Clipper and George Hammond culture of the amenities forum which organized todays event. Im happy to welcome back a. J. Baime if we had them here you in half or so ago from the accidental president. His last book, and this time we have a virtually from his home, and were going to talk about his new book about a 1940 election. Were going back 72 years to another electionyear and you will be amazed at exactly how similar it sound in some ways. Another with a different but in some ways. Whats different is the politicians were all younger than they are today. Thats one big difference. But a. J. , take it away and tell us about the overview of the book. Just a very good read by the way. Very good read. Outstanding. I want to say a couple things first. Thank you so much for having the. The the Commonwealth Club is a wonderful place to be and you are doing this virtual. A lot of people are going to painandsuffering china for myself im just reminding why i fell in love with reading when i was six because books can really transport you to another time and place and to me during all of this has been a blessing. Regarding my last moment with you, id always tried this book back in 2017 when i talked about the accidental president and i plant this book to come out during a 2020 a 20 election cye because i thought this this isk about the making 40 election, United States. It will give me an opportunity to talk about things that matter. But two things happen that he didnt expect. One is doing the research i found whole bunch of material i really didnt expect to find and secondly elements the life conspired in such a way that you begin to feel as a is writing the book and everything is writing about was no longer taking place in 1948 people taking place now. I i would suggest a few pictures to give an idea, concrete idea when talk that the 9040 is is a first election to plant on the television machine. What youre looking at is a picture of the first election broadcast on cbs. Here we are a new kind meeting is going to change the way elections take place and, of course, today we have social media doing the exact same thing. Heres an image that is going to start at you. I it startles you. In 1948 the was a massive surge surge in White Nationalism in the United States. This is charlottesville. In 1940 there was a massive, massive wave of violence against african americans, this particular picture youre looking at come this is a man named isaac wickard, four hours after he was released honorably discharged from the United States army, served in world war ii. He had an altercation with a white Police Officer and he was blinded. He became you see them the escorted by joe come the heavyweight fighter. Orson welles got fired from his radio show for speaking out for isaac wickard. The whole story of what happened to him became politicized and became part of the political conversation in a way we are feeling exactly the same way now with george floyd. The alger hiss story breaks during 1940 election. Sadly there so much talk in washington and people all over the country trying to figure out how is there a communist conspiracy infiltrating washington . What is the fact, what is the conspiracy theory. These are conversations there having in washington and all over the country among the electric in 1940, serving that feels relevant today. To relevant. I know. Fbi on betrayal of a major president ial political candidate with regard to a possible russian conspiracy. Heres Henry Wallace come such a fascinating picture. I could look at this picture forever. Theres so much to see. But was wallace a stooge for the kremlin and moscow . Was a . Now we know he wasnt but again this is the conversation 1940 and thats relevant today. This is the berlin airlift. Truman launches the berlin airlift. This is not an apples to apples comparison but during the election cycle in 48 we were nose to nose with the soviets on the break world war iii, fear and anxiety gripped the country and that is happening in our election cycle now for completely different reason and that is exactly 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 feel relevant today and we should all cross our fingers and toes that it remains that we get its amazing to think during the 1940 election cycle Nuclear Bombs are literally going off as we are testing larger and larger weapons in the pacific. Ultimately we get to harry truman. One thing i want to make one last point before i start very briefly talking about the candidates the 48, i want to give you one quote from the most surprising document i found through all my years of research. This is a Republican NationalCommittee Memorandum written november 15, 1947 so just about eggs exactly give before the 40 election. I will give you one since. The United States of america is fair game for moscow and has been for years. And as far as anyone willing to see figure 1948 will be the year of which soviet russia will do everything in its power to influence the election here. Certainly that feels familiar. Yes. Im going to give you a brief introduction of the four four candidates and a conversation will begin. What i really want to do in this book is follow all four candidates to their campaign odysseys in real time, so the reader can really experience what america was experiencing but also candidates themselves. The america they were seeing all leading up to this climactic moment on november 2, 1948. So heres Henry Wallace. Wallace was an extraordinary candidate who won no states but a story assassinating and we can learn a lot from it. Wallace was of one candidate, breaks away from the democrats