Truman and Hoover: Working Together on a Food Crisis

Move Over!

But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.

Traffic congestion is one of those big things that really tests your Christianity. Forget that love thy neighbor thing, I want that space four cars in front of me. And what about that slow guy driving in the far left FAST LANE, with the out of state tags? If you think you have patience, just get a job that requires you to sit in traffic every day.

They were two very unlikely companions. One wasn’t well liked and the other was given the tough task of keeping us together while we were ending a war. The mere mention of one would cause you to grind your teeth. The other one scared a lot of people. Most of all, they didn’t like or trust one another. Yet, in a strange twist of fate they were called to join together.

They were both born into the same environment. They were poor. One worked real hard to get out of his environment and had a successful career that made him very wealthy. The other took a different route. He went into public service and never made much money at it. In fact, in the days before the President could afford the luxuries he can today, he once told a friend that when you took out expenses (they had to pay their own and some of the other help’s) from his presidential salary, his take-home pay was about $80 a week.

The Bible is full of odd combinations. Maybe God called some of them together to show that even the most likely enemies, with his special touch, can work together to accomplish great things. I know that is what must have happened to these two other guys.

Herbert Hoover was pretty much thrown out of office in the election of 1932. It was so bad that I’m sure they were changing the locks on the White House doors while he was stepping over the threshold. During the depression of his term, they called the shanty towns, where the poor and unemployed stayed, Hoovervilles. Inside out pockets were called Hooverpockets. Everything about him was tainted.

Harry Truman was forced onto the scene with the death of Franklin Roosevelt. A few weeks after he became President, the European side of World War II came to a close. But many European cities lay in ruin, with people wandering around aimlessly, homeless, and starving. Roosevelt did not communicate much with Truman, so everything was very new to him.

Europe needed help. Russia offered them the glorious false hope of communism. If we didn’t help, they sure would. What was a soul to do?

When you have had a long day at work the last thing you want to face is traffic going home. It is almost like each of those cars in front of and beside you is your enemy. You are so focused on your own travels, that you don’t have time to think of the suffering they are probably experiencing, just like you. One of the things I have figured out is that it usually doesn’t do any good to weave in and out of traffic, it usually only makes matters worse. That car you spent 15 minutes finally getting around, putts right by you when your lane stops. Then you’re really upset.

When the Roman Empire ruled the world there was one thing for sure, the Jews hated them. And to pay taxes to these evil people was really insulting. In fact, the only thing worse than paying those taxes was for a Jew to “desert” his own people and start collecting those taxes for those dreaded Romans. Radical Jewish people, called Zealots, rose up and one of their efforts was to kill these tax collecting traitors. Then there was Jesus. Which side was he on?

Jesus called 12 very special men to be his helpers. They came from all walks of life. He called them His disciples. Among the 12 there were two that were polar opposites: Matthew and Simon. I’m not talking about the Simon who would one day be called Peter, but the seldom mentioned one that went by the name Simon the Zealot. Can you imagine Matthew, the Jewish tax collector, and Simon the Zealot, sitting at the same table and posing for the Da Vinci’s Last Supper painting?

Herbert Hoover wasn’t a politician by trade. He was an engineer. What got him into politics?  Woodrow Wilson asked him to help with food shortages that devastated Europe after World War I.  World War I left countless Europeans wandering around, starving and homeless. Hoover did such a great job that he became an instant hero in America. So without political experience, the public decided they wanted him to be president. Then a depression hit during his term and this “rich man” received the blame. I’m sure all the talk about how he didn’t care about the poor really hurt. Democrats only had to mention his name and people would come running to them. For four elections Franklin Roosevelt feasted on his unpopularity.

Then Truman was thrust into the White House, upon Franklin Roosevelt’s death, and he faced a crisis and he really didn’t have any qualified people around him able to resolve it. The European part of World War II just ended a few weeks after he became President. What was he supposed to do with all those people whose homes and cities were now rubble? Who, oh who, had experience helping large groups of wandering, starving, homeless people? Despite his dislike for him, the answer was Herbert Hoover. So the diehard Democrat (Truman) and the diehard Republican (Hoover) joined forces. They did a very good job of handling the crisis, too. Through it all they became very good friends.

So there you have it, two rival Presidents and two polar opposite disciples, who were very unlikely partners, working together for the better. If they could work together and make the best of an awkward situation, then I guess I shouldn’t get so upset about that idiot, a few cars in front of me, who almost caused another traffic accident.