Welcome to the Commonwealth Club, im george hammond, chair of the forum which organized todays events. Im happy to welcome back a. J. Baime who was here a year and half or so ago and his last book in this time we have him here virtually from his home and we will talk about his new book the 1948 election so we are going back 72 years for another Election Year and youll be amazed at exactly how similar it sounds in some ways and in other ways very different and one of the difference is the politicians were younger then so that is one big difference but a. J. , take it away and tell us about the overview of the book, a very good read by the way. Thank you. I want to say a couple of things first. Thank you so much for having me and the Commonwealth Club is a wonderful place to be and here we are going through painandsuffering and i know for myself im just reminding why i fell in love with reading when i was six years old because books can transform or transport you to another time and place and for me thats been a blessing. Now, regarding my last time i was a few, i started this book back in 2017 to talk about the accident of president and i planned this book to come out during the 2020 election cycle because i thought this is a book about the 1940 election when Dewey Defeats Truman but it will be relevant and give me opportunity to talk about things that matter but two things happened that i did not expect. Doing the research i found a whole bunch of material that i did not expect to find and secondly elements in our life conspired in such a way that it began to feel as i wrote the book that everything i was writing about was no longer taking place in 1948 but taking place now. I want to show you a few pictures to give you an idea, concrete idea so in 1948 was the first election to play out on the Television Machine so what you are looking at is a picture of the first election i broadcast on cbs and here we are a new kind of media will change the way elections take place and of course, today we have social media doing the exact same thing so here is an image that will startle you. I hope it startles you. And 9048 there was a massive surge in White Nationalism in the United States. This was charlottesville. In 9048 there was a massive wave of violence against African Americans and this particular picture you are looking at, this is a man name isaac whittier four hours after he was releas released, honorably discharged from the United States army and served in world war ii and had an altercation with a white Police Officer and was blinded and became here he is being escorted by the heavyweight fighter and orson welles got fired from his radio show for speaking out for isaac and the whole story of what happened to him became politicized and became part of a political conversation in a way that we are feeling exactly the same way now with george floyd. The story breaks during the 1940 election and suddenly there so much talk in washington and people all over the country trying to figure out is there a communist conspiracy infiltrating washington and what is the fact and what is the Conspiracy Theory and these are conversations they were having in washington and all over the country among the election of 1948 and certainly that feels relevant today. To relevant. The fbi on the trail of a major president ial political candidate with regards to a possible russian conspiracy and this is such a fascinating picture. There is so much to see but was wallace a stooge for the kremlin in moscow . Now he know he wasnt but again this is a conversation in 1948 and certainly that is relevant today. This is the berlin code during the 1948 election cycle truman watches the berlin airlift and this is not apples to apples comparison but during the election cycle and 48 we were nose to nose with the soviets in the brink of world war iii with fear and anxiety gripping the country and that is happening in our election cycle now for completely different reason and that is exactly why the reason im talking to you from my Basement Office and not on the stage. Couple more to go. This is one picture that should not feel relevant today and we should all cross our fingers and toes that it remains that way. It is amazing to think of the 1940 election cycle Nuclear Bombs are literally going off as we tested larger and larger weapons. Ultimately we got to Harriet Truman. One thing i want to make one last point before i start for very briefly talk about the kennedys and 48 i want to give you one quote from the surprising document i found to all my years of research and this is the republic initial Committee Memorandum written november 15, 1947 so just about a year before the 48 election and the United States of america United States of america is fair game brought moscow it has been four years and as far as anyone sees it in 1948 would be the year in which soviet russia will do everything in its power to influence the election here. That feels familiar. And now i will give you a brief introduction on the conversation will begin. What i really wanted to do with this book is follow all four candidates through their campaign odysseys in real time to weed them out so the reader can experience what america was experiencing but also the candidate themselves and the american may receive it and leading to this climactic moment on november 2, 1948. Here is Henry Wallace and wallace was extraordinary candidate who won the states but his story is fascinating and wallace was the one candidate that breaks away from the democrats and says hey, we got this new cold war and it