Truman's Triumphs: The 1948 Election and the Making of Postwar America 070061866X, 9780700618668

Table of contents :
American Presidential Elections
TRUMAN’S TRIUMPHS
INTRODUCTION
JANUARY 1,1948
DIVIDED REPUBLICANS
THE CONVENTIONS NAME THEIR CANDIDATES
A DEMOCRATIC SWEEP
p. I.

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tr u m a n ’s tr iu m p h s

American Presidential Elections M ICHAEL NELSON J O H N M. MC CA RDE LL, JR.

TRUMAN’S TRIUMPHS TH E

If48 EJEC TIO N

AND

TH E M A K IN G OE PO STW AR A M E R IC A

U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS OF KANSAS

Published

© 2012 by the University Press of Kansas

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Busch, Andrew E.

Kansas 66045), which was organized by the

Trumaris triumphs : the 1948 election and the making of postwar America / Andrew E. Busch. p.

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Kansas Board of

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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ISBN 978-0-7006-1867-5 (paper : alk. paper) 1. Truman,

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Harry S., 1884-1972. 2. Presidents—United States—Election—

Emporia State

1948. 3. Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972—Influence. 4. United

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States—Politics and government—1945-1953. 5. Political

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campaigns—United States—History—20th century. 6. Election

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Editors’ Foreword vii Author’s Preface ix Introduction i 1

January i, 1948 5

2

The Contenders 27

3

Divided Democrats, Divided Republicans 57

4

The Conventions Name Their Candidates 93

5

Truman Defeats Dewey 122

6

A Democratic Sweep 164

7

Interpretations and Legacies 183 Appendix A: 1948 Republican Primary Results 219 Appendix B: Harry S. Truman Nomination Acceptance Speech, July 15,1948 222 Appendix C: 1948 Presidential General Election Results 229 Appendix D: Harry S. Truman Inaugural Address, January 20,1949 231 Notes 237 Bibliographic Essay 255 Index 263

e d ito r s ’ fo r e w o r d

Fill in the blank:_______________won an astonishing upset victory in the 1948 election. Correct answer: Harry Truman, of course. But there are other correct answers as well. “Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives” is one. As Andrew E. Busch points out in Truman’s Triumphs, political pundits were just as certain that the Re­ publicans would hold their majority in the House as that the Republican presidential nominee, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, would unseat President Truman. As a result of the 1946 m idterm election, the GOP controlled the House by a 246-188 majority. No one foresaw that the Democrats would gain seventy-five seats two years later—the largest gain for either party in any House election since then. “Democratic Senate candidates” is an answer that would get at least partial credit. The 1946 election had given the Republicans a 51-45 m a­ jority in the Senate. O f the thirty-three seats on the ballot in 1948, the GOP held eighteen. The challenge for the Democrats seeking a majority was formidable: to gain at least four seats. On election day they gained nine—all but one at the expense of a reelection-seeking Republican in­ cumbent. And among the newcomers were some Democratic senators who would dominate party and even national politics in the future, in­ cluding Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, Hubert H. Humphrey of M inne­ sota, and Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. W hen the dust settled on November 2,1948, the Democrats, not the expected Republicans, controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress. One of the distinctive strengths of Truman’s Triumphs is that it embeds the president’s victory within the larger narrative of all the elections taking place that day. Indeed, Busch points out, Democrats also did well in the 1948 gubernatorial elections, in which they gained eight statehouses, and in the state legislative elections, in which they gained 572 lower house seats and 118 upper house seats. In many states, Busch shows, the coattails seemed to run up the bal­ lot from Democratic congressional candidate to president, not the tradi­ tional other way around. In competitive House races, TrUman outran the Democratic nom inee in h i districts but was outrun in 116. And “in the

races where it counted,” writes Busch, “Democratic Senate candidates were more likely to outpoll Truman than not.” Nevertheless, Busch rightly gives full credit to Truman and his bril­ liant political advisers, especially James Rowe and Clark Clifford, for re­ alizing that the best way to defeat the GOP was to exploit the division be­ tween its moderate, Northeastern wing and its conservative, Midwestern wing. This division, which dated back to the 1912 presidential nom ina­ tion battle between President William Howard Taft, an Ohio conserva­ tive, and form er president Theodore Roosevelt, a New York progressive, was especially sharp in 1948. Northeastern moderates prevailed in the presidential arena by nom inating Dewey, but the Republican-controlled Congress was firmly in the hands of Midwestern conservatives. As Busch expertly chronicles, Truman drove a wedge between the two GOP wings by calling Congress into special session on July 26,1948, and daring the Republican majority to pass liberal legislation that had been endorsed by the Republican national convention in its platform just one m onth before. Both Congress and Dewey responded like deer caught in the headlights, and thereby handed Truman and his party’s legislative candidates their winning issue: the so-called “do-nothing Republican 80th Congress.” The irony is that even though it was the Democratic Party that was m ost obviously divided in 1948—southern conservative Democrat J. Strom Thurm ond of South Carolina and northern liberal Democrat Henry A. Wallace actually ran as third-party candidates—Tru­ man's brilliant exploitation of the less tangible but no less im portant divisions within the GOP turned out to be strategically more im portant in determ ining the outcome of the election.

viii

e d i t o r s ’ for ewor d

W hen given the opportunity to write on the election of 1948 for the University Press of Kansas, it did not take me long to decide. The Truman-Dewey-Thurmond-Wallace election offers som ething for ev­ eryone—trium phant grit, tragic hubris, dangerous naïveté, fractious parties, m eaningfid conventions, deep strategy, accidents of fate, accusa­ tions of betrayal, foreign crises, the birth of a new nation in the Middle East, wayward polls, a dramatic special session of Congress, internecine battles among unions and liberals, spies, extremists galore (including a sprinkling of Ku Kluxers and m ore than a sprinkling of Communists)— and, of course, the results that so surprised the nation. Although m uch has been written about the election of 1948, it can always be viewed with a fresh eye. I have tried in particular to offer more detail about die nom ination season and the im portant congressional elections than is typically done. I have also dived deep into the state o f public opinion in 1948, making use of the hundreds of survey questions about issues of the day polled by the Gallup and Roper organizations. My conclusion that the policy significance of 1948 is best seen as an affirmation of the New Deal, of containm ent, and of a halting progress on civil rights that established the political baseline for postwar America is not out of step with m ost other interpretations. My conclusion about the politics of the m om ent—that it is hard to tell whether the election was evidence o f the durability or the vulnerability of the New Deal coali­ tion—is not quite as conventional. I am probably harder on the Com­ m unists at hom e and abroad than is typical. I have always agreed with Harry Truman’s view that Communism and Nazism were essentially alike, m eaning that Stalin was not morally different from Hitler and that domestic Communists and their fellow travelers were objectively in league with a hostile totalitarian power. Given that perspective, I hope I can be forgiven for not cutting the Communists m uch slack. It is this perspective that also leads me to conclude that the m ost signifi­ cant long-term legacy of the 1948 election was the decisive ratification of containm ent, which put the weight of the United States into the project of stopping the expansion o f the Soviet em pire for m ost of the next forty years, until that empire was no more.

