Potus Geeks Book Review: Dewey Defeats Truman by A. J. Baime
The 1948 United States Presidential election remains one of the most fascinating for historians to ponder for its improbable result. Trailing badly in the polls, leading a divided and demoralized Democratic Party, with an empty war chest, deserted by its old guard, it appeared a virtual certainty to everyone that the Republicans would retake the White House that November. Everyone that is, except for Harry S. Truman.
Dewey Defeats Truman: The 1948 Election and the Battle for America's Soul is the latest post mortem of this remarkable contest for the White House, in the era after the defeat of the axis and the start of the cold war. Trumanologist A. J. Baime (who also wrote The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and Four Months That Changed The World, reviewed here in this community) examines the many daunting challenges, both domestic and on the world stage, that faced FDR's unlikely successor as the 1948 contest approached. These included the difficult economic transition from a wartime economy to a peacetime one, labor unrest, rampant racism and segregationist policies, the rise of communism abroad and at home, tension with the Soviets in Europe and the Communist Chinese in Asia, and Israel's fight for a homeland in the Middle East. All of these conspired to cause severe hemorrhaging of Truman's popularity and approval rating.
By the time 1948 came around, Truman's party was disintegrating. Those on the left, led by the flaky former Vice-President Henry Wallace, were opposed to the President's interventionist foreign policy and wanted America to keep its hands off the rest of the world. In the south, racist segregationists led by Strom Thurmond were contemptuous of Truman's long overdue civil rights measures. It looked like FDR's New Deal coalition was fracturing beyond repair. Truman trailed Republican Thomas Dewey in the polls so badly that 50 out of 50 pundits polled considered Dewey's election a fait accompli. National news magazine covers portrayed the New York Governor as President-in-waiting long before any ballots had been cast. Dewey knew that the election was his to lose, and yet that's precisely what he did. So what happened?
Baime provides an intelligent and insightful play-by-play of the election, including the lead up to the campaigns, the conventions, the thrilling whistle stop campaigning, the strategies and speeches of all four candidates, and the tense last-minutes of the race. Of special interest is the contrast between the well-funded Republican campaign machine, and the jerry-rigged Democratic campaign, whose war chest was always running on fumes, and whose candidate seemed to compose his popular speeches on the fly as his train sped from town to town.
Baime provides and especially good analysis of why the result stunned and shocked so many, including how and why a forgotten bureaucracy known as the Commodity Credit Corporation played an important role in the outcome of the election. Dewey would later say, "The short answer on the election was that the farmers switched, and that's that". Of course there's much more to it than that, and Baime touches all the bases in telling the remarkable story of this election, doing so in just over 350 pages.
This book is well written, well researched, logically ordered and carefully analyzed. Political junkies, history lovers, those nostalgic for the era, and anyone who loves a story in which political truth is stranger than fiction will all enjoy this book for its story, its characters, its pleasant literary style, and the lessons to be learned from it.
Dewey Defeats Truman: The 1948 Election and the Battle for America's Soul is the latest post mortem of this remarkable contest for the White House, in the era after the defeat of the axis and the start of the cold war. Trumanologist A. J. Baime (who also wrote The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and Four Months That Changed The World, reviewed here in this community) examines the many daunting challenges, both domestic and on the world stage, that faced FDR's unlikely successor as the 1948 contest approached. These included the difficult economic transition from a wartime economy to a peacetime one, labor unrest, rampant racism and segregationist policies, the rise of communism abroad and at home, tension with the Soviets in Europe and the Communist Chinese in Asia, and Israel's fight for a homeland in the Middle East. All of these conspired to cause severe hemorrhaging of Truman's popularity and approval rating.
By the time 1948 came around, Truman's party was disintegrating. Those on the left, led by the flaky former Vice-President Henry Wallace, were opposed to the President's interventionist foreign policy and wanted America to keep its hands off the rest of the world. In the south, racist segregationists led by Strom Thurmond were contemptuous of Truman's long overdue civil rights measures. It looked like FDR's New Deal coalition was fracturing beyond repair. Truman trailed Republican Thomas Dewey in the polls so badly that 50 out of 50 pundits polled considered Dewey's election a fait accompli. National news magazine covers portrayed the New York Governor as President-in-waiting long before any ballots had been cast. Dewey knew that the election was his to lose, and yet that's precisely what he did. So what happened?
Baime provides an intelligent and insightful play-by-play of the election, including the lead up to the campaigns, the conventions, the thrilling whistle stop campaigning, the strategies and speeches of all four candidates, and the tense last-minutes of the race. Of special interest is the contrast between the well-funded Republican campaign machine, and the jerry-rigged Democratic campaign, whose war chest was always running on fumes, and whose candidate seemed to compose his popular speeches on the fly as his train sped from town to town.
Baime provides and especially good analysis of why the result stunned and shocked so many, including how and why a forgotten bureaucracy known as the Commodity Credit Corporation played an important role in the outcome of the election. Dewey would later say, "The short answer on the election was that the farmers switched, and that's that". Of course there's much more to it than that, and Baime touches all the bases in telling the remarkable story of this election, doing so in just over 350 pages.
This book is well written, well researched, logically ordered and carefully analyzed. Political junkies, history lovers, those nostalgic for the era, and anyone who loves a story in which political truth is stranger than fiction will all enjoy this book for its story, its characters, its pleasant literary style, and the lessons to be learned from it.