Truman, Harry S.. You want a friend in this life, get a dog. New West, Vol. 3, p. 33, Dec 4, 78.

In the “Dictionary of Contemporary Quotations” by John Gordon Burke (1981), J. G. Burke distributed by Gaylord. This information was found via Google Book Search but it can be checked more directly using the website of an organization called the “Magazine Research Center”. There is a query engine for an updated version of the “Dictionary of Contemporary Quotations” here and a search with “speaker: Truman” and “keyword: dog” yields the information above.

So John Gordon Burke is pointing to “New West” magazine, Vol. 3, p. 33, December 4, 1978 as a seminal document. Wikipedia gives some background on the magazine as follows “New West, a sister magazine on “New York”‘s model that covered California life, was also published for a few years in the 1970s.” This quote citation is indirect and I have not actually seen this issue of “New West”. If some blog reader has access to old issues of “New West” or a database it would be useful to have a larger context for the text.

Recall that the play by Samuel G. Gallu, “Give ‘Em Hell, Harry,” was produced on Broadway in 1975. So it is possible that the “New West” writer was influenced by the play. Yet the play is a dramatic work that may have been fictionalized. The quote it contains may have been misattributed, concocted, or inaccurate.

When did the city of Washington appear in the quote? It happened by 1987 and that is before Maureen Dowd’s 1989 column.

I’ll close with some words from Harry Truman: ”If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog.” MICHAEL J. BOSKIN Stanford economics professor.

In the New York Times article “Prospects” dated June 7, 1987. The article solicited advice for Alan Greenspan who was the incoming Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Boskin was one of the advice givers.

As President Truman once put it, ”If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog.”

In a letter to the New York Times dated October 15, 1987 by TIMOTHY B. NORBECK Executive Director Connecticut State Medical Society New Haven. The existence of these two letters suggests that the incorporation of Washington into the dubious quote had already disseminated from coast to coast by 1987.

If I really need to, perhaps I can try to contact Roberts and others who relied on the Dowd quote and see what they feel about its being out there—ready to trap the unwary. But before I do that, maybe I’ll do a wrap-up for Hoyt and see if that finally gets his attention.

I still haven’t heard from Dowd, by the way. While Hoyt’s office wouldn’t share her e-mail address, I’ve now used the Web form twice. No reply after a day.

So now, instead of simply asking Hoyt’s office for her e-mail address, I’m going to see if it’ll investigate Dowd. The idea isn’t to get her fired unless something totally outrageous happened; I just want to know why this apparent fiction has been on the Web so long from a paper of record. And how did it happen in the first place? No jihad against the Times. Beyond my interest in the accuracy of The Solomon Scandals, it’s in fact a sign of respect that I care about the matter. I’d never go to this trouble if she’d been writing for Podunk Daily.

David

Since Hoyt’s term began on May 14, 2007 (according to your previous post) the September 2007 version of the quote should be within his purview. Maybe you could ask Hoyt to investigate the article by Roberts instead of the one by Dowd?

The quest may seem quixotic to some but I can understand your deep interest in the accuracy of your own book.