Harry Truman, with what he did in dropping and having the guts to drop the bomb in 1944, saved - saved millions of American lives.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My favourite president, and the one I admired most, was Harry Truman.
I always go back to Harry Truman: Should we drop an atomic bomb to save 100,000 lives? That's a hell of a decision to make. Did he make that decision by himself? No, he had advisers.
I admired Truman, among many other things, because he integrated the Army. I admired JFK because the very first civil rights legislation was passed at his insistence. JFK showed what you could do, though he was a deeply flawed person, as we all now know.
World War II... did not happen to everyone, but it happened to most. There were people from Germany who were throwing bombs at us.
We remember the heroes who ran into the burning buildings to rescue those trapped inside, and the dauntless passengers on Flight 93 who laid down their lives to save others, including almost certainly those of us in the U.S. Capitol.
No one remembers how the American people responded day-to-day, week-to-week, or month-to-month about the decisions that Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower made during the most dangerous decades in American and world history. But we know now that they did what was right, and we honor them for it.
Ronald Reagan will be remembered for leading the United States during a time of tremendous international transition - the demise of the Soviet Union, the Berlin Wall coming down, and the end of the Cold War.
The day before the anniversary of D-Day, we lost a man who was equaled by few and surpassed by none as a leader in the cause of freedom: Ronald Reagan.
I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.
I liked Truman very much. He was precise and businesslike. After a while, it was his turn.