I Hear That Train A-Comin': Cameron Should Follow Truman's Whistle Stop Lead With Early Campaigning

It appears from recent statements in the House of Commons and from Downing Street that the only vote David Cameron is concerned about is the Scottish independence referendum. While it's certainly an important matter that will help decide the future of the UK, Cameron should also be thinking about voters in another election battle: his own. While the next General Election is 10 months away, looking to the example of Harry Truman's 1948 Whistle Stop campaign as an example of how an embattled leader can get his message out to the electorate well before they head to the polls.

This time in 1948 was not kind to President Harry Truman. The Soviet Union started the Berlin Blockade, which cut off food, coal, medical supplies and all other road, rail and river traffic to East Berlin. The Communist takeover of China continued, while Communist forces also threatened to depose the Greek ruling party.

Things were little better back in the US. Franklin Roosevelt's former Vice President Henry Wallace leading a left-leaning breakaway of the Democratic Party on one of Truman's flanks, while the Southern Democrats (aka Dixiecrats') used the issue of states' rights to mask their racism as they too broke away from Truman because he supported civil rights. Later that year the States' Rights Democratic Party leader, Strom Thurmond, would outrageously declare that "there's not enough troops in the army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our swimming pools, our homes, and into our churches."

Truman could have waited until the autumn to launch his bid to beat Thurmond, Wallace and Republican candidate Thomas Dewey. After all, by mid October in his final election cycle, his predecessor, FDR, had only given two major speeches. But Truman was not beloved by the party faithful as Roosevelt had been, and wartime unity was a thing of the past. So the President used a speaking engagement at the University of California's Berkeley campus as an excuse to go on a "non-political inspection tour" of the Western United States. In fact, this "Shakedown Cruise" as one member of his new Research Division called it, certainly was political, with its aim being for Truman to share the main concepts of the Democratic platform from as many train platforms as possible.

Heading out in mid June, Truman's train rumbled across thousands of miles of track - 9,505, to be precise. He delivered 76 speeches in 18 states in just 15 days and while some of those were to large audiences, most were to small groups who had gathered at train stations in small towns. Truman would come out to the rear platform of his armor-plated living quarters - which included a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and formal dining room - speak for a few minutes, shake a few hands, and then head on down the line.

During these brief speeches, Truman discussed conservation, reclamation and power projects in the West, the precarious situation in Germany, provision of low cost housing and government support for farmers. But he saved his most energetic words for the Republican-controlled 80th Congress, which he felt had blocked all of his party's major legislation just for the sake of obstruction. He warned that if people voted the same way as they had in the 1946 midterm elections, they would get more of the same inaction from another "do nothing Congress", which he claimed was "the worst we've ever had" (today's Democrats may have something to say about that.) Insulted, the man who many felt controlled that Congress, Ohio's Robert Taft (the son of former President William Howard Taft), complained that Truman was "blackguarding Congress at every whistle stop in the West." Rather than firing back at the man whose motto was "The duty of opposition is to oppose," the wily Truman embraced the "Whistle Stop" slogan, and took advantage of the outrage from the small towns he spoke in, whose residents were offended by Taft dismissing them as inconsequential.

Click here to keep reading this article via The Huffington Post. 

Want the full story of Truman's Whistle Stop Tour and remarkable 1948 election victory? 

Then Click here to buy the US version of my new book, Whistle Stop: How 31,000 Miles of Train Travel, 352 Speeches, and a Little Midwest Gumption Saved the Presidency of Harry Truman. 

Live in the UK/Europe? Then click here to get a copy.  

If you'd like a signed copy (to be dispatched in early November 2014) please e-mail me. 

JFK: How Quickly We Forget

"[when each elected official] presses its own ends...which generally results in no action at all...they devote more time to the prosecution of their own purposes than to the consideration of the general welfare...and so, as each separately entertains the same illusion, the common cause imperceptibly decays."

Greek historian Thucydides, on the main flaw of his nation's ruling counsel. A favorite quote of John F. Kennedy.

When I pulled up Google News this evening, I was horrified to find nothing on the front page about what I thought would be the top story: today marks the 48th anniversary of the fateful, despicable murder of President John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald.

What could I have gleaned from the news aggregation service? That the Denver Broncos released quarterback Kyle Orton. That HP sold a few of its TouchPad tablets before discontinuing the model. And, lest I go a moment bereft on star-crossed teen vampire news, that many viewers are seeing the new Twilight movie twice.

Let me restate: this is the anniversary of the day that a President of the United States died.

And yet, we concern ourselves with trivial morsels that can neither satisfy nor advance us. None of them evil or inherently wrong, yet all sideshows, distractions from the history we ought to be immersing ourselves in on this day, of all days.

The top story, thankfully, was a little more substantive - an overview of the Republican debate on foreign policy.  Yet, as I digested it, I was reminded of how we're cultivating the politics of division, of how feuding and finger-pointing has taken the place of positive policy-making, and how paralyzing partisanship has derailed the budgetary not-so-super committee, stalemated the Senate and which will likely cloud all political coverage until November 2012.

This, in turn, prompted the recall of the quote at the top of this page, which I borrowed from page 331 of William Manchester's informative, moving, and fantastically detailed tome on JFK's demise, The Death of a President (review to follow soon). Now, Kennedy was certainly a divisive figure - his mere Catholicism was almost enough to prevent his election, his rich background bothered many and his appointment of fellow Irish Catholics irked outsiders. And he certainly had personal flaws - don't we all!



Yet, he was, too, a man with the courage to own up to his folly in the Bay of Pigs debacle, the strength to stare down the Soviets in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the fortitude to take on the violent ignorance of white supremacists over civil rights, even at the risk of alienating the southern Democrats. As I recently wrote, he also had a keen mind, as evidenced by his Pulitzer Prize-winning literary work. When he spoke of change in his inspiring inauguration speech, he had the policies to back up the sentiment, and the determination necessary to force them through.

How very different to certain political "leaders" of today, on both sides of the aisle. They talk a big game in the locker room, but have neither the intellectual chops nor the gumption needed to win when they get on the field. They spend too much time slinging dirt and focusing on what their opponents haven't done, rather than convincing us of what they themselves can do. With their teenager-like egos and insecurities, they worriedly watch the opinion polls and are blown this way and that by the fickle winds of public opinion. This is no way to inspire, to lead, or to govern. What we need is someone who is principled enough to form new ideas, articulate enough to explain them, and determined enough to implement them when they reach office.

Then, and only then, can the pretenders of today live up to the legacy of Kennedy, Reagan and Lincoln, for the good of what Thucydides called the "common cause." Assuming of course, that our politicians know their history, and aren't too busy reading the drivel that makes it onto the front pages these days.