A Look Back at Politics 1948

After my Mom’s passing in October 2017, we found letters she had written to her parents while she was away at college.  She spent one year attending Arizona State College at Tempe (now Arizona State University).  She was there in 1948, during the Presidential election between Thomas Dewey and Harry Truman.  It was interesting to read her comments and to find they don’t sound much different than today.

In late September of that year, she and her Aunt “went into Phoenix to hear Dewey”.  She wrote this: “Daddy, I’m sure you would have liked the part about free enterprise and little government regulation of business.”  (My grandfather worked automobile parts industry.)  Dewey was the Republican candidate.  To this day, Republican candidates still run on easing government regulation of business and letting free enterprise reward companies that make and deliver what people want while making a profit and weeding out those that don’t.

She also wrote, “He sounds as tho he’ll clean up Washington & make things efficient.”  We certainly hear this comment from Presidential candidates every four years.

Not much has changed.