{"id":4416,"date":"2025-02-17T08:39:06","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T13:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4416"},"modified":"2025-02-17T08:39:06","modified_gmt":"2025-02-17T13:39:06","slug":"the-buck-stops-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/17\/the-buck-stops-here\/","title":{"rendered":"The Buck Stops Here"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

Harry Truman was an \u201caccidental\u201d president of the United States.

Plucked from obscurity to be Franklin D. Roosevelt\u2019s running mate in 1944, no one realistically imagined he would ever sit in the Oval Office.

But the little-known Missouri politician became America\u2019s 33rd<\/sup> chief executive when FDR suddenly died the following April. America was still at war with both Germany and Japan.\u00a0The memory of the Great Depression remained fresh.\u00a0Truman was succeeding the only man who had ever been elected president four times.

To put it bluntly, he felt overwhelmed.

Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, who knew Truman from their days together in Congress, offered some advice:\u00a0

\u201cFrom here on out you\u2019re going to have lots of people around you.\u00a0They\u2019ll try to put a wall around you and cut you off from any ideas but theirs.\u00a0They\u2019ll tell you what a great man you are, Harry.\u00a0But you and I both know you ain\u2019t.\u201d

All of us need at least one friend who knows that \u201cwe ain\u2019t,\u201d and is willing to say so.

And when we\u2019ve been crushed by the verdict of someone who\u2019s branded us a loser and a failure, hearing a friend\u2019s assurance that \u201cyou ain\u2019t that, either,\u201d is one of life\u2019s great gifts.

It\u2019s worth noting that Truman is ranked by most historians among the half dozen most effective chief executives.\u00a0He steered America through the beginning of the Cold War, facing head-on the vexing issues of rebuilding Europe, nuclear proliferation, and the conflict in Korea.

On this Presidents Day, the enduring image of his years in the Oval Office was the little wooden sign that sat on his desk. It was the gift of fellow Missourian Fred Canfil, a brusque and intimidating federal marshal.

During a visit to the federal prison in El Reno, Oklahoma, late in 1945, Canfil noticed a plaque on the warden\u2019s desk.\u00a0It read The Buck Stops Here.<\/em>

Canfil remarked that he knew someone who would appreciate that.\u00a0The warden replied that the prison\u2019s paint shop had designed and created the little wooden sign, and he would immediately ask them to craft a duplicate.

The rest is history.\u00a0The Buck Stops Here <\/em>became Harry Truman\u2019s unofficial motto. \u00a0

The origin of the phrase is interesting. It comes from frontier days when poker players had to devise a marker to indicate whose turn it was to deal the cards. An inanimate object of some sort was passed from player to player.\u00a0Often it was a knife with a buckhorn handle (\u201cthe buck\u201d).\u00a0The buck would come to rest in front of the player who had the next deal.

Sometimes a silver dollar might be used as the marker, which is one possible resolution of the mystery why American dollars became known as \u201cbucks.\u201d

If a player decided he didn\u2019t want to deal the cards, he could \u201cpass the buck\u201d to the player on his left.\u00a0

The warden at the Oklahoma prison, who was an enthusiastic poker player, was making it clear to everyone who walked into his office that he was never going to surrender his personal responsibility.\u00a0Truman couldn\u2019t have agreed more:\u00a0\u201cThe President \u2013 whoever he is \u2013 has to decide.\u00a0He can\u2019t pass the buck to anybody.\u00a0No one else can do the deciding for him.\u00a0That\u2019s his job.\u201d

You don\u2019t have to be president, accidental or otherwise, to recognize that the same obligation is weighing on you every day.

It\u2019s not someone else\u2019s job to make the decisions that have fallen to you alone \u2013 decisions concerning the condition of your heart, the trajectory of your work, the integrity of your relationships, and how best to move into your next season of life.\u00a0

God has given each of us the privilege and responsibility of taking a leading role in such decisions.\u00a0Are you someone whose inherent goodness and greatness will carry you to success?

You know, along with everyone who really knows you, that you most certainly ain\u2019t<\/em>.

We are all sinners and strugglers. But the Lord has a word for us:

\u201cAll of you, clothe yourselves with humility\u00a0toward one another, because, \u2018God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.\u2019 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God\u2019s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.\u00a0Cast all your anxiety on him\u00a0because he cares for you\u201d (I Peter 5:5-7).

There\u2019s no getting around the fact that it\u2019s your deal today.

But God has your back.

Don\u2019t pass the buck.<\/em>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Harry Truman was an \u201caccidental\u201d president of the United States. Plucked from obscurity to be Franklin D. Roosevelt\u2019s running mate in 1944, no one realistically imagined he would ever sit in the Oval Office. But the little-known Missouri politician became America\u2019s 33rd chief executive when FDR suddenly died the following April…. Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4417,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,851],"class_list":["post-4416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-accountability","tag-presidents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4416"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4418,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4416\/revisions\/4418"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}