Kerry, Meet Dewey

William J. Stuntz has a very interesting piece on TCS on how the 1948 Truman/Dewey race is eerily similar to the 2004 race:

Like Bush, Truman was widely ridiculed — a common saying at the time held that “to err is Truman” — and widely believed to be too stupid to be an effective President. Bush fired Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, who promptly wrote a book mocking his former boss’s incompetence; Truman fired Commerce Secretary Henry Wallace, who immediately called the President a warmonger. Calls for Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation are common today. So were calls for the resignation of Defense Secretary James Forrestal in 1948. (The next year, Forrestal resigned under pressure, then killed himself.) Yet Bush and Truman share more than their troubles. Like Bush, Truman seemed to have a knack for reaching middle America. Elites tended to sneer at him, but a sizeable fraction of the population genuinely liked the man. So too with Bush, whose poll numbers today look much better than Truman’s in spite of a relentlessly critical press.

It’s an interesting parallel, although how far one wishes to take it is up in the air. The Dewey/Truman race in 1948 was an exceptionally close race (hence the “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN” headlines in the papers). Truman and Bush do have many similarities, and it’s hard to imagine that Truman was once a reviled political figure in many circles.

I maintain that this is going to be a realigning election, and what we’ll see in the next few days will be dramatically different from the close race we’re currently expecting. By the numbers Bush has a small 3-point lead. But the numbers don’t tell the whole story, and I have a feeling that the fundamental _zeitgeist_ of this nation has changed in the period after September 11, and that will translate into a much larger base of support for the President than we’re seeing.

History has judged Harry S. Truman far more kindly than his critics have. I have a feeling that history will be infinitely kinder to President Bush than those who constantly express their blind hatred towards him. At the end of the day, Bush has resonance with the American people and Kerry does not, and people feel safer with Bush as Commander-in-Chief than they do with John Kerry. That in and of itself will be enough to steer this election his way. Truman had the common touch and resolve, while Dewey was a rather effete Northeasterner. Truman’s numbers were as low, if not lower than President Bush’s, yet he still managed to defeat his opponent. In this, one can only hope that history repeats itself – then go out into the field and get voters into the polls to ensure that it does.