Click to enlarge photos.By Don McKee
Columnist
John McCain should take pointers from the 1948 campaign of President Harry Truman.
Truman was running for a full term in his own right, having succeeded to office after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945, less than a month before victory over Europe and four months before Japan surrendered.
Truman faced a very steep uphill battle.
His public approval rating stood at only 36 percent. He faced revolt from both left and right wings of his own party - the Progressives led by Henry A. Wallace and the Dixiecrats with nominee Strom Thurmond.
The striking thing about Truman was that he ignored the rump parties and their attacks.
Truman's Republican opponent was the patrician Thomas E. Dewey, the New York governor who had run against FDR in 1944.
The contrast between the two candidates could hardly have been more striking. Here was the dapper, liberal Dewey, only 46, fresh from his lofty and dignified acceptance speech, versus the plain-spoken, straight-talking, rough-and-tumble Truman, 64.
Truman found a far better target than his opponent. It was the Republican-controlled Congress. He termed it "the worst in my memory" before calling a special session in July 1948 to deal with - believe it or not - a housing crisis and other issues including providing "public power and cheap electricity."
Republican leaders in Congress blocked Truman's legislation. That gave him what he wanted: a "do-nothing Congress" to run against.
Truman barnstormed across the country, but he was wasting his time, according to the leading pundits, polls and prognosticators.
The Roper poll said in late September that Dewey led Truman by 41 to 31 percent - even worse than McCain's 8-point lag in yesterday's Rasmussen poll. Fifty well-known political writers said Dewey would win. Leo Egan of the New York Times flatly predicted Dewey's election "is a foregone conclusion."
The final Gallup survey in October 1948 had Dewey leading 49.5 percent to Truman's 44.5. Roper's poll gave Dewey 52.2 percent, Truman 37.1 percent. Roper said: "Dewey is in."
During the closing days of the campaign, Dewey even began planning his inauguration, a la Barack Obama's having his own presidential seal made during this campaign.
Meanwhile, Truman was undaunted. He kept running against the "do-nothing Congress."
The day after the election the Chicago Tribune displayed this famous headline: "Dewey Defeats Truman."
But when the votes were counted, Truman had won by two million votes, 49.5 to 41.5 percent. An admiring Republican leader said: "There he was flat on his back. Everybody had counted him out but he came up fighting and won the battle. That's the kind of courage the American people admire."
John McCain, who has already come back from being counted out in the primaries, can do the same. He should run against the do-nothing Democrat-controlled Congress - including Barack Obama - and its failure to act to prevent the financial crisis, enact an urgently needed energy program or cut spending.
That's how McCain can make another comeback.
dmckee9613@aol.com
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Posted Comments
I read your column all the time and believe you have made another good point. John McCain has come back before and the most important time that he came back, was with honor. That is something the other candidate knows nothing about, along with most of the folks in the Congress.
Thank you! I was beginning to think I was the only person with a memory or common sense left in what's left of my America. We cannot subsist on "polish and glitter."
I don't even feel as if McCain has a clear plan on getting America back on track. In the debates, especially last night's, he seems to be repeating what Obama views are. Granted I know both candidates can share the same views on certain topics but, many times McCain is not genuine when he express his views. I don't judge books by the cover but, Obama appears to be a regular citizen that has the common sense and more to turn the country around.
Check your history books...Dewey a liberal? Of the two, Truman was the man who wanted to initiate civil rights legislation and a national health care plan. Truman was very liberal even by today's standards.
Is the Marietta Daily Journal controlled by Republicans? Oh, that's right, Conservative Cobb! How could I have forgotten. Why does the paper not offer a different view... not one so bent on declaring McCain and the Republican Party as the greatest thing on the planet. Look where that party got us in the last 8 years!! Why won't you all run a column with a Democratic bent, or better yet, no political bent. Oops, that would mean that Don would have no where to place his far right columns!!! Not all of us that live in Cobb believe in the right, the far right, the Christian right or the Republican Party! Represent your citizens, not a select few.
i think your wrong about mcain, if people vote for obama, there giving their vote to teorrist.
don't let Obama fool you, he won't do what he says,,i think alot of people have "forgotten about 9/11" vote for Obama and that's what will happen if he gets office,because he just don't care.He wouldn't even shake hands with the soilders in IRAQ.
I agree. McCain has a different plan than Obama's especially on taxes. He could very well be a repeat of Truman - let's hope so. Obama has so many skeletons in his closet, no one really knows where he comes from or what he stands for. All we know is what he chooses to tell us. Like Bill CLinton, he will be a charlatan who changes course in mid-stream. Now, he says he'll cut taxes, but if in office, watch out! He'll raise them on everyone just like Clinton did in 1993.
That's a stretch. I'm undecided at this point, but strongly leaning toward Obama. The parallel that you draw is related only based on your ad hominem arguments about a do-nothing congress and McCain's determinination--which should be admired--to not quit in the face of pessimistic punditry, coming from all places, the right, which it seems, is where you make your bed. You might want to wait to write editorial columns like this until after the election so that it doesn't appear that you are blatantly campaigning for one of the candidates and impugning your own credibility as a journalist.
I don't know what McCain should do to win. But I do know what McCain should do...tell us what he really believes--damn the consequences. Instead, McCain pandered last night by announcing a an idea that he previously opposed. Out of desperation, it seems, he's now proposing for the government to purchase mortgages in which the houses secured by those mortgages have depreciated. In other words, McCain wants you and me to take the hit instead of the banks that should have known better. Isn't that rewarding the greed and excess that McCain is supposedly campaigning against? No. I don't believe that McCain supports his own proposal. But he's throwing everything at us to get us to vote for him--everything, that is, except the truth about how he would preside.
Maybe....you should send McCain your recommendation....As far as I am concerned"VOTE THEM ALL OUT!"