INTIMATE LOOKS AT THE MEN WHO RAN AMERICA

INTIMATE LOOKS AT THE MEN WHO RAN AMERICA Story and photography by Margaret & Eric Anderson Political scientists now rank the Truman performance as near-great, showing an honesty and directness in his decisions that we've missed in recent decades. Truman was the last self-educated man we've had in the presidency: widely read, with a command of history and a detailed knowledge of affairs that astounded those around him. No longer is Truman seen merely as the man who beat Dewey, dropped an atomic bomb and fired MacArthur. His simple library situated in a park six blocks north of the Truman home contrasts with the stark beauty of the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston which contains the details of his Presidency and its fearful ending, something forever etched in every American who remembers the chill of November 1963. Kennedy's term of 1.000 days was a time when the White House had grace, style and wit; and after his light was snuffed out and a nation mourned and a son saluted, there came briefly to America a sense of majesty.
	There was no majesty to Richard Nixon's departure from the presidency and his place in history will be forever controversial. But clear from his library in Yorba Linda, just 15 minutes north east of Disneyland, nixonfoundation.org is that, for all his purported faults, he loved America and he achieved much particularly in foreign affairs. The display of his personal life is quite touching. He surely loved Pat, his wife, as did Ronald Reagan his Nancy and their libraries show those love stories. Both libraries also reveal men in command, who seemed to understand the role, power and value of the presidency. It was the prestige of that office that brought four presidents together for the grand opening of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace. But even as the cameras caught Nixon visiting soldiers and going to China despite a serious blood clot in his leg, the photograph of President Nixon most requested by the American public is the one when Elvis came to visit!



	The library shows Pat Nixon's contributions to her husband's life. Her loyalty to him is well documented. Well it should be: It seems in retrospect the only difference between Nixon's actions in power and those of other presidents is that he got caught and paid the price. The bumper stickers his campaign staff gave out in the New Hampshire primaries, "Nixon's The One!" now have a prescient touch. The Library building has behind it the very birthplace of the president and visitors can still hear the same train whistles from downtown he described in his childhood memoirs. The birthplace exhibits the bed he was born in, showing that it wasn't just Abraham Lincoln who lived in a simple home.