I could not have completed this project without the patience and help of others. O f course, my wife, Melinda, and children, Katie, Daniel, and Elizabeth, were long on the patience end of things, as was Fred Wood­ ward at UPK. Connie Oehring, Kelly Chrism an Jacques, Susan Schott, and Sara Henderson White at UPK were extremely professional and helpfid. I also want to particularly thank series editors Mike Nelson and John McCardell, along with other readers, for their helpful comments and suggestions, as well as Hannah Burak, Aseem Chipalkatti, Andrew Nam, Ian O’Grady, Alexander Pei, and Sam Stone for their invaluable research aid. W ithout them , this project would undoubtedly have ended up as successful as Tom Dewey on November 2,1948. April 2012

x

a u t h o r ’s p r e f a c e

tr u m a n ’s tr iu m p h s

INTRODUCTION

The election of 1948 may have produced the single m ost iconic m om ent in the history of American presidential elections: the image of a victorious Harry S. Truman, sm iling broadly and holding aloft a Chicago Tribune em ­ blazoned with the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman.” The story of Truman the fighter coming from behind to win when almost no one else thought he could has captured the American imagination since the day it hap­ pened. Although the public opinion polls were flawed, Tru­ m an almost certainly did come from behind. Although he rem ained confident throughout the campaign that he would prevail, it is true that almost no one else shared his confidence. When Newsweek magazine surveyed what it considered to be the top 50 political analysts in the coun­ try in early October, all 50 predicted a Dewey win. And Truman faced a difficult campaign with a determ ination and a fire that has rarely been duplicated since, if ever. Truman’s campaign and seemingly amazing trium ph deserve attention in any account of the 1948 election, but the story is more complicated than that. The complications are many, and they will be ex­ plored in the pages to come. Among other things: • Truman may have trailed in the polls, but he had the benefit of serving as the standard-bearer for a party that Franklin Roosevelt had turned into a national majority, or at least a strong plurality. That coalition had to be recognized and mobilized

•

•

•

•

•

by Truman, but if he could do that, he actually had the advantage under the surface. The story of 1948 is largely a story of how Truman approached that task. Americans in 1948 had to render judgm ent on three major policy innovations. It was the first presidential election since Depression, war, and the presence of FDR in which the nation could take stock of the New Deal direction of domestic policy. It was also the first election after the establishm ent o f containm ent as the foreign policy of the United States and the first since Truman had made civil rights an im portant part of the federal policy agenda. Indeed, it was the first presidential election in the postwar era, featuring discussion of a raft of new issues such as domestic comm unism , economic reconversion, and inflation; consequently it was the first filli opportunity for Americans to set a course in the postwar world. Both m ajor parties were split. On the Democratic side, the split took the form o f two departures from the party, one by Southern segregationists and the other by the far left, both of which groups form ed third-party tickets to attem pt to advance their views and affect the election’s outcome. The Republican split took the form of division between two philosophical wings of the party that represented on one hand the 80th Congress and on the other hand the GOP presidential ticket. In the end, though the Democratic split was m ore open, the Republican split proved m ore damaging. Because Republicans were divided over both domestic policy (how accommodating they should be toward the New Deal) and foreign policy (how far they should go in the direction of internationalism and away from isolationism), the Republican nom ination was nearly as im portant as the general election result. The presidential nom inating system in 1948 was substantially different from the reform ed system to which we are accustomed, and the differences were im portant. Primary elections influenced the nom ination but did not control it; it was possible to seriously consider a genuine last-m inute draft of a candidate; and the national conventions really mattered. The congressional elections were a m ajor part of the story of 1948 as well, though they are often reduced to a sentence or a paragraph in accounts of the election. Democrats regained

2 IN T R O D U C TIO N

control of Congress after having lost it in 1946, and the election marked the last tim e through at least 2008 that the presidential w inner’s party pulled in such a large num ber of new House seats (a net gain of 75). The 1948 election is the object o f some interesting and crucial ques­ tions. Should Truman’s victory be seen as a genuine upset or as some­ thing that should have been expected, even if it was not? Was Truman really behind all that tim e, or did he just seem behind because the polls were off base? Did the third parties have any significant effect? What groups of voters gave Truman his win, and why? Would a differ­ ent, m ore combative strategy by Dewey have made a difference? Did Truman provide congressional coattails, or did lower-level Democratic candidates pull Truman over the line in some crucial states? And what difference did the election of 1948 make? This book will seek to answer these questions. Chapter 1 lays the groundwork by examining the national and inter­ national context of the 1948 election on January 1,1948. Two key pieces of that context were economic and international. The United States was in a postwar economic boom, but there was some turbulence, and many Americans feared a return to depression. The key international fact was that the United States had fought and recently won World War II. From that fact flowed a num ber of consequences, both foreign and domestic. In addition, Chapter 1 examines the state of the parties and recent elec­ tion results that formed part of the strategic context for the campaigns. Chapter 2 surveys the m ain contenders for the presidency, starting with Truman himself. Those contenders included a handful of Demo­ crats besides Truman—Richard Russell at die Democratic convention, Strom Thurm ond and Henry Wallace at the head of splinter parties. The list also included a bevy o f Republicans, including New York governor Thomas E. Dewey; Ohio senator Robert A. Taft; form er Minnesota gov­ ernor Harold Stassen; California governor Earl Warren; Michigan sena­ tor A rthur Vandenberg; Massachusetts congressman and Speaker of the House Joseph Martin; and General Douglas MacArthur, commanding the U.S. occupation of Japan. Towering above the field was Dwight D. Eisenhower, a noncandidate whose nom ination was coveted by many in both parties. Chapter 3 follows die divided Democrats and die divided Republicans through the prim aries, maneuvers, debates, and events o f the primary INTRODUCTION

3

season, starting with Harry Truman’s January 7 state o f the union ad­ dress. As was true throughout 1948, what was happening in the broader world in places such as Prague and Berlin was as im portant as what was happening inside the campaign. Chapter 4 traces the four conventions that took place w ithin a onem onth period in the sum m er of 1948—Republican, Democratic, States’ Rights, and Progressive. These conventions saw the nom ination of the four tickets of the fall: Dewey/Warren, Truman/Barkley, Thurm ond/ Wright, and Wallace/Taylor. These conventions also wrote the party plat­ forms, which led to a particularly significant m om ent when the Demo­ cratic convention approved a bold civil rights plank for the first time, leading to a walkout by 35 delegates from M ississippi and Alabama. Chapter 5 addresses the general election campaigns of the four sig­ nificant candidates as well as the m ajor domestic and international events that influenced the fall campaigns. The chapter also examines the presidential election results both geographically and demographically. How did Truman put together his winning coalition? W here did Dewey fall short? How did the third parties do? Chapter 6 takes a detailed look at the congressional and state elec­ tions in which Democrats retook control o f Capitol Hill, regained a majority among the state governors, and gained m ore than 500 state legislative seats. The connections between the congressional elections and the presidential election are also discussed. Finally, Chapter 7 takes a brief look at what happened to th e contes­ tants of 1948 before contemplating how to interpret the election as well as the legacy of the election for American politics and policy. The American people in 1948 were facing a new world, a world o f great opportunities and great fears. In the end, the 1948 election did not just determ ine a president; it affirmed that Franklin Roosevelt’s coalition, though uneasy and perhaps even in decline, was not a fluke and that the New Deal approach to government would go forward. It also affirmed that newer departures in policy, a new drive for civil rights and a tough determ ination to resist Soviet expansionism, would endure and move forward, sooner (containment) or later (civil rights). Truman enjoyed m ore than a simple victory over Dewey: He enjoyed a victory against Dewey, die Republican Congress, two Democratic rebels, poll­ sters, and pundits and for a series of policy directions that defined his presidency. Altogether, the Truman-Dewey-Thurmond-Wallace contest would shape postwar America. 4 IN T R O D U C T IO N