is not known walts fault but Harry Trumans fault and there is only one man in the country that can stop world war iii and that is me so he becomes the candidate of protest and to me he is the beginning of the antiestablishment movement that goes right through the 1950s and 60s and you can see on the left ear that you heard a lot from him in the future so wallaces politics were so controversial when he goes to campaign in the south he says i will not speak in any hall were an African American and caucasian american can sit next to each other and i will not stand in a hotel or napkin american is not permitted. So when he gets to the south there are riots and stabbing and he is routinely pelted with tomatoes and a very Brave Campaign he ran. Even his Vice President going into work to go through the colored interest to a church got in a physical altercation and a violent one with the police trying to stop them and he was a u. S. Senator and that was in amazing detail. And you can see in the previous picture its amazing to think that there were times during those rallies when wallace would stand in front of crowds and were and throwing eggs at him saying i want some evidence that i am in the United States of america. Now Strom Thurmond, during the 1948 election truman was the first president ial candidate to really go after the African American vote. Segregates a military and becomes the first president to address the naacp and the first president to hold a Campaign Rally for the spiritual home of black america and so Strom Thurmond, war hero, governor of south china heads up this new party and this is their National Convention in which he is nominated to run for president and i will give you one brief quote from what he saying in this moment. On the site he says i want to tell you ladies in johns mind theres not enough troops in the army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit the negro race into our theaters and swimming pools and our theaters and into our churches. He wins four states on that platform of pro segregation and White Supremacy and finally, thomas dewey who everyone knows is about to become the first republican president in 16 years and we talked about him quite a bit so i will not say much now except for this, this is the one time the two candidates made during the election cycle and Harriet Truman leaves over and says tom, we move into the white house do something about the plumbing, will you . [laughter] there were real issues with the white house, right . There were in fact and they were literally known what crumbling i should say. Back to truman, we will talk about him so why dont we start our conversation and i hope that was useful. Thats great. So you can put up the pictures and we can start with dewey. Thomas dewey new york governor young in his mid 40s or Something Like that when he was running and it already been governed before and he did what giuliani but he imitated him but he took the rose to public power that giuliani tried to do which was to be an attorney general, attacked the mafia, when cases and then go on either to new york providence or in this case, new york governor for a while and i know giuliani played the card because when he was attorney general he came to speak he made it very clear he was going to play exactly the same political thing because giuliani had his eye on the white house as everyone knows but he only has the back room in my house are now but he has yet to go there. Thomas dewey, quite a character. He had been an attack dog, as you said earlier on when he ran but he ran a Different Campaign so talk about that and he was 30 points had or Something Like that at the beginning of the campaign. To me, i was very fascinated at how fascinating i found him and i thought he was going to be a byproduct story and a minor character and he is not and very much a merry major character because the way that he came up into prominence was so extraordinary and from a small town comes out of nowhere, michigan, comes down and becomes a young prosecutor in new york city and finds himself on the trail brilliant prosecutor, brilliant lawyer and becomes this figure who takes on the mafia in the 1930s during the depression where there was a lot of mafia around and he became famous as a prosecutor that in two different movies hes betrayed by Humphrey Bogart on the big screen and thomas dewey could successfully prosecute god and that is how he came up and that was giuliani so high that 1948 he had already been, this is his third president ial candidate because he had been the guy that everybody said all the way back in 1940 you are the future of their Publican Party and by the 1948 comes he decides he will not run because he ran in 1944 and lost it came closer than defeating fdr than anybody did but felt in his heart that he didnt want to suffer through losing president ial election twice and he had to be convinced to run so his story becomes very [inaudible] obviously, everyone thought, your book is so clear that everyone thought all the media in all the newspapers predicted that he would win and no predicted no newspaper predicted that truman when it would win, they spent time after words wanting how they got it wrong just like people in the media have done that in the 2016 election how do we get that wrong with the polls and everything. Polls were just starting then and that was another element that you or at least you are influenced when im sure they had polls before that but they became much more influential s so just as more media feels big to us at that time the fact that radio