1948

            Beaming from the rear of the train formerly used for his illustrious whistle-stop campaigns, a triumphant Harry Truman reveled in the previous day's Chicago Tribune. The banner headline speciously pronounced "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN-, as indicated by author and independent scholar, Harold I. Gullan. This paradoxical article was a collective memory of the "upset- election of 1948. .
             According to Gullan, by 1948 Harry Truman had been a professional politician for twenty-six years. With the death of President Franklin Roosevelt in 1945, Truman took office and, as quoted by author and history professor Fred L. Israel, told reporters, "I feel like the moon, the stars, and all the planets have fallen on me."" Unprepared for presidency, Truman was faced with the momentous problems of post-war America, but he grappled them with resilience, and the majority of the American people rallied behind him. However, he sympathized with Roosevelt's liberal principals while the mood of the country was becoming increasingly conservative (Israel 146). His three years in the White House were, as described by Gullan, a "jarring roller-coaster ride-, and all the post-war uncertainties "inflation, strikes, shortages, problems with the Soviet Union, and controversy over atomic weapons "eroded his personal popularity as well as the popularity of his Democratic party. His decision to run in 1948 could not have been easy, but in his Memoirs Truman stresses his responsibility to preserve the gains of the New Deal and continue to "lead from strength- with the Soviet Union. Also, being a career politician who had reached the pinnacle of his profession, recognizing that he was still viewed as what both Gullan and historian Donald Holley called an "accidental president- must have strengthened his resolve to win on his own. However, as all biographers agree, his chances of success looked bleak, as his Republican adversary Dewey was progressively gaining status and support.