JA N U A R Y 1,1 9 4 8

New Year’s Day 1948 inaugurated what would go down as one of the m ost eventful years in American political history, culm inating in the reelection to the presidency of incum bent Harry S. Truman and the restoration of a Democratic majority in Congress after a two-year hia­ tus. None of these changes were obvious as the year be­ gan, however, and American politics—like the broader world—was in flux. The postwar world was new, and Americans were still deciding how to navigate it. As the election year began to unfold, there were several key ele­ m ents to the context within which Truman, other presi­ dential contenders, congressional candidates, and the electorate operated. The front page of the January 1,1948, New York Times offered an advance peek into the year to come. A com­ modities scandal involving grain speculation was roil­ ing the W hite House. Congressional Republicans faced obstacles in their attem pt to cut taxes against President Truman’s wishes. Britain nationalized its railroads. France, Italy, and Austria agreed to term s for U.S. aid. King Michael of Romania was ousted in a Com m unist coup that completed the process of incorporating the country into the Soviet bloc. In m ore positive news, the Greek army, supplied by the United States as part of the new policy of containm ent, was on the verge of lift­ ing the Com munist siege of Konitsa. Palestine was in the news. Perhaps foreshadowing his deliberately noncombative general election campaign, New York gover­ nor Thomas E. Dewey declared a “Good Neighbor Day.”

Perhaps foreshadowing voter turnout on November 2, the Times re­ ported a smaller-than-usual crowd in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Capturing the opportunities and frustrations o f the m oment, Truman is­ sued a New Year’s statem ent calling on Americans to be patient in their search for peace. Economically, the nation seemed on the surface to be in no small am ount o f turm oil at a tim e when government was deemed responsi­ ble for economic well-being to an extent previously unknown. A basic prem ise of the New Deal had been that the federal government, and especially the president, should assum e a positive responsibility for the state of the nation’s economy, a concept that was codified in the early years of die Truman presidency with the passage of the Employment Act o f 1946, which gave the president the Council of Economic Advi­ sors and the statutory responsibility for m aintaining maximum possible employment and stable prices, but with no federal job guarantee. The economic context was provided by die overarching fact that the United States had only recentiy come out of a deep and stubborn depression. From September 1929 until roughly 1940, the engines of growth had largely ground to a halt, and unemploym ent was at intolerably high lev­ els. For the entire decade of the 1930s, unemploym ent averaged 18.3 percent and never fell below 14 percent. Though New Deal m easures m itigated the suffering and may have helped stabilize the economic free fall, the New Deal never successfully reignited private-sector job cre­ ation or led to broad economic recovery and growth. It is easy to overlook the severity of the Great Depression, and consequentiy the psychological impact that it had on Americans who lived through it. By 1932, industrial production had fallen 53 percent, busi­ ness construction was down 84 percent, and about one in four Ameri­ cans who wanted a job was unemployed. The banking system teetered, with 3,555 banks failing or receiving assistance in 1933, the peak of the financial crisis. Tent cities of homeless Americans arose. About 1,500 colleges went broke; in 1932, schools in New York City were closed be­ cause the dty could not afford to pay teachers, and the Chicago public libraries were unable to purchase a single book. The Empire State Build­ ing, which opened in 1931, was able to rent only one-third o f its space.1 In the countryside, farm ers had been suffering through a recession in the farm economy since the m id-i920s, and their distress worsened with the Depression and the Dust Bowl, which was at its m ost severe from 1930 to 1936. A nascent recovery was cut short in 1937-1938 by a 6

CHAPTER ONE

recession inside the depression, during which the unemploym ent rate spiked again to 19 percent. The long economic drought ended in World War II. About 20 million Americans were put under arm s over the course of the war, and m illions more were employed in arm am ents factories as the United States be­ came (in Franklin Roosevelt’s words) the “arsenal of democracy.” From 1941 to 1945, U.S. factories turned out 100,000 fighter planes, 98,000 bombers, 88,000 tanks and self-propelled artillery pieces, 2.4 m illion military trucks, hundreds of naval ships, and nearly 34 million tons of m erchant shipping. In 1945, the last year of the war, only 1.9 percent of the civilian labor force was unemployed. The war-induced economic turnaround led many Americans to fear that the country would slip back into depression once the war was over and the troops came home. Memories were too fresh for Americans to turn squarely to the future; the economic pain of the recent past cast too long a shadow. Demobilization of the arm ed forces was rapid as m en and women under arms fell from 12 m illion in 1945 to 1.5 m illion in 1947. Reconversion of arm am ents factories to civilian production also took place at a brisk pace. Federal policy sought to ease the transition with m easures such as the G.I. Bill and the establishm ent of Veterans Adm inistration home loans, but every hiccup in the economy produced public trepidation. Adding to the postwar turm oil was the uncertain status of linger­ ing government wartime economic controls and a sudden rise in labor unrest. Government controls over wages and prices, allocation of raw materials, production, and consum ption were part and parcel of the war effort, enacted and enforced by agencies such as the War Produc­ tion Board and the Office of Price Administration. Once the fighting ended, public resentm ent over rationing and wage and price controls worsened. Discontent came to a head around the m idterm elections of 1946, when Americans wondered why they had to put up with controls more than a year after V-f Day. To alleviate the pressure, Truman had ended m eat controls just weeks before the 1946 vote, too late to save Democratic fortunes. By 1948, almost all of the economic controls from the war were gone, but now the economy was going through some adjustm ents owing to the change. Inflation had replaced unemploym ent as the biggest worry, growing at a rate of 18.1 percent in 1946 and another 8.8 percent in 1947. Certain sectors of the economy faced shortages or runaway prices Ja n u a r y I,

1948

7

or both. There were significant shortages o f lum ber and other building supplies, steel (despite record output), food stocks, cattle, railway freight cars, and fuel oil as well as a shortage of venture capital bemoaned by business. In fact, as 1948 dawned, the United Press called high prices the biggest news story of 1947, and inflation seemed destined to be one of die handful o f issues that would decide the election. The president had proposed a ten-point anti-inflation plan in late 1947 that included rent and transportation controls, export and credit controls, and réintroduc­ tion of wartime mandatory wage and price controls. The Republicans in Congress had responded with a plan including tax cuts, spending cuts, voluntary drives to encourage Americans to consum e less, and a volun­ tary program allowing government-sponsored industrial conferences to devise their own price-control and allocation plans. In their program, Republicans also embraced Truman’s proposed rent, transportation, and export controls. W hen Congress passed an anti-inflation m easure at the end o f 1947, Truman signed it reluctantly—after drawing ridicule when his staff lost the bill at the W hite House and had to send for a duplicate. At the same tim e, American unions began a m uch m ore aggressive phase. In 1948, 31.2 percent of American wage and salary workers be­ longed to a union (by 2010, only 11.9 percent did). There were about 15 million unionized workers; unions employed 55,000 staff m em bers and collected $400 m illion annually in dues. After having been forced to settle for small or no raises during the war, when they had been con­ strained both by wage controls and by public hostility toward strikes during the tim e of national crisis, unions were suddenly unleashed. As a result, in 1946 there were 4,985 strikes, costing the nation an astound­ ing 2.8 billion m an-hours o f labor; in 1947, another 3,693 strikes cost 830 m illion m an-hours o f labor. Although late 1947 saw a decline in strike activity, analysts were divided about whether to expect another upsurge in strikes in 1948. In particular, the aggressive tactics of the unions affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) seemed to pick up where they had left off in 1938 dining the some­ tim es violent sit-down strikes against Detroit automobile companies. Although the unions had many supporters, it appeared to many others that they were endangering the stability of the economy at the very mo­ m ent that it was again vulnerable to reverses. How to treat labor was an issue that divided the parties and would infuse the upcoming electoral contests. These unsettling features o f the economic life of the nation both 8 CHAPTER ONE

