An Election Apart: Harry Truman and the Last Time an Incumbent President Was Strapped for Cash

Philip White

John Trumbull's 1793 portrait of John Adams

In our hyperbole-infected 24/7, anywhere, anytime news cycle, many reporters have become too quick to judge elections in exaggeration. If you believed stories from the Obama-Romney coverage chapter and verse, you’d think this was “the most negative campaign ever.” Never mind that contest between two chaps by the names of Adams and Jefferson, in which Jefferson’s election managers slammed Adams as a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."  Sniping back, Adams’s team dismissed Jefferson as "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.”

Depending on where your political sympathies lay, you’d also be resolved that Mitt Romney or president Barack Obama were the two most mendacious candidates of any that have vied for the White House. Hmmm. Because political candidates never stretch or bend the truth to further their arguments, of course. Like the time that Al Smith’s detractors took their anti-Catholicism line into comical territory by circulating a photo of Smith dedicating a new tunnel and claiming he was planning to extend the passageway under the Atlantic to Rome, so he could take direct orders from the Pope if he became president.

But one claim about this year’s Obama-Romney face off that is accurate is that it is the most highly funded election in US history, with more than $6 billion dollars flowing into Democratic and Republican coffers, and then out again to pay for TV ads, logistics, calling campaigns and the rest.

This cash-rich election is the opposite of another that I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time studying lately: The Harry Truman vs. Tom Dewey presidential election of 1948.

Clifford K. Berryman, October 19, 1948

Before we look at the money side, let’s first look at the context of this election. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had been president for 12 years, authored the New Deal, forged the historic wartime alliance with Winston Churchill and become an indelible imprint on the nation’s consciousness, died on April 12, 1945. In his place was a man who had been vice president for just 82 days, and was as unlike Roosevelt as was possible. FDR was born into privilege, had been to the best schools, and mixed in the elite East Coast liberal circles, making his ascension to the presidency seem natural and, in some ways, almost pre-destined. In contrast, Harry Truman had been a soldier, a farmer and a failed haberdasher, had never been to college, and preferred to mix with his old friends from Missouri. Yet, with FDR gone, he was now at the helm of the US, which had become an industrial powerhouse during World War II.

Presidential History Roundup

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Ari Berman, "In Osawatomie, Obama Embraces New Populist Moment," The Nation, December 6, 2011

. . . . Obama’s pivot away from austerity orthodoxy and toward public investment began with his jobs speech in September, but he’s subsequently sharpened his language and focus in recent months in response to pressure from Occupy Wall Street. He’s now tackling issues of basic fairness and attacking the GOP’s brand of “your-on-your-own economics” in a much more direct way. His nod to Teddy Roosevelt, who delivered his “New Nationalism” speech in Osawatomie in 1910, could not have come at a more appropriate time.>>>

Adam Hochschild, "What Gingrich Didn’t Learn in Congo," New York Times, December 4, 2011

. . . . Mr. Gingrich would be our first president with a Ph.D. since Woodrow Wilson. Does his work as a historian tell us anything about him? Or, for that matter, anything about why, despite certain events in 1776, he considers “anticolonial” an epithet? To address these questions, a good place to start is his 1971 Tulane doctoral dissertation: “Belgian Education Policy in the Congo 1945-1960.”>>>

Lolly Bowean, "Piece of history rescued from time: Restorers give new life to 146-year-old copy of 13th Amendment," Chicago Tribune, December 7, 2011

In the moments after a hand-printed copy of the congressional resolution approving a 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution signed by Abraham Lincoln arrived at a South Loop graphic conservation firm, six staff members stood in silence, staring at the historic document.

Even with its wrinkles and creases, the 146-year-old artifact with faint, cursive writing that abolished slavery in the United States carried an emotional intensity.>>>

Kevin Opsahl, "USU lecturers talk about LDS presidential hopefuls in U.S. history," the Herald Journal, December 3, 2011

Two academics who spoke at Utah State University this week said they believe the "Mormon question" confronting voters in the 2012 Republican primary race is still present but not as strong as it was in 2008, when Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney failed in his quest for the GOP nomination.

The comments came Thursday when USU's Religious Studies program hosted a discussion between Newell Bringhurst, a retired professor of history and political science at College of the Sequoias and a liberal Democrat, and Craig Foster, a research specialist in the LDS Church's Family History Library and a conservative Republican.>>>

"Dec. 6, 1923: Calvin Coolidge Delivers First Presidential Address on Radio," December 6, 2011, New York Times Blog

On Dec. 6, 1923, the first presidential address was broadcast on the radio. President Calvin Coolidge delivered what is now known as the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress.

The New York Times anticipated Coolidge’s address in its Dec. 5 edition: “The voice of President Coolidge, addressing Congress tomorrow, will be carried over a greater portion of the United States and will be heard by more people than the voice of any man in history.”>>>

Party Like It's . . . A Political Party

Randall Stephens

Third party politics has long altered the American political landscape. Some of those included, along with periods of most activity:

Anti-Masonic Party (1820s and 1830s)

Liberty Party (1840s)

Free-Soil Party (1840s and 1850s)

Know-Nothing/Nativist Party (1840s-1860)

Greenback Party (1870s)

Prohibition Party (1880s-1890s)

People’s Party (1890s-1900s)

Socialist Party (1900s-19-teens)

Progressive Party (three separate movements: 19-teens, 1920s, 1940s)

Dixiecrats (1948)

For details on each, see this handy Encyclopedia Britannica site. Will the Tea Party change party politics in America? Will it be a factor in the coming years?

Related links: "Third parties leave a mark: A timeline of third party showings," Christian Science Monitor, 28 October 2010.