By Nick Tomboulides
In surveys of historians and the American people, President Harry S. Truman is regarded as one of the best leaders our nation has ever had. Truman, a Democrat who Republicans also admire, ascended to the presidency in 1945 while World War II was still being fought. He presided over the surrender of nazi Germany and imperial Japan.
What most Americans don’t know about Truman is that he was an early champion for term limits on Congress. When Congress passed a resolution for term limits on the presidency — in response to FDR’s unprecedented 12-year tenure — Truman demanded to know why House and Senate members weren’t included.
His reasoning? “We’d help to cure senility and seniority — both terrible legislative diseases.”
In a handwritten note now available to read at the Truman Library, Truman made a powerful case for term limits on the Congress.
He said “limitation for members of the House and Senate would prevent the focalization of the key Committees. At present the Foreign Relations and Foreign Affairs committees of the House and Senate have chairmen who live in (a) day before yesterday or back before the first world war. The appropriations committees of the House and Senate are aged and decrepit men, who if they think at all think…backward thinking.”
True to his nickname of Give ‘Em Hell Harry, Truman added that “there are old time Senators who even make Louis XIV of France and George I of England look like shining liberals.”
In today’s political environment, elected tricksters do all they can to evade term limits. The straight talk from a statesman like Harry S. Truman is a reminder that we don’t have to settle for the status quo.
CLICK HERE to read the full Harry S. Truman letter on term limits.
CLICK HERE to help clean up the corrupt mess in D.C., by signing the Term Limits Petition.
Nick Tomboulides is the Executive Director of U.S. Term Limits
