Within days of Truman’s nomination, the Oscar Ewing group—via Clifford—began to funnel its ideas directly into the Oval Office. These ideas were intended to supplement the policies that Truman had been pushing since the end of World War II. The ultimate thrust would be FDR-driven progressive ideology, with the recognition that a reactionary return to 1920s conservatism would be disastrous in a country that had been newly reborn after the war.
As for organization, the Democratic National Committee moved into new headquarters in New York City a week after the Philadelphia convention. The Republicans had their headquarters in the capital city. The Democrats preferred New York—the biggest transportation hub, home to the advertising industry, and an important media base.
Starting Monday, July 26, movers hauled desks, telephones, typewriters, and teletype machines into a fifty-room office on the Biltmore Hotel’s fourth floor, atop Grand Central Terminal on Forty-Second Street. Senator Howard McGrath of Rhode Island was a rookie boss of the Democratic National Committee, while the office would be managed by Neale Roach, who had been the chief organizer of the Democratic National Convention. From the get-go, Roach could see that spirit was lacking in the new headquarters. “Every morning when I would go into the office,” he recalled, “I would notice that these girls on the reception desk looked like they didn’t even have as much pep as somebody you would meet at a morgue. I got worried about it, because the impression was just one of defeat all the way through.”
“The pressure was increasingly heavy,” recalled the national committee’s publicist Jack Redding, who would practically live among the thundering typewriters and telephones in the Biltmore offices in the months before the election. “Many days I didn’t leave the building, eating my meals either in the [hotel] restaurant or at my desk . . . I began to lose weight, as well as sleep, and developed a fine set of dark circles under my eyes.”
The Democratic National Committee’s job was to map out the political territory, identify and cultivate influencers in every county in the country, and raise the funds necessary to conduct the candidate’s national campaign. “Meetings were held at the White House at least once a week, sometimes three or four times a week,” recalled Redding. “The White House meetings were concerned with campaign strategy.”
One day at the Biltmore headquarters, Senator McGrath was speaking on the telephone while a potential campaign-finance chairman sat outside waiting to meet with him. This was Louis A. Johnson of Virginia—an attorney and former assistant secretary of war. By the time McGrath could finish his phone call and summon his guest, Johnson had grown ornery. He stormed in and halted in military style (he had served as a colonel in World War I).
“Young man,” Johnson said to Senator McGrath, who was twelve years Johnson’s junior, “I didn’t come here to cool my heels waiting for you. I have important things to do. I came here to help the Democratic Party. I have nothing further to say to you. Good-bye!”
As Johnson headed for the door, McGrath yelled, “Come back! Come back here!” When Johnson paused, McGrath said, “I don’t know what you’re shouting about, Colonel, but if you think I insulted you, let me tell you something. I had Jake More, the state chairman of Iowa, on the telephone when you were announced. Ed Kelly [former Democratic mayor] of Chicago was waiting for me on another line. I don’t know what you think, but in my opinion, I could not fail to complete those calls. I want you to know I’m working for the Democratic Party, too; and I’m not getting a salary to do it.”
Johnson pivoted and took a seat. Soon it was settled: Johnson would be the new finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee. A staunch believer in Truman’s approach to military expenditures—to keep the country strong while holding the line on spending, so federal funds would be available for other programs—Johnson had his own personal desire to see Truman succeed. He wanted to be the next secretary of defense. If he could help win Truman the election, he hoped the president would give him the job. Johnson’s fund-raising would be crucial to the campaign’s success, and to his own ambitions.
Along with organization and money, knowledge was key—knowledge of the communities where Truman would be campaigning, knowledge of how campaign issues affected localities across the country. Earlier in the year, the Oscar Ewing think tank came up with the idea to create a campaign research unit to unearth facts, figures, trends, and local issues that people cared about, in every town where the president would be speaking. One member of the Ewing group, David Morse, suggested an old friend named Bill Batt to head up the unit. Batt was in business in Philadelphia and was looking to get into government work, with an eye toward a future congressional run.
Bespectacled and brilliant, William Batt came to Washington, where he met with Senator McGrath and Clark Clifford. “They asked me to go up in a back room and work up a budget, which I did and it came to about eighty thousand dollars, if I remember correctly, to run an operation of the size they wanted for the . . . months between then and the election day.”
Batt found office space on Dupont Circle near the Hamilton National Bank building. It was “miserably noisy,” Batt recalled, as it was next to a construction site where the city was digging a roadway underpass. But it was affordable. Batt began recruiting. “We were looking for generalists,” he recorded. “We were looking for exceedingly knowledgeable guys who knew the issues before
