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For years I've found it interesting that the two presidents who guided post WWII America were from small towns about 150 miles apart.
Harry Truman and Dwight David Eisenhower were both from rural heartland America. Both were interested in the world and America's place in it. By the time Truman graduated high school, he had read all 2,000 books in the Independence library. His political support came from the corrupt Pendergast family in Kansas City, although there is no evidence Truman was anything other than a stand-up guy.
In 1919, during a time of widespread anti-semitism, Harry Truman's business partner was a Jewish man by the name of Eddie Jacobson. Years later, Truman would be the first American president who addressed the NAACP in person, in spite of the fact that Truman's own mother held a fierce grudge over the civil war and refused to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom when she visited Washington.
FDR and Truman barely knew one another, and Roosevelt failed to inform his vice president on vital programs such as the Manhattan Project. Because he was a voracious reader, Truman was able to not only bring himself current, but also comprehend the ramifications of what was going on.
Eisenhower was Supreme Allied Commander in WWII. The man who out smarted the efficient German war machine. As far as major events of the 20th Century, it's hard to beat. Yet Eisenhower is rarely cited by Republicans these days. Maybe it's due to the remarks in his final speech as president warning Americans of the political military industrial complex, or because he's the last president that had a balanced policy in the mid-east. Older Egyptians remember when Eisenhower went to the U.N. to call back British, French, and Israeli forces from the Suez Canal.
When I visited the Eisenhower museum a couple of years ago, I was struck by one of his quotes near the exit: If all that Americans want is security, then they can go to prison.
This morning when I got online, one of the top stories in Wired was about Jack Kilby, a man from my small hometown, Great Bend, Kansas, who, on this day in 1958, showed his colleagues at Texas Instruments his new invention - the integrated circuit. He's largely responsible for us to be able to communicate like this.
I know there are small towns across this country who can point out similar stories from their own history. So, what is wrong with small-town America in 2008?