accompanied and, at least sometimes, disguised other, more salutary facts. Indeed, it was generally understood at the tim e that the country was experiencing an economic boom bringing broad prosperity, and it was assum ed that Truman’s chances were directly connected to the question of whether the boom would continue. Despite fears, the na­ tion did not fall back into a depression after World War II. Reconversion of industry was accomplished relatively seamlessly. Real gross domestic product (GDP) was mostly stable, suffering very small declines in 1945 and 1947 (but a 10 percent decline in 1946). Nominal GDP grew at a 9.8 percent rate in 1947. Unemployment naturally grew, but not beyond 4 percent. The economy added 2.43 m illion jobs in 1946 and another 2.56 m illion in 1947. In a world where m uch of the industrial capacity of nations lay in ruins, the United States was blessed with a highly produc­ tive and intact physical plant, and someone looking past the immediate troubles could see that the U.S. economy would bestride the free world like a colossus for the foreseeable future. Likewise, the agricultural sec­ tor seemed destined to continue feeding m uch of the world. The stock m arket lagged because investors were hesitant to believe the boom was enduring, as corporate profits were m odest and high income taxes lim ­ ited demand for stocks.2 Nevertheless, Newsweek reported that “the na­ tion was in the throes of the greatest dollar-volume buying spree in its history.” Macy*s departm ent store “smugly decided to quit publicizing million-dollar days,” as they had become too common; Gimbels was “doing a good business in grand pianos and $4,000 m ink coats,” and Cartier “was having no trouble selling superexpensive jewelry.”3 U.S. News World Report reported in its January 2,1948, issue that “produc­ tion is at a new postwar peak.. . . Auto output climbed to 120,001, a new postwar record___Electric power hit a new high___ Industry produced in November at 192 percent of 1935-39 on the Federal Reserve Index. . . . House-hold appliance sales at departm ent stores in October were 41 percent above a year a go.. . . Living standards have never been so high for m ost people. They’ll go on rising during m uch of 1948.”4 This was true for both labor and farm ers. As late as 1935, nine in ten farm homes were lit with coal-oil lamps; by the end of the 1940s, four in five had electricity. By 1948, the average wage of the American auto worker was three tim es the level of the Depression-era low, and hom e ownership among workers had ballooned. A harbinger of things to come and a sign of economic change, 1948 was the first year in which the United States im ported m ore oil than it exported. Ja n u a r y I,

1948

9

The postwar boom came with fears abounding among the newly prosperous that their prosperity was tenuous. A poll published on Janu­ ary 3,1948, showed that 54 percent of farm ers thought there would be a serious depression in the next decade, whereas only 13 percent did not think so. O f those who saw depression ahead, nearly three in five pre­ dicted it would occur in the next two years.5 Both the prosperity and the fears of its loss were to play a m ajor role in the election. The uncertain­ ties surrounding the economy were symptoms of a broader question, “the fear that American democracy cannot control its own economic fate.” It was the task of the nation, Life magazine editorialized, to show that “it is possible for a democratic economy to control its own extreme fluctuations without changing its essentially free character.”6 If the economy was uncertain, the world was more so. If depression and tenuous recovery provided some of the background to the election, World War II provided m uch of the rest, both at home and abroad. The m ost basic reality was that the war had been fought and won. It had been fought and won by a Democratic adm inistration—at the end of the road, Truman’s adm inistration—at the head of a vigorous and mostly ef­ fective federal government. The circumstances under which the United States had been brought into the war severely discredited traditional policies of isolationism that had been a hallm ark of many of Franklin Roosevelt’s strongest opponents. The adm inistration, the presidency as an institution, the Democratic Party, and internationalism as a foreign policy approach had all been bolstered in the public eye. As David Plotke argued, “The central domestic result of World War II was to cem ent the Democratic order.”7 It was also victory in the war that created the problems of demobilization, reconversion of an intact industrial plant, and postwar abundance; but stalemate or, worse yet, defeat would have brought an entirely different set of problems. In the worst case, Ameri­ cans m ight not have had to worry about an election in 1948. Of importance was also the fact that the war against Nazi Germany had been prosecuted against a regime anim ated by open and legally cod­ ified racism, sometimes by black American servicemen who had per­ formed credibly in battle. Americans were brought face to face with an extreme extension of the racial codes that dominated significant swaths of their own country, albeit in m ilder form. As Michael Barone ex­ plained, “The equality of sacrifice demanded of young m en of both races pointed up the absurdity of demanding unequal treatm ent for civilians. IO C H A P T E R O N E

Practices which had been accepted unthinkingly started to be examined, and to be questioned. Did it make sense to practice racial discrim ina­ tion in a war against a foe the essence o f whose evil beliefs was racial discrim ination?”8 As 1948 opened, there was a clear sense that the issue o f civil rights was on the verge of breaking out in a m ajor way. The legal ground was shifting as restrictive racial covenants were being challenged in court cases from Detroit to St. Louis to W ashington, D.C. Moreover, the war years had seen significant movements in population from rural areas to urban areas, to the West Coast, and from North to South (by whites who had been stationed there in the arm ed forces) and South to North (by blacks seeking employment in arm am ents factories). All told, from 1940 to 1950, the num ber of blacks living outside the South increased by 60 percent, with the num ber tripling in Los Angeles, going up by a factor of 5 in Portland, and increasing by a factor of 10 in San Francisco. During that same tim e, the total nonwhite population went up by 109 percent in Michigan, 106 percent in California, 60 percent in Illinois, 55 percent in New York, and 38 percent in Ohio and Pennsylvania. This m eant that large num bers o f blacks m igrated from being excluded vot­ ers to being actual voters. Moreover, there was a growing black middle class in the North. In the words of Samuel Lubell, “the Great Migra­ tion not only brought the Negro back into national politics, but moved him into a wholly new orbit of social, economic, and political conflict.”9 On the whole, there was a widely noted increase in assertiveness by the nation’s black minority, especially among returning servicemen, and in the sum m er of 1946, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sponsored a m arch to the Lincoln Memorial to protest the Ru Klux Klan. Accentuating the deterioration of the Southern position on race. Har­ vard Sitkoff noted that “the South saw itself losing the battle o f the cen­ sus. . . . Every Negro going to the North m eant another potential voter pressuring both parties for civil rights legislation. Every Negro leaving the South helped decrease southern representation in Congress and southern electoral votes, further m inim izing the South's bargaining power in the Democratic party.”10 Not least, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in Smith v. Allwright in 1944 that the all-white primary, long used by Southern Democrats to effectively disenfranchise African Americans, was unconstitutional. The legal battle would continue into 1948 in South Carotina, which finally opened its Democratic primary to 35,000 Negro Ja n u a r y I,

