Book the accidental president , now we have him here virtually to talk about his new book about the 1948 elections going 78 years to another Election Year and you will be amazed how similar it sounds in some ways and in others what is different is politicians were all younger than they are today. That is one big difference. Take it away and tell us about the overview of the book. I want to say a couple things. Thank you for having me lose the Commonwealth Club is a wonderful place to be. I know books, i fell in love with reading when i was 6 years old because books can transport you to another time or place and that has been a blessing. I started this book in 2017 talking about the accidental president and i planned this book to come out in the 2020 cycle. This was a book about the election and it will be relevant and give me an opportunity to talk about things that matter. Secondly, elements in our life conspired in such a way, everything i was writing about was no longer taking place in 1948 but taking place now. Idea, a television machine, what i was looking at is a picture of the first Election Night broadcast in the cvs and the new media will change the way elections take place, social media doing the same thing. It was a massive surge in White Nationalism in the United States, in charlottesville. There was a massive wave of violence in africanamericans, this particular picture, 4 hours after he was honorably discharged, served in world war ii but an altercation, a white Police Officer is blinded and you see him being escorted by joe lewis, heavyweight fighter, orson welles got fired for speaking out for isaac littered. The whole story became politicized and part of the organization. With george floyd. The story breaks in the 1948 election and people all over the country, is there a communist conspiracy infiltrating these are the conversations in washington, feels relevant to that today. Here you have the fbi on the trail of a major president ial candidate with regards to a russian conspiracy. Here is Henry Wallace. A fascinating picture. So much to see but was wallace a huge for the kremlin in moscow . Now we know he wasnt but this was the conversation in 1948 and that is relevant today. This is the berlin airlift. During the 1948 election cycle he launches the berlin airlift. This is not an apples to apples comparison but during the election cycle we were nose to nose, fear and anxiety gripped the country. This is a different reason and is the reason i am talking from my Basement Office and not on stage. And and they are testing larger and larger weapons in the pacific. We get to harry truman. I want to give you a quote from a surprising document, this is Republican National committee memorandum. Is fair game for moscow. The year in which soviet russia will do everything in its power to influence the election here. Now i am going to introduce the four candidates. What i wanted to do in this book is follow all four candidates through their campaign odysseys in real time, to experience what america was experiencing but also the candidates themselves, the america they received leading to this climactic moment on november 2nd, 1948. Henry wallace was an extraordinary candidate, you can learn a lot from it. Wallace was the one candidate who breaks away from the democrats and says we have a new cold war ended is not the soviets fault. It is Harry Trumans for literally one can stop world war iii and that is me so he becomes candidate protest and to me it is an antiestablishment movement that goes through the 50s and 60s. We heard a lot from him. Wallaces politics were so controversial. When he goes to campaign in the south, he says i will not speaking any hall where an africanamerican or caucasian american can sit next to each other. I will not stand in a hotel where africanamerican is not here. When he gets in the south there are riots, a stabbing, he is pelted with tomatoes. Even as Vice President , in the entrance to a church, got in a physical altercation with the police trying to stop him. That was in amazing detail. You could actually see in a previous picture, amazing to see there were times during those rallies wallace would stand in crowds that were throwing eggs at him. I want some evidence i am in the United States of america. Strom thurmond during the 1940 election truman was the first president ial candidate to go after the africanamerican vote, segregates the military, becomes the first president to address the naacp and the first to hold a Campaign Rally in harlem, not everybody is happy about this. Strom for rent, war hero, governor of South Carolina launches a heads up this new dixiecrat party. This is the National Convention which he is nominated to run for president , i will give you one brief quote, on this night he says i want to tell you there is not enough troops in the army to force the Southern Army to break down segregation and admit the negro race into our homes and our churches. He wins four states on a platform of prosegregation White Supremacy and thomas dewey who everybody believes will be the first republican president in 16 years, we will talk about in a bit. This is the 1time the two candidates meet during the election cycle and harry truman leans in and says we move into the white house to do something about this. There were real issues with the white house. It was a limited firm. Back to truman. We will talk about him, and we start our conversation and hope that was useful. Host you can put up the pictures, start with dewey, thomas dewey, new york governor in his mid40s, already governed before and did what Rudy Giuliani to be in attorney general, to win cases. And governor frei while. Really giuliani played the dewey card. When he was