The Challenger

THE CAMPAIGN (See Cover) For the next three weeks Tom Dewey, the challenger, will be under the intensest public scrutiny any American can undergo. Millions of Americans will stare at him or his pictures, will listen to and study his words, and read what hundreds of reporters write about him.

There is no longer any doubt that the U.S. is taking its second wartime election very seriously. There is no doubt that the choice that Americans must make is a serious one--even if only a tithe of what each party has said of the other is true. And all the written words, the stares of the millions of eyes, are concentrated on Challenger Dewey with one intent: to divine his true character, to assess his true worth, to measure him against the well-known qualities of Franklin Roosevelt.

Then, suddenly, it would all be over; as a light switch is clicked, the minds of a majority of the people would have been painfully made up, after much soul-searching--and then Tom Dewey would either quietly return to his tasks in Albany, or would have emerged as the youngest of U.S. Presidents, the new champion.

He had begun with one of the greatest disadvantages that ever faced a Presidential candidate: he was running against the Commander in Chief in wartime. This fact precluded a slashing, all-out attack on the President. Shortly after his nomination a FORTUNE poll showed that 66% of the voters were certain Tom Dewey would lose.

In the traditionally awkward doldrums between the nomination and the start of the campaign, his position did not improve.

Tom Dewey had bridged the gap characteristically, organizing, organizing, organizing. Republican leaders, Senators, Congressmen, committeemen came to Albany in droves, state by state. Newsmen who covered him were bored to tears, but Republicans everywhere, although privately gloomy about his chances, were heartened by the stiffness of his mustached upper lip and cheered by his obvious determination to mobilize all the resources of the resurgent Republican Party.

For weeks Tom Dewey remained secluded in his air-conditioned office in the New York capitol, or at his 486-acre farm at Pawling. When photographers descended on Pawling, they got none of the usual phony campaign pictures. Instead, the U.S. soon saw photographs of a well-groomed gentleman farmer, standing by his barn or leaning on a fence.

At 42. Tom Dewey had been well-known to the U.S. for seven years. His fame as the fearless young prosecutor was secure: millions had read of him as the very model of the modern District Attorney marshaling the forces of right against the hordes of evil. This year they learned more of the details of his rapid success story, from small-town editor's son to governor of the biggest state.

In the nation's second biggest job Tom Dewey had made an exemplary record.

Being governor of a state in wartime is unspectacular. Revenues roll in, expenditures are down, job hunters scarce. Nevertheless, Tom Dewey had played his unspectacular part efficiently and well. He had surrounded himself with as able a team of top assistants as had ever been seen in Albany.

When the campaign began, the polls showed Dewey trailing far behind. At Philadelphia, in his first speech, he made some boggles. But his voice was good--so good that gagsters referred to him as "Lowell Thomas E. Dewey," a shaft aimed at the coaching received from Radio Commentator Lowell Thomas, a Pawling neighbor.

He had repeated and expanded on the attack he had begun in Chicago (that the Roosevelt Administration is old, tired, quarrelsome and defeatist); and opened a new salient by stating the simple fact that in 1940, after seven Roosevelt years, there were still 10,000,000 unemployed in the U.S. He named this the "Roosevelt Depression"--and for the first time the New Dealers were really on the defensive.

And at Philadelphia Dewey sounded his theme: "That's why it's time for a change."

The Dewey campaign was well-planned, orderly, clearly fitted to a pattern. In Louisville, Dewey spoke on foreign policy; in Seattle, on labor; in San Francisco, it was Government regulation; in Los Angeles, Social Security.

Veteran correspondents aboard the Dewey train had never seen such a campaign. Those who had been on the fabled Willkie "crusade" of 1940 found this one very different. Four years ago they had clambered out from morning to night to hear the Willkie back-platform utterances, had ridden with the candidate through streets lined from curb to storefronts with cheering spectators. (The veterans also recalled the utter confusion of the Willkie campaign, and the blur it had left in the minds of voters.)

Now there were almost no parades, and on the way from station to hotel the Dewey motorcade often drove through near-silent streets. When Dewey made one of his rare back-platform appearances, he only repeated what he had already said in formal speeches. But, in contrast to the Willkie campaign, correspondents had a chance, every day, to question the candidate at a press conference.

