Petaluma’s Past: Would Petaluma really ‘Like Ike’ in 1952?

It seems to be all about elections these days. So, rolling along with that theme, let’s consider the election of 1952.

The Argus-Courier was then headed by two avid Republicans, Duncan and Emmett Olmsted. The question was, could they get Petalumans to vote for Republican candidate General Dwight Eisenhower, against the well settled-in registered Democrats of the F.D.R. and Harry Truman years?

Would Petalumans actually “Like Ike” over Democrat Adlai Stevenson?

Let’s look at the long lead-up to that ‘52 election that was, for the first time, promoted via something called television.

In the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt had stepped in to attack America’s Great Depression, and by establishing such “New Deals” as Social Security for the poor, elderly and sick, the FDIC to stabilize the banks and the Public Works Administration to employ over 3 million people, he had stopped the financial panic. Then, he rearmed our country and pulled us thru WWII, before he died in office in 1945. His successor, Vice-President Harry S. Truman, would only serve one and-a-half terms, but during that time, he dropped the atom bomb at end of the war, instituted The Marshall Plan to stimulate European recovery and started “The Truman Doctrine,” to curtail the spread of Communism.

Those 20 years of FDR and HST would be very hard for any Republican to overcome.

But their legacy wasn’t perfect, and our Olmsted editors well knew how to attack it.

On Sept. 7, 1952, they stated, “We hold the belief that government costs are entirely too high.” (Sound familiar?). They pointed out that from 1929 to 1951, the national debt had multiplied more than 15 times, and blamed it on “extravagant spending.”

“For 20 years,” they wrote, “debt, taxes and prices have skyrocketed, because of government expenditures and nearly 45% of wage earners failed to keep pace with the 10% rise in the cost of living from 1950 to ‘51. The so-called prosperity of the New and Fair Deal policies is really false.”

That “spending,” of course, was how FDR and HST paid for all those programs that got us through the Great Depression, as well as the war.

Over the 13 years from 1939 to 1952, average per capita income had increased less than three times, while taxes had increased more than five times.

“It’s time for a change,” said the Olmsteds, and pointed out that even FDR himself, in 1939, had stated that, “Even a wisely led political party given long tenure of office, ceases to be an effective instrument of government.”

The major issues in the election of ‘52, were, according to the Olmsteds, “Corruption, Communism and Korea. It will take a new broom to sweep out the mess. The Korean War is the result of the administration’s bankrupt foreign policy. It has already cost over 117,000 killed and wounded.”

It wasn’t all nice-nice Democratic campaigning, either.

President Truman made a major attack on Ike, trying to blame him for the fiasco of Russian-American relations, targeting Eisenhower’s “bad advice” in ‘45. But the Olmsteds pointed out that HST, that same year, had made Ike his Chief of Staff, and also had re-appointed him to that post two years later.

On Sept. 4, 1952 (voting day), in a column titled “The Campaign Ends,” the editors referred to the effect that TV had had on the campaign.

“One of the most unusual presidential campaigns in history has finally dragged to an end,” they wrote. “Never before has so much oratory been dinned into the ears of the public.”

Then, the next day. On Nov. 5, this header stunned a lot of people.

“Petaluma Goes 2-1 For Ike!”

It was a 71% plurality and Sonoma County had voted about the same, with a turnout of 49,000 voters. The election had been a landslide nationally too, with the largest popular vote ever recorded for President. The Electoral College vote was 442 for Ike vs. just 89 for Stevenson, and in California, 600,000 of the 800,000 registered Democrats had voted for Ike and his VP-elect, Senator Richard Nixon.

“We rejoice in the victory. Let us now be united as American citizens,” said the editors. But, many problems still remained, they added. “The war in Korea, government bureaucracy and controls, the huge spending, high taxes, huge debt, aid to Europe and the menace of Communism. We have to set to work.”

Now, fast forwarding 48 years to the year 2,000, American historians were asked to rank the Top 10 of all US Presidents. Ranked according to the times in which they served, and how they had handled those times.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and yes, Dwight D. Eisenhower, all made that prestigious list.

(Historian Skip Sommer is an honorary lifetime member of the Petaluma Historical Society and Heritage Homes. You can contact him at skipsommer@hotmail.com)