As November approached, no relief was given to the Truman campaign. Sidney Shallett in the Saturday Evening Post wrote, 'The Governor of New York talks not like a man who wants to be President, but like a man who already is President in everything but name, and who merely is awaiting the inaugural date before taking over.' This optimism ran high late into the political season. Magazines, newspapers, and pollsters had written him off. Even with the nomination of his party behind him, none but Truman believed that the presidency could be won.

Truman and his entourage embarked upon a whistlestop campaign of immense proportions travelling more than 21,000 miles, stopping in more than 250 cities, and delivering more than 300 speeches. Beginning with his 1948 State of the Union address, Truman quickly found that his ten month campaign would be long and hard. A stronger civil rights platform in the Democratic party was the cause of this rift. Southern Democrats (Dixiecrats), led by Senator Strom Thurmond, and Progressives, led by Henry Wallace, had splintered from the Democratic Party leaving a fractured and hopeless group searching for a saving grace in the '48 election. No one, Republican or Democrat gave incumbent President Truman any hope of defeating a Republican nominee.especially Thomas E. The 1948 presidential campaign of Harry Truman has been dubbed one of the greatest political campaigns of the modern era. President Truman, no matter how scathing, always professed a fondness for the cartoons and became an avid collector of them in his post-presidential years. Facing such controversial issues as the desegregation of the armed forces, dropping of the atomic bomb, the cold war, the fair deal, the Republican takeover of Congress, and the 1948 presidential campaign, political and editorial cartoons were commonplace. The Truman administration was no stranger to the sneers and jeers of political cartoonists. His approach of using lively pictures that appeal to the masses and using very few words was very effective in enlightening his multi-ethnic New York readers to the injustices of city government. Pressing for social and political change, the artist Thomas Nast began creating charicatures of the Tweed Ring at Tammany Hall in New York.

Not until the late 1880's did this media gain true merit again. Political cartoons in the United States came in and out of prominence through the early nineteenth century. Tracing its origins to Benjamin Franklin and his cartoons asking for unity during the American Revolution were the first of their kind in the new country.

American political cartooning assumed this direct appeal to the masses as well. Because of the high illiteracy rate among the public at the time, these cartoons became known for their straightforward simple pictorial nature. Originating during the Protestant Reformation in Germany, this visual indoctrination gave support to the cause of Martin Luther's religious reforms. Political and editorial cartoons have long been a part of the propaganda that influences the masses. Electing Our Presidents Teacher Workshop.An Ordinary Man, His Extraordinary Journey.

Cartoon a.t.o.m.