Mark Malcomson
American Elections, Part 1: 1948 - Truman and Dewey
Summary
The 1948 US presidential election was one of the greatest upsets of all time. Harry Truman was running as the incumbent having become president when Franklin D. Roosevelt had died. He was expected to lose against the governor of New York, Thomas Dewey. However, things took an unexpected turn.
Mark Malcomson
Mark Malcomson has been principal of City Lit since 2011. Previously, he was the Director of Executive Education at London Business School and president of the New York Institute of Finance. He possesses a bachelor of laws from the University of Edinburgh; a diploma in legal practice from the University of Strathclyde; and a masters in international relations from the University of Kent. Mark was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to adult education.
It is one of the great questions of modern history. Why that didn’t happen is beyond me, and I think it’s… It’s a shocking dereliction of duty, and actually, as much as FDR was a great man, and maybe it was he just couldn’t envisage his own death, whatever, but it’s your job. It’s, you know, as chief executives of a company, they’ve got to ensure succession planning in terms of… Every organisation, part of your job as being in charge of it is to make sure there’s an orderly succession after you, and given his health, given his background, the fact that he had polio, the fact that he was exhausted by 12 years of running the economy and running a war, why he didn’t prepare his vice president better is one of the great mysteries, and it is, frankly, as somebody who’s quite a fan of his, it’s completely negligent, in my view.