![[TRUMAN, HARRY S.] Two copies of the Chicago Tribune newspaper of 3 November 1948. Complete editions of the papers, folio broadsheet.](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2005/NYR/2005_NYR_01534_0455_000(102124).jpg?w=1)
細節
[TRUMAN, HARRY S.] Two copies of the Chicago Tribune newspaper of 3 November 1948. Complete editions of the papers, folio broadsheet.
DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN
Two editions of the most famous wrong-call in American political history. "Dewey defeats Truman" has become a catch-phrase in American political parlance for hasty assumptions. What seems now a colossal journalistic blunder was in fact the conventional wisdom on 2 November 1948. Many Americans--even the President's own exhausted campaign staff--thought the incumbent was going to lose to New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey ("the little man on the wedding cake," in Alice Roosevelt Longworth's famous put-down). The majority of the nation's newspapers endorsed him, and even a slight slip in late campaign polls caused him no great alarm.
Truman however was always confident. On 2 November 1948 he and his family voted in Independence, Missouri. He went to bed early, unaware that two editions of the Tribune were also being put to bed with the bold-faced headlines "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN" and "G.O.P. REGAINS WHITE HOUSE." The errors were the result of a series of mis-steps: first, returns were coming in slowly and the staff at the paper was running out of time before the deadline. Second, most of the editors on Col. Robert C. McCormick's rabidly anti-Democratic paper simply believed that Dewey was going to win. A third factor was a strike at the paper that left inexperienced workers setting type--which is why 5 lines on the far-right column were printed upside down.
After the delivery of the paper, the gap between Truman and Dewey started to close. The old New Deal coalition was not dead yet. Big labor, blacks, farmers and urban liberals all came out for Truman. As the Democratic votes piled up, so did a sense of panic among Tribune officials. They sent staffers out to stop delivery trucks, even to scoop up copies from people's porches. Many were reclaimed and the embarrassed paper sent tens of thousands of the now valuable issue to be pulped like any other unsold copy. These two issues survived. So did the one handed to Truman the next morning at the St. Louis train station where he stopped briefly on his way back home to the White House. Tribune publisher Col. McCormick surely never made Harry Truman smile as broadly as he did when he read the headline and held the paper aloft for the cameramen. "This is for the books!" was Truman's terse comment. A suitably framed copy was hung in the White House. "Mr. Truman always looked at that headline as if he had never seen it before. He never said anything about it. No need to. He just stood there and grinned" (Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman, New York, 1974, p.406). (2)
DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN
Two editions of the most famous wrong-call in American political history. "Dewey defeats Truman" has become a catch-phrase in American political parlance for hasty assumptions. What seems now a colossal journalistic blunder was in fact the conventional wisdom on 2 November 1948. Many Americans--even the President's own exhausted campaign staff--thought the incumbent was going to lose to New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey ("the little man on the wedding cake," in Alice Roosevelt Longworth's famous put-down). The majority of the nation's newspapers endorsed him, and even a slight slip in late campaign polls caused him no great alarm.
Truman however was always confident. On 2 November 1948 he and his family voted in Independence, Missouri. He went to bed early, unaware that two editions of the Tribune were also being put to bed with the bold-faced headlines "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN" and "G.O.P. REGAINS WHITE HOUSE." The errors were the result of a series of mis-steps: first, returns were coming in slowly and the staff at the paper was running out of time before the deadline. Second, most of the editors on Col. Robert C. McCormick's rabidly anti-Democratic paper simply believed that Dewey was going to win. A third factor was a strike at the paper that left inexperienced workers setting type--which is why 5 lines on the far-right column were printed upside down.
After the delivery of the paper, the gap between Truman and Dewey started to close. The old New Deal coalition was not dead yet. Big labor, blacks, farmers and urban liberals all came out for Truman. As the Democratic votes piled up, so did a sense of panic among Tribune officials. They sent staffers out to stop delivery trucks, even to scoop up copies from people's porches. Many were reclaimed and the embarrassed paper sent tens of thousands of the now valuable issue to be pulped like any other unsold copy. These two issues survived. So did the one handed to Truman the next morning at the St. Louis train station where he stopped briefly on his way back home to the White House. Tribune publisher Col. McCormick surely never made Harry Truman smile as broadly as he did when he read the headline and held the paper aloft for the cameramen. "This is for the books!" was Truman's terse comment. A suitably framed copy was hung in the White House. "Mr. Truman always looked at that headline as if he had never seen it before. He never said anything about it. No need to. He just stood there and grinned" (Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman, New York, 1974, p.406). (2)