This was recorded in clifton park, new york. It is about an hour and 10 minutes. Good morning everyone. Welcome to the clifton park has halfmoon public library. We are very pleased to have David Pietrusza to talk about his latest book 1948 Harry Trumans improbable victory and the year that transformed america. David is the author of a number of books and he is here to talk about his book about 1920 the year of six president s, 1960 lbj versus jfk versus nixon, and ted williams my life of pictures. He has also written and produced a wma hq documentary local heroes, baseball and Capital District diamonds. Reviewed for his hairy german book talk about how likely it is, eliminating portraits of portrait support candidates and the evenhanded appraisal of truman is especially compelling. The journey he takes is to election day is one he is definitively lead in his past his work has been compared to theodore whites classic them a king of the president series. After three stayed home runs by think pietrusza is the undisputed champion of chronicling americans president ial campaigns. Heals a masters degree in history the university at albany and is served on city council in amsterdam new york and is the recipient of the 2011 excellence in letters and arts award of the Alumni Association at the university of albany. In addition to doing president ial biographies and elections he is also a member of saber a, the baseball historians organization. He is a casey winning judge and jury and edgar Award Finalist for his book by arnold rusty. Ladies and gentlemen, David Pietrusza. Pietrusza. Thank you natalie and its great to be back here again. The question that people always ask me about my books is, why did you write this book . And americans claim to hate politics, but we love the elections. We love sports. My sports background, your sports background, the whole country is crazy about it. We love the competition. We love the 162 games series and things going down to the 7th game of the world series. We love the home run and we love bill buckner and pookie wilson. 1948 is one of those bill black mayor moment in elections. Elections. This is when the underdog comes back and pulls out what everyone has written. That is Harry Trumans improbable victory. That is the year, that is the election that was the great iconic comeback, the great surprise, the great surprise when the pundits are proven so spectacularly wrong. That is another thing we love her kuwait love to be smarter than all the guys you see on tv and who are writing in the newspaper columns and harry turman, who was just in ordinary harry, the only, the only president of the 20th century who doesnt go onto college. Hes a high school graduate. Not the only one since, not the last one, the only one in the 20th century. You have to go back to andrew johnson, to Abraham Lincoln to find such a common man. And not just the common man but a fellow who has been a failure at business. His haberdashery shop in Downtown Kansas City goes bus left to pay off the debts for 20 years and he pays them all off. He will declare bankruptcy. He is a standard of honor and he will pay all his debts. He also has a standard of honor which marked him in his earlier political career go back where he is the product and he is known for really most of his active political career as being the product of one of americas most attack you rarely corrupt political machines. This is something that like al smith in 1928, is never really able transcend. He is a product of tammany and he gets whooped by Herbert Hoover for a note in their of other reasons. Harry truman is the product of the pendergast machine in kansas city. He is the head of the county government. They steal millions and millions of dollars. Harry truman never takes a time. He has to kind of wink at what goes on in some cases. Yes to get things done. He would sit down. He would sit down and pour out his soul in private letters which he never sent to anyone. He would hole up in these motels and right these letters that were found decades after his death and he would wrestle with these questions cover. Am i a Public Servant or am i a crook . Am i doing the right thing . He is conflicted by this but he stays in this machine and he is determined to get out of local government. He wants to be a congressman. But he is such a puppet, he is such a nobody even at that time that is like no hairy, you cannot be a congressman. Can i be governor . No, you cant be governor. When the machine can find anyone to run the United States senate in 1934, ok. We now return to our regularlyscheduled programming. So, the machine cant find anyone to run for senate, United States senate in 1934. You would think they could. Its going to be a big democratic year. Harry pulls it off but he goes into the senate. Again, he is like a nobody, nobody and then disaster strikes. 