1948

II

voters. Altogether, the num ber of black voters increased by an estim ated 80 percent from 1940 to 1948, and observers perceived that the nation's African American voters were up for grabs. After a dalliance with FDR’s Democrats, they seemed no longer satisfied to he quiet partners in a coalition with Southern segregationists. For their part, Southern whites had responded to the unaccustomed pressure from blacks and liberals in a variety of ways. Some began to cautiously accommodate themselves to the new realities and tentatively forged political coalitions that were consciously nonradal in approach. Others resisted. In 1944, concerned about Franklin (and Eleanor) Roosevelt’s tentative moves on civil rights, some Southern delegates had launched a half-baked rebellion. Although FDR was renom inated by the Democratic National Convention without facing any significant threat, 89 Southerners from Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, M ississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia voted for Virginia senator Harry F. Byrd instead. Roosevelt won no delegates in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Virginia. More troubling, postwar racial vio­ lence in the South was on the upswing as assertive blacks began to col­ lide with defensive whites. In one instance, an altercation between a white radio repairm an and a black custom er and her navy veteran son led to a two-day spree o f mob and police violence against the black com­ m unity in Columbia, Tennessee.11 The afterm ath of war also left m uch o f the world in ruins, physically and morally exhausted. The United States, for the first tim e in its history indisputably the m ost powerful nation on earth, was left with m ore than trem endous economic opportunities. It was arguably left with trem en­ dous new economic, political, and m oral responsibilities. As a result, the United States had taken the lead in trying to forge a postwar inter­ national structure through the United Nations and the Bretton Woods Agreement, the monetary stabilization agreem ent among 44 countries that pegged international currencies to the dollar and included estab­ lishm ent o f the International Bank for Reconstruction and Develop­ m ent and tiie International Monetary Fund. In the early years after the war, there was m uch idealistic faith (or at least hope) in the United Na­ tions as a m echanism for settling disputes and promoting the devel­ opm ent of the world. Nevertheless, the lives and well-being of tens of m illions of people, both friends and form er foes, would be powerfidly affected by what course the United States would choose in the world, the United Nations notwithstanding. In the worst case, the possible con­ sequences o f U.S. failure included m ass starvation and the collapse o f 12 C H A P T E R O N E

the Western European democracies. These were not far-fetched possi­ bilities on January i, 1948. The nation’s hum anitarian responsibilities were highlighted by the new issue of the so-called displaced persons (DPs), refugees from war-tom portions of Europe who were seeking ad­ mittance into the United States. The bulk of DPs requesting admittance were Jews and Eastern European Catholics, and their plight touched a chord of sympathy among many Americans, especially those with sim i­ lar ethnic backgrounds. American responsibilities were also accentuated by the reality that the only other world power capable of imposing its will over large ter­ ritories was the Soviet Union. Britain was in decline, bankrupted by war and diverted by its postwar plunge into democratic socialism; it had already left the defense of the Eastern M editerranean to the United States and had withdrawn from India in 1947. Other European colonial powers were exhausted. Although the Soviets were allies of the United States from 1941 to 1945, many Americans did not forget that this had been an alliance of convenience against a common enemy, not a m ar­ riage of principle. After all, it was Hitler, not Stalin, who had chosen to renege on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. Even before the end of hostilities in Europe, tensions with the Soviets had begun to build due to Moscow’s obvious drive to dominate Poland. In a key address on February 9,1946, Stalin had indicated that the global conflict between Com munism and capitalism, which had been put on hold during the war, was inevitable. Later that year, Truman had hosted W inston Churchill’s visit to Fulton, Missouri, where the once-and-future prim e m inister had declared that “an Iron Curtain has fallen across Eu­ rope.” Commentators talked of a “cold war” developing between East and West. By 1948, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania had be­ come Soviet satellites. Along with Soviet control had come vast repres­ sion. In Poland, about 8,700 opponents of the Communist government were killed from 1945 to 1948, while in the run-up to the rigged Janu­ ary 1947 “elections” that cem ented Com munist rule, 50,000 to 60,000 supporters of the opposition Peasants Party were arrested. A Bulgarian purge led to the death or disappearance of 30,000 to 40,000 people, mostly m em bers of the local nobility, mayors, teachers, Orthodox clergy, and shopkeepers. Hundreds of thousands of Hungarians, Romanians, and Slovakians were deported to Soviet labor camps, perhaps as many as 600,000 from Hungary alone, 200,000 of whom never returned.12 The Soviets had also put severe pressure on Iran, Turkey, and Greece, Ja n u a r y I,

1948

13

where Communist guerrillas were fighting for control, and powerful Com munist movements were issuing political challenges in France and Italy. American military demobilization had not been matched by the Soviets, leaving a worrisome imbalance of forces in Europe, checked primarily by the U.S. monopoly on the atomic bomb. Indeed, the 1948 election would be the first one conducted in the nuclear age, under the shadow of the Bomb. Although the Soviets had not yet matched the American technology, everyone knew they soon would; for the first tim e in hum an history, the specter of war included the prospect of the com­ plete destruction of civilized life. In Asia, Chinese Communists were on the m arch and a pro-Soviet dictatorship had been established in North Korea. A sense of crisis pervaded the nation and would only be m agni­ fied by events through the course of the year, leading to a “war scare” on three different occasions. Some even advocated a preventive war against the Soviets. The growing struggle with Communism abroad led to a growing concern about Com munist infiltration at home. In the previous decade, both the Nazis and the Communists had proven themselves adept at us­ ing internal subversion to weaken and bring down their enemies. More­ over, in the 1930s and 1940s, there was a large and active Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), and the CPUSA was understood by m ost Americans (correctly, it turned out) to be litde more than an arm of the Soviet Union. Indeed, more than one CPUSA general secretary had been replaced by the party at the instructions of Moscow. By more than 2 to I, Americans thought that American citizens who belonged to the Com munist Party were loyal to Russia rather than to the United States, and three-fourths said that if war came, American Communists would work against the United States.13 W hen relations with the Soviets turned sour soon after World War II, many Americans were afraid that Com munist subversion and espio­ nage m ight threaten the nation. Moreover, open Com munist involve­ m ent in politics became more aggressive, in keeping with a directive issued by the Cominform (the postwar successor to the Com munist International); in Chicago city elections in November 1947, Commu­ nist-supported candidates received nearly 40 percent of the vote. Public worries pushed Truman to institute in March 1947 a loyalty program within the federal government that ultimately resulted in a few hundred dismissals and about 5,000 resignations of federal employees. Later m anifestations of the internal security drive, particularly efforts 14 C H A P T E R O NE

associated with W isconsin senator Joseph McCarthy starting in 1950, ensnared some innocent individuals and had the effect of chilling pub­ lic discussion. Yet, in retrospect, there was a very real “Com munist problenf within the U.S. government. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Soviet files and FBI files revealed a series of messages from So­ viet intelligence officers to the Soviet embassy in the United States that had been intercepted and decoded by the FBI. Code-named the Venona Cables, the messages showed that the U.S. government had indeed been honeycombed with Com m unist sympathizers engaging in espio­ nage for the Soviets. These spies alm ost certainly included Alger Hiss, Laurence Duggan (head of the State Departm ent’s division of American Republics), and at least four others in the State Department; Assistant Secretary o f the Treasury Harry Dexter W hite along with at least seven others in the Treasury Department; fifteen to twenty in the Office o f Strategic Services, including the senior aide to the head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS); at least six spies each in wartime agencies, including the War Production Board, Office of the Coordinator of InterAmerican Affairs, and Office of War Information; presidential adm inis­ trative assistant Lauchlin Currie; and several scientists in the M anhattan Project and subsequent nuclear weapons development efforts.14 At the tim e, die filli extent of Com m unist penetration of the U.S. gov­ ernm ent was a m atter o f conjecture, and the best way to root it out was a subject o f heated debate. The centrist position seemed to be sum m ed up by Life magazine, which contended that “we m ust prove that we can defend our republic under changed conditions without changing what it stands for. By and large, what we have so far is not (as the Communists call it) a ‘witch hunt,’ but a partly bungled hunt for real enem ies.” Life conceded that “the Com m unist Party could be outlawed without strain­ ing the Constitution” but held that it would be unwise to do so.15 On either side of this position were political forces who favored legally ban­ ning the Com m unist Party, a proposal encapsulated in the Mundt-Nixon bill proposed in Congress, and others who saw no significant threat. The debate over Communism—both Truman’s containm ent policy and the question o f internal security—was a m ajor part of the 1948 electoral landscape in both m ajor parties and led to a left-wing third-party cam­ paign that split die Democrats. Although the election o f 1948 would take place in a context established by broader conditions in die nation and the world, it was m ost immediately Ja n u a r y I,

