The Solomon Scandals A Washington newspaper novel by David Rothman

Truman dog quote mystery: Help for me from ex-Senator, but still no solution

Update: I’ve now traced the quote to a Rea­gan Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial, who, how­ever, can’t recall where he heard it. See adden­dum. – D.R.

For close to a year, I’ve tried to crack a Wash­ing­ton mys­tery. What’s the ori­gin of the famous Tru­man quote, “If you want a friend in Wash­ing­ton, get a dog”?

In The Solomon Scan­dals, I put the line in the mouth of a talk­ing Afghan Hound doing a Tru­man act at the Cos­mos Club. But I alerted my novel’s read­ers that the quote is rather iffy—in fact, prob­a­bly just a vari­ant of a 1975 play’s line that appeared with­out “in Washington.”

Mean­while I’ve suc­ceeded in trac­ing the Wash­ing­tonized quote back at least as far as a June 1987 state­ment to the New York Times from then-Senator Nancy Kasse­baum.

But where did the daugh­ter of 1936 Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Alf Lan­don—now Nancy Lan­don Kasse­baum Baker, fol­low­ing her mar­riage to Howard Baker, Jr., the for­mer Sen­ate minor­ity leader—encounter the quote?

A gra­cious reply from Alf Landon’s daughter

I emailed her this week via her husband’s law office and received a gra­cious reply by phone.

“I’m sure it was in a paper,” she said, per­haps the New York Times or the Wash­ing­ton Post.  Well, I’ve searched the Times as best I could through the Net. And now I’ll see if I can’t get a librar­ian or some­one else to check the Post.

Ex-Sen. Kasse­baum recalled the sen­tence as includ­ing “in Wash­ing­ton” and said she used it while believ­ing that it orig­i­nated  from Tru­man rather than from the 1975 play, Give ‘em Hell, Harry. Play­wright Samuel Gallu had him say, “You want a friend in life, get a dog!”

What­ever hap­pened, I’m 100 per­cent con­fi­dent that she acted in per­fectly good faith. Fur­ther­more, she’s been a won­der­ful good sport about this, and in fact plans to order a copy of Scan­dals from a favorite inde­pen­dent book­store in Ten­nessee, Carpe Librum. Nice for my ego, of course. Mean­while I’d still love to solve the mys­tery and get to the quote’s true ori­gins. Sug­ges­tions welcomed!

Adden­dum, 1:38 p.m.: The New York Pub­lic Library has just pointed me to an arti­cle in a Hills­dale Col­lege pub­li­ca­tion called Imprimis—based on a Novem­ber 1985 pre­sen­ta­tion by a Rea­gan Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial named Don­ald J. Devine.

The quote as used there reads, “If you need a friend in Wash­ing­ton, buy a dog.” Reached by phone at his offices at the Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive Union, where he is edi­tor of Con­ser­v­a­tive Bat­tle­line, Dr. Devine told me: “I’ve been using  that since I was direc­tor of the Office of Per­son­nel Man­age­ment. I don’t know where it comes from. I prob­a­bly stole it. I’m sure I heard it from some­one else.” But whom? As in the case of ex-Sen. Kasse­baum, I doubt Dr. Devine just made the quote up. The mys­tery lingers on.

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