David is the author of a number of books and he is here to talk about some of the past. His book about arnold rothstein, has book about 1920 the year of six president s, 1960 lbj versus jfk versus nixon, and ted silent cows almanac, the wit and wisdom of calvin coolidge, and ted williams my life of pictures. He has also written and produced a wma hq documentary local heroes, baseball and Capital District diamonds. Reviews for his harry truman lively itabout how is, illuminating portraits of candidate, and the evenhanded appraisal of truman is especially compelling. The journey he takes to election day is one he has definitively become the best at leading. His work has been compared to theodore whites classic them a of the president s series. After three homeruns, i think pietrusza is the undisputed champion of chronicling americans president ial campaigns. He holds a masters degree in history the university at albany and has served on city council in amsterdam new york and is the , recipient of the 2011 excellence in letters and arts award of the Alumni Association at the university of albany. In addition to doing president ial biographies and elections, he is also a member of sabra, the baseball historians organization. He is a casey winning judge and jury and edgar Award Finalist for his book on arnold rothstein. Ladies and gentlemen, david pietrusza. [applause] david thank you, natalie, and its great to be back here again. The question that people always ask me about my books is, why did you write this book . Americans claim to hate politics, but we love the elections. We love sports. My sports background, your sports background, the whole country is crazy about it. We love the competition. We love the 162game series and things going down to the seventh game of the world series. We love mazeroski hitting a home run and we love bill buckner and mookie wilson. 1948 is one of those moments in elections. This is when the underdog comes back and pulls out what everyone pulls it out when everyone has written him off. That is Harry Trumans improbable victory. That is the year that was. That is the election that was the great iconic comeback, the great surprise, the great surprise when the pundits are proven so spectacularly wrong. That is another thing we love , we love to be smarter than all the guys you see on tv and who are writing the newspaper columns. And harry turman, who was just and ordinary harry, the only, the only president of the 20th century who doesnt go onto college. Hes a high school graduate. Not the only one since, not the last one, the only one in the 20th century. You have to go back to andrew johnson, to Abraham Lincoln to find such a common man. And not just the common man but a fellow who has been a failure at business. His haberdashery shop in Downtown Kansas City goes bust. He is left to pay off the debts for 20 years and he pays them all off. He wont declare bankruptcy. He has a standard of honor and he will pay all his debts. He also has a standard of honor which marks him in his earlier political career where he is the , product and he is known for really most of his active political career as being the product of one of americas most spectacularly corrupt political machines. This is something that, like al smith in 1928, is never really able to transcend. He is a product of tammany and he gets whooped by Herbert Hoover for that and a number of other reasons. Harry truman is the product of the pendergast machine in kansas city. He is the head of the county government. They steal millions and millions of dollars. Harry truman never takes a dime. He has to kind of wink at what goes on in some cases. He has to get things done. He would sit down. He would sit down and pour out his soul in private letters which he never sent to anyone. He would hole up in these motels in this hotel and write these letters that were found decades after his death and he would questions, amhese i a Public Servant or am i a crook . Am i doing the right thing . He is conflicted by this but he stays in this machine and he is determined to get out of local government. He wants to be a congressman. But he is such a puppet, he is such a nobody even at that time that, it is like no, harry you , cannot be a congressman. Can i be governor . No, you cant be governor. When the machine cannot find anyone to run for the United States senate in 1934 okay. We now return to our regularlyscheduled programming. [laughter] so, the machine cant find anyone to run for senate, United States senate, in 1934. You would think they could. Its going to be a big democratic year. Harry pulls it off but he goes into the senate. Again, he is like a nobody, a nobody, and then disaster strikes. 