Video: 'PBS - American Experience - Truman (1997) 5of5' (Mar. 29, 1952, at 44:57)
(Saturday, March 29, 1952, 10:30 p.m. EST; during the 1952 Democratic Party presidential primaries) — President Harry S. Truman, president of the United States since the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt on Apr. 12, 1945, dramatically announced tonight that he would not be a candidate for re-election and would not accept the nomination if he were drafted by the Democratic convention.
Truman made the announcement in almost deadpan fashion almost at the end of his prepared speech before the 5,300 Democrats attending the party’s traditional $100-a-plate Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner at the National Guard Armory in Washington. He said that he had served his country long and hard and that he did not feel that it was his duty to undertake another four years in the White House.
The audience was taken completely by surprise by Truman’s announcement since there had been no indication anywhere in his speech or in the advance word given Jo highest officials on his staff that he intended at this point to bow out of the 1952 political campaign. “Oh no, oh no,” shouted a few people on the floor. But there was less demonstration than might have been; expected because the huge crowd was so astonished.
In 1951, the United States ratified the 22nd Amendment, making a president ineligible for election to a third term or for election to a second full term after serving more than two remaining years of a term of a previously elected president. The latter clause did not apply to Truman’s situation in 1952 because of a grandfather clause excluding the amendment’s application to the incumbent president.
Therefore, he seriously considered running for another term in 1952 and left his name on the ballot in the New Hampshire primary. However all his close advisors, pointing to his age, his failing abilities, and his poor showing in the polls, talked him out of it.
At the time of the 1952 New Hampshire primary, no candidate had won Truman’s backing. His first choice, Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, had declined to run; Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson had also turned Truman down, Vice President Alben Barkley was considered too old, and Truman distrusted and disliked Senator Estes Kefauver, who had made a name for himself by his investigations of the Truman administration scandals.
Truman had hoped to recruit General Dwight D. Eisenhower as a Democratic candidate but found him more interested in seeking the Republican nomination. Accordingly, Truman let his name be entered in the New Hampshire primary by supporters.
The highly unpopular Truman was handily defeated by Kefauver on Mar. 11, 1952; 18 days later, the president formally announced he would not seek a third term (which would have been a second full term). Truman was eventually able to persuade Stevenson to run, and the governor gained the nomination at the 1952 Democratic National Convention.
