Have them here virtually from his home and we are going to talk about his new book about the 1948 election. Were going back 72 years another Election Year. You will be amazed at how it sounds the same in some ways but in some ways very different. The difference is the politicians were all younger than they are today so thats one big difference but a. J. Take it away and tell us about the overview of the book and which is a very good. By the way. Thank you. I like to say couple things first rate thank you so much for having me pay the Commonwealth Club is a wonderful place to be at here we are with a lot of people going through a lot of pain and suffering. Im just reminded why he fell in love with reading when i was six years old. Books can really transport you to another time and place and during all of this is really been a blessing. Regarding my last time with you id started this book back in 2017 when i talked about the accidental president and the book came out during the 2020 election cycle. This is a book about the 1948 election that will give me an opportunity to talk about things that matter but two things happened that i didnt expect. One was during research i found a whole bunch of material that i didnt really expect to find it secondly i was inspired in such a way that it began to feel like there was writing a book that everything i was writing about was no longer taking place in 1948 was taking place now so i want to show you a few pictures to give you an idea of what im talking about. 1948 the election played out on the Television Machine and what youre looking at is a the picture of the first Election Night broadcast on pbs pbs. Here we are an new kind of media that will change the way elections take ways and of course today we have social media doing the exact same thing. Heres an image that is going to startle you. I hope it startles you 1948 there was a massive surge in White Nationalism in the United States. This is charlottesville. In 1948 there was a massive wave of violence against africanamericans and the picture youre looking at a man named Isaac Woodard four hours after he was released and honorably discharged from the United States army. He had served in world war ii. In an altercation with a white lace officer and he was blinded. Here you see him being escorted by joe lewis the heavyweight fighter and orson wells got fired from his radio show for speaking out about whether it. The whole story of what happened to him became politicized and became part of the political conversation in a way that we are feeling the same way now with george floyd. The alger hiss story breaks during the 1948 election and suddenly theres so much talk in washington and people all over the country trying to figure out is there a communist conspiracy infiltrating washington . What is the fact and what is the Conspiracy Theory . These were the conversations conversation they were having in washington and all over the country certainly that is relevant today. To relevant. Then we have the fbi on the trail of the major president ial political candidates with regards to possible russian conspiracy. Heres Henry Wallace the chip fastening picture by the way. I thought i would look at this picture forever. But wallace is a stooge for the kremlin in moscow. Again this was the conversation in 1948 and certainly thats relevant today. This is the berlin airlift so during the 1940 election cycle truman launches the berlin airlift. Is not an applestoapples comparison but during the election cycle and 48 we were nose to nose with the soviets on the brink of world war iii. Fear and anxiety really gripped the country and thats happening in our election cycle now for completely different reason and thats exactly the reason why im talking to you from my Basement Office and not on the stage. A couple more to go. This is one picture that should not be relevant today and we should cross their fingers and toes that remains that way. During the 1948 election cycle Nuclear Bombs are literally going off as we are testing larger and larger weapons. Ultimately we get to harry truman. One last point before i Start Talking about the candidacy of 48 i want to give you one quote from the most surprising document i found through all my years of research that this is the Republican NationalCommittee Memorandum written november 15, the 247 so exactly year before the 48 election. Im going to read one sentence for the United States of america is fair game for moscow and has been for years. As far as anyone is willing to see the year 1948 will be the year in which soviet russia will do everything in his power to influence the election here. Certainly that feels familiar. Now im going to give you brief introduction of the candidates and their conversational begin to what i really wanted to do in this book is follow all four candidates through their campaign in real time to weed them out so the reader can experience what america was experienced and also the candidates themselves. All leading up to the climactic moment on november 2, 1948. Heres Henry Wallace. Wallace was an extraordinary candidate who won but this story is fascinating to wallace was the one candidate or breaks away from the democrats in said hey we have this new cold war and its not the soviets fall. Its Harry Trumans fault and he says theres only one man in this country who can stop world war iii and thats me. He becomes a candidate of protest and to me hes the beginning of an antiestablishment movement that goes right through the 1950s and 60s. You can sample a tear thats pete seager singing and we certainly have heard a lot from him. Wallace is politics were so controversial when he goes to campaign in the south he says i will not speak in any call