Transcripts For CSPAN2 A.J. Baime Dewey Defeats Truman 20240712

Welcome to the Commonwealth Club, im george hammond, chair of the forum which organized todays events. Im happy to welcome back a. J. Baime who was here a year and half or so ago and his last book in this time we have him here virtually from his home and we will talk about his new book the 1948 election so we are going back 72 years for another Election Year and youll be amazed at exactly how similar it sounds in some ways and in other ways very different and one of the difference is the politicians were younger then so that is one big difference but a. J. , take it away and tell us about the overview of the book, a very good read by the way. Thank you. I want to say a couple of things first. Thank you so much for having me and the Commonwealth Club is a wonderful place to be and here we are going through painandsuffering and i know for myself im just reminding why i fell in love with reading when i was six years old because books can transform or transport you to another time and place and for me thats been a blessing. Now, regarding my last time i was a few, i started this book back in 2017 to talk about the accident of president and i planned this book to come out during the 2020 election cycle because i thought this is a book about the 1940 election when Dewey Defeats Truman but it will be relevant and give me opportunity to talk about things that matter but two things happened that i did not expect. Doing the research i found a whole bunch of material that i did not expect to find and secondly elements in our life conspired in such a way that it began to feel as i wrote the book that everything i was writing about was no longer taking place in 1948 but taking place now. I want to show you a few pictures to give you an idea, concrete idea so in 1948 was the first election to play out on the Television Machine so what you are looking at is a picture of the first election i broadcast on cbs and here we are a new kind of media will change the way elections take place and of course, today we have social media doing the exact same thing so here is an image that will startle you. I hope it startles you. And 9048 there was a massive surge in White Nationalism in the United States. This was charlottesville. In 9048 there was a massive wave of violence against African Americans and this particular picture you are looking at, this is a man name isaac whittier four hours after he was releas released, honorably discharged from the United States army and served in world war ii and had an altercation with a white Police Officer and was blinded and became here he is being escorted by the heavyweight fighter and orson welles got fired from his radio show for speaking out for isaac and the whole story of what happened to him became politicized and became part of a political conversation in a way that we are feeling exactly the same way now with george floyd. The story breaks during the 1940 election and suddenly there so much talk in washington and people all over the country trying to figure out is there a communist conspiracy infiltrating washington and what is the fact and what is the Conspiracy Theory and these are conversations they were having in washington and all over the country among the election of 1948 and certainly that feels relevant today. To relevant. The fbi on the trail of a major president ial political candidate with regards to a possible russian conspiracy and this is such a fascinating picture. There is so much to see but was wallace a stooge for the kremlin in moscow . Now he know he wasnt but again this is a conversation in 1948 and certainly that is relevant today. This is the berlin code during the 1948 election cycle truman watches the berlin airlift and this is not apples to apples comparison but during the election cycle and 48 we were nose to nose with the soviets in the brink of world war iii with fear and anxiety gripping the country and that is happening in our election cycle now for completely different reason and that is exactly why the reason im talking to you from my Basement Office and not on the stage. Couple more to go. This is one picture that should not feel relevant today and we should all cross our fingers and toes that it remains that way. It is amazing to think of the 1940 election cycle Nuclear Bombs are literally going off as we tested larger and larger weapons. Ultimately we got to Harriet Truman. One thing i want to make one last point before i start for very briefly talk about the kennedys and 48 i want to give you one quote from the surprising document i found to all my years of research and this is the republic initial Committee Memorandum written november 15, 1947 so just about a year before the 48 election and the United States of america United States of america is fair game brought moscow it has been four years and as far as anyone sees it in 1948 would be the year in which soviet russia will do everything in its power to influence the election here. That feels familiar. And now i will give you a brief introduction on the conversation will begin. What i really wanted to do with this book is follow all four candidates through their campaign odysseys in real time to weed them out so the reader can experience what america was experiencing but also the candidate themselves and the american may receive it and leading to this climactic moment on november 2, 1948. Here is Henry Wallace and wallace was extraordinary candidate who won the states but his story is fascinating and wallace was the one candidate that breaks away from the democrats and says hey, we got this new cold war and it is not known walts fault but Harry Trumans fault and there is only one man in the country that can stop world war iii and that is me so he becomes the candidate of protest and to me he is the beginning of the antiestablishment movement that goes right through the 1950s and 60s and you can see on the left ear that you heard a lot from him in the future so wallaces politics were so controversial when he goes to campaign in the south he says i will not speak in any hall were an African American and caucasian american can sit next to each other and i will not stand in a hotel or napkin american is not permitted. So when he gets to the south there are riots and stabbing and he is routinely pelted with tomatoes and a very Brave Campaign he ran. Even his Vice President going into work to go through the colored interest to a church got in a physical altercation and a violent one with the police trying to stop them and he was a u. S. Senator and that was in amazing detail. And you can see in the previous picture its amazing to think that there were times during those rallies when wallace would stand in front of crowds and were and throwing eggs at him saying i want some evidence that i am in the United States of america. Now Strom Thurmond, during the 1948 election truman was the first president ial candidate to really go after the African American vote. Segregates a military and becomes the first president to address the naacp and the first president to hold a Campaign Rally for the spiritual home of black america and so Strom Thurmond, war hero, governor of south china heads up this new party and this is their National Convention in which he is nominated to run for president and i will give you one brief quote from what he saying in this moment. On the site he says i want to tell you ladies in johns mind theres not enough troops in the