Never Assume

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Today is the 65th anniversary of the appearance on the news racks of physical proof of perhaps the most spectacularly bad headline decision ever.

As I have mentioned before, I used to work on newspaper copy desks, and I understand the temptation to write a headline for a story when you already know — or think you know — how it is going to turn out even though it isn't official.

I worked on sports copy desks, and there were often times when Super Bowls or something similar became lopsided early and, even though much of the game had yet to be played, it was clear which team would win. On such occasions, we felt we had extra time to work on our headline, and most of the time we were right.

(I always felt that we held ourselves to somewhat higher standards at those times, given that we had the luxury of time to reflect and come up with just the right headline. I have always been proud of a headline I wrote at the Arkansas Gazette about a college football game that got out of hand early.)

That is one of the biggest differences between writing a sports headline and writing a news headline, I suppose. Most team sports events are rigidly timed. When one team grabs a big lead over another, the game eventually reaches a point when it is no longer possible for the other team to come back. (Baseball is the sole exception to that rule, I guess. In baseball, as Yogi Berra said, it really ain't over until it's over.)

But news doesn't work that way — as the folks at the Chicago Tribune found out on this day in 1948. They probably knew it already, but what happened 65 years ago was a reminder to them and a cautionary tale for the generations of editors to follow.

It was a banner headline about the 1948 presidential election, which was held 65 years ago yesterday. It famously proclaimed "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN" in big bold letters on Page 1.

History remembers the 1948 campaign as Harry Truman's "Give 'em hell, Harry" campaign, the greatest political comeback ever. The 1948 election made Truman the patron saint of political lost causes. I can't remember a single political campaign in which the underdog failed to invoke the memory of Truman and his upset win as evidence that anything is possible (regardless of whether the cause was really lost at that point or not).

When I was a journalism student, they told us about the 1948 election and the Tribune headline — and I'm sure it is still this way in most schools — as a reminder never to assume.

Sixty–five years ago, the folks on the Chicago Tribune's copy desk made a huge assumption. They assumed that Tom Dewey, Truman's Republican opponent, would win the election, and it was a reasonable assumption to make. Truman was the incumbent, but he was unpopular. In June 1948, Gallup reported that only 39% of respondents approved of his job performance.

It may have been due, in part, to wishful thinking on the part of the Tribune. It was a Republican–leaning paper and had called Truman a "nincompoop" on its editorial page.

And there is no doubt that still–primitive polling methods played a huge role, too. There were flaws in polling methodology that would be corrected after the election, but the flaws were firmly in place before the voters cast their ballots as the polls persistently predicted Dewey's victory for months. Pollsters were convinced that most voters had made up their minds in September and stopped polling weeks before the election, thus missing a late shift in Truman's favor.

It has been estimated that as many as 14% of voters who originally intended to vote for Dewey decided in those final weeks to vote for Truman or someone else — or not at all.

And part of the reason was due to deadline pressure.

As Tim Jones of the Tribune writes, "a printers' strike ... forced the paper to go to press hours before it normally would." The accelerated deadline forced the managing editor to make the kind of judgment call that no editor wants to make early on an election night. He had to choose a headline for a story that wasn't over when he made the decision — but would be when the readers picked up their papers the next morning.

Obviously, he made the wrong choice. He relied on polling data that was weeks old and made the pollsters his scapegoat — even though he had also depended too much on the judgment of the Tribune's Washington correspondent, who was almost never wrong, as well as the fact that LIFE magazine had just published a picture of Dewey with the caption "the next president of the United States."

It was a huge mistake, but remember, this was in the days before the internet, before cable TV. Heck, TV was still in its infancy in those days, anyway. Few people outside the Chicago area knew of the headline faux pas — until Truman, who was returning to Washington by train, made a stop in St. Louis and was handed a copy of the Tribune with its erroneous headline.

"He had as low an opinion of the Tribune as it did of him," Jones wrote. "Truman held the paper up, and photographers preserved the moment for history."

A Force of a Different Color

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"It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale."

Executive Order 9981
Issued by President Harry Truman
July 26, 1948

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Harry Truman desegregated the U.S. armed forces on this day in 1948.

Some people cite this as an example of true presidential courage. Truman was running for re–election in a nation that was only starting to deal with its racial problems. His electoral prospects had been regarded as dim for months — ever since Gallup reported his approval rating was 36%. The New Deal wing of the Democratic Party had been trying to persuade Dwight Eisenhower to run as a Democrat, but he declined, and Truman was nominated by his party in mid–July.

