60 years ago

TRUMAN DEFEATED DEWEY
IN BIGGEST COMEBACK IN
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION HISTORY,
CAN MCCAIN TOP IT?

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Republican John McCain had mostly closed the gap between he and Democrat Barack Obama, possibly signaling yet another seemingly impossible comeback, exactly 60 years to the date that Harry Truman pulled off the biggest surprise in presidential election history.

For weeks now, polls have shown McCain trailing and, as the Arizona Senator said himself, “Obama is already measuring the drapes in the White House.” And that’s exactly what happened to Truman in 1948.

His opponent, Robert Dewey, was considered a shoo-in. Inaccurate poll after inaccurate poll showed Dewey with an overwhelming lead that pundits said would propel him well over 300 electoral votes on Election Day. Sound familiar?

The Chicago Tribune was so confident in a Dewey victory that the printed the headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman.” As the results came in on Nov. 4, however, Truman took a lead that he never lost (coincidentally, South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond carried 39 EV’s running as a Dixiecrat). The next morning, Truman grabbed a copy of the newspaper and posed for one of the most infamous photos in American politics.

Will Truman defeat Dewey once again on Tuesday? I guess we’ll have a good idea about 48 hours from now. But with McCain having played the role of Truman a number of time before, you cannot count the possibility out.