American History: Truman Wins the Election of 1948

17 August 2011

President Harry Truman holds up a newspaper that, based on early results, mistakenly announced "Dewey Defeats Truman"

STEVE EMBER: Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English. I’m Steve Ember

HARRY TRUMAN: “I want to say to you, for the next four years, there’ll be a Democrat in the White House, and you’re looking at him.”

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Presidential elections are exciting events in American politics. Few elections for the White House have been as exciting as the one in nineteen forty-eight. And few have had such surprising results.

ANNOUNCER: "This is NBC Television."

SENATOR J. HOWARD McGRATH: “We have obtained the results from the state of Ohio which assures victory for President Truman and Senator Barkley. With Ohio’s twenty-five electoral votes, President Truman and Senator Barkley will have a total of two hundred and sixty-six votes in the Electoral College. This is the minimum figure necessary for victory.”

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Four candidates were nominated for president in the nineteen forty-eight election. One was the man already in the White House, the candidate of the Democratic Party, President Harry S. Truman.

Truman had been the party's vice presidential candidate with Franklin Roosevelt in nineteen forty-four. When Roosevelt died a year later, Truman became president. He was the one who made the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan to end World War Two.