army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit the negro race into our theaters and swimming pools and our theaters and into our churches. He wins four states on that platform of pro segregation and White Supremacy and finally, thomas dewey who everyone knows is about to become the first republican president in 16 years and we talked about him quite a bit so i will not say much now except for this, this is the one time the two candidates made during the election cycle and Harriet Truman leaves over and says tom, we move into the white house do something about the plumbing, will you . [laughter] there were real issues with the white house, right . There were in fact and they were literally known what crumbling i should say. Back to truman, we will talk about him so why dont we start our conversation and i hope that was useful. Thats great. So you can put up the pictures and we can start with dewey. Thomas dewey new york governor young in his mid 40s or Something Like that when he was running and it already been governed before and he did what giuliani but he imitated him but he took the rose to public power that giuliani tried to do which was to be an attorney general, attacked the mafia, when cases and then go on either to new york providence or in this case, new york governor for a while and i know giuliani played the card because when he was attorney general he came to speak he made it very clear he was going to play exactly the same political thing because giuliani had his eye on the white house as everyone knows but he only has the back room in my house are now but he has yet to go there. Thomas dewey, quite a character. He had been an attack dog, as you said earlier on when he ran but he ran a Different Campaign so talk about that and he was 30 points had or Something Like that at the beginning of the campaign. To me, i was very fascinated at how fascinating i found him and i thought he was going to be a byproduct story and a minor character and he is not and very much a merry major character because the way that he came up into prominence was so extraordinary and from a small town comes out of nowhere, michigan, comes down and becomes a young prosecutor in new york city and finds himself on the trail brilliant prosecutor, brilliant lawyer and becomes this figure who takes on the mafia in the 1930s during the depression where there was a lot of mafia around and he became famous as a prosecutor that in two different movies hes betrayed by Humphrey Bogart on the big screen and thomas dewey could successfully prosecute god and that is how he came up and that was giuliani so high that 1948 he had already been, this is his third president ial candidate because he had been the guy that everybody said all the way back in 1940 you are the future of their Publican Party and by the 1948 comes he decides he will not run because he ran in 1944 and lost it came closer than defeating fdr than anybody did but felt in his heart that he didnt want to suffer through losing president ial election twice and he had to be convinced to run so his story becomes very [inaudible] obviously, everyone thought, your book is so clear that everyone thought all the media in all the newspapers predicted that he would win and no predicted no newspaper predicted that truman when it would win, they spent time after words wanting how they got it wrong just like people in the media have done that in the 2016 election how do we get that wrong with the polls and everything. Polls were just starting then and that was another element that you or at least you are influenced when im sure they had polls before that but they became much more influential s so just as more media feels big to us at that time the fact that radio was becoming and communication industry was ramping up so posters were extraordinarily powerful and one of them wrote in the newspaper column and said im not going have posters anymore because its pointless and why spend money on having that campaign if dewey will win. I can tell you this, there were two teams for meat writing about dewey that was so touching and the one is where on Election Night, no, i will go back, on the night he holds his final Campaign Rally in Madison Square garden he gets on the train after words to take the train back up to albany to the Governors Mansion and is so sure he will win he holds an impromptu meeting among all these reporters that had been covering his campaign for months and he tells them who will be in his cabinet he says you cant tell anyone and this will be the secretary of state, secretary of treasury and he was so sure he would win but the other scene that was so touching to meet was on Election Night hes in his suite at the hotel with his family and friends and at some point the night is not going at plant and locks himself in the room with the yellow legal pad by himself and just listens and turns on the radio all night long and slowly realizes what is about to happen to him. Solitary man on that it. He definitely left his mark anyway on the rePublican Party very influential and he was progressively public and i think that another element that i thought was very machiavellian move that you talk about that truman does is that the republicans right after their convention they picked dewey but it was a tight race and there was a progressive Teddy Roosevelt type republican and taft who was the son of the president taft he was the leader of the conservatives and a lot of people thought he should be the nominee so there was very close but the conservative republicans were in control of the congress so what truman did was the platforms between deweys platform and trumans platform were almost identical and that is what you wrote. Thats right. So he put a pin in this by calling congress back to try to enact deweys platform and i thought that was yes, we will talk about the democratic National Convention and we show a piece of video social we will come back but i thank you raised a wonderful and interesting point that coming out of world war ii it was as if they were aligned in the sand and everyone stood this election was going to be aligned between the past and the future in the post world was shaping up and which Political Party was going to be in charge and imprint their vision on america in both Political Parties coming out of world war ii had to figure out who they were and what they stood for and the republicans had an interesting situation because they had a rivalry within the party that was the conservative fashion that was run by or headed up by robert taft, mr. Republican on capitol hill and dewey who was a liberal and a liberal with a republican name because he been raised to think Teddy Roosevelt was the definition of the rePublican Party and so at the republican, even through the primaries that oregon primary fascinating story was a front honor all along and is about to lose and taft comes up as a star course and then their neck and neck and the primaries will decide it and they have the first ever, ever broadcast radio president ial debate and its neat because you can look it up and watch it and you can listen to it on youtube today and theres only one question, should communism be outlawed in dewey, of course, being a prosecutor won the nomination that is how it happened but the republicans were comfortable with his platform because a lot of it agreed with harry truman. We will come back to Harry Trumans maneuver against that but anyway, they both did the same thing