It appears he has at least one ardent supporter. Those are some of the regions finest salmon specimens. We will know soon. November is just around the corner. President truman continues his swing around the circuit. Meeting former Vice President gardner in texas. The chief executive gets a present. He rides to the home of old friend cactus jack and gets a warm welcome en route. He visits the alamo, the historic shrine of texas independence. In austin, a big crowd greets the president as he continues his campaign for the lone star states 23 electoral votes. The president struck of the republicans saying they dont want unity. On his tour, the president spoke and visited with sam rayburn, former speaker of the house. At fort worth, thousands turned out as he worked to bring the southern vote back into line. Dewey defeats truman, the famous photo of that Chicago Tribune headline from the 1948 president ial campaign. Of course, we know harry s. Truman won the election. His rival, thomas e. Dewey had to accept defeat. This week on the conte nders, we are live from the Roosevelt Hotel in new york city, which in november hosted the Republican Party headquarters and Thomas Deweys campaign. He used this suite, number 1527, whenever he was in new york during 12 years as governor. He and his family and the closest aides gathered in these rooms on Election Night. Joining me is Richard Norton smith. It is november 2, 1948 at the Roosevelt Hotel. What happened here . Richard well, the day began with a virtual unanimity in the Nations Press corps that this election was over. That it was thomas e. Deweys to lose. Had polling after labor day. They were so convinced there was no contest. Gov. Dewey and mrs. Do we want to vote at midday not too far from here. He got out of his car and decided to walk back to the hotel. Reporters thought it was a good sign. He was a new dewey,a warmer dewey that people have seen on the campaign trail. They had an Election Night tradition of having dinner with their friends, Robert Strauss who was a publisher. The family went there for an early dinner. While they were there, some disturbing returns came in from connecticut in particular. Thomas dooley had relied along the accountants as much as anyone else, almost always had a respect for the numbers. The numbers were a little out of sync with what the pollsters had predicted. That was at the beginning of the night long ordeal in this suite. The secret service had sent to their top agents here. They thought Thomas Dooley was going to be president like everyone else. It went on and on. It out to 3 00 in the morning, the agents began to slip away. That was their nonverbal way of communicating a truly historic upset was taking place. At one point before dawn, the governor of new york pulled his head through the door and said it to a friend, what do you know . The little son of a bitch won. His former his formal concession came later in the day. Before we get to that point where he looks out of the sweet and sees a secret service is gone, there is a confidence at the Roosevelt Hotel. Describe that. The confidence was based upon, very understandably, based upon the fact there was a consensus among people on the right, people on the left, not only that thomas e. Dewey was going to win. This is what is fascinating. When you see the iconic image come up thomas e. Dewey is known as the man who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. If you go back and read the contemporary press, everybody from drew pearson to walt whitman, then not only expected him to win, they had praise for the campaign he had run. They thought it was high minded, and they had a lot of criticism for the campaign harry truman ran against him. It is an example of how a snapshot of history can be superseded very quickly. We want to show our viewers from that night early on when the returns are starting to come and, thomas e. Deweys Campaign Manager and the confidence they had early on. Take a look. Champagne flows freely. Victory is in the air. The first returns had truman in the lead, but republicans are not worried. And then he brings good news secured we now know that governor do we will carry new york state by 50,000 votes and he will be the next president of the United States. [applause] white were republicans are confident they could get the white house in 1948 . By the way, carrying york state was no small feat. It was the first time in 20 years of republican had managed to do it. New york was the cradle of the new deal. For him to announce that and it predicted based upon that that victory was in the air, that was perfectly understandable. 1948 what we did not know going into 1948, america had become a new deal country. The death of Franklin Roosevelt had ended one presidency. The approaching government, the expectation that government would be more involved in insuring prosperity, the government would be used to fight economic downturns as the new deal had in the 30s and 40s. Whether or not he believed in the success of those efforts, the assumption was that when fdr died, the new deal died with him. The set of expectations the relationship between the average american and his government which had been transformed by the new deal, that was not the case. On election day in 1948, a americans enjoyed record prosperity, record employment. The reasons the republicans in spite of that thought they could win was very simple here truman. We forget today that here a true man in his first term was a very unpopular president. There was talk about the little man from missouri. Truman had a very difficult assignment. Every president after a war has a process of readjusting economically, culturally, the agriculture sector. Inflation, strikes