UA Prof. Michael Schaller: A ghost of impeachment past

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

Nearly half the Congress denounced the president as a failed businessman and a vulgar, incompetent stooge of Moscow and Beijing. After his election by a minority of voters, opponents claimed he staffed federal agencies with lackeys and traitors and spurned the advice of military professionals.

Sound familiar? But the president was Harry Truman, not Donald Trump, and demands for his impeachment in 1951 came overwhelmingly from Republicans. Where Democrats saw an attempted coup, Republicans saw a defense of constitutional order.

Truman’s unexpected election in 1948 stunned Republicans who had coined the slogan “to err is Truman” when, as vice president, he took office upon Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death in 1945. By 1949-50, as his popularity sagged, GOP leaders charged that Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson allowed Russian agents to penetrate government, “steal” the atomic bomb, and “lose China” to communism. Although nonsense, Republicans needed ammunition to counter Truman’s sponsorship of NATO, the Marshall Plan and revival of the German and Japanese economies, moves that assured the West’s ultimate triumph in the Cold War.

Ignoring policy, they peddled wild conspiracy theories. The era’s “fake news” resembled later attacks on Barack Obama (Kenyan, Muslim) as well as tortured arguments made by and in defense of Trump.

Calls for Truman’s impeachment reached a fever pitch following his decision in April 1951 to fire Gen. Douglas MacArthur, a likely GOP contender for the 1952 presidential nomination. (He had tested the waters in 1944 and 1948.) A polarizing figure and darling of conservatives, the general won acclaim early in the Korean War by pushing North Korean forces out of South Korea, an American ally, just three months after their June 1950 invasion. Celebration turned to despair in November when Chinese armies entered the conflict.

China’s leaders feared that MacArthur’s plan to crush the North Korean regime – agreed to by Truman — might be a prelude to an attack on China, the North’s patron and neighbor. In ferocious combat, Chinese “volunteers” pushed Americans forces back and threatened to overrun South Korea.

As hope for a quick victory faded, MacArthur feared being blamed for a bloody stalemate. The general insisted that the only way to save his troops (and his reputation) was to attack China, perhaps with atomic bombs. Truman and the Joint Chiefs balked. They feared a wider war would trap the U.S. in a strategic backwater (“the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong enemy”) and free the Soviets to overrun Europe.

To force Truman’s hand, MacArthur sabotaged U.S. peace feelers extended to China and endorsed Republican assertions that Truman bore personal responsibility for the senseless “murder” of thousands of GIs. On April 11 Truman decided “the Big General in the Far East” had to go.

Months of political trench warfare followed, as Republicans used the crisis to attack the president. Before returning to the U.S., MacArthur claimed that an “eminent medical man” told him that “the president was suffering from malignant hypertension,” was bewildered and confused, and “wouldn’t live six months.”

By the time the general reached California, a dozen state legislatures passed resolutions condemning Truman. The Hearst chain – the Fox News of its era — declared Truman “unfit to be president,” claiming he had fired MacArthur while under the influence of a “mental or neural anodyne” administered by communists in the State Department.

Sen. Richard Nixon remarked that the “happiest group in the country are the Communists and their stooges” who had taken “MacArthur’s scalp.” Sen. Joe McCarthy explained the president was “drunk on bourbon and Benedictine,” adding “the son-of-a-bitch ought to be impeached.” Republican politicians claimed that a “secret, inner coterie” — a deep state — of communists loyal to Stalin controlled the executive branch and impeachment was the only remedy. Polls reported two-thirds of Americans faulted Truman for firing MacArthur.

Just before MacArthur addressed a joint session of Congress on April 19, the White House circulated a mock “Schedule for Welcoming General MacArthur” that reflected the administration’s anxiety:

12:30 Wades ashore from Snorkel submarine

12:40 Parade to the Capital with General MacArthur riding an elephant

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12:47 Beheading of Gen. Vaughn (aide to Truman) at the rotunda

1:00 Gen. MacArthur addresses members of Congress

1:30-1:49 Applause for Gen. MacArthur

1:50 Burning of the Constitution

1:55 Lynching of Secretary of State Acheson

2:00 21-atomic bomb salute

2:30 Nude DAR’s leap from Washington Monument … followed by lunch.

In his nationally broadcast speech, MacArthur accused the president of “defeatism.” Instead of appeasing China and the Soviet Union by compromising in Korea, there was “no substitute for victory.” Dramatically, he closed with the lyrics of a barracks song from his early years in the Philippines, “Old Soldiers never die, they just fade away.”

One Republican official claimed he’d “heard the voice of God,” while another compared him to St. Paul. A journalist quipped there was not a “dry eye among the Republicans or a dry seat among the Democrats.”

Despite Republican hopes, the impeachment express encountered two speed bumps: a flawed hero and battlefield success. The general’s star dimmed after his long, bumbling testimony during Senate hearings that Republicans billed as a first step to removing Truman.

Efforts to generate buzz through mass rallies also faltered. Crowds grew restless, then smaller, when MacArthur strayed from accusing Truman of treason to proposing tax relief for Texas oil barons, two of whom – H.L. Hunt and Clint Murcherson — funded his campaign. Facing half-empty venues, he canceled further appearances.

In Korea during the summer of 1951, a new commander, Gen. Matthew Ridgway, stopped China’s advance and held the line near the 38th parallel without widening the war. Beijing agreed to peace talks that eventually produced an armistice. The receding threat in Korea, along with MacArthur’s fumbles, blunted the impeachment drive.

His presidency tarnished, Truman opted not to seek reelection.

However, Republicans discovered an easier path to the White House, nominating a unifying, not polarizing, military hero, Dwight D. Eisenhower.