I'm reading a new book called
Citizen Soldier: A Life of Harry Truman. The politics Truman faced from the Republican Congress are very similar to today. Complete refusal to pass his programs and legislation (including national health care insurance); Truman refused to cut taxes on the very wealthy; had to deal with formation of alternative parties (but on the Democratic side): The Dixiecrats (conservative splinter from the Democratic Party of Southern States opposed to civil rights legislation), and the Progressive Party (a liberal splinter from the Democrats); and ran against an opponent that was perceived as "out of touch"--Thomas E. Dewey. The Dixiecrats thought Truman too liberal, and the Progressives thought Truman too conservative. Several states in the South were mostly against him
Truman campaigned in 1948 in a similar way to Obama in 2012. Going into the election, many thought Truman couldn't win. His favorability rating was around 36 percent. Most of the press reported that Dewey was ahead in the polls. That Truman would be easy to beat. Truman ran a campaign advocating support for the "common man" and not the rich. He pointed out a "do-nothing Congress." He put together a coalition of lower income working people, blacks, jews, Catholics, labor unions, and farmers. In 1948, much of America was still agrarian and rural, so the farm vote was essential to Truman.
The large, mostly spontaneous gatherings at Truman's railcar events were an important sign of a change in momentum in the campaign, but this shift went virtually unnoticed by the national press corps, which continued reporting Republican Thomas Dewey's apparent impending victory as a certainty. One reason for the press' inaccurate projection was polls conducted primarily by telephone in a time when many people, including much of Truman's populist base, did not own a telephone.[108] This skewed the data to indicate a stronger support base for Dewey than existed, resulting in an unintended and undetected projection error that may have contributed to the perception of Truman's bleak chances.
Dewey campaigned in a similar way to Mitt Romney--and faced perception problems.
Dewey had seemed unstoppable. Republicans figured that all they had to do to win was to avoid making any major mistakes, 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: "You know that your future is still ahead of you."
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."[17]
...
All his presidential campaigns were hampered by Dewey's habit of making overly vague statements, defining his strategy as not being "prematurely specific"[27] on controversial issues. Truman joked that Republican Party (GOP) actually stood for "grand old platitudes".[29] Walter Lippman, in 1940, regarded him as basically an opportunist, who "changes his views from hour to hour... always more concerned with taking the popular position than he is in dealing with the real issues".[30] Adding to that, he had a tendency towards pomposity[31] and was considered stiff and inapproachable, with even his own aide Ruth McCormick Simms once describing him as "cold, cold as a February iceberg".[32]
...
Part of the reason Dewey ran such a cautious, vague campaign was his experience as a presidential candidate in 1944. In that election Dewey felt that he had allowed Roosevelt to draw him into a partisan, verbal "mudslinging" match, and he believed that this had cost him votes. As such, Dewey was convinced in 1948 to appear as non-partisan as possible, and to emphasize the positive aspects of his campaign while ignoring his opponent. This strategy proved to be a major mistake, as it allowed Truman to repeatedly criticize and ridicule Dewey, while Dewey never answered any of Truman's criticisms.[18] Perhaps alone among all of Dewey's advisers, his 1944 campaign chairman, Edwin Jaeckle, admonished him to be aggressive on the campaign trail, advice Dewey rejected.
http://www.amazon.com/Citizen-Soldier-L ... rry+truman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_E._Dewey
