Thomas Dewey

Thomas Edmund Dewey (March 24, 1902 – March 16, 1971) was the Governor of New York (1943-1955) and the unsuccessful Republican candidate for the U.S. Presidency in 1944 and 1948. He was the first presidential candidate born in the twentieth century.

Early life and career

Dewey was born and raised in Owosso, Michigan, where his father edited the local newspaper. He was graduated from the University of Michigan in 1923, and from the Columbia Law School in 1925. While at the University of Michigan, he joined Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, a national fraternity for men of music.

During the 1930s Dewey was a New York City prosecutor. He first achieved headlines in the early 1930s, when he prosecuted bootlegger Waxey Gordon while serving as Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Additionally, he relentlessly pursued gangster Dutch Schultz, both as a federal and state prosecutor. Schultz's first trial ended in a deadlock; prior to his second trial, Schultz had the venue moved to Syracuse, then moved there and garnered the sympathy of the townspeople so that when it came time for his trial, the jury found him innocent, liking him too much to convict him. Following that trial, Dewey and Fiorello LaGuardia found grounds with which to try Schultz a third time, driving Schultz into hiding in Newark, New Jersey. There, Schultz put into action a plan to assassinate Dewey. Crime boss Lucky Luciano, fearing that if Dewey was murdered, the FBI and federal government would wage all out war on the Mafia, ordered that Schultz be killed before he had the chance to finalize his plans. Luciano's plan went accordingly, and before Schultz could finish organizing his plot to kill Dewey, Schultz was shot to death in the bathroom of a Newark Bar. Shortly thereafter, Dewey focused his attentions on Luciano, and had him convicted of being a pimp.

In 1936, while serving as special prosecutor in New York County, Dewey helped indict and convict Richard Whitney, the former president of the New York Stock Exchange. In 1939 Dewey prosecuted American Nazi leader Fritz Kuhn for embezzlement, crippling Kuhn's organization.

Dewey was elected District Attorney of New York County (Manhattan) in 1937.

Governorship of New York

In 1938, at age 36, Dewey ran unsuccessfully for Governor of New York on his record as a criminal prosecutor. While defeated, Dewey's relatively strong showing against incumbent Governor Herbert Lehman, FDR's successor, brought him political attention. He won his second race in 1942, and was relected in 1946 and 1950.

He was regarded as an honest and efficient governor. He cut taxes, doubled state aid to education, increased salaries for state employees, and reduced the state's debt by over $100 million. Additionally, he put through the first state law in the country which prohibited racial discrimination in employment. As governor, Dewey also signed legislation that created the State University of New York.

Presidential candidacies

Dewey ran for the 1940 Republican nomination, but lost to Wendell Willkie, who went on to lose to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the general election. At the time Dewey was considered an isolationist, like Willkie's other rivals, Senators Robert Taft and Arthur Vandenberg. Dewey's position evolved during the 1940s; he was generally considered an internationalist and classed with the moderates in later years.

Election of 1944

Dewey won the Republican nomination in 1944 but was defeated in the election by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the incumbent. During the campaign, 26th US President Theodore Roosevelt's daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, a socialite well known for her wit, called Dewey, alluding to his pencil-thin moustasche, "the little man on the wedding cake.” Unfortunately for Dewey, the image stuck and had a devastating effect on his national image. Even though Dewey campaigned against the New Deal and managed to garner more votes than any Republican candidate since Herbert Hoover in 1928, he was defeated in 1944 and 1948.

Election of 1948

He is probably best known as the Republican candidate in the 1948 presidential election in which, due to miscalculations by pollsters and the press, he was projected as the winner. The Chicago Daily Tribune had even gone so far as to print "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN" as its post-election headline, though the election was actually won by Harry S. Truman, the incumbent. In this election, Dewey was the first presidential candidate to have his own polling unit. The unit, like all major U.S. pollsters, showed that Dewey would win in a landslide.

Indeed, given Truman's sinking popularity, Dewey had seemed unstoppable. Republicans figured that all they had to do was to avoid destroying a certain election victory, and as such, Dewey did not take any risks. He spoke in platitudes, trying to transcend politics. Speech after speech was filled with empty statements of the obvious, such as the famous quote: "Your future is bright, very bright indeed, brighter than a bald man's dome." An editorial in the Louisville Courier-Journal summed it up:

No presidential candidate in the future will be so inept that four of his major speeches can be boiled down to these historic four sentences: Agriculture is important. Our rivers are full of fish. You cannot have freedom without liberty. Our future lies ahead.Donaldson, Gary A, Truman Defeats Dewey (The University Press of Kentucky, 1999), p. 173, quoting the Louisville Courier Journal, November 18, 1948.

It was believed that Dewey's poor showing in 1944 was partly due to being too aggressive, a fault which his campaign aimed to avoid this time.

Dewey was not as conservative as the Republican Congress, which also proved problematic for him. Truman tied Dewey to the "do-nothing" Congress. However, unlike Robert Taft, a powerful Senator from Ohio and rival for the nomination in 1948, Dewey was no longer an isolationist. He supported the Marshall Plan, aid to Greece, recognition of Israel, and the Berlin airlift.

Later career

Dewey did not run for president in 1952 and instead helped Dwight Eisenhower win the Republican Party's presidential nomination and the subsequent election. Dewey's third term as governor of New York expired in 1955, after which he retired from politics and returned to his law practice. He died of a heart attack on March 16, 1971.

Al Taliaferro, the Disney comic strip artist and creator of the Huey, Dewey and Louie ducklings, named Dewey after Thomas Dewey.

In 1964, the New York State Legislature officially renamed the New York State Thruway in honor of Dewey. The official designation is, however, rarely used in reference to the road, and the naming was opposed by many Italian Americans, who are a relatively large and important demographic presence in the state. However, signs on Interstate-95 in Mt. Vernon and Port Chester designate the Thruway as being the Thomas E. Dewey Thruway.

Dewey has not been forgotten even today. In 2005, the New York City Bar Association named an award after Dewey. The Thomas E. Dewey Medal, sponsored by the law firm of Dewey Ballantine LLP, is awarded annually to one outstanding Assistant District Attorney in each of New York City's five counties (New York, Kings, Queens, Bronx, and Richmond). The Medal was first awarded on November 29, 2005.

References

Thomas E. Dewey Papers, University of Rochester

Notes

External links

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