They underestimated Truman, as Dewey and his team did, as almost every member of what we would now call the chattering class did, and even as many of those closest to him did. What the small-town politician lacked in polish he more than made up in sheer determination. First, he brought divided, exhausted Democrats to their feet with a 2:00 a.m. barnburner of an acceptance speech. Then he called Congress into special session beginning July 26th to consider legislation he said was essential and that the “Do-nothing” 80th had refused to consider. Finally, he simply decided to close his ears to the naysayers, the “experts” who told him he wasn’t worthy of the job and had absolutely no chance of beating Tom Dewey.
Harry was taking his show on the road. He got on a mighty train, the custom-made, heavily armored Presidential car, the “Ferdinand Magellan,” and accompanied by staff and roughly 50 members of the press, headed out to meet the voters. If Harry Truman was going to go down, it wasn’t going to be through lack of effort. “I want to see the people,” he had said. He meant it literally. Truman wanted them to know that he was thinking about them, that he shared their values, that he understood the challenges they faced. He and his team plotted three big runs—a cross-country one that took him to California, a move back to the Midwest for six days, and finally a ten-day trip to the major industrial centers of the Northeast. Then, back to Washington before a trip home to Missouri to vote and watch the returns.
Truman wanted more than the set-piece speeches in arenas in large population centers. And he wanted more stops as well. He realized something that both the Dewey brain trust and the media hadn’t grasped. People like to see and they also like to be seen. That meant stopping in small towns and rural railroad junctions. You could see Truman in big places like Cincinnati and St. Paul, and little ones like Fostoria, OH and Tolano, IL. Each place they stopped, Truman would get out on the rear platform of his car and speak, no matter how big the crowd.