Correction: The online version of the New Yorkk Times was not as clear as it could have been, thanks to rather confusing layout. Prof. Boskin correctly says the dog quote actually came from then-Sen. Nancy Kassebaum—with whom I’ll check. – D.R., Oct. 23, 2008 (headline changed).
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd still hasn’t explained how she picked up an iffy quote on March 10, 1989: “If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog.” I queried her twice via a Times e-mail form and find her silence rather disappointing. Ah! But there’s a happy twist suggesting that, as I’d hoped, she published the quote in good faith.
Thanks to Garson O’Toole, the nom de plume of a TeleBlog regular, we now know that the quote appeared in the Times at least as early as June 7, 1987. In dispensing advice for Alan Greenspan, then about to chair the Federal Reserve, a Stanford economist used the above quote word for word. I’m going to write Prof. Michael J. Boskin and see where he got the quote. Yet another mention in the Times appeared on October 15, 1987, in a letter from Timothy Norbeck, executive director of the Connecticut State Medical Society, in New Haven, Connecticut.
Quote still iffy—but you never know
The quote and a predecessor are still problematic—the Harry S. Truman library couldn’t find anything before playwright Samuel Gallu used, “You want a friend in life, get a DOG!” in 1975 play. Dramatic license? But who knows? Maybe we can surprise the Truman Library and find that the quote is authentic. If not, might the Times want to do a retraction? At least as recently as last year, the line was still popping up there. Both the library and Ralph Keyes, author of The Quote Verifier, mentioned Ms. Dowd’s 1989 use of the quote, also cited by Bill Clinton.
Related: Earlier TeleBlog items on the quote, which I wanted to confirm for use in a forthcoming newspaper novel.
Isn’t it possible that Harry Truman really did say it, and possibly often but just not in a context where it would be written down? There seem to be way too many people using it for there not to be a grain of truth in there somewhere.
I agree with you, Mo MoDo. It isn’t probable—since the Harry S. Truman library has investigated—but it is possible. One big argument against the quote, however, is this. Harry and Bess Truman supposedly thought of animals in practical terms and actually returned a dog given to them to be their pet. Anyway, with the TeleBlog raising the issue, maybe some people will come out of the woodwork and we’ll get at the truth. For now, I need to reach Prof. Boskin and perhaps others. And maybe Ralph Keyes or the Truman Library can track down the estate of Samuel Gallu and see if someone can search his papers. Thanks for your continued interest. David
There’s a lot of those plausible truths around where people absolutely know that they’ve been told by someome trustworthy that something is sure and cant remember just where or cant refference it anywhere. Urban legend exist because they could be, and is often only debunked because some minor detail got tangled up and written down wrong.
A quote like that could have come from Roosevelt, Wilson or a less important people from Truman’s administration and just wound up attributed to Truman.
It could have been a saying floating around Washington at the time of Truman those kind of slang rarely ever made it to print before SMS, twitter and chats blurred the like between spoken and written language.