and says hey, we have this new cold war, and is not the soviets fault. Its harry truman fault. He says that only women in this country who can stop world war iii and thats me. He becomes a candidate of protest and to me hes really the beginning of an antiestablishment movement that goes right through the 1950s and 60s. You can can see on the left that people seeger singing and you heard a lot from him in the future. Wallace politics were so controversial, when he goes to campaign in the south he says i will not speak in any hall were an africanamerican or caucasian american cant sit next to each other. I will not stay in any hotel word africanamerican is not permitted. When he gets to the south there are riots, the stabbing. He routinely held with tomatoes. It was a very Brave Campaign that he ran. Even as Vice President going into, just to go through the entrance to a church, got in a physical altercation, a violent one with the police trying to stop him. He was a u. S. Senator. I was in amazing detail. You can see in the previous picture is amazing to thank there were times during those rallies where wallace would stand in front of crowds ever throwing eggs at him saying i want some evidence that ive in the United States of america. Okay, Strom Thurmond. During the 1948 election truman was the first president ial candidate to really go after the africanamerican vote. Segregates the military. He becomes the first president to address the naacp and the first president to hold a Campaign Rally in harlem, the spiritual home of black america. Not everybody is happy about this. So Strom Thurmond, were here, government South Carolina launches, headset this new dixie Dixiecrat Party. Hes now made to run for president and going to give you one brief quote of what he is saying in this moment. On this night he says, i want to tell you ladies and gentlemen, that theres not enough troops in the army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit that negro race into our movie theaters, swimming pools, homes and churches. He wins for states on that platform of prosegregation White Supremacy. Finally thomas dewey. Everybody believes is about to become the first republican president in 16 years. We will talk about him quite a bit so i will not say much note except for this. This is the one time the two candidates meet during the election cycle, and harry truman leans over and says, tom, when you move into the white house do something about the plumbing, will you . They were real issues with the white house, right . There were, in fact. The white house was literally crumbling. And back to truman. We are going to talk a lot about him so why dont we start our conversation, and i hope that was useful. Thats great. We can put up the pictures. We can start with dewey. Thomas dewey, new york governor, young, right, in his mid40s, Something Like that when he was running here get always been government before. He did what giuliani obviously imitated him but he took the road to public power that giuliani tried to do, which was to be attorney general, attack the mafia, when cases, then go on either to new york province, new york governor for a while, and i know that giuliani played that card because when he was attorney general he came to speak in new york at a place and he made it very clear he was going to play exactly the same political thing because giuliani had his eye on his white house as everyone knows. Hes only got the back room and the white house now, but he does get to go there. In any case, thomas dewey quite a character and he had been an attack dog as you said earlier on when he went by demand a different campaign. Maybe talk about that. He was 30point ahead come Something Like that at the beginning of the campaign. Dewey, to me i was very fascinated how fascinating i found him. I thought he is going to be a byproduct of the story, a minor character. Hes not. Hes very much a major character in the story that i wrote because the way that he came up into prominence was so extraordinary turkeys from a smalltown, comes comes out of nowhere, michigan, comes down and becomes a young prosecutor in new york city and finds himself on this trail, really, brilliant prosecuting lawyer and he becomes this figure takes and the mosque in the 1930s during the depression when there was a lot of mafia round. He became famous as a prosecutor. How does that happen, that in two different movies is portrayed by Humphrey Bogart on the big screen. People used to say thomas dewey could successfully prosecute thats how we came up, just like giuliani. By the time 1948 came he had already been come this is his third president ial candidate because he had been the guy that nobody said all the way back in 1940, the year the you the future the Republican Party. By the time 1948 comes he decides hes not going to rent because he ran in 1944 and is lost. He came close to defeating fdr than 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 and so this story becomes very [inaudible] and obviously anyone thought, your book is very clear that everyone thought, all the media, all the newspapers predicted that he is going to win. Not a single newspaper predicted to truman was going to win come Something Like that, at least not of the major ones. Media was on his side and they spent time afterwards wondering why they got it all wrong, just like people in the media have done that in the 2016 election. How did we get that wrong with polls and everything . Polls were just starting then. That was another element, at least their influence. Im sure they had polls before that but they became much more