Time & Perspective Quote by Harry S. Truman

Truman’s jab lands because it sounds like a Missouri porch verdict delivered with presidential authority: not a lofty condemnation of policy, but a character indictment so physical you can picture it. “Talking out of both sides of his mouth” is folk idiom turned into political scalpel, a way of saying duplicity isn’t an occasional tactic for Nixon; it’s the operating system. Then Truman tightens the screw with a comic escalation: “at the same time and lying out of both sides.” The redundancy is the point. He’s not merely accusing Nixon of contradiction; he’s accusing him of industrial-grade fabrication, a talent so practiced it becomes simultaneous, almost athletic.

The subtext is Truman’s own brand of plainspoken legitimacy protecting the office from what he saw as a newer, more slippery politics. Truman came up in a culture where a politician’s sin wasn’t ambition; it was being slippery about it. Nixon, rising fast in the postwar era, represented a different species: media-savvy, ideologically flexible when useful, and comfortable weaponizing insinuation. Truman’s line reduces that modernity to a single moral failure: you can’t negotiate, campaign, or govern if your words can’t be trusted.

Context matters, too. Truman was watching the Republican bench consolidate around Nixon as the Cold War sharpened incentives for fear-based messaging and aggressive partisan tactics. The insult isn’t casual name-calling; it’s an attempt to frame Nixon early as uniquely unfit, not because he’s wrong, but because he’s unreliable. It’s Truman trying to warn the country that style is substance when the style is deception.