1939, boss pendergast on good friday goes to the federal pen for corruption and people say well, thats the end of harry truman now. Who is going to want him . Who is going to want this pendergast puppet that still remains in the United States senate. His mentor is finished and so is he. He faces a threeway primary. And he wins. He goes to all the small towns and courthouses, the masonic temples and every other place he knows in missouri. And he wows them. Pulls it off and that is a valuable lesson when it comes to 1948 and the Democratic Party is split once again. But he is back in the senate. But who is he . He is given an assignment. Look into all these military bases. Defense contracting things we are doing to win the war against hitler. Are we getting the bang for the buck . Are we spending our money wisely . Harry truman goes around, gets in his car and really no staff, no expense delivers a remarkable , report that no we are not. , we are wasting a hell of a lot of money while our boys are fighting and dying in europe and north africa and the South Pacific and we have got to stop it. And here is how. People say, gee whiz, he did that intelligently, honestly, in a nonpartisan manner. Maybe there is something to this harry truman guy. Which takes us to 1944. Franklin roosevelt is looking for a fourth term. The war is still on and in 1940, he has dumped his Vice President , john nance gartner, who had grown a bit too conservative for the new deal and he put in henry a. Wallace, the secretary of agriculture. Who is a very leftwing kind of new age kind of guy or back them. And he forces wallace on the ticket in 1940. The Democratic Party does not really want him. And in 1944, roosevelt is getting the word back, you keep this guy on the ticket, he could cost you a million votes. Roosevelt is a great politician. He knows what this means. And he says, i have forced Henry Wallace on the party once. I cant do it twice. I cant do it twice. He has got to go. Not in so many words, not in so many words, but he eventually slits wallaces throat. Who did he replace them with . The guy he replaced them with is a guy that is not too southern, not to northern, not too conservative, not too liberal, respected by the union but not really in the pocket of the unions, and that is harry truman. He fits in all the slots. They put him on the ticket in 1944 and by april 1945 Franklin Roosevelt is dead. Harry truman goes to the white house, and says to eleanor roosevelt, can i pray for you . And she says no, we need to pray for you, because you are the fellow who is in trouble now. He starts off very popular. The war is one, the atomic, is dropped on the pan. It is vj day. Americans are smiling, and harry chairman reaches a popularity level of 87 . Gloria monday, that goes downhill real fast and people, some of it is beyond his control but there are reasons why his popularity drops. He is not Franklin Roosevelt. Right now, all the republicans are saying who is the next reagan . Why, we miss reagan a lot. Back then that was, my god, my god how we miss fdr him on, the how we miss fdr, among the democrats. Harriet truman was no fdr. So, there is a longing for the lost leader. Also he is prone to certain gaffes. His appointments are not always the strongest. There is talk of a missouri gang as there was an ohio gang with warren harding, people who are hangers on, small timers who are put in positions way above their abilities. You see the old new dealers being shoved out of the cabinet, not just Henry Wallace who was fired by harry truman for being a prostalinist really, giving speeches against the truman foreign policy. But you also have where, with harry truman, the country turns against the party and the leader which brings us into war. If you dont believe me, ask either bush. Ask lyndon johnson, woodrow wilson, after world war i, what happened to the Democratic Party. What happens to Winston Churchill a pretty good war , leader in 1945. He is out the door. So this is a normal thing, the readjustment means a lot of things get thrown out, including parties in power. Republicans take the house and the senate in 1946. They are on a roll. Harry truman keeps going up and down in popularity. By the spring of 1948, he is down in the low 30s in terms of popularity. And its not only a republican democrat thing going on here. The Democratic Party is leading splitting three ways, not just two ways. Not just you have got some sort of oh, carter, Teddy Kennedy thing going on. Not a george bushpat buchanan thing going on, but its being split, the left, the center, and the right. On the right, you have the southern segregationist democrats. Franklin roosevelt had talked a good game with black civil rights, but he really hadnt done anything. Remember that the army and navy in world war ii are still segregated. There is no move to desegregate anything in the country. Harry truman proposes a big Civil Rights Program at the beginning of 1948. The southern democrats are simply aghast by this. And beyond that, they feel personally betrayed because they had thought of harry truman as one of their own. His mother had been in an internment camp during the civil war. An internment camp run by the union during the civil war. Confederate sympathizers. If you look at harrys statements and you look at his private correspondence, he is not exactly a bleeding heart liberal on the topic. But, he puts this forward and the southerners are aghast. They Start Talking about a strategy in which they will punish harry truman. They will punish the Democratic Party and make the Democratic Party come to its senses on civil rights, states rights, and all of these things and they will do this by putting the election into the Electoral College and brokering a deal. One of the people involved in that is a young man, young governor from South Carolina named j. Strom thurmond. Decorated war veteran, former judge and considered at the time to be kind of a progressive , liberal, new deal kind of democrat. The new base of the south except that once he gets caught up in this one South Carolina legislators Start Talking it against the truman Civil Rights Program he joins with the dixiecrats largely centered