1948

15

a political event taking place in a political and partisan context. That con­ text in America in 1948 was conditioned first o f all by the fact that the Democratic Party had constructed a new political order in America since 1933. As David Plotke noted, that new order had three key components. First, “it reached widely into social life,” affecting m illions of Ameri­ cans through government programs, regulations, and employment. In 1947, there were over two million federal employees, twice as many as before World War II and three and a half tim es as many as in 1930. Second, the new Democratic state emphasized the expanded power of the presidency. Starting from the base Roosevelt had provided, Truman “further developed the president-centered character of the regime. . . . The executive increasingly organized proposals and program s.” Finally, despite some conflicts with Truman, “the progressive Uberai leadership that persisted at the center o f the Democratic poUtical bloc rem ained in Üie federal state.” All three of these features—the extensive dependence of Americans on New Deal programs, the centraUty of the presidency, and the role of Hberals in the adm inistration—would be visible as the campaign proceeded.16 Each party, however, began the 1948 election cycle with certain strengths and weaknesses. RepubUcans were widely beUeved to be entering the year with political m om entum . This appraisal was based largely on the results of the 1946 m idterm elections. In those elections, Republicans rode their slogan “Had Enough?” to a gain o f 55 seats in the U.S. House and 12 in the U.S. Senate, giving them a majority in Con­ gress for the first tim e since the 1930 elections. RepubUcans won the national House vote for the first tim e since 1928 and made strong gains in every region but the South, which rem ained soUdly Democratic. The GOP also gained governorships in four states, including such electoral gems as Ohio and Michigan, giving them a majority of the nation’s gov­ ernorships for the first tim e since 1930. The RepubUcan tidal wave of 1946 led many commentators to con­ clude that Truman had been irretrievably repudiated and that the Repub­ Ucans were on the cusp of unified control of W ashington. Indeed, some suggested that RepubUcans m ight be the beneficiaries of a far-reaching poUtical “reaUgnment” that would undo the dominance of the New Deal coaUtion. Some Democrats shared tins pessim istic view. Shortly after the election. Democratic senator J. WilUam Fulbright (Arkansas) sug­ gested that Truman should name RepubUcan senator Arthur Vandenberg secretary of state and then resign, an action which would (under 16 CHAPTER ONE

1946 laws governing presidential succession) have made Vandenberg president. (In retaliation, Truman privately took to calling the Arkansas senator “Half-bright.”) Though still basking in the glow from its 1946 victory, the Republican Party of 1948 faced im portant obstacles. For one thing, the image of the Republicans had not fully recovered from their association in the public m ind with the onset of the Great Depression. To many Americans, the GOP was now the party o f Herbert Hoover and deprivation, of “Hoovervilles” and “economic royalists.” O f course, m uch subsequent economic analysis has suggested that Roosevelt’s economic policies were largely ineffective and may even have prolonged the economic doldrums, but this analysis was in the future.17 FDR may not have conquered the De­ pression, but he was highly successful at conquering the Republicans. Moreover, the party continued to be riven by im portant divisions that went back to the “progressive” versus “old guard” struggles of the early twentieth century. These largely self-reinforcing divisions were philo­ sophical, institutional, and geographical. The two geographical bases of the party were in the Northeast and the Midwest. The Northeastern Republicans were more liberal and were m uch m ore likely to have made peace with the New Deal. They were also more likely to be internation­ alists in foreign policy. The Midwestern wing was m ore conservative, more frugal when it came to fiscal policy, and more likely to hope to roll back the New Deal. Before Pearl Harbor, they were also more likely to be isolationists, and although some (such as A rthur Vandenberg) had swung around after the bombs fell, many rem ained skeptical of post­ war foreign entanglem ents. The Midwesterners’ stronghold was in Con­ gress, where they dom inated the Republican contingent. There was, to be sure, a rem nant of Midwestern progressive Republicans, and the conservative speaker of the House, Joe Martin, hailed from Massachu­ setts, but this picture is a reasonable starting point. The divide in the GOP was m ost pronounced on foreign policy. Since 1945, in the U.S. Senate, 19 Republicans had voted for the Bretton Woods Agreement, 14 against; 17 had been for the loan to Britain, 18 against; 35 had voted for aid to Greece and Turkey, 16 against; 32 had supported the adm inistra­ tion’s filli $350 million foreign aid bill, 16 opposed.18 The Northeastem ers had their greatest success in presidential nom i­ nation struggles. Their superior organization, m arketing skills, and delegate strength in the big industrial states gave them an upper hand that they parlayed into nom inations for Wendell Willkie in 1940 and Ja n u a r y I,

1948

17

Thomas Dewey in 1944. A key question of 1948 would be whether the Northeastemers’ string of successes would continue and how the relation­ ship between the two wings would be handled by the eventual nominee, whoever he m ight be. That relationship was likely to be more complicated than at any tim e in the recent past: For the first tim e since before Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency, the congressional party was “irf while the presi­ dential party was “out,” hoping to unseat an incum bent. This situation would ultimately be aggressively exploited by Harry Truman. Although the Republican divisions ended up being at least as im ­ portant as the Democrats’ divisions, for m uch of the election season it was troubles in the Democratic Party that drew m ost of the attention and seemed m ost pivotal. Indeed, the Democratic coalition had long been fractious, and its leap into the majority in the New Deal years had exacerbated that tendency. FDR had brought together Northern urban liberals; unions and other working-class voters; form er progressive Re­ publicans; many farmers; blacks; intellectuals; and Southern Demo­ crats, m ost of whom retained both a Jeffersonian political outlook and a com m itm ent to racial segregation along with their hereditary loyalty to the Democracy. Big cities were key for the Roosevelt coalition. From 1928 to 1936, the Democratic presidential vote had increased from 60 to 75 percent in New York City, from 48 to 65 percent in Chicago, from 39 to 60 percent in Philadelphia, from 37 to 65 percent in Detroit, and from 28 to 67 percent in Los Angeles.19 The big cities had rem ained a bedrock of Democratic support in 1940 and 1944. This coalition, outlines of which could be seen in 1932 (and, accord­ ing to V. O. Key, perhaps as early as 1928), solidified in the m idterm elections of 1934 and FDR’s reelection landslide of 1936. It had pro­ duced four consecutive presidential victories. This m eant that a Demo­ cratic win in 1948 would be a fifth consecutive victory for the party—a feat that had been accomplished only twice before, by Jefferson’s Repub­ licans from 1800 to 1820 and by Lincoln's Republicans from i860 to 1880. Any Democratic nom inee in 1948 would have to beat history to win, whatever the state of his coalition. The two m ost recent of the Democratic wins had been closer and were arguably attributable to foreign policy crisis and war, though FDR had also had the disadvantage o f having to overcome national tradition in order to seek a third and fourth term in those elections. (See Table 1 . 1 .)

