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President Barack Obama

ZOOMING IN

Rudy Romero

10/27/2008

Every time I ponder the possibility of Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama’s becoming the first African-American President of the US, I am haunted by what happened to Republican candidate Thomas Dewey in the 1948 US presidential election. Dewey, who had come from successful stints as a Federal prosecutor and as governor of the state of New York, lost the election to re-electionist Harry Truman.

Thomas Dewey led HST — the initials which the media used when referring to Harry Truman — in all the opinion surveys leading up to the election. That was not difficult to understand. The former governor was charming and very popular with the media, while the former haberdasher from Independence, Missouri was colorless and unsmiling. The media thought that Tom Dewey had the election in the bag. In probably the most famous would-have-been headline of all time, The Chicago Tribune carried a headline that read “Dewey Wins.”

Dewey didn’t win, of course. The man from Independence beat him. Between the time that the opinion surveys were conducted and the time that the respondents put pen to paper in the voting booths, something monumental happened. The majority of America’s voters changed their minds about HST and decided to keep him in the White House for another four years.

The voters had very good reason to do what they did. Harry Truman may have been colorless and uncharismatic, but he has shown himself to be a decisive and courageous Chief Executive of the world’s most powerful nation. The dropping of atomic bombs on Japan, the Marshall Plan for the postwar reconstruction of Europe and US intervention in the Greek civil war were some of the tough decisions that Harry Truman took in the White House between 1944, when he succeeded President Franklin Roosevelt, and 1948.

It appears that in the last few days preceding the 1948 election, America’s voters decided that they were more comfortable with Harry Truman, whom they had come to know and like. When the time come to put a name on the space for president in the ballot, they decided to go with the candidate they were not uncomfortable with. For all his excellent qualifications, Thomas Dewey was out.

This is what scares me, an Obama partisan, about the lead that the Democratic candidate is building against his Republican opponent John McCain. A Truman-type upset could happen again 60 years after 1948. The Republicans were all poised to take over the White House when the 1948 polls closed, but many American voters had eleventh-floor changes of heart.

No unusual or special factor was involved in the 1948 election. It was the usual struggle for political supremacy between two parties with differing programs of government. Their standard-bearers differed only in terms of character, experience and achievement.

This time around there is a special, a very special, factor in the picture. It is Barack Obama’s being an African-American. Nothing like it has happened before. Until not so long ago the notion of an African-American running — let alone leading in the contest — for the Presidency of the US — was unthinkable. But today there are opinion-survey numbers showing the junior senator from Illinois moving closer to victory on Nov. 4.

Going for Senator Obama — and going against SenatorMcCain — are the American people’s weariness with the Iraq war, their desire for change and the slowing down of the US economy. These are the factors keeping Obama ahead of his Republican opponent in the opinion polls. A very recent poll shows his lead to be as wide as 10 points.

Will the race factor spoil everything for Barack Obama on Nov. 4, the way that the American voters, being more comfortable with the colorless but dependable Harry Truman, spoiled the show for Thomas Dewey 60 years earlier?

Not being an expert on American politics, I could well be wrong about some Democratic voters’ turning away from Barack Obama. But I have a strong feeling that I will not be. The factors I have mentioned above — the economic slowdown, national weariness with the Iraq war and the widespread desire for change — will, I think, suffice to carry the day for the junior senator from Illinois. I believe that at the moment of truth, when they have to place a name on the ballot space reserved for the president, the Democratic survey respondents who said that they would vote for Barack Obama will stick with the first African-American candidate for the highest position in America.

President Barack Obama: A truly incredible happening.

(My e-mail address is rudy_v_romero@yahoo.com)