1939, pendergast on good friday goes to the federal pen for corruption and people say well, thats the end of harry truman now. Who is going to want him . Who is going to want this pendergast puppet that still remains in the United States senate. He is finished so he faces a threeway primary. And he wins. He goes to all the small towns and courthouses, the masonic temples and every other place he knows in missouri and while some, pulls it off and that is a valuable lesson when it comes to 1948 when the Democratic Party is split once again but he is back in the senate. But who is he . He is given an assignment. Look into all these military bases. The contracting things to win the war against hitler. Are we getting the bang for the buck . Are we spending our money wisely . Perry chairman goes around, gets in his car and really no staff, delivers a remarkable report that no we are not. We are wasting a hell of a lot of money while our boys are fighting and dying in europe and north africa and the South Pacific and we have got to stop it. Here is how. People say gee whiz, he did that intelligently, honestly in a nonpartisan manner. Maybe there is something to this harry truman guy. Which takes us to 1944. Franklin roosevelt is looking for a fourth term. The war is still on and to 1940, he has dumped his Vice President , john vance gartner, who had grown a bit too conservative for the new deal and he puts in henry a. Wallace the secretary of agriculture. Who is a very leftwing kind of new age kind of guy or back them. And he forces wallace on the ticket in 1940. The Democratic Party does not really want him. And in 1944, roosevelt is getting the word back, you keep this guy on the ticket, he could cost you a million votes. Roosevelt is a great politician. He knows what this means. And he says, i have forced Henry Wallace on the party once. I cant do it twice. I cant do it twice. He has got to go. Not in so many words, not in so many words but he eventually slits wallaces throat. Who did he replace them with . The guy he replaced them with is a guy that is not too southern, not to northern, not too conservative, not too liberal, respected by the union but not really in the pocket of the union and that is harry truman. He fits in all the slots. They put him on the ticket in 1944 and by april 1945 Franklin Roosevelt is dead. Harry truman goes to the white house and says to eleanor roosevelt, can i pray for you . And she says no, we need to pray for you because you are the fellow who is in trouble now. He starts off very popular. The war is won, tomek loans are dropped on japan its vj v. J. Day and americans are smiling, and harry chairman reaches a popularity level of 87 . Transit gloria monday. That goes downhill real fast and people, some of it is beyond his control but there are reasons why his popularity drops. He is not Franklin Roosevelt. Right now all the republicans are saying, who is the next reg and . Boy we miss reagan a lot. Back then that was, my god, my god how we miss fdr him on, the democrats. Harry german was no fdr. So, there is a longing for the lost leader then and also he is prone to certain gaps. His appointments are not always the strongest. There is talk of a missouri gang as there was an ohio gang with warren harding, people who are hangers on, small timers who are put in positions way above their abilities. You see the old new dealers being shoved out of the cabinet, not just Henry Wallace who was fired by harry truman for being a prostalinist really, giving speeches against germans foreignpolicy, but you also have where, with harry truman, the country turns against the party and the leader which brings us into war. If you dont believe me, ask either bush. Ask lyndon johnson, Woodrow Wilson after world war i what happened to the Democratic Party. What happens is winston churchill, a pretty good war leader in 1945. He is out the door. So this is a normal thing, the readjustment means a lot of things get thrown out including parties in power. Republicans take the house and the senate in 1946. They are on a roll. Harry truman keeps going up and down in popularity. This spring of 1948, he is down in the low 30s in terms of popularity. And its not only a Republican Democratic thing going on here. The Democratic Party is leading three ways, not just two ways, not just you have got some sort of oh, carter, Teddy Kennedy thing going on. Not a George Bush Pat Buchanan thing going on, but its being split, the left, the center and the right. On the right, you have the southern segregationist democrats. Franklin roosevelt had talked a good game with black civil rights, but he really hadnt done anything. Remember that the army and navy in world war ii are still segregated. There is no move to desegregate anything in the country. Harry truman proposes a big Civil Rights Program at the beginning of 1948. The southern democrats are simply aghast by this and beyond that they feel personally betrayed because they had thought of harry truman as one of their own. His mother had been in an internment camp during the civil war. Confederate sympathizers. If you look at harrys statements and you look at his private correspondence, he is not exactly at leading heart liberal on the topic. But, he puts this forward in the southerners are aghast. They Start Talking about a strategy in which they will punish harry chairman. They will punish the Democratic Party and make the Democratic Party come to its senses on civil rights, states rights and all of these things and they will do this by putting the election into the Electoral College and brokering a deal. One of the people involved in that is a young man, young governor from South Carolina named j. Strom thurmond, decorated war veteran, former judge and considered at the time to be kind of a progressive liberal nuke deal kind atomic rat, the new base of the south except that once he gets caught up in this one South Carolina legislators Start Talking it against the truman Civil Rights Program he joins with the dixiecrats largely centered in mississippi and alabama going to these regional readings