For a while the mood overall seemed one of a death watch over his own presidency. Dwight Eisenhower had defeated Adlai Stevenson by a landslide. New poll results showed that only thirty two percent of the people approved of the way Truman was handling his job, and forty three percent thought it had been a mistake for the United States to go to war in Korea. But polls meant no more to him now than ever before. “I wonder how far Moses would have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt,” he wrote privately in an undated memo to himself. “What would Jesus Christ have preached if he’d taken a poll in Israel? It isn’t polls or public opinion of the moment that counts, it’s right and wrong.”
David McCullough
Truman Simon and Schuster. 2003. p.1086, 1087.
No comments:
Post a Comment