and did the whistle stop tours and crossing paths and so on other truman had a very good joke about that that dewey was following him everywhere but would you tell that joke . Sure, at the end of the campaign it came down to this amazing one, two punch where they visited the same five cities each of them one after the other, chicago, cleveland, boston, new york. By that i mean for cities. During one of those dewey had followed truman thought the country and during one of them turns out to be the first daughter favorite speech of the campaign where truman starts cracking these jokes and does it on Live National radio totally off the cuff and makes up like theres this guy following me everywhere i go and he talks the whole series out and says theres one place he will not follow me in the crowd goes crazy and the true Truman Library is an amazing website and you can listen to the speeches that they are all up on the website so they are fun to listen to. Brings them live when their voices are thereto. The old pictures it stinks because they dont look the same as politicians do today they dont seem fake acts amen they look so young, relatively speaking. Anyway, one little personal note about dewey, at the end of the book you bring everyone up to date on the epilogue of this new mentioned that dewey when he lost that he returned to the Governors Mansion in new york and was there for almost six years and then went into private life did not do any more Public Service stuff and what he did was went to a new York Law Firm as the main partner and there was an old law firm from 1906 on valentine bush and wood and got put ahead of that in dewey valentine became very famous firm and i, thats why start my legal career in 1984 and i worked for a partner who was in his early 50s and he had done some work for dewey when dewey was running the place and dewey had died and 71, i think, as you mentioned those as this was 13 years later and one day we were chatting about something in the partners said that dewey really scared the hell out of me and when i was in my ninth year so he should have been made a partner right around then saw his upper partner and dewey asked me to do a special tax memo on an issue i did not know anything about nine not a tax lawyer but a corporate lawyer and he asked me to do this so i had to so i did this memo and did it quickly and got it all done and was a 20 page thing so then i gave them to me as i was walking out the door to go to florida, fly to florida for the begin, and that weekend he died of a heart attack. Ive always wondered whether my memo was so bad that he gave him a heart attack. [laughter] yes, [inaudible] he was getting ready to go to washington to go to an Engagement Party of Richard Nixons daughter in the white house on that date and that is what was happening. Yeah, yeah, really so, there were all kinds of other stories but inside the firm about the way he ran the firm but he clearly took it out on the law firm that he was not president and that is the way everyone talked about it. Truman, you wrote the last time we talked that you had a book the accidental president and talked about how he got into the position to become the president as Vice President under fdr and it was an unusual story and you covered it but maybe a little background so people have an idea about where this guy came from and why. As a person i looked it up it was interesting that he had the highest popularity rating of any president ever and also had the lowest so 91 right after world war ii ended in august and 22 was not ever reached an trump is never gone below 30 and george w. Bush went down to about 25 but truman was down at 22 so i think that gives people an idea of how unpopular he got at a certain point or maybe a little background. I would encourage people to look at the pictures and this is one of the dramatic pictures and you see harry truman taking the president ial oath, speaks 35 words and becomes most powerful man in the world. This is what my book the accidental president is about. Its very much a mistake that he was the Vice President in the first place and was never supposed to be Vice President and it takes time and the book to explain that and here is he realizes when he comes Vice President that roosevelt is sick and most people understand what has happened and truman is Vice President and has never been the mayor of a city and never governor of the state never had the money to own his own home and no College Degree and he really has no idea what is going on in the white house and 82 days into this new regime fdr dies of the cerebral hemorrhage in georgia and truman finds out about this in his rush to the white house and takes those and this is what youre looking at here, standing to his left is best into his market his only child and becomes the president of the United States very much by accident and those are his words. Right after this picture is taken hes ushered into a room with the secretary of war and the secretary says oh, by the way, we have the secret and this is the climactic month of world war ii and we have the secret we have to tell you about but i cant tell you what it is so he goes home to his tiny little apartment on connecticut avenue and is exhausted and terrified and has a ham sandwich with a glass of buttermilk and goes to fed and one thing about truman is hes remarkably talented to sleep during moments of pressure so he goes to sleep and theres this poignant moment where he wakes up in the middle of the night that night and thus truman who is now the first lady of the United States never wanted to be live in washington and wakes up in them all night and looks over and she is sitting on the fed and they had separate beds and she is sobbing hysterically and hes like this will be tough so the next four months he unites the nation and we win the war and everything is going great and hes this amazing story of the man who comes in out of nowhere and blah, blah, blah. Then he has to be the president at a time when the country is moving its peacetime and there is nothing going right but nothing would have gone right no matter who was president and the amount of turmoil that had to happen economically in terms of migration of american and americans and all the stuff it just would not work and this guy is a loser and we want to mount and they are tired of the Democratic Party and tired of the new deal and truman digs in and says, we will continue with the new deal but we wont make it more liberal and even bring it to the left and people freak out and so by the time of the 1948 election approaches everybody thanks his presidency is toast. In the Midterm Election 46 hes already lost the confidence of people and the republicans took over the congress and senate and one of the details i did not know if this was a commonly known detail but i have never heard of it senator fulbright went to truman and fulbright was a democrat and went to truman and said i want you to appoint a republican Vice President and then resign so that we have a republican president that can work with this congress because the country is in such chaos that we really cant do anything else to what an outstandingly interesting idea to hand to someone. It makes you asked the question can you imagine today if somebody came to donald trump and said the house of representatives is a democrat so used to resign for democrats but at the country is in unison but that is kind of what happened so truman comes up with this