Almost President

by Scott Farris

  Roosevelt handily defeated Willkie, and Republicans soon had buyer’s remorse. Well before 1944, the party was ready to return to a lifelong Republican to be its standard bearer. Dewey, meanwhile, had been developing a more mature political philosophy informed by real experience. In 1942, he had won the first of his three terms as governor of New York, and he was proving that states could provide for the welfare of the public more efficiently (at least Dewey thought so) than the national government.

  Dewey’s record included improved mental health care, reform of workmen’s compensation, enhanced cancer and tuberculosis screening and treatment, expanded minimum wage coverage, and preventing work stoppages by doubling the funding for labor mediation. He simplified tax forms, cut red tape in many departments, hired management specialists to improve efficiency, and created a new research unit to help with budget forecasting. When Dewey left the governor’s office in 1955, state tax rates were 10 percent lower than when he had first been elected, but state revenues had dramatically increased.

  During the war, Dewey had shown vision in refusing to spend state budget surpluses, instead setting them aside in a fund he called the “Postwar Reconstruction Fund” that he hoped would ease the transition from a wartime to a peacetime economy. He had also demonstrated the foresight in 1944 to have a state plan in place to help returning veterans quickly access unemployment assistance and prevent delay in their obtaining benefits; the federal government had taken no similar steps to prepare for the end of the war.

  At the national level, Dewey called for medical insurance for the poor—but within the framework of private enterprise. As early as 1942, Dewey outlined his own proposal for foreign aid after the war, to allies and foes alike, that anticipated the Marshall Plan that the Truman administration would implement in 1947. He continued to chide Roosevelt for supposed fiscal irresponsibility, saying there needed to be a new beatitude: “Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.” Government “has nothing it does not take away from the people,” Dewey said, but added, “It is our solemn duty . . . to show that government can have both a head and a heart; that it can be both progressive and solvent; that it can serve the people without becoming their master.”

  With Willkie no longer welcome in Republican circles and Taft temporarily discredited because of his previous isolationism, Dewey easily captured the Republican nomination in 1944 and for the second time in its history (the first being 1864), the United States held a presidential election while the nation was in the midst of total war. Initially, the campaign reflected the soberness of the hour. Dewey essentially began his campaign with a thoughtful and well-received speech on the obligation the United States would have to lead the post-war world in a system of “general international cooperation,” which would include the Soviet Union as well as Great Britain. Dewey planned a host of other high-minded speeches, but the campaign turned nasty.

  Roosevelt did not like Dewey; intimates said he hated him. Dewey hammered away at the New Deal, claiming it had really never solved the Great Depression nor even “understood what makes a job.” After twelve years in office, the Roosevelt administration was simply “old and tired and quarrelsome,” Dewey said, and the centralization of federal power under Roosevelt had now led to two dangerous alternatives: Either every aspect of American life would soon be under “complete government regulation” or the public would be so sick of government interference that they would rebel and “take refuge in complete reaction.” Polling showed Dewey was within five points of Roosevelt.

  Roosevelt had said little publicly during the campaign, but privately he told aides, “The little man makes me pretty mad.” Roosevelt believed that most candidates talked too much and that to be successful a candidate had to have the patience to wait until the right moment to strike exactly the right chord. Roosevelt had his opening when an obscure Republican congressman from Minnesota, Harold Knutson, charged that Roosevelt had wasted taxpayer money by allegedly sending a Navy destroyer to pick up his Scottish terrier, named “Fala,” that had been accidentally left behind on the Aleutian Islands. In late September, in a speech before a Teamsters meeting in San Francisco, Roosevelt showed why he remained the master campaigner with a sarcastic but hilarious speech in which he said, “I think I have a right to resent, to object to libelous statements about my dog.” He added that Fala, being Scotch, did not like to be accused of extravagance. “He hasn’t been the same dog since.” The audience roared with laughter, but Roosevelt added the unfunny charge that Republicans, without mentioning Dewey by name, were using “propaganda techniques” straight from Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

  Dewey was livid. In a speech a few days later in Oklahoma City, he repeated his critique that, despite twelve years of Roosevelt’s policies, ten million Americans were still out of work, but now he added the charge that Roosevelt had failed to adequately prepare the nation for war. Quoting the Army’s chief of staff General George C. Marshall, Dewey said only 25 percent of the Army was equipped and in shape to fight when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. It was a “desperately bad” record, Dewey charged.

  After the speech, Dewey was mulling whether he might use some additional explosive information that had come to his attention—that Roosevelt had been warned ahead of time of the attack on Pearl Harbor but had not taken action to prevent it or to protect the American fleet. Republicans based this assertion, which has never been proven, on rumors that the United States had broken some key Japanese diplomatic codes. Marshall personally intervened with Dewey, privately urging him not to make the charge because it was true that the United States had broken some Japanese diplomatic codes. Information from the broken codes had indicated the Japanese were planning an attack, but Pearl Harbor was not identified as the target (though it can be argued that both the administration and local commanders were negligent by not being on a higher level of alert). Most importantly, Marshall told Dewey, these diplomatic codes were still being used by the Japanese and were continuing to provide useful information, especially when Tokyo was communicating with Berlin. Dewey was skeptical the Japanese would still be using the same codes three years later, but he agreed to drop the issue in the interests of national security.

