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Show THE ''AMERICAN WA Y I rr WHATAMAN TRUMAN y By Geort P"t-Ji ft r What happened? That was the question asked by millions of Americans on Wednesday morning, morn-ing, November 3. How had Harry S. Truman succeeded in confounding con-founding all the pollsters and experts by getting himself elected elect-ed President of the United States? How had he single-handed, without benefit of aid from his own party, accomplished the seemingly impossible in securing secur-ing for himself a four-year extension ex-tension of his lease of the White House? Many and varied answers have been given the pollsters have announced that they are going to take some more polls in order to find out why polls can be so wrong'. Perhaps this will mark the end of election straw polls, which will be all to the good, because they have no legitimate place in the American scheme of things. What do I think happened? I'll make not attempt to answer because, frankly, I don't know. But perhaps I have unwittingly stumbled upon the answer. It was given a few days before the election by an observer remote from the American political scene. The old bromide about not being able to see the forest because be-cause of the trees seems to apply ap-ply here. We, in the thick of the barrage of campaign oratory, may have failed to observe what someone sitting quietly on the sidelines was able to see clearly. As a case in point, Saturday Night, published at Tronto, Ontario, On-tario, carried an editorial entitled, en-titled, "Election Apathy in U. S." in its October 30 issue. Please note that this was several days prior to the election. The Canadian Cana-dian editor said in part: "We have suggested that the Republican candidate doesn't represent any definite attitude of opposition even to the New Deal; and we believe this to be true. The traditional Republicans are, of course, violently opposed to the New Deal and the whole philosophy which it represents; but when it comes to a presidential presiden-tial campaign they have sense enough to tone down that opposition op-position because it is not a vote-winner. vote-winner. "The one element of uncertainty uncer-tainty in the contest lies in the fact that they may not have concealed that opposition sufficiently suffi-ciently well. The Common Man has been told ever since the Hoover regime that this is his Era, with a capital E, and that the New Deal was what made it his Era; and if he gets the idea that Mr. Dewey represents the kind of people who will take his Era away from him, he will vote for Mr. Truman, who is at least the ostensible heir of the people peo-ple who gave him his Era." The foregoing may not be the complete answer, it may not be even part of the answer, but is sounds reasonable. At any rate, the severest critic of our President-elect must recognize rec-ognize and pay tribute to his courage. Against overwhelming odds, he slugged it out with his political opponents and when the votes were counted, 'twas his hand the referee raised as the "Winnah" of the presidential bout. Yea, verily, he can rightfully right-fully be described as WHATAMAN WHATA-MAN TRUMAN! |