Editing Thomas E. Dewey (section)

===1948===
{{Main|1948 United States presidential election}}
[[File:Truman-Dewey-polls-1948.jpg|thumb|upright=1.6|[[Clifford K. Berryman]]'s editorial cartoon of October 19, 1948, shows the consensus of experts in mid-October]]
Dewey was the Republican candidate again in the [[1948 United States presidential election|1948 presidential election]], with California Governor [[Earl Warren]] on the bottom half of the ticket. Dewey was almost unanimously projected to win against incumbent [[Harry S. Truman]], who had taken over from FDR when he died in office in 1945.

During the primaries, Dewey was repeatedly urged to engage in [[red-baiting]], but he refused. In a [[Dewey–Stassen debate|debate]] before the [[Oregon]] primary with Harold Stassen, Dewey argued against outlawing the [[Communist Party of the United States of America]], saying "you can't shoot an idea with a gun." He later told [[Styles Bridges]], the Republican national campaign manager, that he was not "going around looking under beds".<ref>{{cite book|last=Halberstam|first=David|title=[[The Fifties (book)|The Fifties]]|publisher=Villard Books|year=1993|page=7|author-link=David Halberstam}}</ref>

Given Truman's sinking popularity and the Democratic Party's three-way split (the left-winger [[Henry A. Wallace]] and the Southern segregationist [[Strom Thurmond]] ran third-party campaigns), Dewey seemed unbeatable to the point that the Republicans believed that all they had to do to win was to avoid making any major mistakes.

Following this advice, Dewey carefully avoided risks and spoke in platitudes, avoiding controversial issues, and remained vague on what he planned to do as president, with speech after speech being nonpartisan and also filled with optimistic assertions or empty statements of the obvious, including the famous quote: "You know that your future is still ahead of you." An editorial in the ''[[The Courier-Journal|Louisville Courier-Journal]]'' summed it up:

<blockquote>No presidential candidate in the future will be so inept that four of his major speeches can be boiled down to these historic four sentences: Agriculture is important. Our rivers are full of fish. You cannot have freedom without liberty. Our future lies ahead.<ref>Gary A. Donaldson, ''Truman Defeats Dewey'' (The University Press of Kentucky, 1999), p. 173, quoting the ''[[The Courier-Journal|Louisville Courier-Journal]]'', November 18, 1948.</ref></blockquote>

[[File:Thomas Dewey at Bakersfield September 1948.jpg|thumb|Dewey on the campaign trail in [[Bakersfield, California]], September 1948]]Another reason Dewey ran such a cautious, vague campaign came from his experience as a presidential candidate in 1944, where Dewey felt that he had allowed Roosevelt to draw him into a partisan, verbal "mudslinging" match, and he believed that this had cost him votes.

Dewey was accordingly convinced in 1948 to appear as non-partisan as possible, and to emphasize the positive aspects of his campaign while ignoring his opponent: this strategy proved to be a total failure, as it allowed Truman to repeatedly criticize and ridicule Dewey, who never answered any of Truman's criticisms.<ref>Smith, p. 524–529.</ref>

Although Dewey was not as conservative as the Republican-controlled [[80th United States Congress|80th Congress]], the association proved problematic, as Truman tied Dewey to the "do-nothing" Congress.

Near the end of the campaign, Dewey considered adopting a more aggressive style and responding directly to Truman's criticisms, going so far as to tell his aides one evening that he wanted to "tear to shreds" a speech draft and make it more critical of the Democratic ticket.<ref name="Smith, p. 535">Smith, p. 535</ref> However, nearly all his major advisors insisted that it would be a mistake to change tactics. Dewey's wife Frances strongly opposed her husband changing tactics, telling him, "If I have to stay up all night to see that you don't tear up that speech [draft], I will."<ref name="Smith, p. 535" /> Dewey relented and continued to ignore Truman's attacks and to focus on positive generalities instead of specific issues.<ref>Smith, pp. 535–536</ref>

[[File:Dewey Defeats Truman.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.15|Elected President Truman holds up the erroneous ''[[Chicago Daily Tribune]]'' headline on November 3, 1948, the day after the election.]]

The ''[[Chicago Tribune|Chicago Daily Tribune]]'' printed "[[Dewey Defeats Truman|DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN]]" as its post-election headline, issuing 150,000 copies<ref>{{cite news|last=Jones|first=Tim|url=http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-chicagodays-deweydefeats-story,0,6484067.story|title=Dewey defeats Truman: Well, everyone makes mistakes|newspaper=[[Chicago Tribune]]|access-date=October 20, 2016}}</ref> before the returns showed Truman winning.

Dewey received 45.1% of the popular vote to Truman's 49.6%.<ref name="Ross, p. 246">(Ross, p. 246)</ref> In the Electoral College, Dewey won 16 states with 189 electoral votes, Truman 28 states with 303 electoral votes, and Thurmond four states (all in the South) with 39 electoral votes.<ref name="Ross, p. 246"/> The key states in the election were Illinois, California, and Ohio, which together had a combined 78 electoral votes. Truman won each of these three states by less than one percentage point; had Dewey won all three states, he would have won the election in the Electoral College, and if he had any two, this would have forced a contingent election in the House of Representatives.<ref>(Ross, pp. 256–259)</ref> Summarizing Dewey's campaign, a biographer wrote that "Dewey had swept the industrial Northeast, pared Democratic margins in the big cities by a third, run better than any Republican since [[Herbert Hoover]] in the South, and still lost decisively."<ref>(Smith, p. 343)</ref> After the election, Dewey told publisher [[Henry Luce]] that "you can analyze figures from now to kingdom come, and all they will show is that we lost the farm vote which we had in 1944 and that lost us the election."<ref>(Smith, p. 544)</ref>

A biographer noted that Dewey "rarely mentioned 1948 in the years thereafter. It was like a locked room in a musty mansion whose master never entered ... he seemed a bit bewildered at the unanimous front put up by his Albany advisers [during the campaign], regretted not having taken a final poll when his own senses detected slippage, and couldn't resist a potshot at "that bastard Truman" for having successfully exploited farmers' fears of a new depression."<ref>(Smith, p. 546)</ref>

Pre-election planning by Dewey and his advisors for a potential [[United States presidential transition|presidential transition]] was much greater in 1948 than in any previous election cycle, and included selection by Dewey of potential cabinet officers. Though these efforts were ridiculed after Dewey was defeated, pre-election transition planning later became standard practice.<ref name="Henry"/>