attorney general he came to speak in new york and made it clear. He had his eye on the white house, only got the back room in the white house but he has yet to go there. Thomas dewey quite a character and has been an attack dog earlier on when he ran but lets talk a little bit about that. He was 30 points ahead at the beginning of the campaign. I was fascinated how fascinating i found him. I thought he would be a byproduct of the story. Hes not. Is a major character in the story. The way he came up in prominence was so extraordinary, from a small town, comes out of nowhere and becomes a young prosecutor in new york city and finds himself on this trail, a prosecutor, a lawyer and becomes a figure who takes down the mafia during the depression when there was a lot of mafia around it became famous as a prosecutor. How does that happen . In two movies he was portrayed by Humphrey Bogart on the big screen. Thomas dewey could successfully prosecute god, that is how he told it. By 1948 he was this was his third president ial candidate because he had been the guy everybody is set back in 1940, the year you were the future of the Republican Party. By the time 1948 comes he decides hes not going to run because he ran in 1944 and lost, came closer to defeating fdr than anybody did but felt in his heart he didnt want to suffer through losing a president ial election twice but had to be convinced to run so his story becomes very sympathetic. Host obviously everyone thought your book is clear that everyone thought, all the media, all the newspapers predicted he was going to win. Not a single newspaper predicted truman was going to win so the media was on his side and spent time after words wondering why they got it wrong like people in the media did in the 2016 election. How did we get that wrong . Polls were starting another element, their influence. Im sure they had polls before that but they became more influential. More media feels big to us right now. At that time the fact the radio was becoming ubiquitous the communication industry was ramping up. Pollsters were extraordinarily powerful and one of them actually wrote in his newspaper column i will not have this anymore. Why spend money on having a campaign doing this . There were two scenes for me writing about dewey that were so touching. One is where on Election Night, i will go back, he gets on a train to go to albany to the governors mention so sure he was going to win that he hold an impromptu meeting among all these reporters covering his campaign for months and tell them who is going to be in his cabinet. The secretary of state, heres going to be the secretary of treasury, he was sure he was going to win. The other scene i remember that was so touching to me is on Election Night he is in his suite at the Hotel Roosevelt with family and friends at some point it is not going to plan and he locked himself in a room with a yellow legal pad by himself and listens to the returns on the radio all night long and slowly realizes what is about to happen to him. Another element i felt very moved to talk about, is the republicans convention, they picked to do a bit it was a tight race. He was a progressive Teddy Roosevelt type election. And then taft, who was the son of the president taft. He was the leader of the conservatives. A lot of people thought he should be the nominee. So it was very close. But the conservative republicans were in control of congress. So what truman did was the platforms between deweys platform and truman platform are almost identical. And so he put a pin in this. I calling congress back to try to enact deweys platform. I thought that was. Host brilliant. Never gonna talk about the democratic National Convention were going to show peace of video and then will come back. I think you raise a really under full interesting point. Is that there is a line in the sand. Everyone understood this election was a line between the past in the future. The postworld war i shaping up. In which Political Party was going to be in charge and imprint their vision on america. In both Political Parties coming out of world war ii had to really figure out who they were and what they wanted. The republicans had an interesting situation. It was the conservative faction that was headed up by robert taft. Mr. Republican on capitol hill. And dooey who was a liberal. Think Teddy Roosevelt was a definition other Republican Party. I think republicans even through the primaries the oregon primary, fastening story. Dooey was a front runner all along pretty all descendents about to lose, this dark horse and all of a sudden they are neck and neck. An organ primaries going to decide it. They have the first ever, ever broadcast radio president ial debate. It was kind of neat you can look it up and watch it, listen to it on youtube today. Theres only one question, should communism be outlawed . And dooey being a prosecutor and won the nomination. So thats how it happened. But a lot of the republicans were very uncomfortable with this platform because a lot of it agreed with harry truman. Civic will go back to Harry Trumans maneuver against that. But anyway, they both did the same thing. They did these whistle stop tours everywhere. And it would cross each others paths and so on other truman had a very good joke about that. That dooey was following him everywhere but he wont be able to follow him did. [inaudible] sure, the end of the Campaign Came down to this amazing one, to punch or they visited the same five seats each one after the other part chicago, cleveland, boston, new york. Entering one of those dutchmen dooey had filed truman throughout the country entering one of them turned out to be the first daughters featured campaign or truman