in mississippi and alabama going to these regional readings to say what can we do about harry truman . Now the irony of this, the irony of this when thurmond starts being carried away by this talking about how federal government bayonets will not force black people into our swimming pools and into our homes and our schools, the irony is that j. Strom thurmond had a black illegitimate daughter. That is one wing of the Democratic Party. In 1948. The other wing, which seems actually to be more troublesome to harry truman, is the Henry Wallace wing. That is the extreme leftwing of the Democratic Party the on the beyond the new dealers, beyond the eleanor roosevelt, beyond that Hubert Humphreys which is in many cases communist dominated, communist party United States of america. Not just leftwing, not just radical whatever but actual party members. And wallace has a problem. He has been cast aside not both once, but twice both times , involving harry chairman. You would not be human unless you were bitter about this. So you had this bitter former Vice President of the United States with leftwing proclivities anyway and now he has got two reasons, two reasons to be against harry truman personally. And he is talked into not a primary count against truman but , a thirdparty challenge. What is their strategy . Again, what is their strategy . Since the strategy is being dictated from extreme leftwingers, from the people being controlled by really moscow when you get down to it. , it has to be there again not trying to win an election but to send a message to truman and say look, you change your foreign policy, Democratic Party. You change your foreign policy, harry truman. Because we will punish you and we will give elections to the republicans. Then we will go back to the way it was under roosevelt with a guy we can deal with. In 1944, the communist party of the United States had have actually endorsed Franklin Roosevelt. They did not run a candidate. It was kind of one Big Happy Family at one point. So, truman is being squeezed on the left and on the right. He is in trouble. How can he hold together a coalition which will have enough electoral votes to win if the south is going to be stolen away from them by the dixiecrats and where does Henry Wallace hold his strength . Not all over the country but in , big states like new york, new york city, in southern california, in illinois where he can be the balance of power in those states. Democratstates which should win, into the republican column. So, the republican column. Who is the republican going to be . The same answer at some point as we have now, looking forward to 2012, very crowded, confused field. Typical, typical when you have a president , an incumbent who is vulnerable. The opportunity is there and a lot of opposition candidates come out. And the four frontrunners that year, governor thomas e. Dewey of new york. New york is the big kahuna, 45 electoral votes. You take that and you have a big leg up on the presidency. Harold e. Stassen, former governor of minnesota. Now i punchline in american political history because he ran and lost so many times and ran and lost so many times with absolutely no chance of success. Robert a. Taft, senator from ohio, leader of the congressional republicans. The fact out. De facto. Mr. Republican, mr. Conservative but as they say, dull as paint. Not charismatic. And the fourth is not even in the country. The general of the army, Douglas Mccarthy in tokyo running the former, i guess still present empire of japan and a popular guy, but can he pull it off from faraway . He doesnt. He has entered into the wisconsin primary. He should win that. He doesnt. He stumbles and is out fairly quickly. There are not a lot of primaries that year. Theres the New Hampshire primary. There is always the New Hampshire primary. There is the wisconsin primary which macarthur should win and doesnt. He loses it to Harold Stassen which elevates stassen. Stassen is an outsider. He is a boy wonder. In 1938, he had been elected governor of minnesota and he was the youngest governor of any state ever and he quit. He is reelected, saying it now if you reelect me im going to quit in four months and go into the navy. And he is so popular he is still elected. Imagine being elected with a platform like that. He comes out, hes an internationalist. You have got the debate still going on, of internationalism versus isolationism. Stassen is on the extreme end of the republican internationalist brigade at that point. He is feisty. He is a real outsider. He wins in wisconsin. He wins in nebraska. And he is poised to take the frontrunner status away from thomas e. Dewey as the campaign heads into oregon. Now again, notice i have only named four states. These are about the only four important primaries there are. Most of these things are still being done at Party Conventions which means in the backroom. Places like albany or columbus or wherever or when you get to the convention. Now, oregon is where we see something happening which is being repeated again this year, debates. We are debating, we are debating. We are debating. And you see Newt Gingrich at every stop saying i want a lincolndouglass style debate on one topic just me and this other guy in the room and it doesnt matter who the guy is or who the gal is or what the topic is. ,he is calling for that sort of debate. What he should be calling on historically, because he is a great historian, is a stassen