“The President is blackguarding the Congress at every whistle stop in the country,” Taft barked.
The Democrats saw an opportunity. The national committee sent out a form telegram to mayors and the chambers of commerce of thirty-five cities, to conduct an informal poll: “Please wire the Democratic National Committee whether you agree with Senator Taft’s description of your city as a quote whistle stop unquote.”
The responses flooded in: Local city leaders—in Los Angeles; Seattle; Idaho Falls; and Laramie, Wyoming; among other places—were indeed offended by Taft’s reference to their towns as whistle-stops, a term denoting places so insignificant, trains stopped at them only when signaled.
The pique Taft’s comment aroused out west worked to the president’s advantage. Truman would use the term whistle-stop against his opponents for the next five months—right up to Election Day, November 2, 1948—as he campaigned throughout America’s heartland.
Part III
The Conventions
A stranger convention there never was . . . I’ve been seeing them now for close to a half-century but I’ve never seen one quite like this.
—Lowell Mellett, political writer, 1948
13
“We Have a Dreamboat of a Ticket”
ON JUNE 20, THOMAS DEWEY left New York by train for Philadelphia en route to the Republican National Convention, where the 1948 nominee would be crowned. In anticipation of a victorious Republican year, the City of Brotherly Love came alive with the GOP’s elite and hangers-on. Dewey, his family, Herbert Brownell, and the rest of the team checked into twenty-five rooms on the eighth floor of the Bellevue-Stratford, which towered over the corner of South Broad and Walnut Streets downtown. Attendance was expected to be so high, the Republican National Committee had run out of hotel rooms. The committee rented out the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity house at the University of Pennsylvania to accommodate Republican delegates, charging six dollars per person per night.
By the time Dewey arrived at campaign headquarters in the Bellevue-Stratford’s ballroom, the place was lavishly dressed in red, white, and blue bunting and decorated with Republican elephants. The ballroom was jammed shoulder-to-shoulder with Republicans gorging on free liquor. The campaign had ordered fifty thousand I’M ON THE DEWEY TEAM buttons, ten thousand Dewey cigarette holders, five thousand Dewey balloons, one hundred DEWEY IN ’48 sashes, three hundred Dewey neckties, and twenty-five thousand handheld fans so attendees could keep themselves cool. The president of Life Savers candy had donated five thousand cartons of his product, while Pepsi executives kept the bar stocked with soda. A “Women’s Committee” had done the heavy lifting in presenting the event. “The general idea of the Committee,” noted a Dewey team memorandum, “is to make the Dewey headquarters the place in Philadelphia for visitors, and women particularly.”
On the eve of the convention, news outlets clashed with conflicting predictions.
Pollster George Gallup had Dewey in front with 33 percent, with Stassen in second at 26 percent.
The Chicago Daily Tribune claimed that the contest would be between Taft and Dewey.
The New York Times reported that Stassen and Taft were joining forces in a “Stop Dewey” blitz.
Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan was seen making the rounds, telling friends he had no interest in the nomination, all the while keeping a copy of an acceptance speech in his pocket, just in case. Speaker of the House Joe Martin of Massachusetts kept a “Martin for President” movement simmering while assuring friends he had no interest. Harold Stassen’s team had set up headquarters in a different ballroom in the same hotel as Dewey’s, the Bellevue-Stratford. Guests sipped on free coffee and sliced chunks off huge wheels of orange cheddar. “Cheese at Stassen’s very good,” commented a New Yorker correspondent.
Robert Taft’s campaign set up headquarters in the Benjamin Franklin Hotel (a landmark that had gotten some publicity a year earlier for refusing to house the Brooklyn Dodgers, because the team had a rookie black player—Jackie Robinson). Taft showed up wearing a TAFT FOR PRESIDENT campaign button that was from his father’s convention in 1908, the year William Howard Taft was elected. The younger Taft sat on a pink couch while a runt elephant named Little Eva—a Republican mascot—made its way through the crowd wearing a blanket over its back that read WIN WITH TAFT. When Little Eva approached Taft, a newsreel man aimed his camera at the senator. “Shake his trunk,” he said. Taft picked up the elephant’s dripping snout and gave it a shake.
“Shake it again,” said the cameraman. “It’s your baby.”
As the front-runner, Dewey drew the biggest crowds. He pumped handshakes and smiled so hard, one present recalled, it looked like his mustache might fall off. Meanwhile the one politician who made the biggest splash in Philadelphia was not even present. “The great silent star of the political melodrama being unfolded here at Convention Hall is not a Republican but a Democrat,” recorded the columnist Gladstone Williams. “He is Harry S. Truman, President of the United States. Mr. Truman is the inspiration of joy and jubilations of the thousands of Republican delegates.”
On June 21, at the Philadelphia Convention Center, the first speakers took the stage. As was the tradition at party conventions, early on in the process the following words were spoken into the microphone: “We are assembled in this great city to nominate the next President of the United States.” Congressman Martin of Massachusetts remembered the moment: “What
