were here today, he would tell us that 
if we truly want to honor him, we should prepare for the future in our 
time, as he prepared for our future in his. Those of us here today know 
that that means not only investing in foreign affairs; it also means 
investing in the capacity of our own people at home.
    Truman once said, ``The success of our foreign policy depends upon 
the strength of our domestic policy.'' Well, he tried it, and it worked. 
By the close of his administration, he had helped to create 11 million 
new jobs; unemployment was at a record low; farm and business incomes at 
all-time highs; the minimum wage had increased; Social Security benefits 
had doubled; 8 million veterans had been to college on the GI bill; and 
our country had moved closer to one America, across the lines of race 
that divided us.

[[Page 1904]]

    In 1947 President Truman was the first President ever to address the 
NAACP. His biographer, David McCullough, called it the strongest 
statement on civil rights heard in Washington since the time of Lincoln. 
President Truman said, ``I meant every word, and I'm going to prove 
it.'' And so he did, desegregating the Armed Forces and the Federal 
civil service and continuing to fight for civil rights gains.
    He also envisioned a new system of health care for the elderly and 
affordable health insurance for all Americans. He led America on the 
first leg of a long march that would end in 1965, with the creation of 
Medicare. He endured vicious attacks, and his party lost the Congress in 
a record way, in no small measure because he simply thought that people, 
when they needed a doctor, ought to be able to get one.
    But at the signing ceremony for Medicare several years later, the 
guest of honor was Harry Truman. President Johnson gave him the very 
first Medicare card and said, ``It was really Harry Truman who planted 
the seeds of compassion and duty which have today flowered into care for 
the sick and serenity for the fearful.''
    So at home and around the world, if we truly wish to honor President 
Truman, we will do in our day what he did so brilliantly in his: see 
clearly the long-term path we must follow, take the first steps without 
hesitation.
    This is a kind of time Harry Truman must have dreamed of at the end 
of World War II, at the dawn of the cold war, in the bitterest, bleakest 
days of the conflict in Korea: an America at peace, with prosperity, 
social progress, no crippling internal crisis or external threat.
    Like our victory in World War II, this opens a whole new era for us. 
It gives us great opportunities, enormous challenges, profound 
responsibilities. At home, we have the chance and the duty to meet the 
challenge of the aging of America; of the largest and most diverse group 
of schoolchildren in our Nation's history; of families struggling to 
balance the obligation to work with the more important obligation to 
raise their children well; to explore the far frontiers of science and 
technology in a way that benefits ordinary Americans and protects our 
most cherished values; to get this country out of debt for the first 
time since Andrew Jackson was President.
    Around the world, we have to face the threat of proliferation of 
weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, narcotrafficking, the 
persistent, enduring ethnic, religious, tribal, and racial conflicts 
that grip so many places in the world, and new and different threats 
that could profoundly affect us all, including global warming and the 
rise of AIDS and other infectious diseases, along with the breakdown of 
public health systems around the world.
    But we're well-positioned to deal with this, thanks in no small 
measure to what Harry Truman and his generation did so long ago. He gave 
us the opportunities we have today. It's a good thing that we say, 
thanks, Mr. President, by naming this building for him. It would be a 
far, far better thing if we would follow his lead and give the same set 
of opportunities to our grandchildren. I pray God that we will.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 1:33 p.m. outside the Harry S. Truman 
Building. In his remarks, he referred to President Truman's grandnephew, 
John Ross Truman, and daughter, Margaret Truman Daniel; George M. Elsey, 
former administrative assistant to President Truman; and actor James 
Earl Jones, master of ceremonies.