The Pittsburgh Press (September 25, 1944)
Fireworks promised by Governor Dewey
Aboard the Dewey Special –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey all along has been hinting that the foremost objective of his present transcontinental tour was to smoke President Roosevelt into open battle – the sooner the better – and he lost no time in seizing the President’s Saturday night speech as the consummation of that purpose.
Traversing the New Mexico desert at noon yesterday, Governor Dewey issued a statement asserting that Mr. Roosevelt has “dropped the mask of a ‘non-political’ campaign and I shall feel free to examine his record with unvarnished candor beginning with a national broadcast at Oklahoma City Monday night.”
The complaint heard increasingly from Dewey supporters is that he has been too tender both of President Roosevelt and the New Deal.
Governor Dewey heretofore has made no answer to this criticism but his associates have not been so reticent. They said that, opposing as he was a war-burdened President, sitting silently and aloof in the White House and, as reported, in none too good health, there was a great question as to how far Governor Dewey could go in direct attack without arousing popular feeling adverse to himself.
Certainly Mr. Roosevelt has now demolished this reservation.