Not quite two weeks later, he signed an executive order desegregating the military — and ushered in the modern civil rights movement.

The civil rights movement existed before Truman signed that executive order. While some may assign a different starting point, I have long believed that the Supreme Court's Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896, which upheld segregation under the "separate but equal" doctrine, is when the civil rights movement became more than a series of isolated acts. It was in the years following that decision that the NAACP was formed and the efforts for racial equality became more coordinated.

It is often implied, if not suggested outright, that segregation only existed in the South, but it was a national fact of life, and attempts to change that were largely symbolic until Truman desegregated the troops 65 years ago today.

Skeptics may observe — and with justification — that Truman's order was mostly symbolic as well, given the fact that it was not treated as seriously as it should have been for years. And, as I say, there also are those who believe it was an act of genuine presidential courage. It may have been.

But I wouldn't necessarily label it a completely altruistic act. In the context of the times, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss political influences.

At the Democrats' convention in Philadelphia earlier that month, the progressive mayor of Minneapolis, Hubert Humphrey, gave a stirring speech that prompted the delegates to adopt a stronger stance on civil rights. Truman unhesitatingly endorsed the plank, but delegates from Mississippi and Alabama walked out in protest.

Prior to this date in 1948, there was a certain amount of concern among Democrats about the prospects for their national ticket — as well as rumors (which proved to be true) of a schism that might lead to a split in the form of a third–party challenge. In fact, from what I have read, the only Democrat who thought Truman had a chance to win was ... Truman himself.

In fact, there were two challenges to Truman in 1948 — aside from the challenge from Republican nominee Tom Dewey, who had lost to Franklin Roosevelt four years earlier. The challenge from the right came from South Carolina's Strom Thurmond. The challenge from the left came from Henry Wallace, Truman's predecessor in the vice presidency.

Recent Gallup polls still had Truman's approval lingering in the 30s. He may have felt he had little to lose — other than members of his base who might otherwise choose to stay home in November. That may have been at least part of his motivation for issuing the order.

He may also have felt that the current of history was moving in the direction of desegregation.

In many ways, it was a symbolic gesture. Although the order called for its provisions to be "put into effect as rapidly as possible," there was foot dragging in its implementation.

Because of that, many modern historians will say the modern civil rights movement began with 1954's unanimous Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling.

I suppose that is hard to dispute. Segregation had been the virtually unchallenged law of the land since Plessy v. Ferguson, but Truman's order was the first real crack in segregation, and it set things up for Brown v. Board of Education to wedge it wide open — and, in the process, set up the ripple effect that transformed America from a segregated society to an integrated one.

That is the history of the American civil rights movement. I am often inclined to think that American segregation was destined to fall — like the Berlin wall.

But transformations of this magnitude are not historically inevitable, and even when the wheels are set in motion, they can be exceedingly slow to turn.

Truman got the wheels turning on this day in 1948.

Obama Is No Truman

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I was wading through the daily columns criticizing Barack Obama (which come from all sides these days) when I stumbled onto an intriguing piece by Michael Haydock in American History magazine.

Haydock's topic is one that is bound to be of some interest, especially to those who are promoting Obama's candidacy for re–election in 2012 — Harry Truman's upset victory over Tom Dewey in 1948.

If you aren't up to speed on 20th century American history, let me briefly recap the story for you. Sixty–three years ago this week, Truman won a presidential election that most people believed he would lose — and it has achieved something of mythical status in the years that have passed since.

Truman has become something of an inspirational figure, the political patron saint of lost causes.

I've been following political campaigns all my life, and candidates who are widely expected to lose inevitably invoke Truman's spirit in their stump speeches and exhort the faithful to go to the polls on Election Day — in spite of dire forecasts — because anything can happen.

No doubt there are many Democrats who have been demoralized by the economy and Obama's handling of it and would like to see the president pull off a similar victory a year from now — and, to be sure, there are some similarities between Obama's bid for a second term and Truman's campaign for his first full term (although there are many dissimilarities, too):

• Obama is the incumbent, as was Truman.
• Obama is a Democrat, as was Truman.
• Both presidents enjoyed large Democratic majorities in the first halves of their terms only to lose them in the midterms. Their losses in the House were almost identical (Obama, at least, retained a slim majority in the Senate; Truman lost his majority in both chambers).
• Polls in 1948 indicated more people disapproved of Truman's job performance than approved. The same is true of Obama today.

But a year out from the election, there are still a lot of unknown variables. And, frankly, I'm dubious about Obama's ability to re–connect with many of the voters he has lost. Truman seems to have been much better at that kind of thing.

