Harry S Truman And Thomas E Dewey example essay topic

1948: The Forty-First Election When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran for president in 1944, Harry S Truman was selected to replace Henry A. Wallace as his vice presidential candidate. Many conservative leaders did not like Wallace's liberal views. They believed that Truman would be more appealing to mainstream voters. Roosevelt won the 1944 election, and on January 20, 1945, Truman became the vice president of the United Sates. On April 12, 1945, President Roosevelt died of a stroke. Truman was then sworn in as president.

He had been vice president for only eighty-two days. World War II had started during Roosevelt's presidency and it was expected to end during his presidency. Obviously it didn't. WWII was coming to an end when Truman became president; he just had to finish it. Victory in Europe seemed certain, and President Truman wanted unconditional surrender by the Germans.

On May 8, 1945, he proclaimed Victory-In-Europe Day. Truman authorized the use of atomic bombs. Military advisers said that using the bombs would spare the lives of half a million American soldiers. On August 6, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, and on the ninth, a second one was dropped on Nagasaki.

On August 14, Japan asked for peace, and officially surrendered on September second. Truman ran for president in the election of 1948. His only real competitor for the Democratic candidate was General Eisenhower. But Eisenhower removed himself from the race.

Henry A. Wallace was the candidate from the Progressive Party. The Progressive Party was new; it did not support the "cold war". It thought more diplomatic means should be used to deal with Russia. The three main Republicans to become presidential candidates were Thomas E. Dewey, Robert A. Taft, and Harold E. Stassen.

After seeing Dewey's popularity the others dropped out and Dewey got the nomination. President Truman spoke in a friendly manner with a little bit of humor. The public liked this. Whenever he spoke he attracted large crowds. He spoke in a way in which everyone could understand. Sometimes he even made grammatical errors and slurred words.

His speeches included comments about the local scenery and anecdotes. One thing that Truman talked about a lot in his campaign was the Republican Congress. He said it was "the worst in memory". He said, "We need a Congress that believes in the welfare of the nation as a whole and not in the welfare of special interests".

The more he campaigned, the more obvious that his strategy was 'the plain people's President against the privileged people's Congress". It isn't certain who first used the term, but when Truman was campaigning someone shouted out, "Give 'em Hell, Harry!" and it became the campaign slogan. The Republicans focused on Communism. Besides claiming that the Democrats were associated with communism they pledged... vigorous enforcement of existing laws against Communists and enactment of such new legislation as may be necessary to expose the treasonable activities of Communists and defeat their objective of establishing here a Godless dictatorship controlled from abroad.

It was said that Dewey did not win the Republican nomination because of his main beliefs and appeal; people said he won because he had a machine. The liberal columnist Marx Lerner wrote, The machine was ruthless and well oiled, run by a group of slick and modern operators. It combined the age-old methods of power politics with the newest strategies of blitz warfare and the precision tools of American industry and administration. The FBI secretly helped Dewey get the nomination and tried to get him the presidency. J. Edgar Hoover hated both Harry S Truman and Thomas E. Dewey, but he hated Truman more.

The FBI gave Dewey enough derogatory information on Stassen, that he crushed Stassen when they met. Once Stassen was defeated, the FBI and Hoover began to give Dewey information on Truman and the Democrats. The information about Truman wasn't very helpful, but the material on two of Truman's Cabinet appointees was plentiful and useful. The FBI also made sure that the issue of Democrats working with Communists stayed alive. When the election neared, most predicted that Dewey would become president. Fifty national political writers thought Dewey would win.

A betting commissioner called Dewey a 15 to 1 favorite. Sixty-five percent of the daily newspapers supported Dewey. Only 15 percent supported Truman. Toward the end of the campaign, Dewey and Truman had very similar schedules, often speaking in the same cities only a day apart.

Truman said in Cleveland, We have Republicans on the run. Of course, the Republicans don't admit that. They " ve got a poll that says they " re going to win. These Republican polls are not accident. They are all part of a design to prevent a big vote on November 2 by convincing you that it makes no difference whether you vote or not. They want to do this because they know in their hearts that a big vote spells their defeat.

They know that a big vote means a Democratic victory, because the Democratic Party stands for the greatest good for the greatest number of people. The polls continued; even days before the election, results were being released that proclaimed Dewey would become the next president. The day before the election, Elmo Roper said Dewey would win with 52.2 percent of the votes and the Gallop Poll predicted Dewey as the winner with 49.5 percent of the votes. The day before the election, Bert Andrews wrote, "All the signs indicate that Thomas E. Dewey will be elected President on Tuesday over Harry S Truman. The only big uncertainty is whether the Republicans will retain control of the Senate". The New York Times thought that Dewey would beat Truman 315 electoral votes to 105.

The Kiplinger News Letter said, "Dewey will be in for eight years-until '57". Life magazine had a picture of Dewey with a caption that read, "The next President of the United States". Before the official ballots were fully counted, the Chicago Tribune released an early edition. The main headline was, "Dewey Defeats Truman". The article claimed that Dewey had a sweeping victory with an overwhelming majority of electoral votes.

But when the final results came in, Truman was the winner. He had won by 2 million votes. Truman got 49.5 percent of the popular vote compared to the 45.1 that Dewey got. The exact numbers were: Truman with 24,179,345 votes winning in twenty-eight states, and Dewey with 21,991,291 votes winning in sixteen states. The Democrats also won the majority of both houses of congress. The press couldn't believe it.

How had they and the polls been so deceiving? Ever since Truman had gotten the Democratic nomination, people were predicting he would loose. Dewey said, "Two or three million Republicans stayed at home". The next day, November 3, President Truman held up the newspaper with the faulty title and said, "That's one for the books!"

Bibliography

Garcia, Jesus; Mason, Lorna; Powell, Frances; and Rising er, C. Frederick. America Past and Promise. McDougal Littell. Gentry, Curt. J. Edgar Hoover The Man and the Secrets. WW Norton & Company, (c) 1991 Loran t, Stefan.
The Glorious Burden The American Presidency. Authors Edition, (c) 1968 "Truman, Harry S".
Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2002.
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