Book Pick: Whistle Stop by Philip White, University Press of New England, 2014

There were two famous Ferdinand Megellans. The first was flesh and blood, who, between 1519 and 1522, was first explorer to circumnavigate the earth. The second, also a traveler, but more important to history, was steel and steam, the presidential railroad car that carried President Harry Truman over 31,000 miles on his 352 speech whistle stop tour that brought him the most improbable of president...ial victories in the election of 1948.

Whistle Stop is the title of Philip White's book chronicling this fascinating campaign, in which every pollster not only predicted Republican Tom Dewey would swamp Democrat Truman, some even stopped polling in September. Truman struggled just to get the Democratic nomination, being challenged for nomination by the party's left flank, who felt he was not a worthy successor to the sainted FDR. His nomination caused a double split in the party; Southern racists joined he Dixiecrat campaign of SC Governor Strom Thurmond, and northeast liberals signed up with Progressive Party candidate, and Truman's predecessor as VP, Henry Wallace. That left Truman with just the west and Midwest to garner electoral votes.

But Truman was tough, smart and totally committed to carrying on the New Deal legacy of Roosevelt. Getting the nomination, he faced a dispirited party apparatus who bought the pollsters foregone conclusions of a Dewey landslide. Truman responded by doing something innovative in presidential campaigns. He created a campaign issue brain trust of seven brilliant strategists equally committed to his re-election. They boarded together in a bare bones hotel to enable them to work nearly round the clock crafting issue oriented and hard hitting speeches on everything the New Deal stood for: jobs, health care, price controls, infrastructure improvements, minimum wage increase, civil rights, and immigration reform. Sound familiar? Then they created the most ambitious whistle stop campaign ever. Truman gave up the 16 speeches a day, rising a 5:00 AM and not retiring till midnight. He blasted Dewey and the 'Do Nothing' GOP controlled 80th Congress relentlessly, not with gratuitous insults and name calling, but with facts and passion and truth. Dewey, meanwhile, mentally measuring the White House drapes, basically phoned in his campaign with platitudes based around 'unity' and 'competence' instead of substance.

Truman not only won big, 49.5% to 45.1% of the popular vote, and 303 to 186 in the Electoral College, he got to hold up the hated Chicago Tribune with the headline 'Dewey defeats Truman' for Dems to cheer and Republicans to cry.

Every Democrat and progressive should read 'Whistle Stop' before the 2016 campaign begins. It will inspire a commitment to win regardless of the odds, and it will re-enforce how brains, facts, passion and straight talk will trump impersonal, mindless platitudes.