thing and said hes not doing that and called senator fulbright senator half bright. [laughter] sounds like he has some of trumps steel. [laughter] i cannot imagine if that made Hillary Clinton his Vice President and what kind of day we would have with tweeting that night. Okay, that is now his president and take us through so many Economic Issues at home and the International Issues how to deal with the russians and they were our allies and our recent allies who people argued about at that time and are they going to be our allies and you said or told the story i think it was stimson who suggested that we share the secrets with the russians to develop trust because they will figure them out anyway so should we have this and some of the extraordinary proposals that were being made at the time and people really didnt want settled into the cold war mentality yet. But it increasingly felt like a wartime washington but that was the situation israel was about to be born as a country and truman had to figure out what to do what he support the jews and the jews were clamoring for support from the administration but the state department and the Defense Department were saying no way and African Americans were demanding support from truman to southern, very powerful senators and governors say no civil rights in the world war these were unsolvable situations that i dont think any president could have handled but truman happened to be in the white house and he took the brunt of the blame. George michael i think was in charge of the state department and he would be influential and he was against the supporting israel for a lot of political reasons and there were a lot of rational reasons for going against what we now consider the gut instinct that you would do civil rights and of course you would support israel and that is the way it felt later on but certainly not the framework or the context in which he made his decisions. Think about the israel situation itself. After world war ii 6 million jews died in the camps in the camps were being liberated at the end of the world war wide truman was president so it was the darkest secret coming to the floor and people were shocked and people wanted to support the jewish homeland and a lot of people in america and a lot of people do not care and truman there were a lot of powerful credit donors said we will not support campaign if you dont support the founding of this jewish nation and the state department and Defense Department were saying no way we will have a war with the soviets and we have this relationship with all these nations so 1948 was the first year that we imported more oil than we did ourselves and they were not going to sell its oil at a decent price and we would need it and there would be a war and another issue with regards to this that the economics of it all. People were sure that the only way we would support israel and israel would be founded is if we sent in american troops to happen help this country reforms and otherwise israel would not survive a war and so truman was in a very difficult situation and finally decides heck with it i will support this and 90 of it at least and he makes his decision and the buck stops here and that is way it would be and it becomes very much an issue during the election and its comp located but we can talk about it. Why dont we move forward to the election and this book is about the process of it so we have a video right . This is the democratic National Convention and this is one of my favorite moments. Truman comes in and there is literally people Walking Around with signs that say eisenhower for president because no one thanks truman can win. The night before there is this whole debacle where all of the southern white senators raises huge protest and walk out and abandon truman saying we will form her own clinical parties so by the time truman comes in and has to make a speech as a democratic National Convention the situation is a disaster and he gives this amazing speech that ignites the whole hall and we can hear a piece of it. [inaudible] the weight you write that in the book is great and you capture the excitement and some people are gonna dont even realize what is happened and he turns it around and gets people on his side and its crucial because he was down by 30 points or something. Just the point of that was the first televised these conventions both are publicans which happened three weeks before and democrats these were the First National political president ial conventions that were televised but by the time truman got on stage it was so late because things were so delayed that all the Television People had gone home so it wasnt televised and this amazing moment or truman did was remarkable and this takes explaining i will try to do this clearly and concisely. He recognizes that the republican platform is tricky and the republicans adopt a liberal republican platform saying we want to do this, this but the idiot congress is controlled by conservative republicans who will not enact any of that so what truman does is walks up on stage and says i demand an emergency session of congress where you guys should enact all the stuff that dewey wants to do because those are the things that he wanted. [laughter] and so the publicans are suddenly like yes, what will be due and the crowds go wild and figure out what he is done and basically drives a stake into the identity crisis that was a crisis and after he gives a speech theres a moment where this woman named or i forget her name but she comes out and does the thing that no one expects to do and releases 50 doves into the hall because she thanks its a dramatic moment but there are airconditioners whirling above and everyone is freaking out that these birds will get killed and you can hear the former speaker of the house yelling get those plebes out of here and this is on the radio broadcast. What a great machiavelli and move and people probably dont realize its in your book of course but the congress had already sent to stop sessions and wasnt relating until after the election and this was july or so but they were not planning on meeting again until november but he called them back and they were going to come for the next six months or whatever so and they did not do anything. He predicted it accurately and nothing got done. He called it the turn of day session and then he had his own reason because the missouri there was a certain time of year that turnips were harvested and he later said the only thing congress did was up the sales of turnips so we have pictures of this and the term and can paint and if i could talk sure, talk about the campaign. Truman realized he cant win he devises this plan and he does something totally unexpected and creates the president ial campaign and unlike anything that they had ever done and plans to break every rule that he possibly can and what it comes down to is he creates this situation where he goes around and visits hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of towns where no president has ever campaigned small towns all over the country and gets on the train and this idea that if he can explosive Everyday Americans to the magic of the presidency and if i can talk to people facetoface theyll understand what im saying and they will believe in me and vote for me and so he creates this secret Research Department in Dupont Circle in washington dc and sets up a team of speechwriters on the white house and he will elect speeches