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idea what's going on, and you could arrange to have them come over and have dinner with me, I'd appreciate it.”
Now, at that time I was doing work for Jimmy [James F.] Byrnes, who was more of a vice president than Truman, and had a very special relationship with Roosevelt.
Just for the sake of the record, clarify what his position was.
I'm not sure I can tell you. There were so many strange titles in the war years, that I'm not sure--
We can look it up.
James Byrnes. He was from South Carolina, had been, I think, a supreme court justice, had been governor, and was very close to Roosevelt. He was, in a sense, like Harry Hopkins had been at an earlier period.
Byrnes, to his credit, was anxious to find out about public opinion. I had served as chairman of a three-man task force during the war years, made up of [George] Gallup and [Elmo] Roper and Stanton. It was known that I was close to those guys and did a lot of polling in my work at CBS. Byrnes wanted to get help on public attitudes, etc., and had pressed me into doing some things for him. So, I did know a little bit about that part of what was going on.
So, Leonard said to me, “Mr. Truman needs help. He's a hell of a good guy, etc., but he
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