The Solomon Scandals A Washington newspaper novel by David Rothman

Truman nonquote: ‘If you want a friend, get a dog’ — as used by corporate raider Carl Icahn

What are the ori­gins of the gem, “If you want a friend in Wash­ing­ton, buy a dog,” a quote falsely attrib­uted to the late Harry S. Tru­man, as I noted in The Solomon Scan­dals? I’ve been doggedly at work on the case for two years. No defin­i­tive answer so far.

This immor­tal wit­ti­cism or at least a ver­sion of it popped up in the 1975 play Give ‘em Hell, Harry! (“You want a friend in life, get a dog!”). Later a Rea­gan man ven­tured into the ter­ri­tory. Gor­don Gekko spoke a vari­ant in the movie Wall Street, and now here’s another usage, by Carl Icahn, the cor­po­rate raider. Zelig Robin­son, an ardent Tru­man fan who showed Mr. Buck Stops Here around Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts, in 1956 when HST vis­ited Har­vard and Mr. Robin­son was a law stu­dent there, kindly shared Icahn-related details from the 1980s-1990s. I’ll repro­duce them with Mr. Robinson’s permission.

“‘Get a dog,’” he tells us, “was the retort of Carl Icahn to a com­ment by the then Chair­man of U.S. Steel shortly after Icahn badly wounded U.S. Steel in an Icahn-led green­mail raid, and it was in response to some­thing across the table at a one-on-one lunch to which the U.S. Steel Chair invited Icahn for the pur­pose of mak­ing peace. The Chair­man said some­thing to the effect that hav­ing met Icahn and been bruised by him, he thought he needed a friend on Wall Street, to which Icahn sim­ply responded, ‘Get a dog.’ This was reported with the quote in either the Wall Street Jour­nal or the New York Times at the time.” I don’t know about Mr. Icahn’s first usage, but sure enough at least one clip from the New York Times does attribute to him with­out a date cited: “You learn in this busi­ness if you want a friend, get a dog.”

Mr. Robin­son adds about Mr. Icahn’s takeover strug­gle: “The bat­tle went on inter­mit­tently from the mid 1980’s into the early ‘90s; Icahn never obtained vot­ing con­trol over U.S. Steel and finally took his green­mail and left in or around ’91. I doubt Tru­man ever uttered it [the dog quote] or that any­one who paid atten­tion to Wash­ing­ton dur­ing Harry Truman’s life­time ever heard the expres­sion, from him or any­one else.”

I agree, and so do oth­ers. I’d respect­fully sug­gest that the New York Times, where the sup­posed Tru­man­ism has appeared on a bunch of occa­sions, issue a correction—just as the fic­ti­tious Rebecca Kitiona-Fenton, Ph.D., requests in the epi­logue of The Solomon Scan­dals. She is writ­ing in the late 21st cen­tury, some 100 years after after the main plot of Scan­dals. I hope that Times, among my favorite news­pa­pers, does not take that long.

Hello, Mau­reen Dowd (photo), queen of the Times op-ed page? Why have you ignored my email on this? I also struck out at the office of Clark Hoyt, the then-Times’ ombuds­man. The weak excuse was that the office don’t worry about such old quotes: not very con­vinc­ing when the prob­lem­atic words keep show­ing up again and again and no one appar­ently can back them up. Jour­nal­ism is like sausage-making and law-making—the fac­tory floor isn’t always immaculate—but we can all do our best despite the bloody mess stick­ing to our shoes. Ms. Dowd and fel­low scribes, get out your mops! As a Tru­man fan who spent time with the man and could size him up, Mr. Robin­son cares with lawyerly pas­sion about the details. And as an HST booster whose mother’s fam­ily knew Truman’s ex-business part­ner, Edward Jacob­son, I do, too, even if I’m inno­cent of lawyer­dom and never met the buck-stopper.

The name game: Mr. Robin­son, a for­mer IRS attor­ney who also served as a lawyer for a key inves­tiga­tive sub­com­mit­tee in the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, is now with Gor­don, Fein­blatt, Roth­man, Hoff­berger & Hol­lan­der, in Bal­ti­more, Mary­land. The Roth­man in the firm’s name died last year and was prob­a­bly not a rel­a­tive of mine, although you never know. As for “Zelig,” VIPs and coin­ci­dences, yes, I can’t help but think of a mem­o­rable Woody Allen movie.

Detail: Notice? Mr. Robin­son isn’t claim­ing that the Icahn usage pre­ceded the one in Give ‘Em Hell Harry. So far my impres­sion is that it did not. Just for fun, as a long shot, I’ll see if I can’t reach Carl Icahn him­self and ask if he has any­thing to add and can give us the exact date he first used the quote, and per­haps he can even reveal what inspired him to say it. Did he see or read about the Tru­man play?

• Truman and the ‘Get a dog’ quote—or nonquote
• Truman dog quote mystery: Help for me from ex-Senator, but still no solution
• ‘Truman’ quote’s D.C. variant: ‘Solomon Scandals’ blog cited by noted amateur etymologist
• Last hurrah for newspaper movies? ‘State of Play’ opens this week
• ‘Solomon Scandals’ movie? D.C.-Hollywood link—and a family one, too, with a ‘Lassie’ angle