I watched Truman last night. It was an HBO special a few years ago about the life of Harry Truman. It made me realize how little that I know about American presidents from the first half of the twentieth century. For instance, I didn't know that Truman was a democract from Missouri. An interesting fact since I have been working in Missouri the last few months. Gary Sinise gave a great performance as the titular character. Of course, since I know so little about Truman it is hard to tell whether it was an accurate portrayal. I always thought that Harry Truman was well liked, but he only had a 32% approval rating when he left office in 1952. He struck me as being a man who was too small for the job. He started out as a farmer and small business man and woundup taking over for FDR during WW II when Roosevelt died in office. I'm not sure that it was intentional, but the movie made several references to Truman's poor eyesight. There was one scene where he dropped his glasses in the mud during a World War I battle when he seemed helpless. This seemed to be a foreshadowing of Truman's future life because as president he seemed to lack vision. After killing tens of thousands at Dresden and Tokyo using conventional weapons, he still went ahead with using nucluear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the reasoning that it would end the war in the Pacific sooner. He may have ended the war a few months earlier, but he opened a Pandora's box filled with problems for future generations of Americans. It also seemed a tad hypocritical for him to fire General MacArthur for suggesting that we drop the bomb on China during the Korean conflict when he had opened the door to nuclear weapons himself. I guess that I should read more about him before passing judgement. Movies are rarely good historical references.