Washington, D.C. ­– U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) delivered the following remarks on receiving the Harry S. Truman Good Neighbor Award:

“Thank you.

“I’m honored by this award and grateful to the Truman Foundation. A quick glance at previous honorees reveals that I’m in awfully intimidating company. Many are former colleagues and role models and heroes of mine. Bob Dole, Barry Goldwater, Omar Bradley, Buzz Aldrin, Sandra Day O’Conner, Gerry Ford, Howard Baker, Jeanne Kirkpatrick. Many distinguished themselves in their respective fields much more than I have, and I’m humbled to be included in their ranks.

“I’m especially honored to have any association with Harry Truman, a man whom, as historian Clinton Rossiter put it, ‘history delights to remember.’ 

“You don’t have to be a Democrat to admire Harry Truman. I’ve always admired him. I admired his honesty and candor, a straight talker by conviction and habit. I flatter myself to think I’m capable of straight talk now and again. Harry Truman was in a whole other league.

“‘I fired MacArthur because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the president,’ Truman once explained. ‘I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb SOB, although he was.’ Like I said, a whole other league. 

“I admired his courage and fortitude. He was thrust into world history by an act of Providence with the whole world at war and the battle between the forces of good and evil unfinished. He might have been intimidated, but he didn’t show it. He led with resolve and wisdom. He led the greatest power in that titanic contest, and made decisions that would have tested the mettle of people with infinitely more experience and qualifications. He took abuse from critics and gave a little back, but soldiered on until the job was done.

“‘America was not built on fear,’ he proclaimed. And neither was he. ‘America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.’ And so was he. Harry Truman brought courage, imagination and unbeatable determination to the job of leader of the free world. And the world was a better place for it.

“He brought a sense of fairness, too, and compassion. Raised in a southern culture, in the age of Jim Crow, he was not free of prejudice. But he tried to do justice by Americans who had suffered oppression that no other Americans had experienced.

“He wrote to a friend, who cautioned him to go slowly on civil rights:

“‘I am asking for equality of opportunity for all human beings,’ he replied. ‘And as long as I stay here, I’m going to continue that fight. When the mob gangs can take four people out and shoot them in the back, and . . . nothing is done about it, the country is in a pretty bad fix. . . .’

“‘When a mayor and a city marshall can take a Negro sergeant off a bus, . . . beat him up and put out one of his eyes, and nothing is done about it . . . something is radically wrong with the system. . . .’

“‘I can’t approve of such goings on and I’ll never approve of it, as long as I’m here . . . I am going to remedy it and if that ends up in my failure to be re-elected, that failure will be in a good cause.’

“And when he did something about it – integrating the Armed Forces – everybody was pretty sure he wouldn’t be re-elected. Southern Democrats formed the Dixiecrats and ran Strom Thurmond for President. Henry Wallace ran for the Progressives. Dewey led a unified Republican Party. And everyone knew Truman was beat. Except Truman.

“For many Americans of the time, he was an accidental president, a man of modest abilities and no special appeal, who succeeded the revered, larger-than-life FDR. He was a nice enough guy, but really no more than a failed haberdasher with a high school education who was in way over his head.

“As it turned out, he was just leader we needed. Brave, capable, determined, with good sense and a good heart, and enough experience in politics to be very good at it. 

“He didn’t have a lot of formal education, but he was extraordinarily well-read. He could quote from the texts of a classical liberal education as accurately as any Ivy League scholar could. He was well versed in the philosophy and history the American republic. He was genuinely devoted to the country’s founding texts, and he took his oath to uphold the Constitution as seriously as he took his responsibilities as a husband and father.

“Truman also knew that racial injustice exposed Americans as hypocrites and weakened our moral standing in the world and our ability to establish a world order based on principles of representative government and equal justice.  He knew our new enemy, the Soviets, were quick to point to our hypocrisy as they prepared to draw an Iron Curtain over half of Europe.

“So he did something about it. He integrated the Armed Forces, among other things. He ran for re-election even though everyone thought he was done for. He gave the Republican Congress a pretty hard time, and his crowds seemed to get bigger as Election Day approached. But everyone knew how it would end. Dewey would be elected President.

“Newsweek magazine ran a story quoting fifty so-called political experts, all of who predicted Truman would lose. Truman saw the story, and told an aide, ‘I know everyone of those fifty fellows. There isn’t one of them has enough sense to pound sand in a rat hole.’

“And that observation turned out to prove more accurate than the predictions of Truman’s demise. It’s one of the great underdog stories in American history – a delight to remember for us all, Democrat and Republican.

“Truman’s character had convinced Americans that he was the right man for those consequential times. His honesty and decency, his common sense and humility – they made case for Truman more than his speeches or policies. When he promised you a ‘fair deal,’ you knew he would try his damnedest to keep his word.

“Those virtues aren’t always so evident in my profession these days. I hope they will be again. Because today, as much as in Harry Truman’s day, the country needs leaders who possess them. We’re desperate for them. We live in challenging times, and intelligence and ability alone aren’t enough to meet those challenges. Character is more important. It always is.

“In his retirement, Truman once refused a reporter’s request to reflect on his improbable life. ‘I never like to go back and retrace my steps,’ he said. ‘I did what I had to do, and that is that.’

“He was president of all Americans at a transitional moment of great danger and opportunity. He wasn’t just ‘Present at the Creation’ of a world order that would exist for fifty years, prevent a nuclear war and end in the triumph of the West and our values. He did a lot of the creating. Or as he would put it, he did what he had to do and that was that.

“Thank you for his honor. It means a lot to me.”

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