Success Quote by Stuart Symington

Symington is doing something sly here: praising Truman by attacking everyone else. The line flatters a nostalgic ideal of the presidency as a lone, accountable actor, then uses that ideal as a cudgel against the modern executive machine. “Studiously avoided” implies discipline, even moral restraint - as if delegating power to aides isn’t just a managerial choice but a temptation resisted. The real target is the rise of the unelected operator: staffers “with no responsibility but incredible authority,” a phrase that lands like a verdict. It’s not an argument so much as an indictment of a system that lets decisions be made by people who can’t be voted out, subpoenaed cleanly, or blamed without the president taking a hit.

Context matters. Symington came up in midcentury Washington, when the presidency expanded dramatically with the Cold War and national security state, and when “administrations” increasingly meant sprawling staffs, councils, and back-channel power. By invoking Truman - the last president before the White House became a full-blown corporate headquarters - Symington is staking a claim for a cleaner chain of command: if you wield power, you should own the consequences.

The subtext is also institutional self-interest. As a senator and former cabinet official, Symington is defending a world where policy is contested in public forums and formal departments, not brokered by anonymous aides in the West Wing. “So much trouble” reads like a shorthand for executive overreach and policy drift: when authority migrates to staff, accountability dissolves, and government starts to feel like something that happens to people rather than with them.