His economic and social vision constituted a broad legislative agenda that came to be called the "Fair Deal."[156] Truman's proposals were not well received by Congress, even with renewed Democratic majorities in Congress after 1948. The Solid South rejected civil rights as those states still enforced segregation. Only one of the major Fair Deal bills, the Housing Act of 1949, was ever enacted.[157][158] Many of the New Deal programs that persisted during Truman's presidency have since received minor improvements and extensions.[159]

Marshall Plan, Cold War, and China
Truman's press secretary was his old friend Charles Griffith Ross. He had great integrity but, says Alonzo L. Hamby, as a senior White House aide he was, "A better newsman than news handler, he never established a policy of coordinating news releases throughout the executive branch, frequently bumbled details, never developed ... a strategy for marketing the president's image and failed to establish a strong press office."[160]
As a Wilsonian internationalist, Truman supported Roosevelt's policy in favor of the creation of the United Nations and included Eleanor Roosevelt on the delegation to the first UN General Assembly.