starts cracking needs jokes and does it on Live National radio totally off the cuff. He makes it up like theres this guy followed me everywhere i go. The whole storys following theres one place is not in foam and the crowd goes crazy. The Truman Library website is an amazing resource. Because you go there and you can actually listen to the speeches. They are all up on the website. That brings him live in their places too. Can interesting see the old pictures. The old pictures are kind of strange because they dont want the same as politicians do today. They dont seem to act the same. And they so young relatively speaking now. Anyway when the personal note about dooey, the end of the book if you bring everybody uptodate on the epilogue of different people, you mentioned dooey when he lost that he returned to the Governors Mansion in new york it was there for another six years and then went into private life and didnt do any more Public Service stuff. What he did was he went to new York Law Firm as the named partner. There is an old law firm from 1906, when he got put on the head of that dooey, valentine and art. Thats why started my legal career in 1984. And i worked for a partner who was in his early 50s. And he had done some work for dooey when dooey was running the place. Dooey had died and 70 want to think you mentioned 71 about 13 years later. Then one day we were chatting about something after vendor for six months and the partner said, you know, that dooey really scared the hell out of me. When i was in my ninth year. So is right around then, his upper partner. And dooey asked him to do a special tax memo on an issue i didnt know anything about. And im not a tax lawyer im a corporate lawyer. So he asked me to it do it i had to do a jet very quickly got all done it was like a 20 page thing. So then i gave it timothys walking out the door to go to florida to flight on florida for the weekend. And that weekend he died of a heart attack. And i have always wondered whether my memo was so bad it gave him a heart attack. [laughter] host its hard to be. [inaudible] talking red sox slugger charlie they played golf and he was getting ready to go to the airport to fly to washington so he could go to the Engagement Party of Richard Nixons daughter in the white house on that day. Thats what was happening. Guest yeah. Theyre all kinds of other stores which i wont bring up. Inside the firm about the way he ran the firm. He clearly took it out on the law firm that he was the president. Tell everybody shot. So truman, the last time we talked to had the book the accidental president pretty talk about how we got into the position to become the president of course to become the Vice President fdr. Varied usual story. This little bit of backgrounds of people have an idea about where this guy came from. And why as a person i looked it up it was very interesting. He had the highest popularity rating of any president ever and hes also had the lowest. It was like 91 right after world war ii ended in august with the japanese. And it was as low as 22. Twentytwo is never reached, jump is never an oblong 30 george w. Bush went out about 35, terminal and onto 22. Think it gives you a little idea of how unpopular he got a certain point. Little background on what he did. To make sure. I would just encourage people to start looking this is why the most dramatic pictures ive ever seen in my life. Now what you are seeing here is harry truman with a president ial speech of 35 words he comes above powerful man in the world. And this is what my book, the accidental president is about. Its very much the state of the Vice President. Never supposed to be the Vice President takes lead time of the book to explain that very interesting story. He realizes when he comes Vice President that president roosevelt was very sick. Most people understand what is happening. Hes the Vice President and never spin the mail out of a jam mayor of the city. Never governed a state, no College Degree and really has no ideas going on in the white house. In into this new regime he dies in georgia. Truman finds out about this hes rushed to the white house this is what youre looking at here to the left is margaret first daughter, only child. And he became the president of the United States. That was by accident and those are his words. Hes ushered into her room she is the secretary of war and the secretary says oh by the way we have a secret we have to the secret we have to tell you about. But i cant tell you what it is. Speak goes homes with tiny little apartment on connecticut avenue and he is exhausted and terrified. He has a ham sandwich and buttermilk and goes to bed. One thing about truman as he was remarkably talented in moments of pressure so he goes to sleep. This is the moment when he walks up in the middle of the night that night and best trumans the first lady of the United States never wanted to be never wanted to live in washington right whats up in the middle the night shes sitting up on her bed and of course that separate beds. And shes sobbing hysterical and hes like this going to be toug tough. He unites the nation, we win the war and everything is going great. There is this amazing story is demand from nowhere, unites american blah blah blah. Then all of a sudden hes the president at a time when the country is moving its peacetime and nothing goes right. But nothing would have gone right no matter who was president. I had to happen economically in terms of migration of americans, all of this stuff it just was not going to work. And americans are immediate like this guy is a loser, we went ou out. Theyre tired of the Democratic Party, theyre tired of the new deal and truman digs in and said no or grant to continue wit