Governor of New York Thomas E. Dewey and former governor of Minnesota Harold Stassen engaged in the first United States presidential debate on May 17, 1948. The two candidates were competing for the Republican Party nomination for the 1948 presidential election and held the debate shortly before the Oregon primary election. It focused on a single issue: whether the United States should outlaw the American Communist Party. Stassen argued that it should, while Dewey argued that it should not. The debate was broadcast over radio on approximately 900 networks, with an estimated 40–80 million listeners.
Dewey was the front-runner for the Republican nomination in 1948, but Stassen gained a surge of support as some states held primary elections. Stassen challenged Dewey to a public debate throughout the process. As the Oregon primary election approached, Stassen was the favorite to win its delegates. Dewey agreed to a debate in Portland on the condition that he could set the terms, such as forgoing a live audience.
Both candidates gave a 20-minute speech on his position, and both then delivered minute rebuttals. Stassen believed that the Communist Party was working on behalf of Russia and that failing to ban it would threaten the security of democratic nations. Dewey disagreed, arguing that outlawing the party would be totalitarian and only cause it to work in secret. Stassen made the proposed Mundt–Nixon Bill the center of his argument by incorrectly asserting that its passage would outlaw the Communist Party. Dewey had quotations from Karl Mundt ready to disprove this, and he called Stassen's position a surrender because the bill was not the act of outlawing that Stassen had originally supported.
Dewey's performance was seen as more authentic, drawing from his experience as a prosecutor. He won the Oregon primary and the Republican Party nomination for the 1948 presidential election, but he lost in the general election to incumbent president Harry S. Truman. Stassen's political career went into decline after 1948 as he went on to lose several elections at various levels of government. The following decades spawned a tradition of public debates between presidential candidates.
Background Thomas E. Dewey had run against Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1944 presidential election, but Roosevelt defeated him and won a fourth term. Upon Roosevelt's death the following year, Harry S. Truman succeeded to the presidency. Through 1947 and 1948, a fear of communism swept the United States, and a fear arose of domestic communists sabotaging the nation. As campaigning for the 1948 presidential election began, Czechoslovakia was taken over by a communist government, Russia blockaded Berlin, and civil unrest alleged to be caused by communists occurred in numerous countries.
For the second time, Dewey was the front-runner to be the presidential nominee for the Republican Party. He showed little interest in campaigning for the nomination, essentially remaining inactive as the year's primary elections took place. Instead of campaigning against his rivals for the nomination, Dewey presumed he would be the nominee and began campaigning against Truman. One of Dewey's rivals, former Minnesota governor Harold Stassen, campaigned more vigorously and built a surge of support through his activity in the states that held primary elections. A small number of states held primary elections at the time, and they determined only 77 of the 1,094 delegates that were appointed to select the nominee. Stassen hoped that strong performances in the primary elections would prove his viability as a candidate and earn him support during the nomination process. By April, Stassen was seen as a legitimate threat to Dewey's campaign.
Stassen challenged Dewey to a debate following the New Hampshire primary, but the latter declined. Stassen issued several more challenges throughout the primary election season. In New Hampshire, he insisted he would debate Dewey under any circumstances, so long as it was the subject of an "impartial sponsorship". Dewey had attempted to challenge his opponent, Roosevelt, over radio in the 1944 election; he had purchased airtime immediately after a radio address by Roosevelt, but the latter used his last minute to broadcast dead air and caused listeners to turn away from the channel.
When Dewey, Stassen, and Douglas MacArthur fought for delegates in the Wisconsin primary, polling suggested that Dewey had as much national public support as the other two candidates combined. He had little to gain from a debate, while it risked elevating Stassen. The Wisconsin State Journal offered to host a debate between Dewey and Stassen leading up to the primary, but Dewey refused. Stassen made another attempt in Wisconsin when he asked Dewey to appear alongside him when addressing the Wisconsin Association of Cooperatives in what was implicitly understood to be a debate, but Dewey instead had members of the association meet him privately on his farm in New York. MacArthur refused Stassen's challenges to a debate as well.
Stassen again challenged Dewey to debate after Dewey's campaign released his itinerary; Stassen's campaign announced that it too would be campaigning in Milwaukee on April 1. Dewey gave no reply. The issue of the Communist Party was first raised leading up to the Wisconsin primary when Dewey declared on April 1 that communists should remain in the open and Stassen declared on April 2 that the Communist Party should be outlawed. Stassen issued another challenge in Nebraska, again campaigning in the same place on the same day. Dewey declined.
Organizing a debate Campaigning in Oregon Stassen found an opening for a debate when Dewey entered Oregon's primary election. This election was critical for the viability of both of their respective campaigns. Unlike in the previous primary elections, Stassen was the favorite to win in Oregon, polling 13 points ahead of Dewey in a Gallup poll leading up to the election, and Dewey was compelled to campaign more vigorously. Stassen in turn dedicated little time to the state, only occasionally appearing in the month leading up to the primary election.
