FDR, Dewey, and the Election of 1944

17: Campaign on the High Seas

200 The nation’s media had a fine old time with the Democrats’ convention. The New Yorker, for instance, had this to say: Radio listeners found the latest Chicago convention louder and funnier than the GOP one. The brash Democrats have an engaging way of broadcasting their family squabbles so that the whole nation can listen in.1 LifemagazinecommentedthattheDemocrats,evenwithoneeyeon the war, still put on “one of their rousing, old-fashioned political jamborees ,completewithparades,mobs,wirepullingandloud,irritablebickerings .” It was, the writer continued, “unlike the Republican convention where harmony and dullness prevailed.” Everybody was heard: “labor leaders, southerners, political bosses, visionaries, and reactionaries followed each other to the platform. Delegates cheered first one, then the other. Sometimes they cheered just to hear themselves cheer.”2 Jonathan Daniels, a White House staffer, was “appalled by the ruthlessness with which Hannegan carried out” the elimination of Henry Wallace. “So were many other New Dealers,” Daniels wrote. “And Wallace was not the only personage who felt he had a right to feel that he had been done in in the dark. Jimmy Byrnes, believing he had a go sign from the President, definitely felt that way.”3 Columnist Marquis Childs called the convention “a ratification meeting” for a fourth term, “presented . . . as an unhappy necessity called forth by the demands of the hour.” Still, he went on, “the convention 1 7 Campaign on the High Seas Campaign on the High Seas 201 might have been directed in a way that would have left fewer hurt feelings at the end.” (See Jimmy Byrnes, Alben Barkley, Henry Wallace, and a few others.) While many might put the blame for that on Hannegan, it should be remembered that he was only doing the job assigned him by Roosevelt, who, according to Childs, “seems to have forgotten all about the business of politics.” While much of this resulted from the needs of the war effort as well as from FDR’s confidence of his place in history, Childspredictedthat“eventsinthecampaignmaycompelthePresident to come down off Mount Olympus.”4 Drew Pearson, in his “Washington Merry-Go-Round,” concurred with Childs, finding plenty of delegates sore at the end of the convention . “What they objected to was that the convention should be run by thecitymachinesof Chicago,theBronx,JerseyCityandSt.Louis,which threw their weight in favor of the man who owed his political start to the city machine of Kansas City.” Pearson went on to say What many delegates wondered was what Prosecutor Candidate Tom Dewey would do with a Democratic ticket on which the Vice President was a product of Pendergast, picked by Pendergast’s old cronies. Senator Truman is a man of scrupulous honesty, with a great reputation for cleaning up war inefficiency. But nevertheless, many argued that a city-boss product, picked by city bosses, would just be playing right into the hands of Dewey.5 Later, Pearson quoted Dewey commenting on Roosevelt’s dumping of Wallace,saying,“Why,Herb[Brownell]oughttosendhimacheckfor that. Truman will help us more than he’ll help Roosevelt.”6 The New York Herald Tribune, a good Republican paper, in its editorial commented on “the unanimity with which every speaker at Chicago went out of his way to defend the tired and aging leadership of the Roosevelt administration and attack Mr. Dewey’s youth.” But, it said, “twelve years is too much for any group of men to direct a country, and the President has been, himself, stubborn in refusing to bring new and younger blood into his Administration.”7 And, of course, Colonel McCormick, on the editorial page of the Chicago Tribune, wanted to give his slant on the goings-on at Chicago Stadium. “They call it the Democratic national convention but obviously it is the CIO convention,” said his editorial. “Mr. Roosevelt is the 202 FDR, Dewey, and the Election of 1944 candidate of the CIO and the Communists,” it continued, “because they know that, if elected, he will continue to put the government of the United States at their service, at home and abroad.” It concluded by stating “that the CIO is in the saddle and the Democratic donkey, under whip and spur, is meekly taking the road to communism and atheism.”8 “Everybody knows,” the Tribune said editorially after Roosevelt’s nomination, “that Roosevelt is the Communist candidate, but even the Communists cannot be sure where their place will be if he wins. His purpose is to overthrow the Republic...