There was nothing impromptu in this plan of campaign: Tom Dewey and his advisers were firmly convinced that 1944 was no year for barnstorming. They wanted to keep the campaign on a high, even solemn level, befitting a time of crisis. On the practical side, they knew that the mistakes a candidate makes count much more heavily, and stick in the voters' minds much more firmly, than positive gains.

Slowly the U.S. got to know Tom Dewey better. The U.S. as a whole learned that he was cool, precise, tough-minded, with a passion for neatness (he usually fastens both buttons of his single-breasted suits), a meticulous regimen (he rarely eats a heavy meal), an experienced facility in avoiding traps set by hostile newsmen, a firm determination to say exactly what he wanted to say when he wanted to say it.

The crowds who came to the rallies saw a crisp, vigorous young man, usually wearing a neatly pressed dark suit and starched collar, who entered at the precise moment his name was mentioned in the introduction, who had perfect stage presence, who never sweated except when the klieg lights bore down too heavily, a man who made clear, concise--and mercifully short--speeches.

The well-oiled campaign moved on. On board his train, Dewey had a minimum of advisers: Speechwriter Elliott Bell, one-time New York Timesman; Secretary Paul Lockwood, an associate from his D.A. days; Press Secretary Jim Hagerty. Tall, lean Hamilton Gaddis, patronage dispenser of the Dewey Albany administration, preceded the train as advance agent. Behind the lines, a mammoth research bureau, occupying the top floor of Albany's De Witt Clinton Hotel, steadily went on digging up facts & figures.

But after Los Angeles the campaign suddenly stalled. After the San Francisco and Los Angeles speeches, many Republicans feared that Tom Dewey had fallen into the fatal Willkie "Me Too" trap. (In San Francisco, Dewey had done nothing more shocking than to say, in effect, that if the U.S. has discarded Adam Smith's economics it cannot continue to hang, tooth & nail, to Thomas Jefferson's politics. In Los Angeles, he had merely said that if the U.S. is to have Social Security, it should be there for all.) But some GOPsters shook their heads, and Hatchet-man Harold Ickes set up the cry: Dewey is outdealing the New Deal.

At that point, Dewey seemed a lonely figure. He was the only candidate* discussing the issues; he seemed to be talking to himself. Then came the break: Franklin Roosevelt made his famed frolicsome speech to the Teamsters. That brought both Dewey and his campaign to life again. The bulk of his detailed reply at Oklahoma City might soon be forgotten, but one note would stick: "He asked for it. Here it is."

Now the craftsmanship of the Dewey campaign became evident. It was seen that he had been wise, in the weeks when he alone was on the stump, to get well-planted the broad bases and main points of his positive program. This job was necessary work, but also, to a great many voters, somewhat dull. Dewey's shrewd timing became apparent after Oklahoma City; with his main program staked out, he was now free, in the crucial weeks, to concentrate on the much livelier business of attacking Roosevelt's record--which he described as "terribly bad."

Another neat piece of Dewey's campaign strategy also became apparent. In the August doldrums, while he was silent, other Republicans had begun moving up the artillery on a weak Democratic flank--the left-wing support for Franklin Roosevelt from P.A.C. and the Communists. Tom Dewey marched ahead without so much as glancing at this temptingly vulnerable spot--until Franklin Roosevelt, needled by the jabs from Republican underlings, rose to disclaim his Communist support. Then, at Charleston, W.Va., Dewey let go hard against the President's "soft" disavowal. Perhaps Franklin Roosevelt doesn't like the Communists, said Dewey, but look how they like him.

Since Oklahoma City, Tom Dewey has been giving Franklin Roosevelt real trouble. Now, after hearing the Commander in Chief "campaign in the usual sense," he felt that he not only could but should shoot the works. The U.S. saw the beginning of a real prosecution of the New Deal, from top to bottom.

Tom Dewey had learned discipline as a boy in Owosso. (Given a new tricycle, he was told that, if he fell off, he would lose the tricycle for a year. He did, and the tricycle went into the Dewey cellar for a year.) In his racket-smashing days in New York, he had learned how to drive home a point unsparingly. Now his discipline and his relentlessness combined in a new confidence.

Would this stretch-drive carry him on to victory? State by state, there was a Republican surge of strength. G.O.P. Chairman Herb Brownell joked about hiring a few pessimists, to keep him from getting too happy. He said he couldn't believe all the glowing good news that flooded in; for if the reports were true, or even close to the truth, Tom Dewey was not only elected, but by a landslide.

