That night, as Truman rode a train back to Washington, he sat down to enjoy his favorite activity: a game of poker. Also at the table was his press secretary, Charlie Ross, members of the White House press corps including Merriman Smith of the United Press and Tony Vaccaro of the Associated Press, and his aide Clark Clifford. As the voter returns rolled in over the radio, Truman remained composed. The train was nearing Cincinnati when the men learned that a Republican tide was washing over the country. “I was amazed at how calm he seemed in the face of political disaster,” Clifford recorded. “The conventional political wisdom at that point was simple: Harry Truman was a caretaker President.”
When Truman awoke on November 6, he had all the evidence he needed that the nation had lost faith in him. In a landslide, Republicans won majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time since 1928. In the House of Representatives, Republicans now outnumbered Democrats 246 to 188. The Republicans gained thirteen seats in the Senate, including one in Truman’s home state. History had showed that midterm elections could often damage a new sitting president, but few midterms had demonstrated such a complete shift in the tides of power—in Washington and in state capitals from coast to coast. The election was noteworthy for another reason: New faces in Congress included Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, and Richard Nixon of California.
In New York, meanwhile, Republican governor Thomas Dewey was reelected by a margin of 680,000 votes—the biggest majority in state history.
The response in Washington was devastating to the Truman administration. Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas—a member of Truman’s own Democratic Party—called on the president to appoint a Republican as secretary of state, second in line to the presidency, since there was no vice president (Truman had vacated that office when FDR died). Then the president should resign, so there would be a Republican president and unity in Washington.* “I am only suggesting that it would be the best thing for the country as a whole,” Senator Fulbright said. “It probably would be the wisest thing for the President to do . . . It will place the responsibility of running the Government on one party and prevent a stalemate that is likely to occur.”
Newspapers such as the Chicago Sun and the Atlanta Constitution, along with numerous Republican leaders, came out in favor of Fulbright’s proposal. Truman laughed the idea off, calling Fulbright “Senator Halfbright.” But the proposal was taken seriously enough that Charlie Ross had to put out a statement saying Truman would not resign.
Back in the White House, Truman wondered aloud to friends and staffers whether he would stand for election in 1948. He could not use the word reelection, because he had never been elected chief executive in the first place. He called the White House “the Great White Jail,” and said he was looking forward to the end of what felt like a prison sentence.
Around this time, he began to notice something strange in the mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The walls and floors of the White House had begun to creak and moan. At one point Truman borrowed a stethoscope from his staff physician, Dr. Wallace Graham, pressing it up against a wall to hear the building’s unsettling sounds. “The damned place is haunted sure as shootin’,” he told Bess.
Then one day the First Lady became alarmed when she noticed that the five-and-a-half-foot-tall chandelier in the White House Blue Room was trembling. Standing beneath it, she heard the faint jingle of the chandelier’s crystals as they moved seemingly of their own volition. Professionals called in to give the White House a diagnosis found the building structurally unsound. The second floor was caving in. The White House, like the administration, was in a state of historic disintegration.
Part II
The Surging GOP
I will be president. It is written in the stars.
—Thomas Dewey
5
“You Are Getting as Much Publicity as Hitler”
THE WHITE HOUSE ASIDE, no building in the United States had been the setting for more presidential aspirations than the executive mansion in Albany, New York. Red brick with white trim, the Queen Anne–style residence at 138 Eagle Street was originally constructed in 1856 for a wealthy banker. Two decades later, Samuel Tilden became the first New York governor to move in. In 1876, in one of the closest elections in American history, Tilden lost his bid for the White House to Rutherford B. Hayes. Grover Cleveland lived in the mansion while he was governor, moving to the White House in 1885. During Theodore Roosevelt’s term as New York governor, a gymnasium was added to the home. When Franklin Roosevelt moved in, he had an indoor swimming pool built. FDR served two terms in the residence before his move to the White House.
On the evening of November 4 in 1946—the night before the midterm election—New York governor Thomas Dewey and his wife, Frances, entertained friends and campaign officials in the Albany executive mansion. Staff members scurried about, emptying ashtrays and passing out drinks. At 6:15, from inside the mansion, Dewey delivered a radio speech urging all voters to exercise their right to vote. He compared the “confusion and chaos” in Washington to the “team work Government” in Albany.
The following morning, Dewey and an entourage headed for New York City, where the governor cast his vote at a polling station on East Fifty-First Street. That night, at a Dewey rally, crowds chanted “Dewey for President!” By the time Dewey was back in Albany, he had won a second term as governor, beating the Democratic challenger James M. Mead by
