Running Hard and Smart
OSHINSKY, DAVID M.
Running Hard and Smart The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election By Zachary Karabell Knopf. 320 pp. $27.50. Reviewed by David IVI. Oshinsky Chairperson, Department of...
...What happened...
...Every public opinion poll showed him losing badly...
...Thurmond garnered 1.1 million votes and four Southern states, while Wallace won no states and barely a million votes...
...The aloof, unflappable Dewey was, in the author's words, "a man whom people respected but didn't necessarily like...
...Truman did not immediately inspire confidence in his ability to fill Roosevelt's giant shoes...
...His goal was to minimize risk by offending absolutely no one...
...Wallace, he says, "preferred to look the other way," insisting that "the moral price of denouncing the Communists in the Progressive Party was higher than the political price of accepting their support...
...When nothing happened Truman took to the stump, promising a "crusade of the people against the special interests...
...E.F...
...A Newsweek survey of 50 prominent editors and columnists had each one predicting a Dewey landslide...
...The Dixiecrats, unappealing and utterly reprehensible as some of their beliefs may have been, can be seen as a positive force in American politics," he writes, adding: "Voters—at least in the South—had several options...
...Truman moved from job tojob after high school—railroad clerk, bank teller, oil speculator, farmer—in search of a permanent career...
...Winning easily, he went about the business of building better roads and improving public services, while ignoring the squalor and corruption of those who put him in office...
...Governor Dewey, the well-organized establishment candidate, won a third-ballot victory at the Republican National Convention, defeating Governor Harold E. Stassen of Minnesota, an energetic young progressive, and Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, a stiff-necked conservative...
...Oshinsky Chairperson, Department of History, Rutgers University The national election of 1948 has becomepart of ourpolitical folklore...
...While rightly noting that the 1948 campaign provided voters with a wide range of choices, he naively claims that all such choices automatically strengthen a democracy...
...Against a man armed with brass knuckles, well-schooled in the art of eye-gouging, biting and kicking, it is poor judgment to defend oneself with a powderpuff...
...As a child, his small stature and thick eyeglasses set him apart from the crowd...
...What the Party added to the campaign that year was the option to exclude an entire race of citizens from the political process...
...he had never ducked a fight...
...But the message, in his view, came "dangerously close to demagogy" as Election Day approached and cost Truman the ability to govern effectively in his second term...
...Perhaps the headline had it right after all...
...Harry Truman, oh my God...
...Wall Street's E.F...
...in the path of righteousness...
...The President refused, of course...
...As believers in apolitical axiom called Farley's Law (after Democratic Party boss James A. Farley), they assumed that "If a candidate hadn't swayed the voters by Labor Day, then they weren't going to be swayed...
...Dewey Defeats Truman...
...A progressi ve on many domestic issues, Thurmond blasted the Democrats for abusing Federal authority in an attempt to limit the power of the individual states...
...Truman," he mumbled...
...I did not risk my life on the beaches of Normandy," he thundered, "to come back to this country and sit idly by while a bunch of hack politicians whittles away your heritage and mine...
...If only Karabell had stopped here...
...In 1946, the Democratic Party suffered a crushing defeat at the polls...
...The move had enormous consequences...
...Nevertheless, the Missourian undercut Dewey's effort to portray himself as a political moderate who would keep the New Deal in place without expanding it...
...On election eve, the Chicago Tribune went to press early with the now classic mistaken headline: "Dewey Defeats Truman...
...He won national attention during World War II by heading a special committee to investigate the country's defense program...
...On Capitol Hill Truman loyally supported New Deal measures designed to protect workers and retirees, such as the Wagner Act and Social Security...
...Demanding "complete segregation of the races," they selected Governors Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Fielding Wright of Mississippi as their Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates...
...Led by Wallace, the Progressives opposed the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, and virtually all criticism of Stalin's Russia...
...It was, in many ways, the defining experience of his life...
...He had been President for 12 years, leading the nation through the Great Depression and World War II...
...who want a return of the Wall Street economic dictatorship...
...Although remarkably well-read, he remains the only 20thcentury President without a college degree...
...By 1947 the Democrats were badly divided...
...A handful of nonexperts did spot signs of trouble...
...General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas both declined...
...4. Despite the huge crowds that Truman drew on his "whistle-stop" tours, none of the "experts" saw the race tightening...
...Returning from Europe, Truman opened a clothing store in Kansas City, which failed during the recession of 1921...
...His speeches were so lofty, one columnist sneered that they "never touched ground at any specific point...
...In some ways, the 1948 Presidential contest was, indeed, the "final campaign...
...In the end, though, the voters chose Truman's common touch and mainstream liberalism over Dewey's distant and evasive demeanor...
...Early in the campaign, Life magazine declared his Republican opponent, New York's Governor Thomas E. Dewey, to be "the next President...
...Hutton spoke, but no one listened...
...Bookies refused to take bets on the outcome...
...cunning men...
...Truman himself believed that "labor did it," meaning the strong support he got from union leaders and their blue-collar troops...
...Furthermore, he provides little information about the lives of the leading Presidential contenders...
...Hutton, a Dewey supporter, advised him to "take off the kid gloves and start to slug...
...Bom in the farm village of Lamar, Missouri, on May 8,1884, he grew up in Independence, a railroad center near Kansas City...
...As Karabell reminds us, the news quickly got worse...
