Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (22 page)

Truman's policies had controversial long-range results. Hoping for the best, Truman aligned the United States with the Jews and therefore against the Arabs.
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In so doing he associated the United States with the continued survival of Israel. This alignment greatly bolstered the power—henceforth substantial—of pro-Israeli groups in American politics. It also inflamed Moslem wrath against the United States, which confronted crisis after crisis in the Middle East thereafter. Still, there were no easy solutions. Jewish and Moslem nationalism were colliding inexorably in the Holy Land, and there was no policy for America that would not offend one side or the other. In choosing Israel Truman acted out of humanitarian and political concerns and in the hope that the presence of a democratic, pro-American nation in the Middle East would promote long-range Western security in the Cold War. The humanitarian and political motives were hard to resist at the time; whether Truman's hopes concerning security were correct continued to be debated decades later.

W
HILE
T
RUMAN WAS STRUGGLING
with civil rights, Palestine, and the 80th Congress in early 1948, few people gave him much of a chance of winning the election ahead.
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Indeed, he faced open rebellion from a number of onetime Democrats, who by then were gearing up to support Henry Wallace for President on a Progressive party ticket. Wallace had announced his candidacy in December 1947, exhorting his "Gideon's Army, small in number, powerful in convictions," to turn Truman out of office.
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Some liberal Democrats who were cool to Wallace also searched for ways to dump Truman in early 1948. In March Elliott Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., sons of FDR, publicly endorsed General Eisenhower for the Democratic presidential nomination. A month later the
New Republic
ran a front-page editorial titled
AS A CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT, HARRY TRUMAN SHOULD QUIT
. At the same time, the board of Americans for Democratic Action called for an open convention. A few of these political activists were ready to back Eisenhower; a larger number openly favored William Douglas, a liberal justice of the Supreme Court. They liked most of Truman's policies but deplored his "leadership" and were sure he would lose in November. James Wechsler, a liberal journalist, explained that "Mr. Truman's place in history may be written in Mike Gonzales' ageless remark about a rookie ballplayer: good field, no hit."
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Before the opening of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July, other leading Democrats joined in a "Stop Truman" effort. They included liberals such as Chester Bowles, who was running for governor of Connecticut; Hubert Humphrey, who was seeking a Senate seat from Minnesota; Florida senator Claude Pepper; and the UAW's Walter Reuther. Some favored Eisenhower, some Douglas.
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Rarely in the modern history of American politics had so many leading party figures rebelled openly against an incumbent President seeking renomination.

The craze for Eisenhower was ironic, for Truman himself had once been so enamored of him—and so unsure of himself—that he had offered to back him for the presidency. "General," he told "Ike" at Potsdam, "there is nothing that you may want that I won't try to help you get. That definitely and specifically includes the presidency in 1948."
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By 1948 Truman had no such notions in mind, and Eisenhower, who had recently been selected as president of Columbia University, resisted all entreaties. Privately Ike noted that the Democrats had been "desperately searching around for someone to save their skins" but that his friends "would be shocked and chagrined at the very idea of my running on a Democratic ticket for anything."
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When Douglas, too, spurned admirers, rebellious liberal Democrats at the convention in July were without a candidate. Determined to make a difference, they overturned the moderate civil rights plank, in so doing driving the Alabamans and Mississippians out of the hall. But they had no choice except to join in the nomination of Truman and Barkley.

From this unpromising point the campaign turned around for Truman and the Democrats—for four reasons: the parochialism of the Dixiecrats, the political ineptitude of Wallace, the even greater ineptitude of the Republicans, and Truman's own spirited counter-attacks. The result was his remarkable victory in November, a triumph scarcely imagined by most people in July.

First, the Dixiecrats. Thurmond was a young, vigorous, and energetic campaigner. For the most part he tried to focus on states' rights, not just on race. Truman's civil rights programs, he said, would threaten the prerogatives of states. Thurmond also appealed to anti-Communist feelings, which had become strong among Americans by that time. Radicals, subversives, and Reds, he insisted, had captured the Democratic party. Truman's civil rights program had "its origin in communist ideology" and sought "to excite race and class hatred" and thereby "create the chaos and confusion which leads to communism."
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Thurmond's linkage of civil rights and Communism was to become a staple of right-wing thinking over the next several decades. Beyond the Deep South, however, he had little credibility as a presidential candidate. Even there, representatives and senators were reluctant to bolt the Democratic party, lest they be denied seniority and other trappings of power in the congressional session of 1949. Truman, having accepted the more liberal civil rights plank at the convention, shortly thereafter issued his executive orders against discrimination and hoped for the best in the South. As Rowe and Clifford had counseled, he concentrated instead on attracting a good-sized vote in the North, where the election was likely to be close.