for an africanamerican or caucasian american cannot sit next to each other but i will not stay in a hotel where an africanamerican is not allowed. There are riots in the stabbing and hes pelted with tomatoes. Its a very Brave Campaign that a run. Even as Vice President going through the entrance to a church he got into a physical operation with the police and he was a u. S. Senator. You can actually see this picture and its amazing to think there were times during those when they would tackle them and throw eggs at him and say i want some evidence that im in the United States of america. Strom thurmond, during the 1940 election eight election truman was the first president ial candidate to go after the africanamerican vote. Segregates the military because the first president to address the naacp and the first president to hold a Campaign Rally in harlem to black america. Not everybody is happy about this. Strom thurmond to work euro the governor of North Carolina launches this need dixie crat party. This is their National Convention in which he is nominated to run for president im going to give you one brief quote of 40 sacks police in this moment. On this night he says i want to tell you ladies and gentlemen there arent enough troops in the army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit that they and to her swimming pools in theaters and into our homes and our churches. He won four state on the form of pro segregation White Supremacy and finally thomas dewey, everybody believed he was about to become the first republicans present 16 years. Well talk about it quite a bit so i want samba to now except for this. This is the one time been two candidates made during the election cycle and harry truman leans over and says tom when you move into the white house do something about that. There were world issues with the white house. The white house was literally crumbling. And back to truman we are going to talk a lot about him. Why dont we start our conversation and i hope that was useful. Thats great. If we can put up the pictures and we can start with dewey. Thomas dewey new york governor, young in his mid40s when he was running. He had already been governor before. He did what giuliani did but he took the road to public halls in which giuliani tried to do which is to be attorney general, when cases and then go on either to in this case to new york governor for a while and i know that giuliani played that card because when he was attorney general he came to speak and he made very clear he was going to play exactly the same political way because giuliani had his eye on the white house as everyone knows. In any case thomas dewey is quite a character and he had been an attack dog earlier on when he ran anywhere in a very Different Campaign so maybe talk a little bit about that won by 30 points or Something Like that at the beginning of the campaign. To me i was very fascinated by at that he was going to be a byproduct of the story and a minor character. Hes very much a major character of the story that i wrote because the way that he came up into prominence was so extraordinary. He is from small town comes out of nowhere and michigan comes down and becomes a young prosecutor in new york city and finds himself on this trail really a prosecutor really a lawyer and he becomes this figure who takes down the mophie in the 1930s during the depression when there was a lot of mophie around. He became famous as a prosecutor how does that happen that in two different abc was portrayed by hopper bogart on the big screen. People say thomas dewey could successfully prosecute and thats how i came up. When 1940 came he nrd been, this was his third president ial candidate because he had been the guy that everybody said all the way back to 1940 you are the future of the Republican Party. By the time 1940 he comes he decides hes not going to run. He ran in 1944 and a loss. He came closer to defeating fc or that anybody did but he felt in his heart he didnt want to suffer through losing a president ial election twice. He had to be convinced to run so the story becomes very. Obviously everyone thought and its very clear everyone thought about the media and all the newspapers predicted that he was going to win. Not a single newspaper. That truman was going to win. The media was on his side in they were wondering why they got it all wrong just like the media has done in the 2016 election. How did we get that wrong and polls are just starting and i think theres another element of influence. Im sure they have polls before that but they became much more influential. Just as media feels big to us right now that time the fact that radio was becoming ubiquitous the communication industry was ramping up the pollsters were extraordinarily powerful and one of them actually wrote, he said im not going to happen at any more. Why spend the money on the campaign of do we is going to win and i can tell you there weres two scenes for me writing about dewey that were so touching and the one is where on Election Night, now i will go back. The night he holds his final Campaign Rally in Madison Square garden he gets on the train afterwards to take a train to albany to the Governors Mansion these so sure hes going to win if you hold an impromptu meeting with all these reporters covering his campaign for months and he tells them who is going to be in his cabinet and he says you cant tell anybody. Theres going to be a secretary of treasury because he was sure he was going to win. The other scene that i can remember i was so touching to me was on Election Night is the night sweet with his family and friends. Tonight isnt going as planned and he locked himself in a room with a legal pad by himself and turns on the radio