Vested Interest - October 2002 Issue

The President’s Thoughts

There is a famous photograph that we have all seen in our history books. A smiling Harry Truman is shown holding an early edition of the November 7, 1948 Chicago Tribune with a headline announcing, "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN." Over the past month, I have been making calls to urge ITLA members to send money to support the candidates who espouse the idea of protecting the rights of injured people. Several times I have received the response that, "He/she or we’re going to win anyway."

In that 1948 Presidential election, incumbent Harry Truman was running against Thomas Dewey, Governor of New York. All the major polls predicted Dewey would win. The final results were Truman with 24,105,812 votes, Dewey with 21,970,065, and two other candidates, Henry Wallace and Strom Thurmond, each with a little more than 1,100,000 votes. Gallup’s final poll showed Dewey with a lead of five percentage points over Truman, 49.5% to 44.5%.

What happened? According to David McCullough, in his biography of Truman, "The polls were reasonably accurate up until mid-October, the point when Gallup completed his final survey of the campaign for the forecast that was released just before election day. The fault was probably not that the polls were imperfect, but that they were two weeks out of date." A lot can change in two weeks, as it did in this case.

A Roper poll of September 9th, showed Truman trailing Dewey by 13 points. Roper then announced that he would discontinue polling since the outcome was already so obvious.

Anyone who bases their political contribution decisions on the fatuous rationale that the election is already over is either politically naive or in desperate need of an excuse or both. If you’ve indulged me and happen to have read this page over the past few months, you’ve detected a leitmotif running through my thoughts. We have an opportunity. Let’s not sit around on November 6, 2002, and regret that perhaps we didn’t do enough. My goal is that we all have the exact opposite feeling that we had on post-election day 1994. Please respond. Hindsight is always a valuable lesson. I think we have had enough hindsight to eradicate any thought of overconfidence in any election.

On September 14, 2002, we held the 50th Anniversary of ITLA at the Ritz Carlton. This was a wonderful occasion in which we honored the heritage in which we have created over the past 50 years. Senator John Edwards (D-North Carolina) gave a stirring speech which should have made all of us feel good about what we are doing in our professional lives. I hope that many of us are still around when we celebrate our 75th anniversary.

Robert J. Bingle, President
Illinois Trial Lawyers Association