Historical Figures Series: Tom Dewey And His Fight For The Republican Nomination for President
Part 3: Dewey’s Long Road to the 1948 Republican Nomination That Was Going to Make Him ‘The Next President’
When FDR passed away on April 12, 1945 Tom Dewey wired condolences to Eleanor Roosevelt and offered sympathy to the new President, Harry S. Truman. Truman came into office with an 87 percent approval rating, and many Republicans were impressed by this modest, straightforward man from Missouri. Initially Dewey was as well. “While it may be bad news for the Republican party, it will be wonderful for the country and that is what we all interested in.”
The national harmony did not last long. When the Soviets broke many of the pledges that they had made at Yalta, the Cold War began By the time 1945 ended, the international situation across Europe was beginning to unravel. Worse, the domestic boom that had been prominent since the start of the conflict collapsed when the war ended. The peace between labor and the White House was over. Inflation skyrocketed and shortages in peacetime exceeded the deprivations that had unfolded during the war.
By the spring of 1946, Truman’s approval ratings had collapsed. ‘To Err is Truman’ became a popular saying. And the GOP, which had hoped that their fortunes might improve with FDR finally gone, could see a return to power ahead of them. The Republican campaign slogan for the 1946 Midterms was simple: “Had Enough?” They didn’t need to say anything more.
In 1946, the Republicans returned to power in both Houses of Congress for the first time since 1930. In the house they gained a whopping 55 seats and took twelve in the Senate, only one of two occasions in a mid-term election that ten or more Senate seats would switch. Republicans gained seats in such vital states as Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Wisconsin and would take a seat in Kentucky. Several of the Senators elected would be major forces in the years to come William Jenner of Indiana, William Knowland of California, Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, John Bricker of Ohio and a freshman senator from Wisconsin named Joseph McCarthy. Richard Nixon was elected to Congress in California. Among the paltry Democrats gains were two seats in New England. In Maine, Edmund Muskie was elected and a war hero named John F. Kennedy was elected in Massachusetts.
Leadership underwent a massive shift. Joseph Martin took over the Speakership from Sam Rayburn who had held it since in 1933. Alben Barkley became minority leader to Wallace White of Maine, but he was little more than a stalking horse for Ohio’s Robert Taft.
The Democrats were certain that Harry Truman was deadweight. Republicans were salivating for the nomination for President, knowing that the fall campaign would be a formality for the White House. When Dewey swept to reelection in November of 1946, he had become a front-runner but unlike 1944, he was going to have to fight for it.
Within the Senate, there were two major contenders: Taft and Michigan Senator Arthur Vandenberg. Taft was qualified to be President by pedigree but in personality and affect was duller than Dewey. Even in the aftermath of the war he was fundamentally still an isolationist, opposing both the UN Charter and the Marshall Plan. It did not help that the major piece of legislation that bore his name — the Taft Hartley act — doomed whatever appeal to labor he had. Vandenberg had moved from being a staunch isolationist to being a larger supporter of foreign policy, being fundamentally in favor of internationalism on the Foreign Relations Committee. Some wanted Douglas MacArthur, the hero of Manilla and the leader of post-war Japan, to run for President and he wanted to be President — but believed it would be dereliction of duty to leave his post. But the man who was fundamentally considered the biggest threat to the GOP nomination was a thirty-nine year old former governor of Minnesota named Harold Stassen.
Stassen would eventually become a figure of mockery among politicians in his lifetime, but that is unfair because for much of the 1940s many had reason to believe he would be the future of the GOP. He had risen like a rocket in politics: he had been elected to District attorney at 23, won reelection four years later and in 1938 had become the youngest governor history in a landslide victory. He won reelection twice, but in 1942 he resigned to enter the service. Serving under Admiral Halsey in 1943, he won the Legion of Merit. On leave from the Navy in 1945, he was named by FDR as one of the delegates to the San Francisco conference that established the UN.
He preached a new form of Republicanism in 1947, internationalist abroad, a hybrid of liberalism and conservatism at home. He proposed massive public housing, a decrease in tax rates, was wobbly on Taft-Hartley and was willing to grant some authority to the UN. The conservatives loathed him, but by August of 1947, he was running second to Dewey in the polls for the GOP nomination.
To try and find a candidate, most of attention would be at party conventions. By this point, there were now only five political primaries — New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Ohio and Oregon. Dewey wanted to ignore the process which at that time meant little guarantee of the nomination if you won but could doom your chances if you lost. Dewey had seen that work both for and against him. In 1940, he had won 6 of the seven contested primaries but had lost the nomination to Willkie. In 1944, Willkie had lost the Wisconsin primary to him and his chances as front-runner had evaporated. And in the political primary, a candidate like Harold Stassen — who had no Republican organization, but a galvanizing message, unlimited energy and ambition and enormous public support — was a huge threat.
Stassen refused to play by the rules. He would confer with Taft at an October 1947 conference that seemed like he might be allying with Dewey, He then tore that to shreds in January of 1948, saying he would challenge Taft in his home state of Ohio.
Dewey was the sole campaigner in New Hampshire, still not considered the bellwether for political fortune it would be years later. Dewey would win six of the eight delegates at stake, but narrowly: a switch of a few hundred votes would have given Stassen the victory. Stassen fought on.
In Wisconsin, a draft for MacArthur went into effect something that brought fear into the hearts of Dewey and Stassen. When stateside, MacArthur lived in Wisconsin. His grandfather had briefly been governor. Stassen, whose hopes on the nomination depended on an upset victory, campaigned heavily. Dewey only appeared once. Dewey knew his chances were remote, but still hoped to cadge a couple of delegates. He didn’t even get one. Stassen took nineteen to MacArthur’s eight.
