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those of a very brave man, but they were also political dynamite. Had he, mused Scotty Reston of The New York Times years later, phrased his thoughts in terms ordinary men could understand, had he simply said he would not kick a man when he was down, a great deal less damage might have been done. Acheson’s words were, historian Eric Goldman wrote, “a tremendous and unnecessary gift to those who were insisting that the foreign policy of the Truman Administration was being shaped by men who were soft on Communism.” As Goldman noted, Richard Nixon almost immediately responded: “Traitors in the high councils of our own government have made sure that the deck is stacked on the Soviet side of the diplomatic tables.”
    A month later Acheson did something very un-Achesonian; realizing that he had not only damaged himself but, far more important, wounded his President, he tried to explain himself. “One must be true to things by which one lives,” he said, changing few if any opinions. That someone as innately suspicious of Russian intentions as Dean Acheson was to become the primary target for the right-wing isolationists was in itself a reflection of the Alice-in-Wonderland quality of that time. Years later he would loom as the quintessential Cold Warrior, the architect of a hard, edgy, anxious peace with the Soviets.
    Carving out a policy that drew a line and limited Soviet expansion, creating a consensus for that policy and at the same time contending with but not overreacting to Soviet moves, demanded skill and resolve and vision. Americans might have dreamed of a Europe which much resembled that of the pre–World War Two map, but the Russians were already in place in the East. In 1946 George Kennan was asked about denying Soviet ambitions in Eastern Europe. “Sorry,” he answered, “but the fact of the matter is that we do not have the power in Eastern Europe really to do anything but talk.” For many Americans, that reality was almost impossible to accept. Acheson himself despaired of America’s difficult new role of international leadership. “We have got to understand that all our lives the danger, the uncertainty, the need for alertness, for effort, for discipline, will be with us. This is new for us. It will be hard for us.”
    All of this profoundly affected Truman. He had come to the presidency unprepared in foreign affairs, barely briefed on major foreign policy issues by the Roosevelt people. He had, he came torealize, arrived at a historic moment. To him and to his closest foreign policy advisers, it was like a replay of the days right before World War Two. In March 1948, after what seemed to him a series of catastrophic foreign-policy events, he wrote to his daughter, Margaret, “We are faced with exactly the same situation with which Britain and France were faced in 1938–39 with Hitler. Things look black. A decision will have to be made. I am going to make it.”

TWO
    T O THE COMPLETE SURPRISE of the nation’s political establishment and journalists, Harry Truman’s fellow citizens elected him to the presidency, and yet it was only after he was out of office that people truly came to appreciate the full measure of the man and his virtues. History tended to vindicate many of his decisions—some of them, such as the intervention in Korea, made under the most difficult circumstances—and as the passions of the era subsided he came to be seen as the common man as uncommon man.
    In the beginning, his lack of pretense and blunt manner worked against him, standing in stark contrast to Roosevelt’s consummate elegance; later those same qualities were seen as refreshing proof of the rugged character of this fearless small-town man, and, by implication, of all ordinary Americans. As President he was accused ofdemeaning the Oval Office by turning it over to Missouri roughnecks and poker-playing back-room operators who drank bourbon and told off-color jokes—his “cronies,” as Time magazine, then