getting tired, and took a long afternoon nap before this climactic performance. When he woke up, the train was almost in St. Louis. Only then did the writers present him with their wit-encrusted, diamond-bright, verbal tour de force. Dad glanced through it, and then said, “I’m sorry, boys, but I just haven’t got time to get all this into my head.” He threw it aside and went out on the platform in St. Louis’s Kiel Auditorium to give a completely extemporaneous address.
Of all the fake campaigns, this one is the tops so far as the Republican candidate for President is concerned. He has been following me up and down this country making speeches about home, mother, unity and efficiency. . . . He won’t talk about the issues, but he did let his foot slip when he endorsed the Eightieth Congress.
Then he spoke to them as one Missourian to another:
I have been all over these United States from one end to another, and when I started out the song was - Well, you can’t win, the Democrats can’t win. Ninety percent of the press is against us, but that didn’t discourage me one little bit. You know, I had four campaigns here in the great state of Missouri, and I never had a metropolitan paper for me the whole time. And I licked them every time!
People are waking up to the fact that this is their government, and that they can control their government if they get out and vote on election day. That is all they need to do. . . .
People are waking up, that the tide is beginning to roll, and I am here to tell you that if you do your duty as citizens of the greatest Republic the sun has ever shone on, we will have a government that will be for your interests, that will be for peace in the world, and for the welfare of all the people, and not just a few.
Everyone, including the White House writers whose pearls had been tossed aside, agreed it was one of his greatest speeches of the campaign. A reporter for the Washington Post said that if the election was close, and Harry Truman won, he would give the credit to his performance that night in Kiel Auditorium.
So we came home to Independence, to our familiar and much- loved house on North Delaware Street. We had traveled 31,700 miles, and Dad had given 356 speeches - an average of ten a day. Between 12 and 15 million people had cheered or at least seen us.
We three Trumans voted at 10:00 a.m. on November 2, in Independence’s Memorial Hall. It was my first vote for a President, and it pleased me enormously that I was able to mark my ballot for Harry S. Truman. Reporters asked Dad for a final prediction, and he said, “It can’t be anything but a victory.”
“Are you going to sit up for the returns, Mr. President?” someone asked.
“No,” he said, “I think I’ll go to bed. I don’t expect final results until tomorrow.”
This astonished everyone - except Mother and me - almost as much as his prediction of a victory. Most of the reporters simply did not understand that my father believed there was no point in worrying about whether you succeeded or failed at a job, as long as you were sure that you had done your best.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Drew Pearson was writing that Dewey had “conducted one of the most astute and skillful campaigns in recent history.” In the column which Pearson filed for the day after the election, he surveyed for his readers the “closely knit group around Tom Dewey who will take over the White House eighty-six days from now.” Walter Lippmann, the Alsop brothers, and Marquis Childs saw a Democratic disaster of such staggering proportions that we were in danger of becoming a one-party (Republican) country. The New York Times gave Dewey 345 electoral votes. Life’s November 1 issue carried a picture of Dewey and his wife which was captioned, “The next President travels by ferry boat over the broad waters of San Francisco Bay.” Messrs. Gallup and Crossley continued to insist that there was no contest.
That afternoon, my
Of all the fake campaigns, this one is the tops so far as the Republican candidate for President is concerned. He has been following me up and down this country making speeches about home, mother, unity and efficiency. . . . He won’t talk about the issues, but he did let his foot slip when he endorsed the Eightieth Congress.
Then he spoke to them as one Missourian to another:
I have been all over these United States from one end to another, and when I started out the song was - Well, you can’t win, the Democrats can’t win. Ninety percent of the press is against us, but that didn’t discourage me one little bit. You know, I had four campaigns here in the great state of Missouri, and I never had a metropolitan paper for me the whole time. And I licked them every time!
People are waking up to the fact that this is their government, and that they can control their government if they get out and vote on election day. That is all they need to do. . . .
People are waking up, that the tide is beginning to roll, and I am here to tell you that if you do your duty as citizens of the greatest Republic the sun has ever shone on, we will have a government that will be for your interests, that will be for peace in the world, and for the welfare of all the people, and not just a few.
Everyone, including the White House writers whose pearls had been tossed aside, agreed it was one of his greatest speeches of the campaign. A reporter for the Washington Post said that if the election was close, and Harry Truman won, he would give the credit to his performance that night in Kiel Auditorium.
So we came home to Independence, to our familiar and much- loved house on North Delaware Street. We had traveled 31,700 miles, and Dad had given 356 speeches - an average of ten a day. Between 12 and 15 million people had cheered or at least seen us.
We three Trumans voted at 10:00 a.m. on November 2, in Independence’s Memorial Hall. It was my first vote for a President, and it pleased me enormously that I was able to mark my ballot for Harry S. Truman. Reporters asked Dad for a final prediction, and he said, “It can’t be anything but a victory.”
“Are you going to sit up for the returns, Mr. President?” someone asked.
“No,” he said, “I think I’ll go to bed. I don’t expect final results until tomorrow.”
This astonished everyone - except Mother and me - almost as much as his prediction of a victory. Most of the reporters simply did not understand that my father believed there was no point in worrying about whether you succeeded or failed at a job, as long as you were sure that you had done your best.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Drew Pearson was writing that Dewey had “conducted one of the most astute and skillful campaigns in recent history.” In the column which Pearson filed for the day after the election, he surveyed for his readers the “closely knit group around Tom Dewey who will take over the White House eighty-six days from now.” Walter Lippmann, the Alsop brothers, and Marquis Childs saw a Democratic disaster of such staggering proportions that we were in danger of becoming a one-party (Republican) country. The New York Times gave Dewey 345 electoral votes. Life’s November 1 issue carried a picture of Dewey and his wife which was captioned, “The next President travels by ferry boat over the broad waters of San Francisco Bay.” Messrs. Gallup and Crossley continued to insist that there was no contest.
That afternoon, my
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