On this day in 1948, the Chicago Tribune jumps
the gun and mistakenly declares New York Governor Thomas Dewey
the winner of his presidential race with incumbent Harry S.
Truman in a front-page headline: “Dewey Defeats Truman.”
Many of America’s major newspapers had predicted a Dewey victory
early on in the campaign. A New York Times article editorialized that
"if Truman is nominated, he will be forced to wage the
loneliest campaign in recent history." Perhaps not surprisingly then,
Truman chose not to use the press as a vehicle for getting his
message across. Instead, in July 1948, he embarked on an ambitious
22,000-mile “whistle stop” railroad and automobile campaign tour.
At every destination, Truman asked crowds to help him keep his job
as president. His eventual success in the election of 1948 has been
largely attributed to this direct interaction with the public and his
appeal to the common voters as the political "underdog."
At the end of one of his campaign speeches, voices in the
crowd could be heard yelling “Give 'em Hell, Harry!" It didn't take long
for the phrase to catch on and become Truman's unofficial campaign slogan.
In a now famous photograph snapped in the early morning hours after the election,
a beaming and bemused Truman is shown holding aloft the Chicago Tribune issue
that had wrongly predicted his political downfall. Truman defeated Dewey by 114 electoral votes