President Harry Truman, Famous For His Saying “The Buck Stops Here”, Echoes That, Writing “Presidents are responsible to themselves and to history for their decisions”

President Truman had a sign on his desk in the White House that read, “The buck stops here.” The saying “the buck stops here” derives from the slang expression “pass the buck” which means passing the responsibility on to someone else. The expression originated in the game of poker, in which a marker or counter, frequently in frontier days a knife with a buckhorn handle, was used to indicate the person whose turn it was to deal. If the player did not wish to deal, he could pass the responsibility by passing the “buck,” as the counter came to be called, to the next player.

On more than one occasion President Truman referred to the desk sign in public statements. For example, in an address at the National War College on December 19, 1952, Truman said, “You know, it’s easy for the Monday morning quarterback to say what the coach should have done, after the game is over. But when the decision is up before you — and on my desk I have a motto which says ‘The Buck Stops Here’ — the decision has to be made.” In his farewell address to the American people given in January 1953, Truman referred to this concept very specifically in asserting that, “The President–whoever he is- -has to decide. He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That’s his job.” The desk sign has been displayed at the Truman Library since 1957.

Typed letter signed, on his personal letterhead, Independence, Missouri, July 29, 1964, to Judge H.R. Obert, of the Natrona County Democratic Central Committee of Casper, Wyoming, echoing his famous saying. “I appreciate your letter of the 10th, which I am late in answering. Former Presidents are responsible to themselves and to history for their decisions in meeting their political obligations.” This letter appears to be unpublished, as we can find no record of it.

The question Obert had asked Truman to elicit this response cannot be proven, but since Gen. Douglas MacArthur had died just a few months earlier, which resulted in a mini-revival of the controversy over Truman’s firing of MacArthur in 1951, we would conjecture that the firing was the subject. Obert received a brief, even curt, response, with no long-winded justifications. This was in keeping with Truman’s feelings about the matter, and with another brief but sharp defense of firing MacArthur he made in an interview: “I fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President. That’s the answer to that.”