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Truman's 1948 campaign: An upset in the making

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His prospects bleak and his own party in the doldrums, Harry S. Truman embarked on a campaign 60 years ago this summer that would make his name legend in American political history.

The plainspoken Missourian – who was swept into the vice presidency in 1944 as running mate of the magnetic Franklin D. Roosevelt – became president when Roosevelt died in the first year of his fourth term. Three years afterward, in 1948, any residual Roosevelt glow had faded and Truman’s honeymoon was over. With the country stuck in a Cold War, inflation rampant and housing in short supply, Republicans had taken over Congress. They were eager to regain the White House a dozen long years after their last president, Herbert Hoover, left in the depths of the Great Depression.

Liberals in Truman’s own party found the Missourian a pale imitation of their hero, Roosevelt. Southern Democrats reeled at Truman’s civil rights policies. His own party was fractured on the left and on the right. If he lost the election, Truman would pack up and return home to Independence, Missouri. If he won, it would represent an astonishing upset.

As the nominating conventions got under way in summer 1948, the Republicans were licking their chops. Not only the left and right wings of the party, but even some city bosses had scratched around to find an alternative to Truman.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, leader of the Allied victory in Europe in World War II, turned down pleas from Democrats to run on their ticket. In 1948, few knew what party he favored. Four years later, he would accept the Republican nomination and become a GOP hero.

Even in Truman’s hometown the dominant news medium, The Kansas City Star, did not lead cheers for him. Indeed, The Star’s top brass in those days looked forward to a GOP victory. The Star’s newly minted president, Roy A. Roberts, was a rock-ribbed Republican. He had helped engineer Alf Landon’s campaign for the GOP nomination in 1936 and he would help where he could to promote Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.

Truman, on the other hand, had risen from Kansas City’s Democratic political machine. The Star’s leadership was suspicious of his unabashed ties to boss Thomas J. Pendergast, whose organization had directed Truman’s political career. In 1936, the newspaper had documented widespread voter fraud, one important way the machine operated. The Star was investigating reports of similar fraud in a 1946 election in which now-President Truman was interested. Their examination, however, was thwarted when the ballots – impounded for security at the Jackson County Courthouse – disappeared.

As the story of the 1948 presidential campaign unfolded in the pages of The Kansas City Star and its morning edition, The Kansas City Times, the signs of a GOP victory seemed clear. Star reporters often mused in print that Truman probably was finished as president.