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One is whether there will be a third–party candidate who might be capable of drawing votes away from either Obama or his eventual Republican challenger. When Truman was nominated by the Democrats in the summer of 1948, he was the standard bearer for a party that had won the four previous presidential campaigns with Franklin Roosevelt heading the ticket. Democrats were mostly united in those four campaigns, but, in 1948, the party gave every appearance of being splintered. Conservative Southerners, angered by the party's support for civil rights, walked out of the convention hall and proceeded to nominate South Carolina Gov. Strom Thurmond for the presidency. Meanwhile, the man Truman had replaced as Roosevelt's running mate in 1944, Henry Wallace, was nominated for the presidency by the Progressive Party. With the Democrats divided three ways, it was assumed by most that Dewey would glide into the presidency with the support of a united Republican Party. In fact, it was considered such a slam dunk at the time that pollsters, who were still honing their craft in 1948, stopped sampling a couple of weeks before the election — and, as a result, completely missed the last–minute movement in Truman's direction. In fairness to the pollsters, though, they weren't the only ones who believed Truman was on a quixotic quest. Even with the benefit of hindsight, I can understand why the observers of 1948 believed Truman was certain to lose — and why they were astonished when he won. Obama supporters who hope history will repeat itself in 2012 point to the fact that Truman campaigned against a "do–nothing" Republican Congress and speak of Obama doing something similar, claiming that an obstructionist Congress has been preventing him from enacting his proposals. But that's going to be a risky strategy, given Obama's reluctance to act decisively on much of anything except his health care plan when Democrats controlled both the White House and Capitol Hill — let alone after the midterms. Truman could point to a boatload of proposals he sent to the GOP–controlled Capitol Hill, proposals on which the Republicans of the time refused to act. Obama's legislative agenda since the midterms has largely been his job creation package. Truman also had the benefit of the support of Dwight Eisenhower, who would be elected president as a Republican four years later. Eisenhower was widely regarded as the man who had saved the free world during World War II, and his backing certainly must have helped Truman. I can think of no similarly beloved American figure whose support could boost Obama like that. Obama might be helped if the Republicans nominate someone who turns out to be as passionless as Dewey apparently was in 1948. Dewey had been advised to avoid making mistakes, and his campaign was the very definition of playing it safe — too safe. The texts of his campaign speeches are dull and flat — and must have seemed even moreso when Dewey recited them. His most famous statement during the campaign was "You know that your future is still ahead of you." That was about as bold as it got for him. In an editorial, the Louisville Courier–Journal wrote sneeringly of Dewey, "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." Dewey did himself no favors. The election was his to lose, and he did — in large part because he never articulated a vision for the future. It seems unlikely to me that, whoever the 2012 Republican nominee turns out to be, he or she will duplicate that mistake. The 1948 campaign also featured a new twist. If something similar presents itself in 2012, it might have an impact on the race. In 1948, movie theaters agreed to show short films produced by both campaigns. Dewey's film was made by professionals with a huge budget, but it reinforced Dewey's public image as a distant, if not disengaged, leader. The Truman staff, operating on a much smaller budget, used stock footage to create a film that reinforced the image of an active president involved in all phases of his job.

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Some historians have cited the films as important factors in the outcome. I guess the thing people remember about the 1948 campaign, whether they were alive at the time or have only read about it in their history books, is the "whistle stop" train tour that Truman took, speaking to enthusiastic crowds and promising each audience that he would win the election. Maybe he truly believed that — but, if he did, he appears to have been the only one. From all accounts I have read, no one in his staff — not even his wife — believed he could overtake Dewey. When he did, he took great pleasure in flashing the infamously premature "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline that ran in the Chicago Daily Tribune the next day — and reciting the tale of hearing NBC radio commentator H. V. Kaltenborn confidently tell listeners, even late into the night on Election Day, that, although Truman did have the lead, there was no way it could hold up when the later returns came in.

There is no doubt that Truman had some good fortune during that campaign. His foreign policy was popular with the voters, and the country was emerging from a recession that saw inflation go up significantly and GDP tumble just as precariously in 1946 and 1947.

It also helped that Thurmond and Wallace did not receive as many votes as expected.

Perhaps as a side effect, Democrats recaptured both chambers of Congress.

As the saying goes, sometimes it is better to be lucky than good. Truman was lucky in 1948 — lucky that he didn't have to face the voters in 1946.

It remains to be seen whether 2012 will be lucky for Obama.