  Dewey, who by now regretted his intemperate remarks in Oklahoma City, also had to decide in the final weeks of the 1944 campaign whether to make one other spectacular charge—that Roosevelt was a dying man. He decided against making Roosevelt’s health an issue, though that was due as much to fear that the charge would cause a backlash, as it was the desire to take the high road. Roosevelt would, in fact, die the following April, making Truman president.

  Dewey had waged an aggressive campaign, but organized labor had done a tremendous job in turning out Democratic voters to the polls. Turnout had not been expected to top forty-five million, but forty-eight million people voted. Dewey carried only nine states, and New York was not one of them. Roosevelt received 54 percent of the popular vote to Dewey’s 46 percent. It was the narrowest of Roosevelt’s four victories and the closest presidential election since 1916, but as with Lincoln in 1864, the key issue was continuity in leadership during war, or as Taft said, a significant number of voters simply decided “we had better not take out a winning pitcher in the eighth inning.”

  Conservatives thought Dewey was now finished as a presidential contender, and Dewey himself was not certain he would try again. He had a challenging and rewarding job as governor, he noted the Republicans had never renominated a losing candidate, and he thought the war would produce new heroes who would be thrust into politics. Dewey only asked that he be allowed to play the role of the titular head of the party, and he met with Republican congressional leaders in hopes of outlining a Republican program.

  But, in a preview of the tensions the party would experience in 1948, the conservatives would have none of it. The Chicago Tribune scoffed that it was “pretentious nonsense” that a losing candidate should be allowe
d to speak for the party. So Dewey focused on winning re-election as governor in 1946, which he did by a record margin, though, with some foresight of what would occur in 1948, he confessed, “I have concluded that it is harder to wage a constructive campaign when you are sure to win, than it is to wage a slugging, aggressive campaign when you are trying to fight your way up.”

  Dewey continued to pursue progressive, but fiscally prudent, programs and projects in New York. He proposed a 640-mile thruway (now named for Dewey) from New York City to Buffalo that created thirty thousand construction jobs, and he obtained from the legislature the authority to impose rent controls during the post-war housing shortage. Prior planning and the budget surpluses Dewey had hoarded during the war years meant New York had fewer peacetime conversion problems than most states. Post-war unemployment in New York had been expected to top a million, but it turned out to be half that amount as nearly one hundred thousand new small businesses were launched in the state in the two years after the war. Dewey also established another pet project, the State University of New York, now the world’s largest university system, which Dewey had envisioned being far less centralized and more locally controlled than typical state university systems.

  He also continued to develop his political philosophy, which one observer has maintained, demonstrated “an almost Fabian preoccupation with systems and rationality as the keys that would unlock a better world.” In short, Dewey saw governance and politics as a science, and he disdained those who thought that just anyone could do it. “A good many people have the idea that politics is a sordid business, to be left to those who cannot make a living by anything else,” Dewey said. “Others have the idea that it is a simple business, in which anyone can become qualified as a sage overnight or with a brief space of speech-making or handshaking. The fact is that politics is the science of government. So far it has defeated all the best minds in the history of the world. At least I have not yet heard of the perfect government.”

  Compared to Dewey, with his many sterling accomplishments as governor, Roosevelt’s successor, Truman, seemed a disaster as president. While later generations would commend Truman for generally making the right decisions during one of the most chaotic periods in world history after the end of World War II, at the time it seemed as if the man who had assumed office less than three months after becoming vice president was being buffeted by one crisis after another. Some suggested that Truman should just resign and let someone more qualified take over. Pundits failed to see the forest from the trees, focusing on Truman’s several foibles while ignoring the larger trends that showed unemployment was low, the economy was growing at the rate of 7 percent per year, and corporate profits in 1948 were up a third from the previous year.

  Dewey insisted he would have been happy to forego another run at the presidency, but his strong showing in 1944 and his overwhelming re-election as governor in 1946 made him appear a winner who could finally give the Republicans the White House in 1948. For the nomination, he still had to defeat Taft and also former Minnesota governor Harold Stassen, who had not yet become a national joke as a perennial presidential candidate. One of Dewey’s key issues in debates with Stassen was his strong opposition to Stassen’s proposal to outlaw the Communist Party. “You can’t shoot an idea with a gun,” Dewey scoffed, adding, “There is no such thing as a constitutional right to destroy all constitutional rights. . . . I am unalterably, wholeheartedly, and unswervingly against any scheme to write laws outlawing people because of their religion, political, social, or economic ideas . . . it is immoral and nothing but totalitarianism itself.”

  Having dispatched his two rivals and having persuaded the Republicans to adopt a platform that even Roosevelt aide Sam Rosenman said was worthy of the New Deal, Dewey sat back to await his seemingly inevitable election. At least, that is what he would be accused of in hindsight. Dewey, in fact, waged a vigorous campaign. He was “as much a whistle-stop candidate as Truman,” said one chronicler of the election, but his demeanor was less folksy than Truman’s and his speeches more subdued. There was simply less drama than in the wild and frenetic campaign Truman was waging.