With three campaign weeks to go, that was the score. In the time that was left, what could Franklin Roosevelt do to reverse the trend? To some it seemed that up until now he had been hoping to continue the New Deal's twelve-year campaign against Herbert Hoover (see cuts). The Deweymen looked over their case" again & again, pondering the probable points of the Roosevelt attack. What, for instance, were the solid arguments for their man--arguments persuasive to independent voters?

The War. He had repeatedly promised that if elected he would not change the winning combination of military commanders.

The Peace. He had rejected--completely--a soft peace.

World Security. Here Tom Dewey successfully moved to make U.S. foreign policy both positive and bipartisan. He had loosed a blast at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, expressing fears that Dumbarton Oaks would degenerate into a Big Power conference serving only the Big Powers' ends. When Cordell Hull rose to defend himself, Dewey promptly sent Manhattan Lawyer John Foster Dulles as his emissary to the State Department. The U.S. people, who had known little of Foster Dulles, learned that this scholarly, experienced lawyer might be Tom Dewey's choice for Secretary of State. Whatever exuberant hatchet jobs were subsequently done on Foster Dulles because of his Wall Street connections (and Cordell Hull flatly forbade Administration orators to engage in them), his trip to Washington as Tom Dewey's agent swept away much of the feeling that Dewey would be an inadequate tyro in foreign affairs. For years the Protestant church-folk of the U.S. had known John Foster Dulles as the chairman of the Federal Council of Churches' commission to study a "just and durable" peace.

Once the Dumbarton Oaks plan was published, Tom Dewey gave his hearty approval. On the record, he stood at least even-Stephen with Franklin Roosevelt on world-security plans.

Postwar Jobs. Here Dewey's point of view is basically distinct from that of the New Deal. He stands for an end to Government hostility toward business. He stands for giving private enterprise the chance to create all possible jobs, and for moving in with Government-made work (the PWA kind rather than WPA leaf-raking)--but only to buttress the job-creating activity of the citizens themselves. Most importantly, he rejects the New Deal premise that the days of economic progress for America are finished.

Government Regulation. In San Francisco, in the speech which horrified some Old Guardsmen, Dewey said: "Whether we like it or not, regardless of the party in power, Government is committed to some degree of economic direction." Specifically, he mentioned interest regulation, minimum wages and farm support prices. He said: "We are not going back to the days of unregulated business and finance. We are not going back to the days of unprotected farm prices. We do not want the reactionary philosophy of dog-eat-dog."

Social Legislation. Dewey is on record for retention of collective bargaining, the SEC, unemployment insurance, the broadening of Social Security, to take in the 20,000,000 Americans not now covered (farmers, domestic servants, etc.).

Labor Relations. Without lessening labor's economic rights, Dewey is on record for speeding up and simplifying the machinery by which it can achieve those rights. In Seattle he reeled off the names of the interlocking and overlapping federal bureaus which now deal with, and delay, every question of labor policy. That he had flicked a raw spot was made clear last week in speeches in the New York Times Hall by Labor Leaders Phil Murray, Robert J. Watt and David B. Robertson, who spoke with anger at having to carry every little problem to a bickering Government.

One argument Tom Dewey could not make, with any taste, although others were making it for him. That was the issue of the President's age and health, which are respectively 62 and pretty good (see Presidency). But Dewey could hammer away at Term IV, the prime feature of the Republican case, and the cause of uneasiness in many a Roosevelt voter. He could remind the U.S. that in February 1937 the President had told Pundit Arthur Krock of the New York Times that when 1940 came the U.S. would have a new President; that twice, in 1940, Mr. Roosevelt told the voters that when 1945 came the U.S. would have a new President. The memory of these broken promises echoed again when the President told the Democratic convention this year: "Whenever that time comes , new hands will then have full opportunity to realize the ideals which we seek."

Tom Dewey wanted to move the date up a few years. He had now laid the foundations of his campaign, had built the walls and roofed them. With three weeks to go he was busily decorating the rooms with devastating caricatures of the New Deal. He was working faster, though just as surely, with an eye to his own timetable and to the blueprint of his campaign. For his house must be built and furnished in time for the American people to buy it, before Nov. 7.

*Except for Socialist Candidate Norman Thomas-- who, beyond the two-party pale, was almost inaudible.

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