Federal Employee Loyalty Program

The Federal Employee Loyalty Program is remembered in the book as a major decision of Harry S. Truman’s presidency that proved, in the author’s assessment, to be seriously wrong. Its retrospective judgment complicates the neat claim that Truman’s errors were confined to small matters while his consequential choices were sound.

Place in Truman’s Record

The program appears in a discussion of how Truman’s decisions were later evaluated. The account offers no description here of its provisions or administration; it identifies it instead as a consequential choice for which Truman bore responsibility.

Retrospective Evaluation

A frequently repeated assessment attributed to Samuel Rayburn held that Truman was right on the big decisions and wrong on the little ones. The book rejects that formula as inaccurate: it classifies the Loyalty Program as a very large decision that was nevertheless woefully wrong. The contrast makes the point without treating significance and sound judgment as the same thing.

Comparison with Other Decisions

The same assessment places the program alongside Truman’s appointment of Louis Johnson and his seizure of the steel industry as major mistakes. By contrast, Truman’s restoration of Herbert Hoover to public service and public esteem is described as a right and generous decision, despite being comparatively small. Together, these comparisons present the Loyalty Program as part of a mixed record rather than an isolated exception: the scale of a presidential decision did not determine whether it was wise, and Truman’s legacy could not be reduced to a rule separating correct major choices from incorrect minor ones.