The political convention was a century-old institution, but this event was unlike any convention ever held before. In front of the stage, scaffolding had been set up to hold television cameras. The major national radio networks were on hand with their new TV equipment—ABC, NBC, and CBS. Five cameras beamed images of the proceedings into homes all over the East Coast (and only the East Coast, as that was as far as the broadcast could reach). Speakers onstage withered under the heat of 10,000-watt bulbs illuminating their faces for the cameras. It being summer, the hall felt like an oven.
“In a few minutes I began to wilt and go blind,” recorded the political reporter H. L. Mencken, “so the rest of my observations had to be made from a distance and through a brown beer bottle.” Speaker of the House Joe Martin had a different take: For the first time, “we were conducting our affairs in the living room of the U.S.A.”
The first night’s proceedings culminated in a fighting speech by Clare Boothe Luce—the playwright and former congresswoman from Connecticut. Harry Truman, she famously observed, was a “gone goose.”
“Let’s waste no time measuring the unfortunate man in the White House against our specifications. Mr. Truman’s time is short; his situation is hopeless.”
When the balloting began on the morning of Thursday, June 24, people packed the convention center for the roll call, while the major candidates remained in their hotel suites, following the action on TV. In his eighth-floor suite at the Bellevue-Stratford, Dewey sat in shirtsleeves, tensely gazing at a television set through trails of his own cigarette smoke. When the power suddenly went out on the TV, the candidate dashed down the hotel hallway to the room of one of his campaign aides, to watch the returns.
State after state cast its delegate votes, and when it was over Dewey topped the ballot, as expected. Yet he did not have enough votes to secure the majority needed for the Republican nomination. And so began a convention drama common to that era, before the reforms of the 1970s turned conventions into preordained theater. Behind the scenes, Brownell and his associates went to work to bring Dewey over the top. Brownell had been working for months to piece together this influential machinery, and now he flipped the switch. Orders went down the carefully constructed chains of command, reaching into the delegations of every state. Stassen was on the scene, his expansive forehead dripping with sweat. A delegate from Tennessee named B. Carroll Reece approached Stassen and told him how furiously the Brownell machinery was pushing to land Dewey’s victory. Brownell was demanding that delegates vote for the New York governor.
“Harold,” Reece told Stassen, “you have no idea of the pressure put on me. That Dewey machine is like a row of tanks.”
Not until the third ballot did Dewey capture the nomination, grabbing a unanimous vote of all 1,094 delegates. Writing in his diary later that night, Senator Vandenberg recorded, “[Dewey’s] ‘blitz’ was a thing of beauty.”
At his hotel, Dewey showered, changed into a fresh suit, and made the drive with his wife to the convention hall in the back of a black limousine. It had been storming that night. As Dewey approached the arena, rain slowed to a stop and, as if on cue, a rainbow appeared, arcing over the City of Brotherly Love. Backstage in the convention hall, Dewey squirmed uncomfortably while makeup artists prepared him for the television broadcast. “I look just awful,”he commented. He could hear the crowds singing “Hail Hail, the Gang’s All Here” while they waited for him.
When he stepped onstage with Mrs. Dewey, the masses gave him everything they had. The building’s girders soaked up the vibrations from the roars and applause. Dewey stood, waving his arms like he was conducting an orchestra. His speech was just minutes long, but he hit the right notes for this crowd.
“It has been a difficult choice, in an honorable contest,” Dewey said. (Applause!) There had been “spirited disagreement, hot argument.” (Applause!) “But let no one be misled. You have given moving and dramatic proof of how Americans who honestly differ, close ranks and move forward, for the nation’s well-being, shoulder to shoulder.” (Applause!)
“For tonight,” Dewey said, and he paused for effect. “Our peace, our prosperity, the very fate of freedom—hangs in a precarious balance.”
After Dewey’s acceptance speech, he headed to campaign headquarters at the Bellevue-Stratford to speak to his staff and his fans.
“Will you excuse me for being late?” he started. “I finally got through a call to my mother in Michigan and I had a chance to talk to her and give her my love . . .”
Dewey promised his audience that things were about to change. “I can assure you that we will have the finest housecleaning in Washington that ever there was in the history of our government,” he said. Then he retired to his hotel suite, where the Dewey-ites had gathered to begin the next chapter of their campaign—the choice of a VP candidate. The man everyone believed would be the next secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, was in the room. Senator Vandenberg was there, as was Herbert Brownell. Conspicuously missing was Robert Taft, who had been invited but chose to nurse his wounded pride privately.
This hotel suite now represented the future of global power as far as everyone present was concerned. The leading candidate for VP was Charles A. Halleck, the conservative congressman from Indiana. (Since he was a candidate, Halleck was not invited to be present.) “We were all sworn to secrecy,” Vandenberg wrote in his diary. “All of the following names were canvassed: Stassen, Warren [Earl Warren, governor of California], Green [Dwight Green, governor of Illinois], Knowland [Senator William Knowland of California], Bricker [Senator John