In both 1940 and 1944, Roosevelt had lost only Maine and Vermont 18 C H A P T E R O N E

Table 1.1 Franklin D . Roosevelt Vote Totals, 1932-1944 Pop. Vote %

Electoral Votes (o f 531)

Year

Pop. Vote

1932

2 2 .8 m illio n

5 7 -4

472

1936

2 7 .8 m illio n

6 0 .8

523

1940

27.3 m illio n

5 4 -7

449

1944

25.6 m illio n

5 3 -4

432

Source: Guide to U.S. Elections (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1975).

(which he never won in any of his four elections), Indiana and Iowa, the central colum n of prairie states from North Dakota south through Kansas, and Colorado. In 1940, he also lost Michigan, and four years later, he also lost Ohio, W isconsin, and Wyoming. In 1944, running against New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, FDR had garnered only 53.4 percent of the national popular vote. Given the relative closeness of the national totals in 1944, it was not surprising that he won by nar­ row m argins in a num ber of other key states, such as New York (52 to 47 percent), Illinois (52 to 48 percent), Pennsylvania (51 to 48 percent), and Michigan (50 to 49 percent). FDR also won less than 53 percent of the vote in Oregon, Idaho, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Maryland. Both parties could find signs of encouragem ent in these results. If the stability of the vote from 1940 to 1944 continued in 1948, Democrats would start with an advantage. However, enough states with enough electoral votes were close that Republicans could easily imagine themselves going over the top now that they no longer faced Roosevelt’s magic and the under­ standable reluctance of Americans to change presidents in the middle of a world war. As long as they held their 1944 winnings, the addition of New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and one other small state would give them the 266 elec­ toral votes that they needed. Hence a crucial question would be just how stable the New Deal coalition really was. Until recently, Democrats had also dominated congressional elec­ tions, though this did not always result in working control of the insti­ tution. They added seats in the House and the Senate for four straight elections—1930, 1932, 1934, and 1936—leaving them in 1937-1938 with massive majorities unparalleled in m odem American history. After the 1936 election, Democrats outnum bered Republicans by 334 to 88 in the House of Representatives and 76 to 16 in the Senate. This series Ja n u a r y I,

1948

19

of elections included two Roosevelt landslides with congressional coat­ tails and a highly unusual m idterm election in which the president’s party actually gained seats. The GOP struck back in the 1938 m idterm s, gaining 71 House seats and 7 Senate seats and changing the congres­ sional dynamic for the next decade. In combination with newly embold­ ened conservative Democrats, mostly but not wholly from the South, the bolstered Republicans put together a “conservative coalitioif that frequently formed a majority in Congress. After 1938, Republican num bers waxed and waned a bit—after the 1942 m idterm elections, House Republicans trailed Democrats by only 222 to 209—but the conservative coalition m aintained its ability to control the legislative branch. The 1944 presidential election year once again featured Roosevelt coattails, and House Democrats padded their total to 242 to 191; the contingent of Senate Democrats rem ained steady at 57 to 38. This was the congressional situation inherited by Harry Tru­ m an when he became president in April 1945. (See Table 1.2.) Despite his putative majorities, Truman was largely stymied by the conservative coalition. Then came the electoral tsunam i of 1946. Repub­ licans, capitalizing on public dissatisfaction with continued economic controls, labor unrest, widespread concerns that Truman was not a fit­ ting successor to Roosevelt, and a general itch for change after a decade and a half of Democratic control of Washington, reversed the equation in Congress by winning a 246-188 majority in the House of Represen­ tatives and a 51-45 majority in the Senate. At the end of 1948, it would be clear that the Republican takeover of Congress had been a political blessing in disguise for Truman, but on January 1, that was far from ap­ parent to m ost Americans. If Truman’s domestic reprise o f the New Deal faced rough sledding before November 1946, it was dead after, or at least in deep hiberna­ tion, and Democratic divisions were coming to the fore. By the end of 1947, form er vice president and secretary of commerce Henry Wallace had split from the Democrats in order to run a third-party campaign against Truman from the left, largely on the basis of opposition to the presidentis firm stance against Soviet expansionism. At the same time, the Southern segregationists were growing increasingly restive, though this split had not fully m aterialized by January 1948. Both splits—the Wallace defection and the later rise of the Dixiecrats—were m anifestations of broader struggles taking place in Ameri­ can politics and the Democratic Party. While the South had rem ained 20 C H A P T E R O N E

Table 1.2 Congressional Party D ivisions, 1 92 9-19 47 House

S e n a te Republican

D e m o c ra t

Republican

D e m o c ra t

1928

1 64

270

39

56

1 930

216

218

47

48

1932

313

117

59

36

1934

Election

322

103

69

25

1936

334

88

76

16

1938

262

169

69

23

1940

267

162

66

28

1 942

2 22

209

57

38

1944

242

191

57

38

188

246

45

51

1946

Source: Clerk o f the U.S. House o f Representatives; U.S. Senate.

solidly Democratic for Roosevelt in the previous four elections, careful observers could perceive some cracks developing. At the presidential level, as early as 1928, several states in the outer South, including Vir­ ginia, North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, and Texas, had deserted the Democratic ticket of Al Smith, a Catholic from New York, to vote for Herbert Hoover. Against FDR in 1944, Republican Thomas Dewey had won nearly 40 percent o f the vote in Virginia and Tennessee and onethird in North Carolina. In Congress, conservative resistance to the New Deal within the Democratic Party was concentrated in the South, and in the mostly failed 1938 party “purge,” Roosevelt proved him self inca­ pable of stem m ing such resistance. The fight over Communism also strained the Democratic Party. The chief question was whether liberals would see Communists as al­ lies, as in the “popular front” years of World War II, or as adversaries. Several labor unions, which under FDR had become pillars of the new Democratic coalition, suffered internal fights between Communists and anti-Communists for control. In one key example, Walter Reuther was elected head of the United Auto Workers (UAW) in 1946 on an explicitly anti-Communist platform. Reuther had begun his career as a socialist and had moved to the Soviet Union for a tim e to work. Recognizing the lack of freedom in the “workers’ paradise,” Reuther had returned to the United States, stripped of illusions about Communism. He was also convinced that Communist-backed unions had underm ined the UAW position in the strike of 1945. After his elevation to the leadership of Ja n u a r y I, 1 9 4 8