Although Stassen had intended to start campaigning on May 17, Dewey's sudden activity prompted him to move his schedule up three days, saying that he wished to make time for a debate. He had been asked about a debate while on Meet the Press, with the reporter indicating there was a rumor that Dewey had challenged Stassen. Dewey's campaign aide portrayed Stassen's change in schedule as an excuse by a panicking campaign, saying that Dewey did not intend to participate in any debate. Stassen made his proposal to outlaw the American Communist Party the centerpiece of his rhetoric when he arrived in Oregon, and it became the key issue for the state's primary election.
At the same time, two Republican members of the House of Representatives, Karl Mundt and Richard Nixon, were sponsoring the anti-communist Mundt–Nixon Bill. On a similar point, the House Un-American Activities Committee published a report on May 11 concluding that the Communist Party sought to violently overthrow the government.
Debate negotiations The program director of the KPOJ radio station, Tom Swafford, noticed that the Communist Party ban was the strongest point of disagreement between Dewey and Stassen. He was inundated with political news as attention moved to the Oregon primary election, and he frequently interacted with both candidates and attended their campaign events. Swafford wished to see them debate the subject. The station's owner, Philip L. Jackson, was interested in the idea, but his company was affiliated with the Democratic Party. Instead, Jackson passed the idea to Reed College president Peter H. Odegard for him to organize. Stassen accepted Odegard's invitation. Dewey declined, but he expressed interest in debating the Communist Party issue because he deemed it dangerous enough to warrant "a full discussion". His aide Paul Lockwood ultimately convinced him to participate. Lockwood had been convinced by Swafford, who argued that shirking a debate would affect Dewey's image.
Stassen was losing his advantage in Oregon and needed the debate to revitalize his campaign. His strong desire to debate meant that Dewey had significant leverage over the terms. Negotiations took place between Robert Elliott, working for Stassen, and John C. Higgins, working for Dewey, on May 13. Dewey's team wanted the Multnomah Country Republican Central Committee to sponsor the debate and for the scope to be limited to the question of the Communist Party. His campaign was to set the location and the format. Dewey decided that the debate should be held in a small studio without a live audience; the energy of Stassen's audiences had been an asset to this point, and Dewey's team worried this would amount to a "circus stunt" of hecklers. Holding the debate privately also meant that their physical appearance would not be a factor. Stassen's build, at 6 feet 3 inches, made him an imposing figure next to Dewey, at 5 feet 8 inches.
Stassen initially refused to concede on having an audience. He wished to hold it in the Portland Ice Arena, or at the Portland Civic Auditorium, the latter seating up to 5,000 spectators. Swafford visited Stassen at his hotel room, and—in a meeting that took place in the bathroom while Stassen was shaving, still in his pajamas—convinced Stassen that he would not need an audience if he was confident in his ability to debate Dewey. Stassen told Swafford, "all right, I'll debate that little son of a bitch anywhere, anytime, on any subject".
Preparation Neither candidate campaigned the day before the debate. Stassen worked with anti-communist senator Joseph McCarthy to prepare. Dewey had Elliott V. Bell, his most valued speechwriter, come to Portland for the debate. Instead of their usual back-and-forth process that produced several drafts, they produced a draft by studying Stassen's previous speeches and preparing possible responses. They based his speech on one that he had delivered in Portland on May 3. To rehearse, he had his team pitch questions at him and criticize his answers in a mock debate. Dewey had his chief researcher, John Burton, and his counsel, Charles D. Breitel, produce a swathe of information about anti-subversion laws and congressional hearings. The team transcribed the key details onto note cards for Dewey to have for the debate.
Proposal to outlaw the Communist Party Stassen's proposal
Although it was not listed among his formal policy positions, Stassen proposed that the Communist Party should be outlawed, playing on the strong anti-communist mood that had grown popular in the United States. He brought up the idea on June 14, 1947, in a nationally broadcast address. This was after long consideration of the idea privately, where he conducted research and considered his own political philosophy. Stassen's position was that the Communist Party functioned as a fifth column working at the behest of Russia, and that stopping it was necessary to prevent World War III. He proposed outlawing communist parties in all "peace loving nations of the world". Among other accusations, Stassen repeated the common belief that communists were behind labor disputes in the United States. He cited the Guarantee Clause to justify the constitutionality of criminalizing attempts to overthrow the United States government. Stassen argued that freedom of speech does not grant "the right to destroy". He likened the situation to that of nations like Colombia and Czechoslovakia where legal communist parties challenged the democratic process, seizing power entirely in the latter nation.