dewey debate because the stassen dewey debate is the first broadcast debate in president ial history. It is held in a Radio Station in portland, oregon, and held on one topic. Two guys in a room, in an iron cage on a topic should the , communist party of the United States of america be outlawed . Harold stassen, the great liberal in the affirmative, in the affirmative. Tom dewey, tom dewey in the negative. Now we havent talked much about thomas dewey. Dewey was the governor of new york, a pretty popular guy. He had been the nominee of the Republican Party in 1944. He had led on the first three ballots in 1940, before losing to wendell willkie, willkie quite remarkable. This year he is only 46 years old. That is about the age obama was. That is only three years older than jack kennedy was. He is a young man. And he has been on the verge of power and National Notoriety even before 1940. In 1940 he hasnt asked District Attorney. He is not even governor. Attorney. Trict he was mr. District attorney, crime buster, the guy who went after the mob, put them in jail. Went after the wall street guy, put them in jail. He did it all. He was spectacular as the District Attorney but as governor, he begins to trim his sails. He is looking at the polls and as a candidate, it is the same way. So even though he is the , purported frontrunner and he is the frontrunner in terms of delegates at this point, he is not particularly loved in the party or among the population. But in this debate, he is the former District Attorney. He is a great prosecutor. He is great with a jury. Stassen was a prosecutor too, but evidently the prosecutors in manhattan have to be tougher than the prosecutors in minnesota and dewey cleans his clock. Stassen is essentially left bleeding on the floor after that primary. Dewey wins it. But he still can be stopped at the convention because, because he doesnt have the votes, he doesnt have the love, but he knows had to make deals. He makes a deal with the governor of pennsylvania to push him over the top and he wins the nomination. At that point, he is faced with a choice. Who do i make my Vice President ial candidate . It is a guy he wanted to put on the ticket for years before, a warrant governor of california. , this is another one of these cases where we look at there is , this big liberal wing of the Republican Party. Dewey, stassen, warren. Warren may be the most liberal of all of them. Warren does not want to do it. He doesnt want to do it in 1944, doesnt want to do it in 1948. But he is finally thinking if i keep turning these people down they will stop asking me to dance. The if i want anything ever again, this could be at. So i had better take it. With great reluctance, it becomes the deweywarrant ticket, which people think is just great. Its great. Its a fairly young ticket. Is progressive, its thinking. It has geographic balance. It has new york and its got california. Wow, what a great ticket. And the democrats have got harry truman. Maybe not. Earlier in the air, the republicans were looking at a guy named dwight david eisenhower. The grassroots wanted ike. Everybody likes ike. They dont know what he is, republican or democrat . H he is a general, that is good enough. Sort of like some big political version of white christmas. Everybody loves a general. And they love him. He turns the republicans down. The democrats, things are not Getting Better for harry chairman. The convention is going into philadelphia. Just about everyone has the convention in philadelphia that year republicans, democrats and , progressives. Lets go with ike. Lets go with ike. This amazing incoherent coalition of democrats forms united by one thing staying in , power. Southern segregationists like Richard Russell and strom thurmond. Northern liberals like Hubert Humphrey, bigcity bosses of chicago, jersey city, members of franklin d. Roosevelts family, all of them come together. They want to stampede the convention for ike. Ike finally draws back and says no at the last minute. Otherwise it could have been eisenhower as the nominee and beatingthe president , dewey, but he says no, not this year. He does not become president this year of columbia university. Four years more for the presidency. So truman, truman, its so bad at that convention he gets on the phone and he is calling william o. Douglas, the Supreme Court justice. Will you be my Vice President . Why him . Because william o. Douglas is a guy who is respected by the old new dealers. He has to get back in good graces with that wing of the party. He has to cement that tied to the new deal. And William Douglas supposedly says, i will not read the number i will not be eight number two man to a number two man. And he turned him down. He takes Alvin Barkley, harry truman takes Alvin Barkley democratic leader of the senate , and you have the ticket. Is a pretty good speaker. Barkley he is pretty wellliked. He is older than harry chairman and harry chairman is not a young man. They both come from border states. It does not look like much of a ticket. It does not look like much of but harry truman goes to the a ticket. But harry truman goes to the convention. He waits for hours to give his speech. He doesnt give it until 1 00 in the morning and the convention has just been all roiled up with everything. Hubert humphrey had gone to the floor and forced a floor fight on the civil rights plank. The southern democrats were mad enough going into this convention