all of that came due on here trimmings watch. The consensus in 1946 and 1947 was he did not handle it very well. It was so bad the republicans to congress in 1946 which only fed their expectation that the presidency would fall into their lap two years later. How are republicans viewing the Truman Administration at this point . That is a great question. The problem as there was no such thing as the republicans. That was part of thomas e. Deweys problem. The party was evenly split between what is called the eastern establishment, the old Teddy Roosevelt wing of the party. Charles hughes was in that tradition. Thomas e. Dewey represented that. Opposed to that were the conservatives, but westerners, many of them isolationists who rallied around bob rttaft. He had precipitated the split. That never really healed. When republicans took congress, it was the conservatives who became the face of the party. On the other hand, you had people like thomas e. Dewey, many of the governors who were much less cost out to the new deal, much more willing to work with its promises. Thomas e. Dewey is our contender to night. He ran, he lost, but he changed history anyway. Here he is launching his campaign in 1948 and the criticism he has of the Truman Administration. On january 20, we will enter in a new era. There will begin in washington the biggest on raveling, on spiraling operation and our nations history. What do you make of what he says there . That does to his strength and the perception after as witness. Thomas e. Dewey had been governor of new york for several years. He had untangled it, on traveled a lot of bureaucratic cobwebs. He had taken what many people would see as a hybrid of conservative and liberal ideas to make government more responsive, in some ways to make it smaller. Taxes were reduced to make it from the year to the private sector. When he had done in new york, he proposed to do on the national level. One critical element that sets thomas e. Dewey apart his civil rights. He is in the forefront on that issue. New york state is the first state in america to pass anti discrimination legislation. Thomas e. Dewey took them very seriously. It did not meet with universal agreement, even with republicans in new york. We are talking about thomas e. Deweys campaign. We will be joined a little bit later by his son, thomas e. Dewey, jr. We will be taking your phone calls this evening. You can start dialing in startRichard Norton smith. We are working our way back. Lets go to the Fall Campaign and the issues that are there. Is Hillary Truman popular . He is not popular at the beginning of the campaign. It is a reversal of what we see now. People were content with record high employment, but they did not attribute it to harry truman. Also, global issues were eight huge factor here. One of the things that truman has been criticized in retrospect but at the time was widely praised was running a campaign of National Unity in which he tried first of all, the idea of bipartisan Foreign Policy is part of thomas e. Deweys political allegis legacy. It is something that began in the 1944 campaign. He supported truman on the airlift to berlin. He supported truman on recognizing the state of israel. At the same time, he wanted to increase the Defense Budget by 5 billion. There is no doubt he would have been he supported the marshall plan, but he would have asked more questions before just turning american tax dollars over two leftwing governments in europe. It was a campaign that in many ways is what we claim we want in a candidates. It was not hitting below the belt, there were not a lot of possible personalities, there were not a lot of name calling. Is that showing up in the polls . In a do we vs. Truman hypothetical . The popular notion is that thomas e. Dewey drowned in a sea of complacency. He was taken by surprise by what happened in the suite that night. The fact is, he knew. He was the first candidates to have a fulltime polling unit as part of his campaign. He listened to the pollsters. He had an appreciation of their art. He was well aware of the fact his lead was slipping. There were people who came to him in the last 10 days of the campaign and he acknowledged that the lead was slipping. To one of them, he said never talk when you are a had a. What happens next then . Are the democrats behind truman . Are they solid behind i will tell you who was solid behind it true men. One of the factors behind the loss, they had organized labor which they saw as an attack on many of the rights and privileges that had developed under the new deal. It put thomas e. Dewey in an awkward position. By and large, he agreed with much of the bill. At the same time, he is governor of new york. This is a labor state. This is a liberal state. In some ways, he was walking on a fine line. What it did was organize labor has nothing ever did. 1948 was the single election in which organized labor played the biggest role throughout america. In race after race after race, the democratic ticket ran a head of here truman in part because of his relative unpopularity and also because organized labor turned out in record numbers and voted democratic. Or the other players in the Democratic Party at this time . You have four candidates in the 1948 election. You have former Vice PresidentHenry Wallace who believes that truman has started the cold war. Truman is a tune to the possibility of peace with the soviet union. On the foot on the far right, you have thurman who walked out of the Democratic Convention because a young man introduced and passed a pro civil rights plank. So the conventional wisdom was, this would hurt truman. He would lose votes on the left, he would lose votes on the right. In