Wallace proved to be almost as non-threatening to Truman as Thurmond. Many liberal Democrats were originally attracted to him, for he took bold stands in favor of civil rights and other progressive issues. As the campaign developed, however, Wallace's views on foreign policy alarmed many of these supporters. Some were already upset by his opposition to what he called the "Martial Plan." Others thought him a virtual tool of the Communists. Reuther explained, "Henry is a lost soul. . . . Communists perform the most complete valet service in the world. They write your speeches, they do your thinking for you, they provide you with applause, and they inflate your ego."
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Wallace seemed unworried in 1948 by the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia and by the fate of West Berlin. Throughout the campaign he seemed blind to the political impression that his association with Communists was making. "If they [Communists] want to support me," he said, "I can't stop them."
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Truman tried to ignore Wallace, but it was hard for him, and he succumbed to the temptation to Red-bait. The President said, "I do not want and I will not accept the political support of Henry Wallace and his Communists." "A vote for Wallace," he added later, " . . . is a vote for all the things for which Stalin [and] Molotov . . . stand." On another occasion he departed from a prepared text to urge Wallace "to go to the country he loves so well and help them out against his own country if that's the way he feels."
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Wallace's close association with Communist ideas indeed cost him dearly in the Cold War climate of 1948. Well before November, many Progressive party candidates for Congress withdrew in favor of liberal Democrats. Only a handful of well-known figures, including the black singer and Communist Paul Robeson, stuck with Wallace. The socialist Irving Howe dismissed Wallace as a "completely contrived creature of Stalin." John Dewey, America's most eminent philosopher, added, "There can be no compromise, no matter how temporary, with totalitarianism. Compromise with totalitarianism means stamping an imprimatur on the drive for a
pax Sovietica
."
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The political ineptitude of Wallace, who was known for his idiosyncrasies, might have been predicted. That of the Republican presidential nominee, Thomas E. Dewey, was not. He was after all a seasoned campaigner and office-holder, having twice been elected governor of New York, where he was generally popular. Indeed, he went on to win a third term in 1950. In 1944 Dewey had undertaken the formidable task of challenging FDR for the presidency and had come closer to winning than any of Roosevelt's other opponents for that office. He captured the nomination again in 1948, defeating Taft and Harold Stassen, the moderately liberal former governor of Minnesota, in primaries and in the GOP convention. Dewey was liberal, especially by contrast to Taft and other leading congressional Republicans, and he endorsed a GOP platform in 1948 that was very progressive on civil rights. Although Dewey implied that the Democrats were not tough enough on Communism, he refrained from Red-baiting. In a key debate with Stassen during the primary campaign Dewey had refused to endorse the outlawing of the American Communist party.
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But Dewey exhibited two fatal flaws. First, he was personally cold, pompous, and virtually without charisma. While machine-like in his efficiency, he appeared uninterested in people around him. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Theodore Roosevelt's daughter, memorably called him "the little man on the wedding cake." Even smiling seemed to come with difficulty. A photographer once said, "Smile, governor." "I thought I was, he responded.
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Dewey's other liability was overconfidence. Virtually all the pundits gave Truman no chance to win, and Dewey believed them. He did not get his campaign underway until mid-September and did not work hard at it thereafter. His speeches were bland in the extreme and offered no reason for voters to choose him over Truman. Neither he nor his running mate, Governor Earl Warren of California, paid much attention to farm-state voters, who were restive in 1948. One reporter quipped that Dewey didn't run; he walked. Another called him "Mr. Hush of politics."
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The
Louisville Courier-Journal
later summed up his campaign: "No presidential candidate in the future will be so inept that four of his major speeches can be boiled down to these four historic sentences: Agriculture is important. Our rivers are full offish. You cannot have freedom without liberty. The future lies ahead. (We might add a fifth: the TVA is a fine thing, and we must make certain that nothing like it happens again.)"
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Truman's campaign offered a dramatic contrast. He launched it right away by insisting on addressing party delegates following his renomination. It was by then 2:00
A.M.
, and he had sat patiently in the wings awaiting his opportunity. Then he electrified the faithful with a spirited partisan attack on the conservative Congress, which he proceeded to call into special session. "It was a great speech for a great occasion," Max Lerner said, "and as I listened I found myself applauding." T.R.B. of the
New Republic
added, "It was fun to see the scrappy little cuss come out of his corner fighting . . . not trying to use big words any longer, but being himself and saying a lot of honest things."
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After the special session—which deadlocked—Truman waged an extraordinarily energetic campaign. Between September and election day he traveled a record 31,700 miles, much of it on trains that "whistle-stopped" across the country. Standing on the back of the train, Truman assailed Congress, after which he asked the crowds if they would like to meet his family. Then he introduced Bess, his wife, as "the Boss," and Margaret, his daughter, "who bosses the boss." As the train pulled out Margaret would toss a red rose into the crowd.
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Truman's speeches constantly reminded listeners of all the programs that he supported and that conservative Republicans opposed: expansion of Social Security, additional public housing, higher minimum wages, controls on inflation, more progressive taxation. He regularly emphasized his toughness—including the Berlin Airlift, which was front-page news during the campaign—against the Soviets. And he relished partisan attacks on his opponents. The morning he left on the first of his long train trips Barkley came down to the station to wish him well. "Go out there and mow 'em down," Barkley advised. "I'll mow 'em down, Alben," Truman replied, "and I'll give 'em hell." Reporters heard the conversation and put it in their stories, and by the time the train reached the West Coast people were yelling, "Give 'em hell, Harry."
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Sometimes this hell could be hot. Seeking to rally the working classes at the core of the Democratic coalition, Truman charged that Republicans were "Wall Street reactionaries," "gluttons of privilege," "bloodsuckers," and "plunderers." GOP legislators in the 80th Congress, he said, were "tools of the most reactionary elements" who would "skim the cream from our natural resources to satisfy their own greed." Dismissing Dewey, "whose name rhymes with hooey," Truman said, "If you send another Republican Congress to Washington, you're a bigger bunch of suckers than I think you are." "Give 'em hell, Harry!" the people shouted back. "Pour it on!"
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