and then Hubert Humphrey said our plank on civil , rights is not as strong as the republicans. Its the same mush that we were peddling in 1944. No, we need a move out of the shadow of states rights into the Bright Sunlight of civil rights and he forces a floor fight on to the convention, the first one since 1932 with the democrats for prohibition. And he wins. He wins and some of the democrats walk out. Walk out. The convention is dragging on into chaos. And then when they announce harry chairman is coming into the hall at 1 00 a. M. Past any media that you can get. They police, open up this floral display of the liberty bell in philadelphia and they fly out the doves of peace which are all pigeons, actually. And they have been cooped up her cooped up for hours. Now they see the lights in the noise and the dance and they just go crazy. They are attacking things and flying into electric fans and landing on sam raeburns head and they are doing things that pigeons do. [laughter] and harry truman has worn a white suit. [laughter] well, that is probably the low point. [laughter] harry truman starts off kind of kind of slow. To alvins to point barkley to get applause lines. And then he gets into what is going to do. And i am going to challenge the Republican Party and the donothing congress to come back in a special session and turn and pass a program for the american people, and the crowd goes wild. People say wow, this would be a this could be a horse race. Maybe theres something going on here. But when harry truman goes to detroit to start his campaign on labor day as democrats traditionally do, he hasnt got enough money to take the train out of the station. And they have to make frantic calls to do that. Its still very dicey for him. The progressives under Henry Wallace come into philadelphia next. They have their convention. Its very interesting. Use the show up and we hear these names later on. Pete seeger is providing the music, paul robeson is providing the music. You have got a couple of delegates there who become United States senators one of , which is george mcgovern. They kind of go off on their own but their campaign is downward, downward, downward with the progressives. The dixiecrats meet again. They nominate strom thurmond. All the while, things are going on in the world and in the country. As the conventions are meeting in uncle joe stalin decides hes going to blockade berlin. So what do you do . Start a world war . Sent convoys in . Or do an air left . You figure out how to do an airlift to supply the people of west berlin before they riot and demand communism. And america figures out how to do that. And that is one of the things going on. You have got the return of the peacetime draft. Now, world war ii was a segregated army. The blacks are saying, okay, we have put up with that, we put up with it during the war. We are not putting up with that again. A. Philip randolph says to harry truman, you do this again, i am going to have a march on washington before Martin Luther king. March on washington. And you know something . We have taken polls. 30 of our black youth will not if your for the draft have a segregated army and navy. With hishen truman, back to the wall in the middle of the election, knowing that dixiecrats have gone as far as they can and not sure where the , black vote in the north will go. This is when he makes his decision to desegregate the Armed Services. This happens right in the middle of this. In the spring, in february, there is a special election in new york. Theres always a special election in new york for congress. This was in the bronx. A pretty safe democratic seat. What happens is republicans dont win but Henry Wallace supporter wins and sends shockwaves through the Democratic Party. It is wow this movement may have , legs. This is in a fairly heavily jewish area, okay . Wallace had been taunting truman as being insufficiently proisrael. All the candidates are pretty much proisrael, dewey, taft, all of these guys. But truman has been having problems with the jewish community. They dont think he is sufficiently proisrael. And what he does is 13 minutes after the state of israels independence or statehood is proclaimed, he is the first chief of state, we are do we are the first country to recognize israel. This helps solve some of his problems on the left with the wallace vote. But it is very chilling to see, chilling to read i think in the New York Times that day or the next day, that out of egypt, out of cairo, Muslim Leaders are talking about the jihad against the United States of america. Many things are part of that year which continue for a long time afterwards and into today. And the election goes on. We also see, now harry truman has this turn of day special session of the legislature and the law of unintended consequences. He brings congress back in. Congress doesnt want to come back in the middle of an election but they come in and they hold some hearings on communists, communists in government. They take some testimony and what this leads to is a guy named Whittaker Chambers going before the House Unamerican Activities Committee and saying that alger has is a member of the communist party, former secretary of state, undersecretary of state. And this is the beginning of the mccarthy era. Is also the beginning of Richard Nixons political career because he is one of the few people when this starts to happen who says i smell a rat. I smell a rat. I do