was becoming and communication industry was ramping up so posters were extraordinarily powerful and one of them wrote in the newspaper column and said im not going have posters anymore because its pointless and why spend money on having that campaign if dewey will win. I can tell you this, there were two teams for meat writing about dewey that was so touching and the one is where on Election Night, no, i will go back, on the night he holds his final Campaign Rally in Madison Square garden he gets on the train after words to take the train back up to albany to the Governors Mansion and is so sure he will win he holds an impromptu meeting among all these reporters that had been covering his campaign for months and he tells them who will be in his cabinet he says you cant tell anyone and this will be the secretary of state, secretary of treasury and he was so sure he would win but the other scene that was so touching to meet was on Election Night hes in his suite at the hotel with his family and friends and at some point the night is not going at plant and locks himself in the room with the yellow legal pad by himself and just listens and turns on the radio all night long and slowly realizes what is about to happen to him. Solitary man on that it. He definitely left his mark anyway on the rePublican Party very influential and he was progressively public and i think that another element that i thought was very machiavellian move that you talk about that truman does is that the republicans right after their convention they picked dewey but it was a tight race and there was a progressive Teddy Roosevelt type republican and taft who was the son of the president taft he was the leader of the conservatives and a lot of people thought he should be the nominee so there was very close but the conservative republicans were in control of the congress so what truman did was the platforms between deweys platform and trumans platform were almost identical and that is what you wrote. Thats right. So he put a pin in this by calling congress back to try to enact deweys platform and i thought that was yes, we will talk about the democratic National Convention and we show a piece of video social we will come back but i thank you raised a wonderful and interesting point that coming out of world war ii it was as if they were aligned in the sand and everyone stood this election was going to be aligned between the past and the future in the post world was shaping up and 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 figure out who they were and what they stood for and the republicans had an interesting situation because they had a rivalry within the party that was the conservative fashion that was run by or headed up by robert taft, mr. Republican on capitol hill and dewey who was a liberal and a liberal with a republican name because he been raised to think Teddy Roosevelt was the definition of the rePublican Party and so at the republican, even through the primaries that oregon primary fascinating story was a front honor all along and is about to lose and taft comes up as a star course and then their neck and neck and the primaries will decide it and they have the first ever, ever broadcast radio president ial debate and its neat because you can look it up and watch it and you can listen to it on youtube today and theres only one question, should communism be outlawed in dewey, of course, being a prosecutor won the nomination that is how it happened but the republicans were comfortable with his platform because a lot of it agreed with harry truman. We will come back to Harry Trumans maneuver against that but anyway, they both did the same thing and did the whistle stop tours and crossing paths and so on other truman had a very good joke about that that dewey was following him everywhere but would you tell that joke . Sure, at the end of the campaign it came down to this amazing one, two punch where they visited the same five cities each of them one after the other, chicago, cleveland, boston, new york. By that i mean for cities. During one of those dewey had followed truman thought the country and during one of them turns out to be the first daughter favorite speech of the campaign where truman starts cracking these jokes and does it on Live National radio totally off the cuff and makes up like theres this guy following me everywhere i go and he talks the whole series out and says theres one place he will not follow me in the crowd goes crazy and the true Truman Library is an amazing website and you can listen to the speeches that they are all up on the website so they are fun to listen to. Brings them live when their voices are thereto. The old pictures it stinks because they dont look the same as politicians do today they dont seem fake acts amen they look so young, relatively speaking. Anyway, one little personal note about dewey, at the end of the book you bring everyone up to date on the epilogue of this new mentioned that dewey when he lost that he returned to the Governors Mansion in new york and was there for almost six years and then went into private life did not do any more Public Service stuff and what he did was went to a new York Law Firm as the main partner and there was an old law firm from 1906 on valentine bush and wood and got put ahead of that in dewey valentine became very famous firm and i, thats why start my legal career in 1984 and i worked for a partner who was in his early 50s and he had done some work for dewey when dewey was running the place and dewey had died and 71, i think, as you mentioned those as this