for the huge rallies but everything these Research People will ask all the stuff down on no cards and the airplane will fly three, four days to ever the train is coming in and hand over these briefcases so that when truman shows up in some little town he can say i know you have a new sausage factory or theres a war hero the past away and so he would have information to use to start an offthecuff speech that he can connect with these people and then he would speak offthecuff about patriotism and decency and honor so that is basically how it worked and in the process he became the president ial candidate and becomes american folk hero. I thought it was interesting how he began by giving speeches there were all written for him just to do it in the normal way and then ended up doing more and more that talking off the top of his head about what was on his mind and that was what was effective. He was really not, he didnt have the skills that fdr had so when he began his presidency you have speechwriters in the same ones that judge sam rosenman who wrote fdr speeches would write the speeches for truman but chairman truman was delivery at thats why his presidency went but he wanted that and he spoke offthecuff and he acted like an everyday american which is what he was and keep going through their sides and there are more pictures to the campaign. As we go to the next line the first question came in and is a good one on this topic from john wren and he asks truman had only met with fdr a couple of times but were there others in the administration who were helpful during the first 80 days of his presidency and in other words, did truman get a lot of help from fdr from the administration . He did. James burns. He appointed james burns secretary of state and burns was very pivotal and sam roseman helped him write his speeches but one of the things and a lot of the i think historians have said truman picked up where roosevelt left and did not do much and did a lot and as a matter fact he replaced the entire cabinet very quickly and a new so essentially i think he really did create it but through the war years there was james byrne, sam roseman and after the war the figures that came up were young people mostly lawyers that he handpicked a lot of who do not have a tremendous amount of political experience so after the war ended by the time 9048 it comes around his main go to work clifford on the Campaign Train and until truman came around there was no political expanse whatsoever. I thought it was interesting to hear the start up and its always interesting to go back and little history and then you see someone come on stage for the first time and what their role is and in that case he had the big role in the 60s as well any mention in another place George Mcgovern was Henry Wallaces First Political campaign or i mean the campaign decisionmaking so i just thought that was interesting and its always like watching a movie and seen so many good becomes a big star later but as of big role in the sidon. All the people who came into the office in 1948 who opined away, [inaudible] and Richard Nixon same time so here we have a picture in in someone is on the horse so who is on the horse . There is this amazing woman giving the speech on the back of the train and there is a guy who heckles him on top of the horse and he comes out and opens up and looks at the horses teeth because for most of his life he was an obscure farmer and he looks at the horses teeth and says this is not a good horse and the guy rides away. [laughter] just like every day on the campaign was a comedy of errors but at the same time it wasnt and was very Serious Business that there was definitely this feeling that the future of the world was at stake but truman had a good sense of humor. This is detroit in the motorcade in detroit and this is Labor Day Weekend and literally this is one of the campaigns begins. Truman shows up, Labor Day Weekend at detroit home of the automobile factory, and has this amazing rally Cadillac Square and right at the first began at the campaign everybody in the truman Cake Campaign in shock because there is 100 thousand people turning out into the streets in detroit and then they get in this car and drive north up to pontiac drive through these little towns in michigan and everywhere they go there are tens of thousands of people on the street to see him Call Campaign and this does make sense and who are all these people and that sets the tone for the campaign. Why is he happy here . I have no idea. Great picture. Is a great picture because it captures him and now we can talk about Henry Wallace. So Henry Wallace is the people that brings us to russian interference in the election and tell us who he is and he was fdrs Vice President to how did he end up on another platform and what was that platform . Henry wallace is the Vice President from or during right after 1934 and is pushed off the ticket very and especially enduring the 1924 election to make way for truman because people thought wallace was just a little weird and far to the left and made people uncomfortable and was a mystic and he gets pushed aside in any party for her to make way for truman and really is not happy about it. He knows hes a massive hero among liberal americans after the war there is this one debris comes to the white house and sits down with truman and they sit in the white house and have lunch and they watch footage of the atomic bomb going off and they can see it from different angles and wallaces completely unnerved and thanks this is wrong we should not be doing this and its just the fact they were sent off these atomic tasks and the soviets dont have a bomb and wheat refused to share the secret with them and this is causing this new thing called the cold war and so wallace eventually rakes with truman and launches his own campaign called the Progressive Party and gives it the nickname gideons army and is very christian man and you know i talk earlier about what his campaign stood for but there are these poignant moments where he was able to connect with people on the coast and hes really indicative to trump and would hold rallies in new york, los angeles, chicago and these liberal bashes and people would go wild and pack stadiums and the biggest political rallies that anybody had ever seen and a lot of young people and a lot of celebrities karl rove and w deb to boys and black americans and Jewish Americans and intellectuals and loved wallace and then he would go to the americans cart lands and there would be rides and people would murder the guy because they were so on comfortable and weve seen that same kind of division in america today. In the same groups of people ironically. The same geography as well. It is amazing how much we just kind of shifted the terms and shifted some of those things but the basic underlying emotional issues remain the same but what people are comfortable with what they are not but so one of the things i found interesting was your story about the moscow newspapers coverings is triumph in new york and so on and it reminds me of the inauguration in 2017. Its an important point in wallace so far to the left and he brought together this Grassroots Campaign and shockingly the people who are running his campaign were very aligned with the party of the United States and they all wrote memos and did oral histories to explain exactly what they were doing so it was extraordinary contribution in the early days of the cold war they had