not believe hiss. They go after hiss, and finally get him. But this is again one of the things that differentiates 1948 as starting so many Different Things. The campaign starts. In the spring, harry truman made an interesting discovery. He kind of knew. Part of that was something he knew. He knew, he was really bad giving a speech office script. I mean really bad. He was in the senate and probably only gave three speeches in his whole career. Could not he had very bad , eyesight and he had trouble reading from his paper and just giving a speech like this. But he talked to a bunch of newspaper editors at the white house and he just speaks. First he gives a speech and people are like, is the bar still open . Evenhe speaks off the cuff people who do not like him go, hey that was pretty good. I kind of like that guy. He has got something. Everybody notices this. This is one of these great moments where the lightbulb goes on and then he does it again. He does it again when he speaks right after recognizing israel. He goes to a jewish group in washington and he does the same thing and he wows them. He says, i have got to keep doing this. I have to keep doing this because i stink doing it otherwise. And he does and he goes across the country on his first in spring on his first whistlestop campaign. There are a lot of gaffes. There are a lot of mistakes and a lot of errors. He finds his stride when he gets to california. Then he does it again after labor day. Now, dewey does the same thing. He has one of these whistlestop but dewey is not as lively, not as spontaneous. Tom dewey originally had not wanted to be president or governor or an attorney. He wanted to be a singer he , wanted to be a performer. Harry truman you remember was the piano player. Tom dewey was training to be a concert vocalist. His wife appeared on rod. Showbiz people. So he knew how to present himself. He was really good but too slick and it did not come across well. And his content was too much mush. Harry truman is rocking and socking and as he leaves washington on his fall whistlestop tour, someone says give them hell, harry. He says yeah, i will, and he does. He used to say well i just tell , the truth and they think its hell. [laughter] but he, in many cases he is very , rough. He is very rough. In his speech in chicago for example he pretty much accuses , tom dewey and the people he dewey andcuses tom the people behind him of being fascists. Is really overthetop and even his advisers are cringing but its its attack, attack, attack. Dewey is not attacking and people should notice things. People often see what they want to see and they have made up their mind. Day dont need any more data or the data is irrelevant so they know that harry truman is a loser and they know that tom dewey is the next president of the United States. So when they see these crowds getting bigger and bigger and bigger and more boisterous for harry truman they are just , it is like they are just curious. , they just want to see the president. They do not care. And when they see the crowds not so big and not so enthusiastic for tom dewey they should say, shouldnt people want to see the next resident of the United States . And they dont. They dont make the connection. The roper polling organization stopped polling in midoctober. They think it is in the bag. Why waste money on this . Also people see that it looks like humphrey is going to win in minnesota and it looks like they might win in West Virginia against whoever and is like well we might be in trouble. We might, we are going to lose seats. And they dont connect the fact that the wheels are falling off the Republican Campaign all over place. Because they have made up their minds that this is safe. A week before the election i think the gallup had it down to five points. That is nearly within the margin of error. Then when you add in this fact that thirdparty candidates tend to just collapse as election day comes in. Henry wallace collapses and those votes go to harry truman. So, election day 1948, it is all festivities in new york at the hotel roosevelt. Republicans have their headquarters there, they are ready to win. The democrats are, dont even put up a tote board in their headquarters in new york and washington. It is like we dont want to know , what these numbers are. [laughter] just let us die in peace. But the returns start to come in. And they are not too bad for dewey at first. In fact, what happens is he wins the northeast. He wins the northeast in part thanks to Henry Wallace. He carries new york and he carries maryland over harry truman, thanks to Henry Wallace and he does well through the northeast. Pennsylvania is a very republican state. Iney had carried the midwest 1944 against Franklin Roosevelt. He had not carried the northeast. He concentrates on the northeast, and in doing that he starts to ignore the midwest. Early on in the truman reelection effort there was a Campaign Document developed and it said well you can safely ignore the south. Thats not exactly right. Although here is a fun fact. Franklin roosevelt had won the presidency four times without needing one electoral vote from the south. Without needing one of those votes. Harry chairmans advisers say, you know, the farmers, the midwest, the far west, the far west is looking for irrigation projects, infrastructure. The farmer in the midwest is looking for government help. And harry truman was a missouri dirt farmer. He understood these people. Ok . He goes and he is walloping the republicans on these issues and also inflation. Inflation. He has got 7 inflation in the country and he is walloping the congress about doing nothing about it. Now, he also has prosperity. He has got prosperity and there is a cold war but it aint a hot water. Aint a hot war. What do i mean by prosperity . No eight, nine, 10 unemployment, no Great Depression. 