FDR, Dewey, and the Election of 1944

David M. Jordan

Description

2012 AAUP Public and Secondary School Library Selection

Read an IU Press blog interview with David M. Jordan

Although the presidential election of 1944 placed FDR in the White House for an unprecedented fourth term, historical memory of the election itself has been overshadowed by the war, Roosevelt's health and his death the following April, Truman's ascendancy, and the decision to drop the atomic bomb. Today most people assume that FDR's reelection was assured. Yet, as David M. Jordan's engrossing account reveals, neither the outcome of the campaign nor even the choice of candidates was assured. Just a week before Election Day, pollster George Gallup thought a small shift in votes in a few key states would award the election to Thomas E. Dewey. Though the Democrats urged voters not to "change horses in midstream," the Republicans countered that the war would be won "quicker with Dewey and Bricker." With its insider tales and accounts of party politics, and campaigning for votes in the shadow of war and an uncertain future, FDR, Dewey, and the Election of 1944 makes for a fascinating chapter in American political history.

Preface and Acknowledgments
Prologue: An Evening at the Statler
1. A Nation at War
2. Politics in Midwar
3. The Republicans
4. The Democrats
5. Willkie Pushes Hard
6. President and Congress
7. Wendell in Wonderland
8. The Bandwagon Rolling
9. It Looks Like Dewey
10. The Republican Convention
11. Meanwhile, the Democrats
12. The Ailing President
13. Will Roosevelt Run?
14. Who Runs with Roosevelt?
15. The Democrats Arrive in Chicago
16. Democrats in Convention
17. Campaign on the High Seas
18. The Republicans Go to Work
19. Dewey Heads West
20. The Battle Is On
21. The October Campaign Kicks In
22. Death in October
23. Dewey on the Offensive
24. FDR Strikes Back
25. Down to the Wire
26. Bricker's Campaign
27. The Man from Missouri
28. The Last Days
29. Election Day
30. Summing Up
Epilogue: The Fourth Term
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Political Process
• 20th Century
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Histoire
• Politics Magazine
• Politics
• History of the Americas
• Anthropology
• United States