a very popular in some places president ial candidate who everybody knew platform mirrored so people were very upset and one of the things i wanted to say about wallace is fascinating me is the whole idea that after all this happened he was so sure that truman would lead us through war that years later he loses terribly and is humiliated in election and fades into oblivion but later writes a book and says i was wrong and supports truman when truman sends troops into korea and he supports and ended up supporting truman and other things and ends up realizing that i was wrong in the soviets arent the bad guys so. Interesting time to change your opinion because he didnt write during the mccarthy era when this was such a big issue and he wasnt disavowing his path but just say no that was an inaccurate thing that moscow is not operating on a basis that we can deal with so that is Henry Wallace and the Progressive Party but then we have a fourth party and this is something so i mean, just like harry truman but not exactly justly carried truman because the southern democrats and i think maybe its influential to a display not only about trump but also about the switch from the democrats and their publicans and the southern strategy and that whole thing because. Trump was fascinating to me on so many levels and pivotal in American History on so many levels and what they did okay, one of the reasons why no one believed truman wins because the Democratic Party shattered and you have the left side of the party that goes with Henry Wallace and you got the conservative part of the party that goes with Strom Thurmond and there is truman so hes lost voters right there but what truman was doing is they launched this party in opposition to trumans Civil Rights Program and its pure and simple, whites of privacy in the south is the way it is always been and that is the way it was an trump in thurmonds father was supposed to be again, this is something you cant make up he was supposed to be a governor of South Carolina and political career was derailed over a political argument and he shot and killed a man when thurmond was a young boy and so Strom Thurmonds father becomes the lawyer for a man named pitchfork ben tillman and pitchfork gentleman was this figure who really united the Democratic Party in the south as the party of racism and White Supremacy and disenfranchisement of africanamerican voters so thurmond grew up with this and when truman launches the civil rights thing truman is like no, i will fight this so he becomes the head of the party and on the face of it theyre called the states rights Democratic Party and their theory is the federal government should not be able to tell states what are rules are in our state and in our state there is whites primacy and in our state black people are not allowed to vote and that is his theory. He launches this Incredible Campaign but of course he has secrets of his own. Yes, he does and the secrets came out in public in 2005 but it is interesting to me especially because coming into a Political Awareness in the early 60s he was a very influential figure of racism at that time and he will always stand up for that and became a senator and a powerful senator and he was increasingly old senator and he mentioned that he was the only senator that was still a senator at the age of 100 and in addition to that he had young wives or i dont member how many he had but he and much younger wives and you are just its an interesting character all around and even up against lbj and lbj was the president at the time and but it wasnt aware or he had disappeared that at least in the popular notion in just 15, 20 years it does appear that he run on the spot form in 1940 of total White Supremacy and was known as a racist and i found it fascinating to read this. Couple of thoughts they are. And very careful in the book to make sure that people understand when they are reading that the decisions people were making and the campaigns and the ideas the people embraced came in their context so we as americans if you read this book today you will see that im very careful about understanding where he was coming from. For ideas and traditions that have been in the south for generations and there is a reason why he one of four stat states. There was a set of americans who believed what he was saying but really i think from a macro point of view its important to point out that in all through the early part of the 20th century the democrats there was this idea of a solid south of the Democratic Party and that was built around race then goes back to 1877 with there was a comp gated situation but the reconstruction ended in the federal government said hey, we can move this over here and make this happen and we will move our troops of the south and you states can make your own rules and so all of those states became very segregated and White Supremacy was in place and thats the way it was and it was one of the solid south of the Democratic Party because they were anti party of lincoln. 1948 is important because that is when it all shifted the solid south campaigned against the Civil Rights Program of truman and launched their own party and that is how they ended up because there were conservatives political and conservative politically, theoretically in the Democratic Party is very one simple issue and that is when it all started and that is why today it is the solid south of their will begin party and that may be changing. Thank you. Its ironic that the conclusion that was reached in 1876 election because there was another new york governor at the time but he was a democrat and it was the real begins that made the deal to the republican present get back in an email even though the republicans were giving up on why they fought the civil war just 12 years earlier and you look at that and you go wow, its like, did take that short a time frame you know for the power to be more important than why you did that shift. It is an important point that you raise. Its interesting to think that decisions we make in our Politics Today can have effect on generations of our Political Parties and others. They are all valid and whenever someone comes in and creates the cyclone and everyone is wondering when everyone will fall out and if you read history you know the cyclones make things fall out in strange ways. That was Strom Thurmond so you tell the story near the end because we got more time of his daughter so he has his daughter from when he was a teenager and that this daughter was half africanamerican and maybe tell that story because thats not public story but its also very interesting, especially his relationship with her because it does seem to be paternal and attentive for that kind of circumstance. I agree with you. Throughout the story where he is campaigning on the weiss the pharmacy issue and he has a daughter that he fathered with an africanamerican woman and its a secret and no one knows it and he is very caring for her and takes of her financially but after he dies she writes a memoir of what happened and it is such a moving moment where he ends up losing the election but she follows the selection through and heres the things that he is saying. Negroes have no right to be in our sewing pools and our churches. They should not be voting in these kinds of things. Her name is bessie mahon she just married another africanamerican man and they are seamless and listening to it on the radio and its fascinating that this poor