fact what it did was, it made. Trim and a man in the middle. Neither thurman or wallace turned out to have anywhere near the impact it was believed it would have. The economy at the time, what is it like . The economy is trumans great strength. As i say, record employment. More than that, what he did very shortly in his campaign, he does to thomas e. Dewey what he did to the Republican Congress. The fact of the matter was, a democratic president riding the crest of prosperity in the fall of 1948 could point a finger at the Republican Congress and in the fact suggest people. Truman was not bashful about doing it. If you return republicans to complete control of the white house and congress, you can expect to see a return to the economic policies that produced the great depression. It was not that long since the great depression. People to talk members were very sharp. That came into play without a doubt. What about the role of communism . It is fascinating. Truman had taken some heat for introducing this charge that fdr had inadvertently allowed congress to take root in his administration. In 1948, i think we have a the first nationally broadcast president ial debate revolved around one issue. Shall the communist party in america be outlawed . Thomas e. Dooley, takes the civil libertarian view that, no, it should not be outlawed for reasons he expounded. His opponent took the position that it should be outlawed. It was a turning point. That is also the same year that do we have to figure out how to handle the issue. We are going to get to that debate a little bit later coming up. First i want to show our viewers what tom dewey had to say about communists in 1948. Some jeer at the problem calling it a red herring. Some people get panicky about it. I do not belong to either of those groups. We must neither ignore or outlaw them. If we ignore them, we give them the of unity that they want. If we all love them, we give them the marty down that they want even more. We well in the government we get to last january we will keep the American People informed or there are, who they are, and what they are up to. That is classic dewey. That is very much what his approach was. It raises the fascinating prospect that had he been elected in 1948, we would have never heard of joe mccarthy. Mccarthyism would have never entered the language. Senator mccarthy, who was in many ways a product of republican frustration over losing an election that they thought was a sure thing. Tom dewey was a political boss, other things. He would have controlled the Republican Party nationally. I can tell you, he would have never allowed a joe mccarthy to rear his head. We talk some domestic issues we talked some international issues. We are well into the cold war. Dweey is supportive of the marshall plan. He supports nato. To some degree, he had put in americas economy on a cold war footing. Dewey is supportive of all that. If anything, he thinks we need to spend more money on defenses. He thinks we have neglected conservative forces. For example, Charles De Gaulle who is out of power in preference in france. He thinks a creed of american diplomacy could put people like that to good use. How does he differ from the other prominent republicans in the party at that time . Who are they . Bob taft, mr. Republican from ohio, is fair to say he was the champion of the isolationist wing of the Republican Party. That is to say, the wind profoundly suspicious of International Organizations like the u. N. Suspicious of litter on the korean war. Suspicious of projecting American Military power around the world as opposed to building up a american defenses here at home. Former president Herbert Hoover would have been in that camp as well. The thomas e. Dewey is somebody who had morphed. From a young man, he had been an isolationist. One of the interesting things is to watch him become a committed internationalists and a champion of bipartisan Foreign Policy. Given that, what is the impa of that attitude on all of his president ial bid . He runs in 1940, 1944, 1948. I think it was safe to say it was statesmanlike. It did not win him any votes. In 1944 there was a significant conflict between thomas e. Dewey and fdr. They disagreed over the United Nations. Specifically, would the United Nations have an army that it could employ a without first securing the permission of Member States at the United States . Franklin d. Roosevelt said, yes, he supported that. Thomas e. Dooley was not supportive of that. He said later on that history was proven i was right. To talk about the divide in the Republican Party over international issues. Do they come back together in temper the 1948 campaign . Taft and dewey winds come back together . It was very shrewd on his part to see that as the achilles heel. To try to almost eliminate dewey and suggest if you vote for this man that we are right to get is the midwest conservative Republican Party. To be fact,dewey did very little. Him and taft despise each other. Their rivalry is one of the great intellectual contests in american history. It is about something. It is not just about personal ambition. It is about a different view of the world, different view of government at home, a different view of what the Republican Party stands for, a different view of what abraham lincolns legacy is. Tonight we are coming to you live from the Roosevelt Hotel here in new york city to talk about thomas dewey. This is our 14th week series. Our first phone call is brian in springfield, illinois. Go ahead. Thank you so much for the series. Mr. Smith, we still miss you here in springfield. I had a question about 1952. I remember reading about and illinois senator who was a taft supporter and a conven