Dewey was doing his job by gathering delegates, picking up ninety from his New York state delegation. The problem was Stassen had all the press.
In Nebraska Taft hoped to gain momentum in a non-binding ‘beauty contest’ and put basically every Republican who had shown interest in the nomination on the ballot. It backfired: Stassen took 43% of the vote to Dewey’s 35%. Stassen was gaining momentum in some perfunctory primaries: in write-in ones in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, Stassen ran ahead of Dewey. Even in Ohio, where Stassen lost, it was not a huge defeat.
Dewey was now in a desperate position. Only if he could win the Oregon primary against Stassen did his candidacy have any chance of surviving. Dewey would campaign vigorously in Oregon, but his political fortunes would be reversed on an issue that seemed insignificant compared to the general campaign: outlawing the Communist party. This was an issue that Stassen himself have raised, for reasons that have never been clear. As a result, the first ever primary debate was scheduled for May 17th.
Heard by between 40 and eighty million people on every major radio station across the country, Stassen would blunder from beginning to end, mostly because on every aspect of the issue, Stassen was completely misinformed. He also read his remarks while Dewey spoke extemporaneously. Dewey’s position of the decline in the American Communist party was a strong one.
Dewey walloped Stassen in Oregon, capturing all twelve delegates at stake. The problem was, in the eyes of many commentators, all that this had demonstrated was that there was no national demand for any declared candidate, Stassen, Taft or Dewey himself. By this point Dewey had acquired more than 300 delegates, but few people thought he had a realistic chance. It was going to come down to the convention.
The Republican National Convention was historic because it was the first convention ever televised. In order to take advantage of the still new medium, the Republicans and Democrats would hold their conventions in Philadelphia. (At the time, most owners of sets were on the East coast.) Here Stassen and Vandenberg mounted campaigns, Taft was trying to build his, and some were hoping for a dark horse such as the governor of California, Earl Warren.
From the start of the convention, the speakers all piled on Harry Truman. Perhaps the most memorable was Connecticut Congresswoman Claire Boothe Luce, who skewered the Roosevelt decade and famously said that Truman was “Frankly, a gone goose.”
Dewey was organized and in control of everything. The problem was the conservative wing of the party loathed him. If they had been able to unify among a common candidate, they could have unseated him. The problem was no one was willing to yield particularly the two major opponents: Taft and Stassen.
In a late night meeting, Taft suggested Stassen throw his support to him. Stassen argued that they should support Vandenberg. Taft said his Ohio delegates preferred his colleague John Bricker. They broke up at 2:00 am, having accomplished nothing. “Neither Stassen nor Taft hated Dewey enough to withdraw” Taft’s biographer said, “and neither man thought they could get his delegates to follow if they did.
On June 25, the nominations began. Dewey led with 434 delegates to Taft’s 224, while Stassen was third with 157.on the first ballot. On the second ballot, Dewey would gain 83 votes and Taft would gain 50. Stassen lost 8. Before the third ballot Dewey’s delegation called for a recess. Stassen did everything in his power to stop the Dewey juggernaut — except back Robert Taft. Meanwhile Warren, who had held the California delegation for the last two ballots, released his delegates. This would start the train forward; Taft would concede and release his delegates. Dewey was nominated by acclimation on the third ballot..
Dewey’s acceptance speech was vacuous and bland, compared to the one he’d given four years earlier.. He invoked the word ‘unity’ or united nine times in his speech, though it was difficult to know what he was for or against. He mentioned nothing involving Communism, the domestic or foreign issues of the time, civil rights or even the New Deal. To this day no one knows why his speech was so bland or empty. Was he overconfident or did he believe that if he was too specific he would be defeated?
What did not help was how he looked on TV. As he concluded his speech, he waved to the auditorium — never reaching for his wife who had come on stage to accept the nomination with him.
Dewey then had to choose a vice president. The conservative branch advocated for Bricker again or Indiana senator Charlie Halleck. The choice eventually boiled down to Stassen or Warren. The problem was Warren did not want it.
He made that very clear when Dewey offered him the job. He considered it a ceremonial job, told him that his salary as Vice President was less money than he made as governor, and the Vice President had no official residence. Most of all Warren just disliked Thomas Dewey and had for over a decade. He had been offered the vice-presidency in 1944 but had refused it. When he had released his delegates, he pointedly did not endorse Dewey.
Warren eventually took the job for purely political reasons. He wanted the Presidency, and if he were to refuse the vice-presidential nomination twice, he would never be seriously considered for anything again. When a reporter asked one of his aides what made him change his mind, the aide said bluntly: “They put a gun to his head.” Even then, he was indifferent to it. When he called his thirteen-year old son to explain, his son asked: “Is that good?” Warren said that he thought so. He genuinely did not know.
The fact was Warren’s nomination was good for the ticket and the party’s chances; it seemed to lock down California’s 25 electoral votes, it had no tangible connection to the current Congress and relative speaking, it was a youthful campaign: Dewey was not yet 46 and Warren at 57 was still seven years younger than the sitting President. There was every reason to have any doubt when papers like the LA Times called Dewey the next President.
In the next article, I will go into detail why Truman’s chances actually seemed worse than they were even before the Republican campaign, why Dewey ran the campaign he did and why Truman managed to defeat him.