“The fact that the Communists are guiding and using the third party shows that this party does not represent American ideas,” he told the assembled crowd at Gilmore Stadium. “The simple fact is that the third party cannot achieve peace because it is powerless. It cannot achieve better conditions here at home because it is powerless.”
Once again, Truman found his audience enthusiastic and receptive. Afterward, his motorcade headed for San Diego, where the president packed another stadium. “I just have never seen anything like it,” recalled state senator Carter. “I don’t think it will ever be repeated.”
“It was at that point,” recalled Howard I. McGrath, “when people decided that maybe this man did have a chance to carry California.”
The Dewey Victory Special rolled into Los Angeles at 3:50 p.m. the next day. The goal was to outdo the Democrats in the power of the candidate’s message, in crowd numbers, in Hollywood star power—in everything. For the second day in a row, Californians lined sidewalks to get a glimpse of a presidential candidate. Confetti strewn along the route made it look like snow was falling on the palm trees.
The Dewey campaign’s efforts to recruit figures from the silver screen had paid off. Making appearances at the rally that night were Jeanette MacDonald, star of that summer’s hit movie Three Daring Daughters; she would lead the crowd in “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Walt Disney was on hand, along with Ginger Rogers, Randolph Scott, Lionel Barrymore, Barbara Stanwyck, and John Wayne, whose Howard Hawks–directed western Red River was currently playing in theaters. The rally was carefully choreographed by Warner Brothers director and dance choreographer LeRoy Prinz.
Onstage, Dewey came through in a perfectly measured cadence, his delivery as precise as a ticking clock. Like Truman, he chose Los Angeles to deliver his big anti-Communism speech.
“A grim, new struggle is on in the world,” Dewey said. “It is a struggle between two exactly opposite ways of life for the mind and soul—the very future of mankind.” Without mentioning Truman’s name, Dewey called out the administration for having “bungled and quarreled . . . telling the world that ours is a blundering, bungling system.” He skewered the president for his “red herring” comment; Truman was “shutting his eyes to the rampant evil” of Communism, while “Communists and fellow travelers have risen to positions of trust in our government.” The Republican candidate continued:
I propose that, next January 20 [Inauguration Day], we start a mighty world-wide counteroffensive, a counteroffensive not of aggressive acts but of truth, a counteroffensive of hope. I propose that we begin to tell our story—the American story—so well, so truthfully and with such meaning that the world will never again be in any doubt as to the choice between our way of life and theirs.
Dewey finished with a pledge to bring “a new unity for all America.” For the audience, the speech was expeditious, poetic, climactic, and focused.
When it was all over, the street cleaners had their work cut out for them. “It would be foolish to make flat predictions about California at this stage,” wrote the columnist Roscoe Drummond. “But the consensus still is widely on the Dewey-Warren side.”
25
“The Democratic Party Was Down to Its Last Cent”
THE DAY AFTER HIS LOS ANGELES rally, Truman held whistle-stops in Yuma, Arizona, then Lordsburg and Deming, New Mexico, places where, historically, residents might have had more luck seeing a UFO than an American president. When the train crossed the Texas border, Truman entered Dixiecrat territory for the first time. While Strom Thurmond was not polling well in Texas, pockets of the state adamantly opposed federal civil rights laws, and Harry Truman.
Over a dozen whistle-stops were scheduled in the state, in tiny towns like Sierra Blanca and Valentine. Three major addresses were also planned. By this time, the speechwriters in charge of crafting the formal addresses were desperately far behind. Three days before the train crossed the Texas border, White House staffer Albert Carr wrote Matthew Connelly, the president’s appointments secretary, “It is surprising to me that these speeches were not conceived, drafted and polished weeks ago, so that they did not have to be whipped into shape on the midnight before mailing.”
The first major stop was El Paso. “The railroad station was at the end of a long street that had another street coming in at an angle,” recalled White House staffer Donald Dawson, who had just recently joined the campaign train. “The President spoke from the back platform of the train. When he arrived, both of those streets were filled with crowds backed up for two city blocks trying to see the President and wanting to hear him speak. From that point on, it was a succession of personal triumphs.”
The campaign had gathered more political muscle for the Texas trip. Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson, who was running for a Senate seat, came aboard looking disheveled and bewildered; Texans had just voted in the primary and Johnson did not know yet how the tally had come out. “He hadn’t had any sleep or time to shave for three days,” remembered Truman’s first press secretary, Jonathan Daniels, who also boarded the train in Texas. The former Speaker of the House and current Texas congressman Sam Rayburn got on board, as did Truman’s attorney general, Tom Clark.
Whistle-stops brought the train into small towns that looked like scenes from an old western movie. “I remember we stopped at one little place,” recalled Donald Dawson. “There must have been 200 or 300 people there . . . A cowboy was on a bucking horse showing off for the crowd and trying to act smart.” Truman finished his impromptu talk, climbed off the train
