The Man Who Had It Won

THE bristling mustache above a bone-stiff upper lip. The wind-up doll gestures. The suave delivery of platitudes in a deep and resonant voice. Those trademarks of Thomas Edmund Dewey came to symbolize a full decade of Republican Party frustration in the presidential politics of the 1940s. That is unfortunate, since Dewey was the prototype of all crusading young gangbusters in his 30s, a crisply efficient three-term Governor of New York in his 40s, and a premature but valued elder statesman of his party as early as his 50s. Nevertheless, he will be remembered chiefly as the man who blew a seemingly certain election to the presidency by his serenely somnolent campaign against Harry Truman in 1948.

Thomas Dewey had mellowed in his later years. Teased about the fact that his dark hair was finally beginning to thin, he could pat a balding correspondent on the head and reply: "Who are you to talk, you old bastard?" Yet he could never completely shake his waxen image as "the bridegroom on the wedding cake." He was still widely remembered that way when he died last week of a heart attack after playing 18 holes of golf in the 90DEG heat of Bal Harbour, Fla., his favorite winter refuge. In another week he would have been 69.

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 for tranquillity, and Dewey, running a campaign designed to avoid controversy, promptly put them to sleep. Soothingly, he pleaded: "We need a rudder to our ship of state, a firm hand at the tiller."

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."

Effective Manager. As was true of another noted Republican before him, Herbert Hoover, history would have treated Dewey more kindly if he had never run for President. The son of an Owosso, Mich., newspaper publisher, Dewey was educated at the University of Michigan and Columbia University. After winning third place in a national contest as a college baritone, he studied voice in New York City, considered an operatic career (Critic Deems Taylor liked Dewey's voice but said he sang without "enough impulse"). Instead Dewey settled on law and swiftly achieved prominence. A skilled trial lawyer who could wither reluctant witnesses with scornful questions, he was appointed an assistant U.S. Attorney at the age of 29, heading a staff of 52 lawyers. His biggest catch: Rackets Boss Charles ("Lucky") Luciano.

Dewey went back into private practice, which by 1935 was netting him more than $50,000 a year. He left that cozy career to accept an appointment from Democratic Governor Herbert H. Lehman as a special prosecutor to attack racketeers. He badgered rackets victims into testifying against their tormentors by threatening them with income tax and contempt of court charges, and was able to boast that he "never lost a witness" to underworld retribution. He rarely lost a case, either: at one point he ran up 72 convictions in 73 trials.

The young prosecutor earned national fame and soon challenged the man who had launched him, coming within 65,000 votes of unseating Governor Lehman. When Lehman did not seek reelection, Dewey was easily elected Governor in 1942. In his three terms, he proved a superb administrator and an effective manager of the state's money, building up a $600 million surplus, which he funneled into long-neglected hospitals and highways. He also established the first state commission to combat racial discrimination in employment.

Dewey never regained his top influence in the Republican Party after his second presidential defeat, though he helped persuade his party to nominate Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and urged Richard Nixon not to quit the vice-presidential race that same year after Nixon had come under attack for maintaining a secret political fund. As President, Nixon offered to appoint Dewey Chief Justice of the U.S. Dewey declined, saying that he was too old, but later confided to a friend: "I don't have a judicial temperament; I'm too much of a battler."

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