The New Democrat

Source:Library of Congress with a short bio of Governor Thomas E. Dewey (Republican, New York)

Source:The New Democrat

“Summary: “The story of the career of Governor Thomas E. Dewey. Includes scenes taken from his private and political life and concludes with his nomination for president in 1948″–Summary from title card. Made for the Republican National Committee. ”

From the Library of Congress

“Remembered as “an odd mix, a pay-as-you-go liberal and a compassionate conservative”[49] and usually regarded as an honest and highly effective governor, Dewey doubled state aid to education, increased salaries for state employees and still reduced the state’s debt by over $100 million. He referred to his program as “pay-as-you-go liberalism … government can be progressive and solvent at the same time.”[50] Additionally he put through the Ives-Quinn Act of 1945, the first state law in the country that prohibited racial discrimination in employment. As governor, Dewey signed legislation that created the State University of New York. Shortly after becoming governor in 1943, Dewey learned that some state workers and teachers were being paid only $900 a year, leading him to give “hefty raises, some as high as 150%” to state workers and teachers.[51]

Dewey played a leading role in securing support and funding for the New York State Thruway, which was eventually named in his honor.[52] Dewey also streamlined and consolidated many state agencies to make them more efficient.[53] During the Second World War construction in New York was limited, which allowed Dewey to create a $623 million budget surplus, which he placed into his “Postwar Reconstruction Fund.” The fund would eventually create 14,000 new beds in the state’s mental health system, provide public housing for 30,000 families, allow for the reforestation of 34 million trees, create a water pollution program, provide slum clearance, and pay for a “model veterans’ program.”[51] His governorship was also “friendlier by far than his [Democratic] predecessors to the private sector”, as Dewey created a state Department of Commerce to “lure new businesses and tourists to the Empire State, ease the shift from wartime boom, and steer small businessmen, in particular, through the maze of federal regulation and restriction.”[37] Between 1945 and 1948, 135,000 new businesses were started in New York.[37]

Dewey supported the decision of the New York legislature to end state funding for child care centers, which were established during the war.[54] The child care centers allowed mothers to participate in wartime industries. The state was forced to provide funding for local communities that could not obtain money under the Lanham Act.[55] Although working mothers, helped by various civic and social groups, fought to retain funding, federal support for child care facilities was considered temporary and ended on March 1, 1946.[56] New York state aid to child care ended on January 1, 1948.[55] When protesters asked Dewey to keep the child care centers open, he called them “Communists.”[54]

He also strongly supported the death penalty. During his twelve years as governor, more than ninety people were electrocuted under New York authority. Among these were several of the mob-affiliated hitmen belonging to the murder-for-hire group Murder, Inc., which was headed up by major mob leaders Louis “Lepke” Buchalter and Albert Anastasia. Buchalter himself went to the chair in 1944.”

From Wikipedia

I think to understand someone like Tom Dewey’s politics, you also have to understand the politics of the Republican Party back in the 1940s and 50s. And not just in New York, but the entire country as well.

In Tom Dewey’s time, being a Republican was about being in favor of the rule of law, strong national security, strong economy that benefited both workers and management, the U.S. Constitution, equal rights, equal justice, individual rights for everyone. That was what the Republican Party by en-large, before Richard Nixon’s silent majority movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, that was made up of Dixiecrat Democrats who moved into the Republican Party in the 1960s and 70s.

In Tom Dewey’s time, the Republican Party had a conservative wing that believed in conserving our form of government, our Constitution, national security, the American way of life for everyone. But it wasn’t an authoritarian wing who believes the U.S. Constitution is outdated and that not every American in equal, or that not every group in America is equal.

And this is going to sound as strange as sunbathers spotted in the North Pole, or people spotted going ice fishing in the desert or something, but the Republican Party also had a progressive wing that believed in the same values as the Conservative Republicans. But that government could be used to help create progress. But that if had to be efficient. And that the best government especially as it related to safety net and social policies, was the government that was closest to home. Which is where Tom Dewey fitted in to what today would be called a Progressive and perhaps even a Liberal Republican.

And when I say Progressive or Liberal, even in a Republican sense, I’m not talking about left-wing, revolutionary, hipsters, who want to change the world and try to eliminate everything that actually makes America great. And try to replace the American form of government with some type of socialist state. Those are actually the false stereotypes of what it means to be a Liberal or Progressive.

Progressive or even Liberal in the Republican sense, still sounds pretty conservative. Government should conserve, government should move cautiously when it comes to reform, government should be fiscally responsible, which means pay as you go. And when government helps people, it helps them get on their feet and expects people to do as much for themselves as they can.

That’s the kind of Republican that Tom Dewey was, along with Dwight Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller, even Richard Nixon, at least on national security, foreign, and even economic policy, and even George H.W. Bush, at least when he was in the House of Representatives in the late 1960s and even as President. Today, Senator Mitt Romney fits in that wing of the old Republican Party. But the Progressives are obviously not what’s called the Republican Party today.