  Dewey tried to sound reasonable. He even insisted that Truman was not to blame for all the nation’s ills—“only part are deliberately caused for political purposes,” he said. He added, in the platitudes that made his campaign seem devoid of any fighting spirit, “The important thing is that as Americans we turn our faces forward and set about curing them with stout purpose and a full heart.”

  There are several reasons Dewey took a quiet, sensible approach. Dewey was always concerned about dignity, both his own and the dignity of the offices he held or pursued. He found Truman exceedingly unpresidential and thought voters did, too. He also preferred the high road. He sincerely regretted his attacks on Roosevelt in 1944, and when advisors asked him to attack Truman as he had Roosevelt back in Oklahoma City, Dewey moaned that the Oklahoma City address had been the worst speech he had ever given. Finally, he and virtually everyone he consulted were convinced that staying above the fray was good politics. On several occasions, Dewey polled his advisors and party leaders across the country to discern whether he should be more aggressive on the campaign trail. Each time, the unanimous response was that he should continue to ignore Truman as much as possible. Only once, in a speech in Pittsburgh in early October, did Dewey regain his prosecutorial demeanor, lambasting Truman for labor policies that Dewey blamed for a host of strikes. The audience loved it, but when he returned to his campaign train, advisors chastised him, “What are you trying to do, lose the election?”

  And for most of the summer and early fall, calm campaigning seemed to be a smart strategy. Polling by Gallup and Roper showed an insurmountable Dewey lead—a lead so large that Gallup announced it would cease regular polling after September, ensuring that a sudden shift in public mood would pass undetected. Newspapers that had traditionally endorsed only Democrats, such as the New York Times and a host of Southern papers (upset at the Democrats’ newfound interest in civil rights), this time endorsed Dewey. Voters described Dewey in surveys as “able, aggressive, and intelligent,” and they described his campaign as “dignified,” “sincere,” and “clean”; only 6 percent found it cold and only 5 percent thought it dull. A quarter of respondents thought Truman was engaged in mudslinging. Even Truman himself seemed resigned to defeat. At the dedication of the new Idlewild Airport in New York City, Truman whispered into Dewey’s ear that he hoped Dewey would fix the White House plumbing when he became president.

  Truman was likely joking: The incumbent had a few tricks up his sleeve. Truman understood that for all Dewey’s talk of national unity, the Republicans themselves remained badly divided. Truman looked at the Republican platform crafted by Dewey, one that called for action on health care, housing, civil rights, education, and the minimum wage, and he knew that most of the proposals would be unacceptable to the conservative Republicans who ruled Congress, especially Robert Taft. Truman, therefore, in a blatantly partisan maneuver, called Congress into special session on July 29, which Truman said was “Turnip Day” back in Missouri, and dared it to implement all the pledges the Republicans had made in their platform.

  Dewey initially thought the special session was “a nuisance but no more.” Still, he begged Taft and the congressional Republicans to pass a few bits of legislation to counter Truman’s accusation that they were a “do nothing” Congress. Especially helpful politically would be amendments to the Displaced Persons Act, which discriminated against Jewish and Catholic refugees, but Taft said, “We’re not going to give that fellow anything.” Dewey did not publicly press him to do otherwise, but in private he referred to Taft and his allies as “those congressional bums.”

  With revelations that summer that Alger Hiss, a high-ranking official in the State Department under Roosevelt and Truman, had given sensitive information to the Soviets, some Dewey advisors urged him to make Communist infiltration
of the administration an issue. But Dewey was “no McCarthy,” said Pennsylvania congressman Hugh Scott. “He thought it degrading to suspect Truman of being personally soft on communism. He wasn’t going around looking under beds.” Dewey himself said, “In this country, we’ll have no thought police. We will not jail anybody for what he thinks or believes. So long as we keep the Communists among us out in the open, in the light of day, the United States of America has nothing to fear.”

  Truman, however, was willing to use fear as a tool. Initially, some of Truman’s attacks might have been unfair but were hardly libelous. One of his most effective pitches was made in farm country, where a host of commodity prices had suddenly dropped. Truman promised increased price supports for farmers and said the Republicans opposed price supports, which was not true. But as the campaign wore on, Truman’s attacks became shrill and unjust. On October 25 in Chicago, Truman gave his most vitriolic speech of the campaign, charging that Republicans paid only “lip service” to democracy itself. He said that the GOP was rife with “powerful reactionary forces, which are silently undermining our democratic institutions,” and that Dewey was the “front man” for the same type of cliques that had put Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo into power.8

  Dewey was furious and again polled his advisors as to whether he should respond in kind. Again, the advice was to stay the course and maintain his dignity since most major newspapers and magazines were already referring to him as the next president. Among the advocates for nonconfrontation was his most important advisor, his wife, who, when Dewey began drafting a hard-hitting response to Truman, promised to stay up all night if that was what it took to get Dewey to tear up the speech. Instead, the following day, Dewey simply complained that Truman had “reached a new low in mud-slinging. . . . That is the kind of campaign I refuse to wage.” To which a man in the crowd shouted, “You’re an American, that’s why.”