woman is married to an africanamerican man who has no idea that Strom Thurmond is her father and there listening to this and these campaigns teaches on the radio she writes a moving memoir but at the end of the story after he loses they meet and she says how can you say those things and why would you do that and how do you feel at the expense to her that from where he comes from these are american traditions and this is late american is supposed to be and she says no one loves and cares for the negro race more than me is what he says and im using the negro race in his words. When its very poignant moment but its an axle civil. There is the reason i like the story and what it is is it gives us some hope that a certain amount of the hatred in a certain amount of the animosity is really performative as people like to say now or for show and theres a great scene in Huckleberry Finn by mark twain when he talks about the lynching mob and they say things can be talked down fairly easily because very few people actually want to do the lynching but all most all have to be with the whole crowd is doing and you know, i think you can see the same thing about what is going on now and most of the protesters dont want to lose but when things start a lot of people will do things that they werent planning on doing if they are in a crowd doing one thing which was of course, where the idea of having some kind of order helps but it gives you hope about whatever progress we can make if 90 of the people that are shouting something really dont believe what they are shouting. I agree and that is where leadership comes in. Exactly the point. There are other stories in history about one person says something, stop the whole crowd from doing something really stupid and so lets elect some leaders that will do that which is interesting how you go through the selection because it doesnt seem like truman has had any chance and as you said or what do you say to one person when his wife was there that there are only two people who believe that i was going to her im sorry, why dont you tell that truman story. I think we could see the last slide. Okay we are done with strom. Able tell this quick story and then answer your question in the process. So sure that the 80th congress the revoking party is about to take power for the first time in seven years in the white house that they vote in a new plan to up the budget of the inauguration with this unheard of 80000 and they got this unprecedented huge budget that has been on Inauguration Day and what fun they are having what truman is in the middle into his left is Vice President alvin barclay by the American Flag and they are having quite a good time but. I bet that is money the republicans thought they would spend on dewey. On Election Night when he wins there is woman named India Edwards who is this wonderful, very charismatic and powerful woman sort of, i would say the highranking woman in the Democratic National committee at the time. About the media, so the media predicted, as we were discussing earlier i think i prefer the show, the media predicted every single newspaper and the country that truman would lose, and that is not just buy a little bit, a shoe in sort of situation. So they all have to eat crow, there was a story from one of the washington papers, Washington Post invited truman to a dinner where they were going to serve crow and eat it. Thats an old expression. I dont know if people still know that expression, but if you could explain that the background. Guest so, when he wins, he spends his Election Night in kansas city, independence among his home crowd. Its a huge todo, very exciting. A lot of that generation could say that they knew where they were on two occasions in their life. And that is when they found out about pearl harbor, and when whe learned the news of the election of 48. It is a big deal. In his hometown it was a huge celebration. He gets on the train and goes east. He stops in st. Louis, and theyre coming hes giving this copy of the Chicago Tribune. He holds it up, because the Chicago Tribune printed the headline Dewey Defeats Truman. So he holds it up, then he goes back to washington and david mcauliffe, biographer, said that this was the Biggest Party that washington had ever thrown, had ever seen. Millions of people in the street tstreetis the true mainstream cn and the Washington Post hung a sign saying your invited to a crow banquet. Its a thing of the time if you said something wrong, you need to crow. A lot of the media had a lot to answer for him and his a couple of reasons its important to think about. We are seeing a lot of the polls say theres no way trump can win. I see it everyday. I dont believe them. People think that they are just the polls. Go out and vote for who you think you should when. Dont listen to the polls. The other thing thats interesting is because truman made claims at the time about how it designates now with the whole issue of fake news. He made a speech i think it was cleveland i forget but where hes at all of these newspaper reporters, all of these newspapers and pollsters are saying i cant win. They are controlled by the same people that dont want me to win, so dont necessarily believe them, go out and vote. And go out and vote if needed. Host we have a couple of questions. From john, was the truman surprised he won in 1948, or did he believe in his Campaign Strategy . I think the answer to both is no and yes, right . He believed in the Campaign Strategy. Guest throughou guest throughout the campaign and this is one of the things that shocked people, because he lived on the train with people. They lived on the train. It wasnt pleasant. There was no laundry. There were no showers. I think there was one shower on board. It was a difficult thing. People are shocked there was only one person that insisted with complete confidence that he was going to win and i was truman because he had confidence in his strategy in his campaign. They buy into that question . Host yes. The other part was were you surprised that he won, but in the story, he always believed he was going to win. Guest wasnt surprised. But there was a wonderful moment it took a long time to get the polls, not lik like to see t its all electronic and computerized. By the time he realized he had won, he showed up at the headquarters at 6 00 in the morning and people were exhausted. He shot himself in a room to call his wife. They didnt have cell phones, obviously theres no email or texting. Theres a reporter called robert nixon, who depend on the campaign trail the whole time, found out truman was there at the headquarters. Hed gone to sleep ten minutes earlier, hed gone to sleep with his pajamas in an overcoat. He peeks in the door and sees the truman cry and talking to his wife saying. Its a moving moment. He said he would win but it was still a shocker. Host here is a good question for someone to study all their life to make a decision from kevin reece accommodates truman wiaccommodad dewey and the gop lose, where do you come down on that . Guest the answer is both. Host it took both of them. One of them going down and one of them coming up. Guest i think i expressed above about why truman one. But one of the reasons dewey lost is it is critical, strategic decision he made early on in the campaign. Dewey ran a campaign for governor i think in 1940. My point is he banned these campaigns and have to attack campaigns and he had lost and did the two campaigns for governor