ELECTION #41, 1948. The NASTY-METER is 7.

QUOTE from Harry Truman on the journalists who predicted he would lose: "I know every one of these reporters. There isn't one of them who has enough sense to pound sand into a rat hole."

The 1948 saw the most amazing and successful campaign in U.S. history. The man who ran that race was Harry "give-em-hell" Truman. It also saw one of the worst campaigns ever and that was run by Truman's opponent - his name was Thomas E. Dewey.

The CANDIDATES in 1948.

DEMOCRAT: HARRY TRUMAN.

Truman was sixty-four years old in 1948. The Gallup Poll had Truman at 36% in the summer of 1948. It looked bleak for Harry but he had great confidence. He was determined to win this election, even though his mother-in-law had told him he should quit. Truman chose Senator Albert Barkley of Kentucky as his VP.

REPUBLICAN: THOMAS DEWEY.

Dewey had a lot going for him. He was 46 and had already established a national reputation as both an effective crime fighter and governor in NY. Dewey chose liberal Earl Warren, governor of California as his VP.

The CAMPAIGN in 1948.

Some Democratic bigwigs were so disappointed in Truman that they even reached out to General Eisenhower to run for president on the Democratic ticket. But Ike was not ready to run in 1948. Truman got the nomination but he had other problems to face other than Thomas Dewey. At the convention the Democrats split into two other political parties. Henry Wallace, FDR's former VP, formed the Progressive Pary whose platform was based on world peace - it attracted the more liberal elements of the Democratic Party. The third party was the Dixiecrat Party and was formed because Truman was in favor of civil rights.
The Dixiecrats were headed by Governor Strom Thurmond of South of Carolina - Strom and his party were opposed to civil rights reform.

With the Democrats so divided Dewey didn't think there was any way he could lose. Elmo Roper had his poll showing Dewey winning by 44% to 31%. Newsweek Magazine asked 50 political reporters who would win the election - the result was all 50 said Dewey would win. Dewey was so sure he would win that his advisors advised him to say nothing that would get him in trouble and he would win in a walkover. (It was not good advice, it proved to to be fatal.)

Truman refused to let Dewey get away with vagueness. He set out on a whistle-stop train tour of over 31,000 miles and 350 speeches. He attacked Republicans as "gluttons of privilege," "bloodsuckers with Wall Street offices," and "economic tapeworms." Not only was Dewey a target but also the Republican-dominated Congress which had blocked everything he tried to do for America in the previous two years - Harry called them the "do-nothing Congress." He blamed them for not helping stop rising food and housing prices. He had one thing going for him that Dewey didn't - he struck people as authentic. He used words like "damn" and "hell" while Dewey uttered "good gracious" and "oh, Lord." Truman spoke to crowds of thousands in towns big and small and they got bigger and bigger and more and more enthusiastic as the campaign progressed.

Even J. Edgar Hoover tried to help Dewey. Dewey and Hoover were good friends and Hoover was hoping that President Dewey would make him Attorney General. Hoover tried to find incriminating evidence about Truman's personal life that Dewey could use to influence the outcome. The best the FBI could come up with was that Truman was supposedly "soft on communism." The FBI even prepared position papers that Dewey released to the press as if they were written by his staff.

The WINNER was HARRY TRUMAN and he continued as the 33rd president of the U.S.

Truman got 24,179,347 popular and 303 electoral.

Dewey got 21,991,292 popular and 189 electoral.

Thurmond got 1,179,930 popular and 39 electoral.

On election eve in 1948 the Gallup Poll had Dewey winning by 5 points. The Wall Street Journal wrote an article wondering who Dewey's chief advisors would be. One reporter said, "We're going to miss lil' ole Harry." A writer in England wrote an article entitled "A Study in Failure."

Why did Harry win? Dewey said it was probably because of the low turnout, only 51% voted. They might have been swayed by the polls which predicted a sure win for Dewey - so they stayed home and didn't vote.

OR, it was probably because of Harry himself. As the underdog in the fight of his life, he simply went out, threw caution to the wind, and "gave 'em hell." He spoke with passion about what the truth was from his point of view. He liked to tell this story when campaigning in 1948. "In the middle of his speech someone would holler out, 'Give 'em hell, Harry!' Well, I never gave anybody hell - I just told the truth on these fellows and they thought it was hell." People felt he was authentic and they agreed with him - at least 24.1 million of them did -enough to win by over 2 million.

Harry had the last laugh in this tough campaign. On November 2, 1948 Harry went to bed a loser, and on November 3 he woke up a winner. One of the most famous photos in American election history is Truman holding up the Chicago Tribune's front page which said, DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN. Truman had one of the biggest grins on his face that any newly elected president has ever had. (I love to look at that photo and I think I can see Truman thinking, "Take your polls and shove 'em."