Harry Truman's Impossible Election
Deserted by Left and Right in 1948, Truman Refused to Give Up
Nov 9, 2009
Franklin D. Roosevelt, approaching his fourth Presidential nomination in 1944, was informed by his political advisers that he would have to jettison his hand-picked sitting Vice President, Henry A. Wallace, who had become anathema to the conservative wing of the Democratic Party. Irritated but ever the pragmatist, FDR let it be known that he would run with either Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas or Senator Harry Truman of Missouri.
Undistinguished in a first term beginning in1935, Truman had more recently gained favorable national recognition as chairman of a special committee exposing waste and corruption in war contracts. Truman campaigned vigorously and rode into office with FDR's triumph over New York Governor Thomas Dewey. Neither during the campaign nor during the first three months of the new Administration did he meet frequently or in depth with the President.
An Improbable Vice President Succeeds to the Presidency
So it was with much trepidation that the American people, if not Truman, watched his transition to power on the death of FDR in April 1945. Initially popular with his decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan and the subsequent quick victory in the war, the new President seemed unable to cope with postwar inflation and labor-management conflicts. His leadership and communication skills were compared unfavorably with those of his predecessor, and in the midterm elections of 1946, the Republicans unsurprisingly gained control of Congress for the first time since the Hoover Administration.
Although Truman and the opposition Congress collaborated to provide military and economic aid to countries opposing Communism in the Cold War and laid the foundations for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, they were at loggerheads on domestic matters. Democratic Party leaders began looking for a new candidate to head their ticket in the 1948 Presiidential election.
A Famous Upset Electoral Victory
With primaries an insignificant factor in 1948, Truman had to rely on the loyalty of state organizations, many of them political machines such as those of New York and Illinois. With no moderate willing to contest the President, most eventually fell in line behind him. Wallace, who advocated a more conciliatory approach to the Soviet Union and blamed Truman for fighting a Cold War, organized a Progressive Party and took with him the most left wing elements of the Democratic Party. Southern Democrats who desired to remain with the Party prepared to back Georgia's Senator Richard Russell for the nomination, while others began to talk of a separate party.
The Democratic Convention seemed to many observers a listless event acted out by people who expected to lose the election. When a majority adopted a strong civil rights platform plank, several Southern delegations walked out and promptly nominated South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond to head a new States Rights Party ticket. Some reasoned that a four-way race would yield no electoral majority for any candidate, forcing the contest into the House of Representatives, where anyone advocating civil rights could be blocked.
Truman's renomination over Russell seemed worth even less than it had appeared at the beginning of the Convention, but his acceptance speech unaccountably promised victory. He dramatically called the adjourned Congress back into session to take action on health, education, and other issues he asserted they had neglected, and from that moment he began a vigorous cross-country campaign for reelection based primarily on the Republican Congress's shortcomings.
Dewey, again the GOP nominee, ran a bland campaign, but was considered a certain winner by political analysts and pollsters. The respected Gallup Poll, which had found only 36 percent of the public viewing Truman favorably earlier in the year, found him consistently trailing Dewey in their surveys through the summer and early Fall. With the President still five points behind two weeks before the election, Gallup stopped polling.
The morning after Election Day stunned much of the nation. With a 2.5 million popular vote margin, Truman had won 303 electoral votes to Dewy's 189, a small but clear majority. Thurmond had won four states with 39 electoral votes and Wallace no states at all. The three-pronged effort to deny the "accidental" President reelection in his own right had failed.
Reference: U.S. Election Atlas
