Transcript: Chapter 24

NARRATOR: On June 21, the Republicans convened in Philadelphia. After three days of celebrating free enterprise and denouncing Harry Truman, they nominated for president the urbane, progressive governor of New York, Thomas Dewey.

ARCHIVAL FILM OF DEWEY: I pray God that I may deserve this opportunity to serve our country. In all humility I accept the nomination.

NARRATOR: Four years earlier, Dewey had run a strong race against the undefeatable Franklin Roosevelt. This time around, Republicans giddily anticipated victory against Roosevelt's stand-in -- Harry Truman.

ALONZO HAMBY: He still appeared to a lot of Americans to be a little guy, an ordinary man, someone who utterly lacked the charisma of his predecessor, Roosevelt. Americans still really wondered whether someone who appeared to be so much like themselves could really handle the duties and responsibilities of the presidency.

NARRATOR: In July, the Democrats gathered in the same Philadelphia hall where two weeks earlier the Republicans had given their nomination to Thomas Dewey. For the first time, television was there to report the story.

Truman watched from the Oval Office what Newsweek magazine would call "the worst managed, most dispirited convention in American history."

ROBERT DONOVAN: There was no air-conditioning, and it was from the beginning a sweltering convention, in the hotel rooms as well as in the hall. It was a dismal convention from the start because the convention thought that they were going to nominate a loser. No one in that convention hall thought Truman could win.

NARRATOR: The Democratic party was splitting apart, and no one thought Harry Truman could hold it together. Left-leaning Democrats had already turned to the Progressive Party and their candidate for president, Henry Wallace. Conservative Southern Democrats, furious over Truman's stand on civil rights, were threatening to walk out of the convention.

ARCHIVAL SOUND ON FILM OF MISSISSIPPI DELEGATE: "The delegation from Mississippi cannot be true to the people of that great state if they did not join in this walkout."

NARRATOR: In the end, three dozen Southern delegates bolted.

ARCHIVAL SOUND ON FILM OF MISSISSIPPI DELEGATE: "And we bid you goodbye."

NARRATOR: Two days later, they formed their own party, the "Dixiecrats."

DAVID MCCULLOUGH: And it seemed, another devastating blow to Truman's prospects. The combination of the Southerners walking out, and Henry Wallace leading his own Progressive Party campaign, plus all the gloom and doom that seemed to prevail throughout the Democratic Party, spelled only defeat, spelled a very bleak future.

NARRATOR: But as Harry Truman arrived in Philadelphia, he was anything but bleak. In a small, windowless room beneath the convention floor, he sat with vice-presidential nominee Alben Barkley and waited.

DAVID MCCULLOUGH: They kept him waiting 'til almost two o'clock in the morning. Everybody was exhausted. They felt demoralized. They didn't, many of them, want Harry Truman to be their candidate. The Southerners had walked out of the convention. And so, at two o'clock in the morning, out came Harry Truman in his white linen suit, and he stood up there, and he said,

ARCHIVAL FILM: TRUMAN SPEECH "Senator Barkley and I will win this election and make these Republicans like it. Don't you forget that."

ALONZO HAMBY: He's a fighter. Truman is not about the slink out of town with his tail between his legs.

ARCHIVAL SOUND ON FILM: HARRY TRUMAN "The Republican platform cries about cruelly high prices..."

NARRATOR: Truman had come into the presidency bewildered and frightened. Now, the delegates sat stunned as a fire-breathing Truman tore into the Republicans.

HARRY TRUMAN ARCHIVAL SOUND ON FILM: "The Republican platform comes out for slum clearance and low rental housing. I've been trying to get them to pass that housing bill ever since they met the first time.

NARRATOR: Truman challenged the Republicans to live up to their promises.

TRUMAN, ARCHIVAL (SOF): I am therefore calling the Congress back into session on the 26th of July. If there's any reality behind that Republican platform we ought to get some action out of the short session of the 80th Congress. They can do this job within fifteen days, if they want to do it, and they'll still have time to go out and run for office.

NARRATOR: Truman had come out fighting, but still, no one thought he could win. All the polls made him a sure loser.

DAVID MCCULLOUGH: Everybody thought he was going to lose. I mean, that's not just a figure of speech, even members of his own family. His mother-in-law was quite sure that Harry Truman was going to lose.

NARRATOR: Truman's Republican opponent was everything Truman was not. Educated, smooth, sophisticated, Tom Dewey was prepared, he said, to turn back 16 years of Democratic rule.

DEWEY, ARCHIVAL (SOF): "I pledge to you that on next January 20, there will begin in Washington the biggest unraveling, unsnarling, untangling operation in our nation's history."

ROBERT DONOVAN: From the beginning Dewey was transfixed by polls and by Time magazine and everyone else who was boosting him for president. He was very pleased with himself, very pleased with what he'd done. Very sure that he was going to go on and be a great figure. They were so confident that some of the Dewey people had already bought houses in Washington.

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