21

the UAW, Reuther announced that he intended to unite 90 percent o f the union against the 10 percent with outside loyalties. He proceeded to enforce Article 10, Section 8, of the UAW Constitution, which banned from all elective and appointive positions anyone who was “a m em ber of, or subservient to, any political organization, such as the Com munist organization.”20 In mid-1947, CIO president Philip Murray had begun steering his organization away from the Communists, pushing out the Com munist editor of CIO News, and was coming under serious attack in Com munist publications. At the political and intellectual level, forces contended for the soul of liberalism, with the key question being whether liberalism would stand as forthrightly against Stalin’s totalitarianism as it had against Hitler’s. In this battle, the contending forces were represented by Pro­ gressive Citizens of America (PCA) and Americans for Democratic Ac­ tion (ADA). PCA was founded on December 29,1946, by the National Citizens’ Political Action Committee (an offshoot of the CIO Political Action Committee); the Independent Citizens Committee for the Arts, Sciences, and Professions (which was widely understood to have been heavily influenced by Communists); and several other smaller left-wing groups. The group’s stated aim was to serve as a unifying force for pro­ gressives and liberals in order to advance the next step of the New Deal; its chief concern was prom oting a “peacefid” foreign policy based on “a recognition that there is no justifiable reason for another war.” Crucially, and (given some of its organizers) perhaps inevitably, the group wel­ comed Communists as well as others, attem pting to re-create the World War II-era “popular front.” Less than a week later, on January 3,1947, ADA was founded on the ruins of a democratic socialist group called Union for Democratic Action. ADA broadened its appeal, counting El­ eanor Roosevelt, Minneapolis mayor Hubert H. Humphrey, Reinhold Niebuhr, and other notables among its founders. The group sought to create a m ore moderate and pragmatic um brella group for liberals that would neither seek nor accept help from Communists and declared in its opening statem ent of principles that “we reject any association with Communists or sympathizers as completely as we reject any association with fascists or their sympathizers. Both are hostile to the principles of freedom and democracy on which the Republic has grown great.”21 In late 1947, consistent with his internal maneuverings, the CIO’s Murray backed away from PCA and formed an alliance with ADA to present a solid front against the Communists. 22 C H A P T E R O N E

Other portions of the New Deal coalition seemed to be teetering on the brink. For example, Democratic strategists noted with concern the movement in 1946 of Northern black voters back toward the Republican Party. O f course, those voters had been loyally Republican since Lincoln and had started moving toward the Democrats only in the 1930s. Both Republicans and Democrats could plausibly imagine that blacks m ight simply be returning to their natural partisan home, and a continued loss of these voters would endanger the Democratic hold on states such as New York, New Jersey, and Illinois. Not least, the Democratic Party was deeply divided over the m erits of Harry S. Truman as a president and as a candidate. Truman was both blessed and cursed by his position as Franklin Roosevelt’s successor. Truman had to operate in the presidency created by Roosevelt, com­ plete with the expectations stoked by Roosevelt’s charm, eloquence, and early mastery of Congress. Consequently, many Democrats were quickly disappointed in Truman, who did not (in their view) fill the shoes of the master. This palpable disappointm ent would lead some influen­ tial Democrats to launch a highly public “Dump Trum aif campaign in 1948. Both parties were divided, and a crucial question o f 1948 would be which party’s divisions were m ore serious. Finally, as always, presidential candidates in 1948 had to operate within the constitutional requirem ents, legal structures, and party rules that governed nom ination and election to the presidency. Anyone seeking a m ajor party nom ination would have to navigate a nom inating system substantially different than file one that would develop after 1968. The 1948 nom ination contests would take place in what political scientists would later call the “Mixed System”—mixed between the traditional con­ vention system and the system preferred by file progressives, a more ple­ biscitary system utilizing direct prim aries. The Mixed System was not a system produced by deliberate forethought or design. Rather, it was the result of a reform im pulse that spent itself well short of its objective. The prim aries offered the public a direct m eans of controlling the selection of delegates to the national convention. However, a num ber of im portant lim its on the influence of popular opinion expressed through the prim aries rem ained. For one thing, in 1948, there would be only twelve Republican and fourteen Democratic presidential prim aries. The vast majority of states, selecting the vast majority of delegates, would do so by traditional m eans of local and state meetings, conventions, and Ja n u a r y I,

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party committee or party chairman appointm ents. In these processes, state and local party organizations held the upper hand, though a par­ ticularly well-organized political movement m ight make inroads. Moreover, the prim aries themselves were not structured to directly translate public opinion into electoral results. It was a norm al feature of the system for a state political leader with no serious intention of seeking the presidency to dominate his state’s primary as a “favoriteson” candidate who would then hold his state’s delegation to the na­ tional convention as a negotiable bloc. Some state primaries, such as the one in New Ham pshire in 1948, elected delegates by name, without any accompanying preference poll among the presidential candidates. And, as a general rule, delegates to the national convention were not bound to a particular candidate, though they could and sometimes did pledge their support informally. This m eant that the national conven­ tion was often genuinely suspenseful. It was frequently unclear who the nom inee would be prior to the opening of the convention, and conven­ tions would often have to take m ultiple ballots to finally reach a winner with over 50 percent of the vote (in the Democratic Party prior to 1936, the threshold for victory had been two-thirds). The convention, and the nom inating system m ore generally, was open to the possibility of drafts of undeclared—and sometimes surprising—candidates. Consequently, the system was very representative, if by representative one m eans a system using several layers of mediating representative institutions. It was not very democratic, if by democratic one means a system seeking to directly translate public opinion into outcomes. One could not win the nom ination by focusing only on primary states. On the other hand, one could be nom inated without seriously contesting any prim aries at all. One entered prim aries, if at all, in order to build m om entum and prove one’s electability to the party leaders who con­ trolled the bulk of the delegates. And, because the party leaders were very m uch interested precisely in the question of electability, that ques­ tion was front and center in any nom inating contest. The fluidity of this system m eant that nom inating contests could feature a num ber of candidates, pseudocandidates, and potential can­ didates appearing, disappearing, and reappearing at various moments as well as form ing shifting and philosophically mismatched alliances as weaker candidates temporarily joined forces in an attem pt to forestall the success of stronger candidates. All of these features would be visible in 1948, especially on the Republican side. 2 4 CHAPTER ONE

The general election system would also influence the conduct and outcome of the election. That system, constitutionally designated in the form o f the Electoral College, m andated that the presidency would be determ ined by what am ounted to 48 sim ultaneous state elections. In order to win in 1948, a ticket had to prevail in states possessing a total of 266 electoral votes. To prevail in a state, a ticket simply had to gain more popular votes than any other—a plurality, not an absolute majority. This m eant that resources would be devoted m ost generously to states that seemed to be in play. It also m eant that third parties without a strong regional base, in 1948 as always, would face an uphill climb in a system that provided no benefit for finishing even a strong second, let alone third or fourth with support registering in single digits. In addition, m i­ nor parties had to contend with a system of ballot access that provided a distinct advantage to the m ajor parties. In a year that would feature not one but two significant m inor parties, these structural facts were far from trivial. If no one received a majority of electoral votes, the presi­ dency would be decided in the House of Representatives, with each state delegation casting one vote. In that case, the House elections would de­ term ine the presidency. W ithin these rules, the campaign would be conducted with the tools and strategies that had been crucial for several decades. Print media and radio would be the primary modes of communication; 1948 introduced television, but the innovation was not widely used and had no discern­ ible impact. Candidates could travel by air but relied mostly on the train for long cross-country trips. Voters and politicians still expected im pas­ sioned rhetoric and campaigns run as unified party exercises up and down the ballot. It would tu rn out that 1948 was a turning point, both the last and the first o f its kind. Reflecting conditions on or around January 1,1948, observers predicted a dose presidential election. Although retellings of the legendary elec­ tion have em phasized Truman’s weakness, news reports at the tim e indicated that leaders in both parties “think that Truman, whose popu­ larity grew steadily through the past year, will be a strong Democratic candidate.”22As Lewis L. Gould pointed out, “W hen the year began, the fundam entals appeared to be on the side of Truman,” espedally eco­ nomically.23 Republican leaders privately adm itted to the opinion that “next year’s Presidential election is no longer in the GOP bag.”24 Oth­ ers indicated that “President Truman has a good fighting chance to win Ja n u a r y I,

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against any Republican” with the exception of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the only potential GOP contender to lead the president in the polls. Dewey trailed Truman 51 to 49 percent in the January Roper Poll, and other GOP hopefuls were far behind.25 U.S. News