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 02 septembre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780253005625
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington & Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404–3797 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800–842–6796 Fax orders 812–855–7931 Orders by e-mail [e-mail]
© 2011 by David M. Jordan All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses' Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48–1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jordan, David M., [date]      FDR, Dewey, and the election of 1944 / David M. Jordan.      p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-35683-3 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-253-00562-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Presidents—United States—Election—1944. 2. Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882–1945. 3. Dewey, Thomas E. (Thomas Edmund), 1902–1971. 4. United States—Politics and government—1933–1945. I. Title.
E812.J67 2011      973.917092—dc22                                             2011015425
1  2  3  4  5    16  15  14  13  12  11
To Jean
CONTENTS
•    Preface & Acknowledgments
PROLOGUE     An Evening at the Statler
1    A Nation at War
2    Politics in Midwar
3    The Republicans
4    The Democrats
5    Willkie Pushes Hard
6    President and Congress
7    Wendell in Wonderland
8    The Bandwagon Rolling
9    It Looks Like Dewey
10    The Republican Convention
11    Meanwhile, the Democrats
12    The Ailing President
13    Will Roosevelt Run?
14    Who Runs with Roosevelt?
15    The Democrats Arrive in Chicago
16    Democrats in Convention
17    Campaign on the High Seas
18    The Republicans Go to Work
19    Dewey Heads West
20    The Battle Is On
21    The October Campaign Kicks In
22    Death in October
23    Dewey on the Offensive
24    FDR Strikes Back
25    Down to the Wire
26    Bricker's Campaign
27    The Man from Missouri
28    The Last Days
29    Election Day
30    Summing Up
EPILOGUE     The Fourth Term
•    Notes
•    Bibliography
•    Index
PREFACE & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When people think of the 1944 presidential election, they usually think two things: that everybody knew Franklin D. Roosevelt was dying; and that victory was a given for FDR. The thing they usually don't know, or can't quite remember, is who the Republican candidate was. Walter Trohan, the longtime Washington correspondent for the Chicago Tribune , summed it up in his memoirs: “The 1944 presidential campaign was a foregone conclusion even though all the politicians knew FDR was a dying man.” 1
But Trohan was writing his book thirty-one years after the election took place, and he was simply reflecting the received wisdom of that day. If the reader could go back in time to a moment about a week before the ′44 election and talk with Dr. George Gallup in his office at Princeton, New Jersey, where Gallup received his reports of polling around the country and put the results all together for his newspaper clients, the reader would get a far different picture from Trohan's in 1975. According to Gallup shortly before the election, it looked almost like a toss-up, with the result depending on how several key states, rated 50–50 by the pollsters, broke on Election Day. If they went one way, Roosevelt would win his fourth term; if they edged into the other camp, as Gallup thought they would, Thomas E. Dewey could become president.
As to Roosevelt's health, it can safely be said that Dr. Howard Bruenn, Admiral Ross McIntire, and several physicians with whom they consulted were aware that the President had a very serious heart condition. No one else really knew, and McIntire, Roosevelt's personal physician, kept the rest of the country as much in the dark as possible with his misleading announcements to the press and public. There were whispers, of course; the frustrated Republicans were always circulating rumors about FDR and his family. He was dying of cancer, he was really Jewish, he'd undergone a secret operation, his wife was organizing black maids to rise up against their employers, and so on. Roosevelt's day-long drive through the streets of New York in a downpour on October 21, 1944, effectively put an end to the health whispers for that election.
Of course, the fact that Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, on the eighty-third day of his fourth term, seems to validate the theory that everyone knew he was dying. On the contrary, such history-by-hindsight should be guarded against, because it does not accord with what really took place. Lots of people (mostly Washington insiders) had suspicions, but no one knew, and it appears that very few voters made their decision on the presidency thinking that the incumbent was dying. They thought he looked tired after handling the war effort for three grueling years. The biggest issue in the campaign was who was better suited to bring the war to a conclusion and handle the issues of peace thereafter, and the widely discussed choice was between Dewey and Roosevelt, not between Dewey and Harry Truman, the Democratic vice presidential candidate and putative successor to a dying man.
One of the most interesting aspects of the 1944 election is that, long before they went after each other, each party had a major internal problem. For the Republicans, it was how to get rid of Wendell Willkie, their 1940 standard-bearer, who was regarded as poison by the party bigwigs; for the Democrats, it was disposing of Henry Wallace, the incumbent vice president, who was unwanted by sizable elements of the party. Willkie, of course, was a former Democrat who had made inroads into the GOP representing corporate America's fight against the New Deal; to the astonishment of the party leaders, he had parlayed this notoriety into the capture of the 1940 Republican presidential nomination. Wallace, deeply unpopular with party regulars when Roosevelt forced his vice presidential selection in 1940, had developed a following in the left wing of the party but was loathed by many other Democrats. How the parties solved their separate problems with these two men occupies the first part of this story.
Once the two party tickets were set, the normal routine of a presidential campaign got under way. Except that 1944 was far from normal. The nation was deeply involved in the greatest war in its history, and the war effort was the great shadow that fell over all the activities of the campaign. The Democrats chanted “Don't Change Horses in the Middle of the Stream,” while a Republican slogan, not as widely used, was “Win the War Quicker with Dewey and Bricker.” The GOP claimed that it could do better in fighting the war and in providing for the peace to follow; besides, the Republicans said, the Democrats had sold out to the Communists. How these varying efforts played out constitutes the climax of the story.
I have a few personal recollections of the ′44 election, as a 9-year-old boy who was interested in politics. My parents loathed Franklin Roosevelt, so my childhood memories are colored slightly by the fact that everything I heard around the house was slanted in one direction. Still, I read the magazines and newspapers about the campaign (the Philadelphia Inquirer and Bulletin were pretty solidly Republican, and the Record was never allowed in our house) and listened to reports over the radio. It all whetted my interest, and I've been happy to get back to it for this work.
Along the way I have had much help from a lot of people, many of whose names I failed to record. I do want to express my thanks to Jim Cross in Special Collections, Clemson University Library; Sharon Sumpter at the University Archives, Notre Dame Library; Mark Renovitch, Robert Parks, and Karen Anson at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park; Mary Huth and Melissa Mead at the University of Rochester Library; Dan Linke at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscripts Library and Donald Simon at the Firestone Libr