where they were not. They were very hig highlevel, t engaging, a lot of rhetoric and he had one. So he decided to run this very high and poetic campaign wrapped around a term called unity. The whole campaign was based on unity so he never attracts truman, and barely mentioned his name, spoke nothing on any of the issues because he believed that he was going to get in the white house. So if he made commitments to issues, when he got to the white house, no commitments. He just gave speech after speech after speech about unity and that was his Campaign Strategy that they were all desperate, and it wasnt expected. So i think the answer is yes both. Host from david jones. How come the most solidly red were those that were the progress of them had the highest death both generations . Guest can you say that again. Host right now solidly red republican areas but they were solidly progressive in the previous generations. I dont know whether that is accurate or not; is that true . Guest what areas . Host it doesnt say. But he must be in the midwest and so on. The midwest at the time were progressive republicans. Of the ones that staff and his s party, his part of the rePublican Party was a midwestern phenom on. They were in favor of all kinds of defenses. They were all in favor in terms just like dewey, in civil rights, cleaning up the water of the great lakes, that kind of thing. So, im not quite sure what what that one to use. We will move onto another one. Heres an interesting one from edward kashmir. Is it an uncertain result on the Election Night harmful to the democratic process lacks in other words the fact we dont know right away through one whos a good thing or a bad thing . Guest it means a very different thing now than it would have been, because back then the actual process of counting votes is difficult, whereas today it should be very clearcut. But i am going to go ahead and say that its detrimental, because i think that its really important that people have faith in the democratic process. And im hoping and praying we are coming up with a big election, very historical moment for our country. Both sides obviously believe that they are right and both sides believed that they are going to win. And i think that if there is an election result its not decisive, that isnt going to help us. And unfortunately, there is so Much Technology involved. If its one thing i hope for in november of this year, its just that our democratic process in our voting process works, so whatever happens we can accept it in to say this is democratic process. This is the result of an election. We can get down to business. Host the 2004 election george w. Bush here in san francisco, where of course most people are democratic. The title of do we really believe in democracy, and i ask people okay so that was a very emotional election. Do all of you have a strong emotional reaction . They were like three little old ladies that were happy about the election. How many have you had this experience . The person you voted for lost, but they were very happy that the democratic process one again into the majority came through and he says what are you talking about. Theres no kind of reaction like those that read history and everything emotionally to the democratic process, which i think it is another reason why it has to be clear and not muddled, not like florida with the hanging chads. Not where the uncertainty is independent gets stolen because we have plenty most people know about illinois in 1960 and other things that are fairly clear. It doesnt seem like the person who ended up being president , which is a crucial thing, was the one who got the most elections. Kevin reese, with another gop candidate have beat truman, do you think taft could hav have tn truman . Guest that is a great question. I have no idea but i can tell you this, there were a lot of quarterbacks after 1948. Richard nixon firmly believed herald staff if he were the candidate he would have won. If of people said if taft had been, he would have won because there would have been a Clear Division between his site and this site. And so, you know, its a very interesting question. Obviously we dont know. But along those same lines is the question im often asked is what would have happened if dewey one, if the republicans had pulled out this election. I think dewey would have been a terrific twoterm president , a wonderful president. And things might not have been that different in many ways. It might have just been a different person administering things. One thing that came up recently in conversation is whether the whole mccarthy era would have happened if dewey was president , if it is interesting question. It came out in a talk i had a couple of days ago with leary tied to thtype of the great bior that came out with a biography of mccarthy. And that is a really critical issue because truman had a hard time everybody had a hard time standing up to mccarthy, but dewey was a prosecutor and a lawyer and would have took them apart and put an end to that quickly i think. Host in that context, eisenhower was up for grabs by both parties in 1948 and decided not to run, but he did meet with dewey as you have that story. Eisenhower kind o of split into that role in 1952 and became the republican twoterm Vice President. Do you think dewey could have been or are about the same. So, Something Like that, right . Guest thats right. Its interesting, dewey the first thing he did to begin his campaign, everybody wanted eisenhower to run the democratic ticket because they are like theres no way that truman can win. Lets get eisenhower, hes a military figure. He doesnt belong to any party. But get him to run for democrats. He refuses. Everybody wonders he has no Political Party and after that, its very calculated photo op with dewey and thats when he sort of commits himself to the rePublican Party. Host good timing. I will finish with one comment from the listeners, john jones. Its a statement, not a question. He says he thinks its because truman had an unshakable faith and great integrity that couldnt havent had anything to do with corruption and never did and that is why it eventually he was considered a great president. Guest to speak to that really quickly. When truman left office, he had a miserable approval rating. Why is it today that democrats love truman . Why is it today republicans love truman . Wilbushier donald trump quote h, nancy pelosi quote him. Why do they all hold him to this standard . For me, the story of the 1948 election really answers that question, because here was a man that was such an absolute patriot, such a courageous man, honor, decency, but most of all fighting for what he believed to be the right thing for our country. So i think that sums it up for me. Host they didnt see any disconnect between what he said and what he did, which is a rare thing in a position. So, thanks for writing another great book on truman and thanks to the audience. Another event at the Commonwealth Club and its 118th year of discussions. Thanks for joining us once again. The president , available in paperback, hardcover and ebook from publicaffairs recent biographies of every president , inspired by conversations with noted historians about the leadership skills that make for a successful presidency. In this president ial Election Year, as americans decide who should lead the country, this collection offers perspectives into the life and events that forged each president s leadership style