3. 8 unemployment and 1948. James carville said it, its the economy stupid and the people who had gone through Great Depression and the world war, this is the song really is not i am just wild about harry. Its happy days are here again. This is really the beginning of the 1950s. This is the peace and prosperity of the 1950s beginning already then. You get that bump of korea but , otherwise very similar. So, the returns start coming in and it is starting to look like a horse race. Where is harry . Harry goes to a luncheon in independence, missouri, his hometown. Sneaks out the backdoor into a waiting limousine and drives off to a pretty much vacant resort favored by politicians and gangsters outside of town, checks into a room. Nobody knows he is there. He is hidden from the press. He is hidden from the nation, really. Checks into a room and is determined that he is not going to follow this on a minute by minute basis. There is a bottle of whiskey on the nightstand and a ham and cheese sandwich. And that is his Election Night celebration. He turns out the lights. Its probably about 9 00. Every so often, the secret Service People wake him up and tell them he has won this state or he is doing well in that state. Each time they wake him up they just annoy him. They just annoy him more and more. But finally they give him the news which causes him to say, i think i won. I think i have won. Lets go down to kansas city. Lets go down to headquarters. And harry truman has, amazingly, pulled it off. The ballroom in new york for tom dewey is an empty forlorn place. For Henry Wallace and strom thurmond, all these things have fallen apart. But harry truman has proven one thing, as the great political Lawrence Peter berra, a fellow missourian stated it aint over until its , over. And harry truman prove that so right in 1948. And as for this talk its now officially over. [laughter] [applause] thank you. We have got time for some questions, and the deal is you go to that microphone so that the people in our cspan audience can hear you and then i will attempt to evade your questions. [laughter] any takers . This is most unusual. We have one. Go right up there. Your book contains a lot of quotes from harry truman that are blatantly antisemitic and antiblack. Absolutely. Talk into the mic . The that is going on cspan, just speak up. Start all over . Your book has a lot of antisemitic quotes from harry, antiblack quotes. How do you square that harry truman with a harry truman that recognizes israel and pushes for civil rights . David people are complex. People are complex and they have really different parts of them and they see Different Things differently at different times. Harry trumans partner in the haberdashery was a guy named jacobsen, so he has a very Good Relationship with jacobsen. His motherinlaw, trumans motherinlaw, who he did not have a great relationship with, was so antisemitic she would not allow jacobsen into the house. Ok . Truman is has sympathy for the jewish people. He has sympathy for black people when they are being lynched, when they are being treated patently unfairly. But he does not, even after the presidency he is writing in his , memoirs in 1955, this is not some private letter that he doesnt want social equality for with black people. And you get into the 1960s and he is the Kennedy Campaign has to hide him because he is declaring the sit in demonstrators as communist. But people compartmentalize things and i think he does that. And people are contradictory. Truman is just a spectacular example of that. And i think we cannot exclude a certain amount of political calculation in this. That truman and that document i was talking about, his blueprint for reelection says, you have got to hold onto the black vote up north and particularly if dewey is the nominee, you have got trouble. You will lose new york, you will lose ohio, you will lose period so there is that political calculation. Just as i alluded to, where he is given a lot of credit for integrating the Armed Services but usually its not mentioned that a. Philip randolph had a gun to his head in the middle of this election. The southerners had gone off and they have done all this damage. When i say they have done all the damage they can, the southern dixiecrat strategy is to dump the democrats off the ballots, and once truman knows that he is still on the ballot in all of the states he knows he can pull it off in large parts of the south, like texas and georgia but up to that point its dicey for him. So again, people have different parts of them churchill for , example. Churchill has some remarkably antisemitic statements and franklin d. Roosevelt, who of course very friendly to the jewish people. Its very interesting to see what he would have done with the state of israel because he was talking with the arabs just before he dies, with the saudis about, we will consult you on everything. I have read that he was part of the board of directors which instituted the numerous classes at harvard which put in a quota system against jewish