Republican Party of the United States

The Republican Party of the United States emerges in the account less as a single actor than through its leaders, candidates, congressional power, and changing electoral fortunes. It entered the postwar period with control of Congress, then suffered a decisive reversal in the 1948 elections, when Harry S. Truman defeated Thomas E. Dewey and Democrats regained majorities in both chambers. The contrast between the party’s institutional strength in the 80th Congress and its defeat two years later frames the book’s account of its mid-century position.

Congressional Leadership and Foreign Policy

After the Republicans took control of the 80th Congress, Joseph W. Martin Jr. became Speaker of the House, while Robert Taft and Arthur Vandenberg held leading positions in the Senate. The division of influence had a practical policy dimension: Taft was expected to focus on domestic issues, and Vandenberg, as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, on foreign affairs. Truman had known all three men through years in public life, but he was closest to Vandenberg, whom he regarded as capable and trustworthy.

Vandenberg’s political journey mattered beyond party leadership. A former newspaper editor from Grand Rapids, he had been a committed isolationist before the war; the attack on Pearl Harbor persuaded him that isolation could no longer protect the country. His standing among Senate Republicans and his authority on foreign policy made him a consequential figure in the new Congress. The account emphasizes both his political force and his public manner: he was a formidable speaker, whose expansive gestures and polished phrases could command attention. His conversion from isolationism helped make him a Republican interlocutor on international affairs rather than simply an opponent of the administration.

Martin and Taft represented different kinds of political authority. Martin, a dependable House organizer from a Massachusetts factory town, had spent decades in Congress and was regarded in his home district as fair-minded. Taft, by contrast, came from a prominent political family and occupied a more privileged social background than Truman could identify with. These contrasts give the party’s congressional leadership a varied profile: its influence rested on figures with different origins, temperaments, and political strengths, not on a single shared public style.

The 1948 Election and the Republican Defeat

In 1948, Dewey carried 16 states and received 189 electoral votes, but Truman won 28 states and 303 electoral votes. Truman’s popular-vote total was 24,105,812 to Dewey’s 21,970,065, a margin of just over 2.1 million. The Republican defeat extended beyond the presidential contest: Democrats won 54 Senate seats to the Republicans’ 42, and took the House by 263 seats to 171.

The map of the result complicated expectations. Dewey won New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and his home state of Michigan, but Truman carried 13 of the country’s biggest cities and made gains across the rural Midwest, including Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Truman also held seven Southern states despite Strom Thurmond’s challenge, won all four border states, including Missouri, and carried every Western state except Oregon. Dewey’s share of the national vote was 45.1 percent, less than he had received in 1944 while running against Franklin D. Roosevelt.

A post-election study by the Republican Policy Committee placed much of the responsibility on the party’s own campaign. It criticized Dewey’s aloofness, speeches pitched above voters, and reliance on Democratic propaganda and polling expectations. The report judged that Truman’s attack on the 80th Congress had redirected the campaign away from the record of Truman and his party and had stirred public indignation. Its assessment was severe: the party had mishandled a strong opportunity to win the presidency and retain Congress. In the book’s account, that diagnosis links the election result not only to the strength of Truman’s campaign, but also to the Republicans’ strategic errors.

Voters, Polls, and Local Opposition

The result also reflected the importance of voter groups that the campaign’s broad forecasts did not adequately capture. Later studies cited in the account identify farm, labor, Black, and Western votes as important to Truman’s victory and the Democratic gains in Congress. The polls were not necessarily inaccurate throughout the campaign; the explanation offered is that the final widely discussed Gallup forecast relied on a survey completed roughly two weeks before Election Day. During the closing weeks, many voters who expected Dewey to win nonetheless voted for Truman.

The Republican experience was not uniform at the local level. In Independence, some residents, mainly Republicans, continued to hold Truman in low regard after he returned home. They were, however, a minority in a town that broadly welcomed the Trumans’ return and appreciated their modest participation in local life. The episode distinguishes partisan disagreement from community response: local Republicans remained critics, even as the town’s prevailing attitude toward its former president was warm.

The Party’s Prospects in 1960

By 1960, Richard Nixon appeared to Truman to be the probable Republican nominee, while Democratic contenders included Stuart Symington, Lyndon B. Johnson, Adlai E. Stevenson, and John F. Kennedy. Truman’s reservations about Kennedy were personal and electoral: he considered him young and inexperienced, doubted that a Catholic could win, and believed Kennedy had been too approving of Joseph McCarthy. He also distrusted Kennedy’s father. These views describe Truman’s assessment, not an official Republican position or a settled account of the party’s nomination.

After Kennedy secured the Democratic nomination, Truman set aside his disappointment and agreed to help him. In a private letter he regarded Nixon as unacceptable and Kennedy as the better of two difficult choices. That shift places the Republican candidate within Truman’s late-life political calculations: Nixon represented the opposing party’s likely standard-bearer, while Truman’s eventual support for Kennedy reflected his judgment about the available alternatives. Across these episodes, the party’s narrative runs from congressional command to electoral defeat and renewed presidential competition, with its public fortunes shaped by both leadership and voters who did not follow the forecasts.