to say what can we do about harry truman . Now the irony of this, the irony of this when thurmond starts being carried away by this talking about how federal government bayonets will not force black people into our swimming pools and into our homes and our schools, the irony is that j. Strom thurmond had a black illegitimate daughter. That is one wing of the Democratic Party. The other wing which seems actually to be more troublesome than harry truman is the Henry Wallace wang and that is the extreme leftwing of the Democratic Party the on the new dealers, beyond the eleanor roosevelt, beyond that Hubert Humphreys which is in many cases communist dominated, communist party United States of america, not just leftwing, not just radical whatever but actual Party Members and has wallace, wallace has a problem. Both times involving harry chairman. You would not be human unless you were bitter about this. He had this bitter former Vice President of the United States with leftwing proclivities anyway and now he has got two reasons, two reasons to be against harry truman personally and he is talked into not a primary challenge against german but a thirdparty challenge. What is their strategy . Again, what is their strategy . Their strategy is being dictated from extreme leftwingers from the people being controlled by really, when you get down to it. It has to be there again not trying to win an election but to send a message to truman and say look, you change or foreignpolicy harry truman because we will punish you and we will give elections to the republic. And then we will go back to the way it was undefined on roosevelt with a guy we dealt with in 1944, the communist party of the United States had have actually endorsed Franklin Roosevelt. It was kind of one Big Happy Family at one point. So, truman is being squeezed on the left and on the right. He is in trouble and how can he hold together a coalition which will have enough electoral votes to win if the south is going to be stolen away from them by the dixiecrats and where does Henry Wallace hold his strength . Not all over the country but in big states like new york, new york city, in southern california, in illinois where he can be the balance of power in those states and tip stage which a democrat should when in the republican column. So, the republican column. Who is the republican going to be . The same answer at some point as we have now looking forward to 2012, a very crowded field. Typical, typical when you have a president and incumbent who is vulnerable. The opportunity is there and a lot of opposition candidates come out. And the for frontrunners that year, governor thomas e. Dewey of new york. New york is the big kahuna, 45 electoral votes. You have a big leg up on the presidency. Harold e. Stassen, former governor of minnesota, now i punchline in american political history because he ran and lost so many times and ran and lost so many times with absolutely no chance of success. Robert a. Taft, senator from ohio, leader of the congressional republicans, mr. Republican, mr. Conservative but not charismatic and the 4th is not even in the country. The general of the army, jug, Douglas Mccarthy and tokyo running the former, i guess still present empire of japan and a popular guy but can he pull it off from faraway . He doesnt. He has entered into the wisconsin primary. He should when that. He doesnt. He stumbles and is out fairly quickly. There are not a lot of primaries that year. Theres the New Hampshire primary. There is always the New Hampshire primary. There is the wisconsin primary which macarthur should win and doesnt. He loses a tooth Harold Stassen which elevates stassen. Stassen as an outsider. He is a boy wonder. In 1938 he had been elected governor of minnesota and he was the youngest governor of any state ever and he quit. He is reelected saying it now if you reelect me im going to quit in four months and go into the navy and he is popular and elected. Imagine being elected with a platform like that. He comes out, hes an internationalist. You have got the debate still going on of internationalism versus isolationism. Stassen is on the extreme end of the republican internationalist brigade at that point. He is feisty. He is a real outsider. He wins in wisconsin, he went to nebraska and he is poised to take the frontrunner status away from thomas e. Dewey as the campaign heads into oregon. Now again, notice i have only named for states. These are about the only for important primaries there are. Most of these things are still being done at Party Conventions which means in the backroom. These are places like albany or columbus or wherever or when you get to the convention. Now, or again is where we see something happening which is being repeated again this year, debates. We are debating, we are debating, we are debating in d. C. And you see Newt Gingrich at every stop saying i want a lincolndouglass style debate on one topic just me and this other guy in the room and it doesnt matter who the guy is or who the is or what the topic is. What he should be calling on historically because he is a great historian is a Stassen Dewey debate because the Stassen Dewey debate is the first broadcast debate in president ial history. It is held in a Radio Station in Portland Oregon and held on one topic. To guys in a room and an iron cage on a topic, should the communist party of the United States of america be outlawed . Harold stassen the great liberal in the affirmati