people. And who is really his best friend among cabinet members . It is morgenthau so people are , contradictory. There are contradictions among every person in this room and harry truman is just this amazing example of it. Anyone else . Trumant true that, well, did not run in stephenson ran 1952. Against ike. That he and bess simply jumped in their car without the benefit of any secret Service Protection and drove back to independence missouri . ,david there is a new book on that actually. Not as new as my book that it came out maybe a year ago and yes, which indicates that. Years before i was going to do a book on this election, i visited independence, missouri. And visited the truman home and its like gee whiz, there is this real linoleum on the floor. Isnt it . This was not, i mean you go to hyde park, or you go to some of these other president ial homes and they are pretty modest. Even calvin coolidges. You go to his house before he is president and its really modest. Its like someplace you would see it amsterdam. But afterwards he moves into a big place. Harry truman never moves into a big place. And his circumstances are sufficiently modest that he is the guy. He is why we have president ial pensions. Up to that point, you know, we really dont have that and they may be independently wealthy like Herbert Hoover or they are able to have accomplished something more than truman did. Very modest on the payroll his whole life, federal or local county government. So truman really is a very modest guy. He might have been taking all these walks to save on gasoline i guess, dont know. Next . The photograph you have on your sign, what can you tell us about this picture of Truman Holding up this newspaper from the Chicago Daily . David ok. I like that cover that is a , great cover. The picture is about two days out from the election day. It is in st. Louis. One of his campaigns, Campaign Aides has brought him the photograph and harry is just in love with it as you can see. Even sing half his face. Even just seeing half of his face. What happens is again, people be seeing what they should seeing. But also here we have some labor. These are also times of labor difficulties. Truman threats about steelworkers and coal miners in jail in we have the taft hartley 1946. Act by the republicans and there is labor troubles at the Chicago Tribune that night. And, there will be a delay and in setting the headlines by three hours so they get on the phone to their correspondent arthur hemmings sears. And is the safe . The tribune is like is the safe . , can we go with this . Nothing could go wrong. Its in the bag. It was not in the bag. Oddly enough, the correspondent was pensioned off right after this. [laughter] that was the end of his career. You dont see him with george will on sundays or anything after that. [laughter] so that story, that is the story. And of course once he gets back to washington he is greeted by this immense crowd at union station. Maybe the biggest second biggest crowd to ever assemble in washington. They are lining the streets. They are going crazy. And i think its bess truman who says to her daughter, you know, there werent as many people out here when we left washington. [laughter] everyone loves a frontrunner. Okay i have got again about a photograph. This picture of the president playing the piano with a young woman sitting on top. What information do you have about that . David well, that is at the National Press club. The piano is still there. Harry truman lounge on the 13th floor or 14th floor. Harry truman was then not resident, he was Vice President and he is at the press club playing the piano and Lauren Bacall is there who is then only about 19. And she sits on the piano, actually kind of reclines on it. So when i introduce her and my cast of characters at the beginning of the book, i say the legs on Harry Trumans piano. [laughter] and this picture did two things. It really infuriated mrs. Truman. [laughter] and it causes people to wonder who this guy was and did he have the gravitas to be president or thehe this hack from pendergast machine again . So while it had become iconic at the time it was shall we say problematic because there were different standards of president ial dignity at that point. Even this whistlestop tour is somewhat unusual for president s. Remember, president s dont even go to the convention. To the national convention, until 1932 with Franklin Roosevelt. I have been given the signal that the time is just about up so we are going to wrap it up so we dont get caught in the middle of an answer. I wish to thank you all for coming today and you have been a great audience. Thank you very much. Tvthis is American History on cspan3, or each week and we feature 48 hours of program exploring our nations past. Next, the Massachusetts Historical Society hosts amy watson, who talks about british imperialism and the Patriot Movement in the 1700s. She discusses why they were involved in the 1745 seizure in modernday nova scotia and argues the Patriot Movement inspired the american revolution. She is a Research Fellow with Massachusetts Historical Society, provided this video. Is an opportunity for researchers who are working in the collections at the Massachusetts Historical Society to share their projects. These are works in progress at this informal gathering that allows presenters to explain their projects, sharpen
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