Word: deweyitis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Backbiting. Dewey reached vainly for the presidency three times. Near the end of a sensational career as a prosecuting attorney in 1940, he sought the Republican nomination. Dewey stumped the nation, headed into the Philadelphia convention as the favorite. But no one had ever leaped from D.A. to presidential candidate, and the party's old pros could not accept the brash, young (38) Eastern upstart. They turned instead to an older, more personable novice: Indiana's Wendell Willkie...
...Dewey came back in 1944 as Governor of the most populous state to wrap up the presidential nomination on the first ballot. His impossible task was to challenge the Commander in Chief in wartime; many voters thought that rejecting Franklin D. Roosevelt would comfort the enemy. Dewey refrained from attacking F.D.R. on foreign policy but lashed out at the New Deal for "bickering, quarreling and backbiting by the most incompetent people who ever held public office." He lost, but drew a surprising 46% of the popular vote...
Cunning Men. It took Dewey three ballots to regain the nomination in 1948 over Ohio's Robert Taft, Minnesota's Harold Stassen, Michigan's Arthur Vandenberg and California's Earl Warren-and the nomination was considered tantamount to election. The nation seemed weary of the frenetic days of New Deal innovation and the burdens of war and postwar readjustment. Harry Truman was a feeble contrast to the fallen F.D.R., and the Democratic Party was split (Strom Thurmond had deserted to run as a right-wing candidate, Henry Wallace as a left-wing challenger). Voters yearned...
Truman, by contrast, slugged viciously ("The Republican Party is controlled by silent and cunning men who have a dangerous lust for power and privilege") through 31,500 miles and 350 speeches, stubbornly predicting his own victory. Gamblers made Dewey an 18-to-1 favorite; some pollsters were so certain of the outcome that they stopped sampling as early as September. But Truman attracted large and noisy crowds ("Give 'em hell, Harry"). He won, mainly because of a revolt among Midwest farmers, who were angry at the Republican Congress and turned off by Dewey's cool gentility...
When the results were announced, Truman laughed gleefully, bouncing up and down on a bed in a suite at Kansas City's Muehlebach Hotel. Dewey gamely faced astonished newsmen in Manhattan's Roosevelt Hotel and admitted: "I'm just as surprised as you; we were all wrong together-but it's been grand fun, boys and girls. Good luck...