Dewey Wins

They don't call it the popular vote for nothing. People run for office and the most popular candidates win. It doesn't take a bushel basket full of brains to figure that out. Winning puts the successful office-seeker at great advantage and those who voted for him (or her) have a happy hangover and then life goes back to normal. King George the Third didn't do anything worse than subsequent winners who benefit nicely from the benefits of taxation. Those who win will be allowed unreasonable comfort.

Our household voted Republican when my sister and I were children. We lived in Philadelphia and the city was, even in the lifetimes of the very old, always ruled by Republicans. We were by inheritance, Republicans -to-be. The phenomenon, to us, was that the country was run by Democrats. Roosevelt was president before I was born and he still was. If everybody in the known world were Republicans, how did we have a Democrat president?

On election year the kids voted in school. Dewey beat Roosevelt in school so it seemed assured that Dewey would beat Roosevelt when the rest of the world voted. There had been Republican presidents a long time ago and three of them were famous. Lincoln freed the slaves and their children and grandchildren were voting for Roosevelt along with the children and grandchildren of the old slave owners down in the Democratic solid south. Another Roosevelt, Teddy, was a Republican and he charged up San Juan Hill and became immortal and then president largely on those credentials. Hoover presided over the great depression which was really the lousy depression and in the end everyone hated him but the owners of apple-orchards. It was commonly thought that Franklin Roosevelt would be president forever and Republicans would have to be satisfied with running Philadelphia forever. My mother broke ranks with the Republicans in 1944, citing the negative effect of Thomas Dewey's moustache. Dewey didn't listen to people like my mother when he ran again in 1948 against Harry Truman, a Baptist from Missouri who had the advantage of incumbency because FDR did the impossible and died.

Dewey beat Truman in our school election so once again we were sure the nation would follow our preference. Signals went out to the contrary. My mother and other women who detested moustaches wouldn't vote for Dewey if he could walk on water. Democrats spread rumors among kids that insinuated Dewey's election meant they would have to go to school on Saturdays and all summer.

Colonel McCormack put his bets with the kids and on the morning after the election in 1948 the heading of his Chicago Tribune screamed "Dewey Wins." It was logical. Strom Thurmond bolted the Democratic party and ran against Truman. Henry Wallace, the vice-president when FDR was healthy, had been dumped as veep and was replaced by Truman and now ran against Truman. Dewey, the Republican, looked better against Truman than he did against the invincible Roosevelt and his campaign was favored by the Democrats' internecine embarrassments: cannons to the left (Wallace), cannons to the right (Thurmond). The Gallup-poll took samplings <@145>round the land and haberdasher Harry might do better than the red-neck and the commie but indicators favored the winds of change. Wallace, Truman and Dewey had their conventions in Philadelphia, the Republicans' fortress city, the old capital of the United States.

"Dewey Wins." Our tenth grade election returns sent up a signal that the nation might heed. But the electorate surprised Gallup, McCormack and our tenth grade experts and Truman won. I would be an adult before a Republican would become president and at about the same time Philadelphia did a flip-flop and older folks in their sixties would be subjected to their first Democrat mayor.