all might long when he realizes whats about to happen to him. A solitary man on that edge. He definitely left his mark anyway on the Republican Party. Very affluent chill and he was a progressive republican. Another element that i felt was very them mock a billion move that you talk about the chairman does as the republicans at their convention they picked a dewey but it was a tight race and there were a few progressive Teddy Roosevelt type republicans and then passed who was the son of president taft. He he was the leader of the conservatives and a lot of people thought he should be the nominee so it was very close. The conservative republicans were in control of the congress so what truman did was the platforms between deweys platform and trumans platform are almost identical right . That is right. He put a pin in this by calling congress back to try to enact a deweys platform. We are going to talk about the democratic National Convention and i think well show a piece of video. We welcome back and talk about what he said but you raise an interesting point coming out of world war ii there was a line in the sand and everyone understood the election was going to be the line of up past and the present. What school party was going to be in charge and imprint their vision on America American im both Political Parties coming out of world war ii had to figure out who they werent what they stood for in their pub and had an interesting situation because they had a rivalry within the party. It was the conservative faction that was headed up by robert taft the republican on capitol hill and dewey was a liberal. He was a liberal because he had been raised to think that Teddy Roosevelt was the definition of the republicans party. Maybe even through the primaries , the oregon primaries, fascinating story. Do we as the firmware and all of a sudden hes about to lose. All of a sudden they are neckandneck and the primary will decided and they have the first ever broadcast radio president ial debate was kind of neat because you can look it up and watch it and listen to it on youtube today. There was only one question should communism be outlawed in dewey being a prosecutor won the nomination. That is how it happened but a lot of republicans were very uncomfortable with this platform because a lot of that agreed with harry truman. We welcome back to harry chairmans maneuver against that but anyway they both did the same thing. They did tours everywhere and they were crossing each others paths and chairman had a very good joke about that. But dewey was following him everywhere. You want to tell that joke . At the end of the campaign he it came down to this amazing onetwo punch where they visited the same five cities each of them one at a the chicago, cleveland boston and new york and by that i mean for states. You are in one of those, do we have followed truman throughout the country and it turned out to be the first daughter margarets favorite speech of the campaign where truman starts cracking these jokes and he does it on Live National radio totally offthecuff makes up this trip like theres this guy following me everywhere i go and hes following me and theres one place is not going to follow me in the crowd goes crazy. The true Library Web Site is a great resource because you can go there and you can actually listen to the speeches. They are all up on the web site and its a lot of fun to visit them. Saying it brings him alive. Its interesting to see the old pictures but in the old pictures they dont look the same as politicians do today and they dont act the same and they look so young right now. Anyway one little personal note about dewey at the end of the book when you bring everybody up to date on the app like of different people. You mentioned do a win he lost he returns to the Governors Mansion in new york and was there for another six years and then went to private life and didnt do any more Public Service stuff. What he did was he went to a new York Law Firm as the main partner. There was an old proverb of 1906 valentine bush v. Palmer and wood. It became a very famous firm. Thats when i started my legal career in 1984 and i worked for partner who was in his early 50s. He had done some work for a dewey. Dewey died in 71 i think you mentioned 13 years later and one day the partner said to me you know that do a scared the out of me. When i was in my ninth year so he should have been made a partner right around then. Dewey asks to do a special tax memo on an issue i didnt know anything about and im not a tax lawyer. He asked me to do this so i had to. I did it very quickly and i got it all done it was like a 20 page thing that i gave it to him and his was walking out the door did fly to florida for the weekend that weekend he died of a heart attack. Ive always wondered whether my memo was so bad that he gave him a heart attack. Red socks slugger carl you stream ski was getting ready to go to the airport to fly to washington so he could go dating gauge meant party of Richard Nixons daughter and the white house on that day. Yeah there were all kinds of other stories inside the firm about the way that he ran it clearly took it out on law firm when he wasnt president and thats the way everybody saw it. He wrote the last time we talked he talked about the accidental president how he got into the position to become the president as Vice President under fdr. Its a very unusual story. I give you background so people have an idea of where this guy came from. As a person i looked it up and he is the highest popular rating of any president ever and hes also had the lowest. It was like 91 right after world war ii ended in august and it was his lowest 22. Trump is never gone below 30 and george w. Bush wen