This Day in Presidential History (Dewey—Oops, Truman—Wins)

November 2, 1948—Harry S. Truman became the most beloved of underdog Presidential contenders by pulling out a win against GOP rival Thomas E. Dewey, in a victory that virtually nobody—certainly not pollsters, and even not members of his own party—thought he'd be able to achieve.

To read accounts of the 30-state “whistle-stop campaign”—including the exhilarating one in David McCullough’s superb Truman—is to come away with a sense of a Rocky-like battler—though, in this case, it might be closer to a Midwestern bantamweight than an Italian Stallion. In fact, the President did face obstacles that seemed insuperable all the way down to the last hours, including:

* A party fractured in three. The Democrats suffered splits not only from the Dixiecrat (States’ Rights) Party, led by Strum Thurmond, but, from the left, the Progressive Party candidacy of Henry Wallace, who felt the President was dealing much too harshly with the Soviet Union. (I find it a bit ironic that two years later, Wallace backed Truman’s “police action” in Korea—if the growing Soviet crushing of free governments in Eastern Europe hadn’t been enough to raise his hackles, why would Korea? H. L. Mencken, in his last hurrah covering conventions, captured some of the candidate’s distance from reality when he noted that Wallace had acquired such a “semi-celestial character” that, “if when he is nominated he suddenly sprouts wings and begins flapping about the hall, no one will be surprised.”)

* Lukewarm support from his supposed base. Even among the “Cold War liberals” who were his base, Truman was regarded with much less enthusiasm than the fallen predecessor who overshadowed him, Franklin D. Roosevelt. That tepid support started with FDR’s own family. Three of the President’s sons—including the eldest, James-- spearheaded a boomlet for General Dwight Eisenhower that lasted up to shortly before the convention, when Ike (who, in any event, hadn’t even declared a party preference) in no uncertain terms turned down the offer.).
* A united Republican Party. The GOP won control of Congress in 1946, largely erasing the stigma left by Herbert Hoover of being the party responsible for economic collapse. At the convention, Dewey had disposed of rivals Robert Taft, Harold Stassen and Arthur Vandenberg without undue bloodletting, after three ballots. The GOP had been out of the White House for 16 years, and sensed that its time had at last come.
* A tested opponent. Dewey was a veteran not just of the most recent election cycle, but of the 1944 race—and he and his campaign manager, Herbert Brownell, were sure that Truman did not possess the electoral magic of FDR, the opponent in that earlier race.
* An incumbent at bay, at home and abroad. Few Presidents have been faced with so many challenges immediately upon taking office—and so little preparation for handling them. FDR hadn’t even kept his Vice-President informed of the Manhattan Project, believe it or not. Communism was on the march not only in Eastern Europe but also in the Far East, in China. At home, with World War II over, labor unions raised their demands and inflation soared. The Republicans even had a clever slogan for the President’s run of rotten luck: “To err is Truman.”

As Truman rose to deliver his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination, party regulars thought they were witnessing a political interment. Instead, it turned out to be a resurrection, as signaled seven sentences into the address, with these words: “Senator [Alben] Barkley [Truman’s running mate] and I will win this election and make these Republicans like it-- don't you forget that!” He sounded as if he actually believed it.

This was an election in which character merged, often imperceptibly, with issues. To be sure, Truman rallied, for probably the last time, the full force of FDR’s New Deal coalition. (Historians have viewed the ’64 Johnson-Goldwater election as a marker in campaign realignment, but the first fissures of that probably go back to the 1952 race, when, in addition to the Northeast, Midwest and West, Eisenhower managed to put the traditional Democratic strongholds of Virginia, Tennessee and Florida in the Republican column.)

Instead of the kind of set “Speech” that candidates have taken to nauseating lengths, as if voters had never heard them say any of it before, Truman and his aides crafted each speech for a local audience. Detroit, for instance, might hear about the rights of labor; the Midwest would hear about farming. (In the age of YouTube, such an approach might not work so well—if you get too specific, something said in one context might not go over elsewhere.)

All of this contrasted with Dewey, a horribly formal, straitlaced figure. His image as what the incurable Washington wag Alice Roosevelt Longworth termed “The Man on the Wedding Cake” crystallized for the electorate, when a sudden lurch on his train led Dewey, with the microphone on, to complain sarcastically about firing the “lunatic” conductor. Instantly, the electorate’s old perceptions of the party as being against the common man were reinforced. (Dewey might have done better if he had let loose publicly with the quip he unleashed on the next Republican New York governor after he stepped down, Nelson Rockefeller: ''I like you, Nelson,'' he once confided, ''but I don't think I can afford you.")

Dewey gave voters little positive to counteract the crass, bossy image he conveyed. His speeches were thin gruel, featuring Reaganesque platitudes about the best lying before America. Still, even with the incident on the train (called, with more than a touch of presumption, the “Victory Special” by the GOP campaign), Dewey still seemed well enough ahead.

What virtually nobody saw coming awas major upset in the making. The predicted results were so out of touch with eventual reality that the two major pollsters of the time, George Gallup and Elmo Roper, faced hard questions (and wholesale cancellations) from clients about how they could be so wrong. The polls led the media to the following embarrassing mistakes:

* “Thomas E. Dewey’s Election as President is a Foregone Conclusion” (The New York Times);
* “The Next President of the United States,” A Life Magazine cover with Dewey’s picture and caption;
* H. V. Kaltenborn, assuring his radio audience that Truman’s early-evening lead would evaporate; and, of course,
* “Dewey Defeats Truman” (from The President’s least favorite paper, the Chicago Tribune).

Look at the famous picture accompanying this blog, in the last-mentioned source. Seldom has a candidate exulted in politics as contact sport so much!