The president ultimately tried to take the issue off the table—to avoid making commitments until after Election Day. He advised his State Department to use “any parliamentary procedures available” and to “use every effort to avoid having U.S. delegation [to the United Nations] drawn into the debate.” Truman subsequently told the undersecretary of state, Robert Lovett, that “every effort [should] be made to avoid taking position on Palestine prior to” the election.
On October 22, Dewey forced the Zionist issue onto the front pages. He gave an address in New York promising to bring “unity to our country to meet the great problems ahead.” Then his campaign made public a letter the governor had written to the American Christian Palestine Committee of New York, in which he attacked “the vacillation of the Democratic administration” on the Palestine issue. He stated that a Republican administration would give “wholehearted” support to Israel and welcome Israel “into the family of nations.”
Dewey was tacitly promising that he would grant immediate de jure recognition, or so it seemed. What was Truman going to do about it?
That night, the Truman Special pulled out of Washington for the final weeklong campaign frenzy. Clark Clifford stayed behind to strategize a response to Dewey’s letter. Clifford tapped out a memo to Truman, to be forwarded to him on the train. “I am working on a statement on Israel now and will have it ready to submit to you on Sunday morning,” Clifford wrote. “I consider Dewey’s action a serious error on his part and the best thing that has happened to us to date. Affectionate regards.”
The next night—Saturday, October 23, at 10:00—Truman delivered what his daughter, Margaret, would later call her favorite speech of the campaign, in Pittsburgh. At the city’s Armory Hall, with one hundred thousand people on hand and a national radio audience tuned in, Truman put on an unexpected comedy routine. It was a surprising moment of levity, given the pressure weighing on him. Dewey, Truman said, was acting like “some kind of doctor with a magic cure for all the ills of mankind.”
Twirling an imaginary mustache, pretending to be a doctor, Truman asked the crowd: “You been bothered much by issues lately?”
Then he became the patient. “Of course, we’ve had a few,” Truman said. “We’ve had the issue of high prices, and housing, and education, and social security, and a few others.”
He switched to the doctor again. “That’s too bad,” he said. “What you need is my brand of soothing syrup—I call it unity.”
The crowd erupted in cackles and applause. Truman then ran through a litany of “symptoms” that the American people were suffering—the Taft-Hartley law, inadequate funding of Social Security, a stagnant minimum wage, etc. His administration had come up with policies to confront all of these issues, but had passed little in the way of legislation, due to the Eightieth Congress’s refusal to come aboard. Dewey’s claim that he was a magic cure-all was a sham, Truman said. “He opened his mouth and closed his eyes and swallowed the terrible record of the good-for-nothing 80th Congress.”
The next morning, as Truman headed east to Cleveland, Clifford’s proposed statement on Israel arrived aboard the train. Truman released the statement at 9:10 that morning.
The Republican candidate for President has seen fit to release a statement with reference to Palestine. This statement is in the form of a letter dated October 22, 1948, ten days before the election. I had hope our foreign affairs could continue to be handled on a nonpartisan basis without being injected into the presidential campaign. The Republican’s statement, however, makes it necessary for me to reiterate my own position with respect to Palestine.
The statement then reprinted what was in the Democratic platform, released back in July at the Democratic National Convention, most notably: “We pledge full recognition of Israel.” For Americans who had been paying attention, it was equivocation at its best. Truman’s party had pledged “full recognition” but none had come. He merely repeated what he had said three months earlier, and criticized Dewey for violating the bipartisan spirit of American foreign relations. Meanwhile Truman’s State Department had to remain mute on the subject, to restrict any communications on the matter until after November 2. Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett wrote his boss George Marshall, “Am told removal of restrictions on normal procedures may be expected . . . when silly season terminates.”
29
“We Are Engaged in a Great Crusade”
THE FINAL WEEK OF CAMPAIGNING saw the two major candidates in a point-counterpoint showdown, as Truman and Dewey followed the same route—Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, New York.
Truman began the battle with his most vituperative attack yet, in Chicago on October 25. Prior to his arrival, he spoke in whistle-stops en route to the Windy City. When he reached his main destination of the day, three hundred thousand people stood in the streets. “A parade a mile long,” Margaret wrote in her diary. “Huge fireworks and displays, too much noise.” Before a jammed crowd at Chicago Stadium, Truman walked onstage along with Bess, Margaret, and Ed Kelly, Chicago’s mayor. The president was going to push hard, in an effort to draw Dewey into a rhetorical brawl.
Truman began by warning against the reactionary forces of an “extreme right wing” that, he said, would put Wall Street’s needs over those of the common man.
“Do you want that kind of future?” he asked.
A crowd of some twenty-five thousand roared, “No!”
He then compared the rise of Thomas Dewey to the rise of Adolf Hitler, and accused Republican leaders of using the same tactics Hitler did for “stupefying the German people” in order to take advantage of them.
“This evil force
