The Pittsburgh Press (October 17, 1944)
Truman: Dewey avoids foreign issues
Stresses danger in shortsighted policies
Los Angeles, California –
Senator Harry S. Truman last night called Governor Thomas E. Dewey a “fence straddler” on foreign policy and said the election of a man like him in 1940 would have cost the lives of American soldiers because “we would have set our sights too low.”
In the first campaign speech of his present swing around the country, Mr. Truman attacked Mr. Dewey’s record at a Democratic rally in the Shrine Auditorium.
Mr. Truman, the Democratic nominee for Vice President, said the nation “took a chance on Harding in 1920” and could not “afford to repeat that mistake.”
Linked with isolationists
He said:
We must support the President. He demonstrated his leadership and courage in foreign affairs when his present opponent was flirting with the isolationists and currying the political support of the Hearsts and McCormicks [William Randolph Hearst and Robert R. McCormick, publishers].
…The Republican candidate has not repudiated them support – no, not even softly. Instead, he has joined them. Like Hearst and McCormick, he spends much of his time denouncing the Communists. And like Hearst and McCormick, he lumps all liberals in with the Communists.
Mr. Truman struck back at Mr. Dewey for quoting reports of the Senate Truman Committee in an effort to show that the war effort had not been properly administered. Mr. Truman said the committee criticized mistakes and never hesitated to lay blame where it belonged but that Mr. Dewey must have known that all committee members, including the Republican Senators, had praised the accomplishments of the war effort in all their annual reports.
Explains Pendergast connection
Asked about his association with the Pendergast machine in Kansas City, Mr. Truman replied that no candidate in Missouri could be elected without the support of that organization.
He said:
I didn’t ask them to support me. They supported me because I was a good vote getter.