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.

• ‘Truman’ quote’s D.C. variant: ‘Solomon Scandals’ blog cited by noted amateur etymologist
• Truman and the ‘Get a dog’ quote—or nonquote
• Truman nonquote: ‘If you want a friend, get a dog’ — as used by corporate raider Carl Icahn
• About Helen Thomas: Oy! But keep her name on the SPJ journalism award
• Deep Throat is dead—and so are the old rules of investigative journalism