influential. In the era, just media feels make to us now. At that time the fact that radio is becoming ubiquitous. The communication industry was ramping up. Some pollsters were extraordinarily powerful and one of them actually wrote, that newspaper columns turkeys that im not going to have polls anymore because why spend the money on having a campaign . Dewey is going to win. I can tell you there were two magazines for me writing about dewey that was attaching, and the one is where on Election Night no, i will go back. The night he holds his final Campaign Rally in Madison Square garden, he gets on a train afterwards to take the train back up to albany to the Governors Mansion and he soldiers going to what he holds an impromptu meeting among all these reporters could been covering his campaign for months. He tells them whos going to be in his captain. He says you can tell anybody. Heres secretary of state, the sector treasury because you sure hes going to win. The other seat i could remember that was attaching to me was on Election Night hes in his suite at the hotel is up with the thumb and friends at some point in the night its not going as planned and relaxants are in the room with a yellow legal pad by himself and he just listens, turns on the radio all night long and slowly realizes whats about to happen to him. Yeah, solitary man on that edge. He definitely left his mark anyway on the Republican Party. Very influential. He was a progressive republican. Another element that i felt was very machiavelli improved and t you talk about that treatment is is republicans right after their convention, they picked dewey but it was a tight race in their, he was a progressive Teddy Roosevelt type republican. And then taft who was the son, right, the son of president taft, he was the leader of the conservatives, and a lot of people thought he should be the nominee. There was very close but the conservative republicans were in control of the congress. So what truman did was, a platforms between dewey platform and truman platform almost identical thats what you wrote, right . Thats right. So he put up in in this by calling congress back to try to enact dewey platform. I thought that was were going to talk about the Democratic National convention and i think shell do a piece of media. Were going to come back to that but you raise a wonderful come interesting point. Coming out of world war ii, there was a point in this into a debate as to this election is going to be a light between the past and future. The post war world was shaping up and which Political Party is going to be in charge and in print division on america next both Political Parties come out of world war ii had to figure out who they were and what they stood for, and republicans had an interesting situation because they had a rivalry within the party. It was the conservative faction that was run, headed up by robert taft and dewey who was a liberal. He was a liberal within Republican Base because he been raised to think that Teddy Roosevelt was the definition of the Republican Party. At the republican, even to the primaries, the oregon primary, fascinating story. Dewey was a front run along and all of a sudden hes about to lose to this dark horse and all the sudden neck and neck and oregon primary was decided and they have the first ever, ever broadcast radio president ial debate. Its kind of neat because you can look it up and watch it. Listen to it on youtube today but theres only one caution. Should communism be outlawed . Dewey of course being a prosecutor won one denominatio. Thats how it happened but a lot of the republicans were very uncomfortable 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. They both did these whistle stop to respond to it and crossing each others although truman had a very good joke about that. That dewey was falling and everybody will be able to follow him you want to tell that joke. Was sure. At the end of the campaigns, it came down to this amazing onetwo punch when he visited the same five cities come each of them one after the other. Chicago, cleveland, austin, new york. I that i need four state. During one of those, dewey have followed truman throughout the country during one of them turned out to be the first daughter margarets favorite speech of the campaign where truman start cracking these jokes and he does it on Live National radio, totally offthecuff, he makes up this story like theres this guy followed me everywhere i go, antitells whole story, hes following the and theres one place hes not going to follow me, and the crowd goes crazy. The Truman Library website is an amazing resource. Because you can go there and you can listen to these speeches. Theyre all up on the website and there fast any, a lot of fun to listen to. Brings them a lie when the voices are there. Its interesting seeing the old pictures and an old pictures its strange because they dont look the same as politicians do today. They dont act the same and as they said they looked young relatively speaking now. Anyway, when little personal note about dewey, at the end of the book when you bring everybody uptodate on the epilogue of different people. You mentioned that dewey when he lost, return to the compass make in york and was there for another six shoes and we did 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 named partner. It was an old law firm from like 1906 on Valentine Bush versus palmer and woodward. He became a very famous for. Thats why started my legal career in 1984 and i worked for a partner who was in his early 50s. He had done some work for dewey when dewey was running the