geeky
This book looks at Truman's campaign team, the Research Division, chaired by Bill Batt and overseen by Washington wise man Clark Clifford. It looks at Truman's blueprint of a very demanding campaign schedule of criss-crossing the country by train (the "Ferdinand Magellan", also known as the "Last Chance Special") with early mornings, late nights, Truman's exceptional work ethic and his addresses to large and small crowds, infused with a local flavor provided by the Research Division. The formula was to attack the Republican controlled 80th Congress, or as Truman pejoratively called them, the "Do-Nothing Congress", a group that Truman painted as beholding to special interest groups, the banks and the rich. It was an interesting time in America, a time when the President was not ashamed to call himself a liberal. Given virtually no chance of winning the election by every nationally known pollster, the author makes the case for how Truman's optimism and belief in his own cause was the catalyst for his amazing come-from-behind victory.
The books offers little detail about the campaigns of the other parties, the Republicans led by Thomas Dewey, the Progressives led by Henry Wallace, or the States Rights Party or "Dixiecrats" led by Strom Thurmond, other than generalities about why each failed in their objectives. This is not the book's focus. (Readers interested in an overall analysis of the fascinating 1948 Presidential election will find a more complete analysis in the excellent works The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election by Zachary Karabell, or 1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year That Transformed America by David Pietrusza.) This book is excellent for its focus on the inner workings of the Truman campaign: what went on inside the campaign train, and what Truman's daily habits were.
While there is some mention of campaign mistakes made by Truman (such as when he told reporters that Russian dictator Joseph Stalin was "a decent fellow" or when he compared Dewey to Hitler), for the most part, the author makes no secret of his admiration for Truman and for Truman's wisdom in how he approached the campaign: seeing the common man as the key to victory, finding a way to address the average voter in plain and direct language rather than nebulous platitudes, and Truman's commitment to speak out in favor of expanded civil rights for African-Americans, even though it meant writing off a number of states in the deep south.
White concludes the book with a comparison of the issues of 1948 with the issues of today. While some of his reasoning is suspect (such as his questionable suggestion that "many media outlets predicted a Mitt Romney victory right up until voting tallies proved them wrong", much as Dewey was predicted to win in 1948), the book's post-mortem does point out a number of similarities from 1948 to 2014 regarding the lack of bipartisanship and congressional opposition to a president because, in the words of Senator Robert Taft, "the duty of the opposition is to oppose." This comparison gives much to consider, even if there will not be universal agreement with the author's conclusions.
While it does not provide a complete look at the uber-interesting 1948 presidential election, this book is terrific for the part of the story that it does provide the reader with. It is always fascinating to look at what winning campaigns did right, especially when the winner is an underdog, and this book strongly delivers in this area. I would especially recommend this book for anyone with an interest or experience in working on political campaigns.