I’ve been enjoying David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Harry Truman recently, especially for the way it gives us such a vivid portrait of the man—his decency, stubbornness, loyalty, and down-to-earth nature.
But there’s a moment in Truman’s presidency that shows what happens when the hidden burden a leader carries erupts into an uncharacteristic lack of composure and self-control.
Truman’s Scathing Letter
It was late 1950. American troops were retreating in Korea, pushed back by massive Chinese forces. Washington was filled with dread: Was this the start of World War III? Should the atomic bomb be used again? Tensions between President Truman and General Douglas MacArthur were mounting. The world seemed poised on the edge of catastrophe.
Then came a personal blow. Charlie Ross, Truman’s press secretary and lifelong friend, suddenly keeled over and died of a coronary occlusion. Just hours later, Truman stepped in front of reporters to make a statement. His voice broke. “I can’t read this thing. You fellows know how I feel anyway . . .” Tears streamed down his face as he turned and walked back to his office. The burden of the global crisis was now compounded by personal grief.
That night, Truman and his wife attended a concert at Constitution Hall where their daughter, Margaret, sang before 3,500 people. The reviews were mixed. The next morning, The Washington Post published critic Paul Hume’s assessment: Margaret was “attractive on stage” but “cannot sing very well.” She was often flat, he wrote, and lacking professional finish. “It is an extremely unpleasant duty to record such unhappy facts about so honestly appealing a person.”
When Truman read the review, he exploded. He dashed off a furious 150-word letter, sealed it, affixed a three-cent stamp, and sent it on its way. “I’ve just read your lousy review of Margaret’s concert,” he began, calling Hume an “eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay” and warning that if they ever met, the critic would “need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below.”
The words were so coarse and uncharacteristic that when they surfaced, Margaret insisted to the press they couldn’t have come from her father. But the letter was legitimate. Tabloids ran with it. Americans began questioning the president’s “mental competence and emotional stability.” Mothers and fathers wrote to the White House, furious that while their sons were dying in Korea, the president seemed preoccupied with a music review.
Hume, to his credit, responded with grace: “I can only say that a man suffering the loss of a friend and carrying the burden of the present world crisis ought to be indulged in an occasional outburst of temper.”
Age of Celebrated Outbursts
Reading this story now can sound almost quaint. In the last decade, we’ve grown accustomed to questions about whether our presidents display the “mental competence” or “emotional stability” required for the job. Today, it’s commonplace for politicians to flaunt their lack of impulse control—and for much of the populace to cheer it on as authenticity. “He’s just being real.” Or “She’s telling it like it is.”
We’re an unserious people, and the people we elevate often reflect that unseriousness.
We’re also malformed by technological devices that encourage us to vent whatever we feel in the moment. To weigh in with our hot take. To express outrage, frustration, and contempt. To scoff and mock. To own the opposition. To destroy the other side.
We’ve normalized a lack of impulse control among ourselves and our leaders. What’s worse, we’ve celebrated the outburst as the sign of authenticity. We don’t expect decency from our leaders because we don’t delight in decency ourselves. The scathing takedown has become attractive, even admirable. Truman’s letter, back in 1950, was seen as an unfortunate lapse in judgment, a failure of restraint in an office that called for dignity. Today, many would celebrate his mistake as a sign of strength.
Virtue We No Longer Admire
The truth is, a lack of self-control is always a sign of weakness, not strength, no matter how many political partisans attempt to reframe it.
Self-control and self-sacrifice remain moral virtues whether or not they’re culturally in favor. Rightly held, their orientation is outward: toward the good of others, toward the strengthening of institutions, toward the selflessness required to carry hidden vulnerability without making others bear the cost of our impulsiveness. A society cannot flourish without citizens who admire and cultivate these virtues, and who require them of their leaders.
Neither can the church. Scripture lists self-control as a qualification for pastors (1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:8). The person without it is described as “a city whose wall is broken down” (Prov. 25:28). The fruit of the Spirit begins with love and ends with self-control, and those bookends are no accident (Gal. 5:22–23). You cannot become a loving person without self-control, because loving someone else will always cost you something. You’ll never make the costly, selfless decisions required by love if you cannot master the selfish impulses most likely to derail you.
To dismiss these concerns as quaint is to deny the moral architecture of the world. Leaders who don’t exercise personal restraint and who don’t put in place people who can help them resist their impulses corrode our institutions.
The partisan applause may be loud. The outbursts may provide an initial rush. But the leaders who truly strengthen a people and the pastors who truly shepherd a church are the ones who learn to carry grief, pressure, and provocation without letting their worst impulses dictate their conduct. Leadership doesn’t begin with authority over others; it begins with authority over oneself under God.
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