Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, May 16th, 1948, New York Governor Thomas E Dewey and former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen are preparing for a presidential debate that would take place the next day.

Both of them were running in the Republican primary.

This debate was a few days ahead of the Oregon primary, which is all, you know, this is somewhat

interesting, but the thing about this debate, it is the first nationally broadcast presidential debate, the first one available on the radio for all to hear.

And another interesting wrinkle is that the entire debate was focused on

discussing the legal status of the Communist Party in the United States. So one

provocative question for the entire debate. So look people talk about Lincoln

Douglas and Kennedy Nixon here to help put Dewey Stasson in its rightful place on

the Mount Rushmore of great American debates are as always Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of

Wellesley. Hey there. Hello Jody. Hey there. So we'll see at the end.

Listeners can judge whether this should be in the pantheon. But so first, I mean, I think one important context

is in terms of the timing and the importance of this debate,

you know, usually in modern elections

and more recent elections as we get

towards the tail end of the primary

process it's kind of like playing out the string because modern primaries you

accumulate delegates as you go and you kind of know what's going to happen by this

point. 1948 very very different circumstances.

This is the era when the people who are going to be the nominees, it's really going to happen

at the convention and everything is just sort of jockeying and positioning for the convention.

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