Upset That Wasn't

In this persuasive reappraisal of Truman's 1948 victory, Harold Gullan argues that it was neither the "greatest upset in American political history" (as popular mythology would have it) nor merely a successful extension of the coalition built by Franklin Roosevelt (as many historians contend). Aided by so many fortuitous circumstances, Gullan declares, Truman should have won by an even larger margin. Despite the near unanimous opinion of polls, pundits, and publications favoring Thomas E. Dewey, a win by Dewey would have been the authentic upset. Making his case, Mr. Gullan surveys Truman's background and recreates the happy but anxious years just after the war, as well as the events of this remarkable campaign. He shows why, in retrospect, the results of 1948 make it-along with 1932 and 1968-one of the three most important elections in the twentieth century. Party loyalties gave way to independent voting, personal campaigning to the primacy of television; the cold war was enshrined as policy; and the bulwarks of New Deal legislation were preserved but little expanded. The Upset That Wasn't was published on the fiftieth anniversary of this historic election.