...Karabell's fix on the major-party race in 1948 can be divided into fourparts: 1. Because Truman seemed so vulnerable, GOP challengers appeared from every direction...
...In The Final Campaign, an earnest, well-written, often familiar account of Truman's victory, Zachary Karabell concentrates on the President's ability to stay "on message" throughout the race...
...Using slogans like "Had Enough" and "To Err is Truman," the Republicans captured both houses of Congress for the first time in almost 20 years...
...White voters would be more appropriate...
...He didn't think that Americans had to compete with the Soviets...
...With nowhere else to rum, the Democratic National Convention nominated Truman for President and Alben W. Barkley, the popular Senate Majority Leader from Kentucky, for Vice President...
...In 1944, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided to run for an unprecedented fourth term, Democratic Party leaders replaced Vice President Henry A. Wallace on their ticket with Senator Truman...
...But fortune came knocking when Tom Pendergast, the political boss of Kansas City and neighboring Jackson County, asked him to run for judge on a threemember administrative court that handled county affairs...
...The author is clearly sympathetic to Wallace, portraying him, as others have done, as someone who believed he was leading "a noble crusade...
...Wallace didn't believe in the Cold War," writes Karabell...
...And his first year in the White House involved a series of wrenching decisions, as he ordered atomic weapons dropped on Japan, fenced with Stalin over the future of Eastern Europe, and faced severe economic pressures generated by the switch from wartime to peacetime production...
...When the United States entered World War I in 1917, he quickly volunteered...
...The reason, Karabell explains, is that they had stopped looking...
...Relying heavily on the advice of political pros like Clark Clifford and James Rowe, he pulled a masterful stroke by lambasting the "do-nothing" Republican Congress and then calling it back into special session to demand passage of an eight-point program that included civil rights, public housing, a higher minimum wage, and greater storage facilities for farmers...
...2. With Governor Earl Warren of California sharing the ticket, Dewey sought to protect his lead by running a mistakefree campaign...
...In December, a group of party Left-wingers formed the Progressive Citizens of America with an eye toward the coming election...
...WHEN THE ballots were counted, Truman had won the tightest Presidential election since 1916, with 24.1 million votes to Dewey's 22 million, and 303 Electoral College votes to Dewey's 189...
...Commanding a tough, working-class unit known as Battery D, Captain Truman took part in the Allied offensives at Meuse-Argonne and Verdun...
...Like many observers, Karabell believes the Democratic split probably aided Truman by removing both the Left-wing tinge of the Wallace camp and the racist cries of the Dixiecrats...
...Hearing the news, Jersey City political boss Frank Hague crushed out his cigar...
...Had the Dixiecrats reached their goal in 1948, blacks may never have voted in the South...
...Harry Truman is now honored as one of our better Presidents and Thomas Dewey is all but forgotten...
...In a bitter race, decided by a razor-thin margin, Harry S. Truman pulled off the greatest upset in Presidential history...
...Others lauded him for his tough campaign, while faulting Dewey for his lackluster effort...
...Fearing a disastrous defeat...
...By focusing narrowly on the campaign, Karabell ignores the wider domestic and foreign policy issues—the Alger Hiss case, the Berlin Airlift—that dominated the headlines in 1948...
...According to his many biographers, the need for respect and recognition dominated Truman's life...
...Linking arms with the Pendergast machine proved both a blessing and a curse...
...Karabell makes it clear that Strom Thurmond—unlike Mississippi Senators James O. Eastland or Theodore G. Bilbo—was no racist fanatic...
...a Gideon's Army...
...The New Republic, a favorite of Left-wing Democrats, insisted that "Harry Truman Should Quit...
...Still others saw Truman as the beneficiary of fine advice "and remarkably good luck" in turning a wild, four-party race to his political advantage...
...It sensitized Truman to the needs of diverse groups, fueled his belief in the welfare system, and got him elected to the U.S...
...Even the nomination of Barkley could not prevent the Alabama and Mississippi delegations from bolting the convention after Northern liberals, led by Minneapolis Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey, attached a strong civil rights rider to the Democratic platform...
...Yet Karabell does not ignore the role played by Communists in the Wallace campaign, particularly during the latter stages when independent Leftists deserted "Gideon's Army" in droves...
...Karabell thinks Truman hit well below the belt when he portrayed Dewey and the Republicans as "gluttons of privilege...
...On April 12,1945, FDR died of a massive stroke at his vacation retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia...
...In 1948, moreover, the victor campaigned with a passion no longer seen or respected in our modern political world...
...Senate in 1934...
...On the other hand, the label of "machine politician" would plague him for years...
...It marked the last time that the farm vote truly counted, that radio was the primary medium, and that a major party needed more than one convention ballot to select a nominee...
...As for me, I intend to fight...
...Well past draft age at 33, he joined an artillery regiment and rose quickly through the ranks...
...Democratic Party leaders searched for an alternative to Truman in 1948...
...Assembling in Birmingham amid rebel yells and Confederate symbols, these Southerners formed the States' Rights (or "Dixiecrat") Party...
...As Vice President he had been excluded from the major discussions relating to foreign policy and the War...
...But it is Dewey, Karabell reminds us—the "cool detached, packaged candidate"—"who has become the role model for our Presidential hopefuls today...
...3. Truman, meanwhile, was running hard and smart...
...A good high school student, he could not find the money to continue his education...
Vol. 83 • March 2000 • No. 1
