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Openhanded California showered Dewey with presents—a crate of oranges and peaches, bunches of grapes and ten-gallon hats. "My goodness, I'm going to have enough hats to last me a lifetime," he told a donor at San Bernardino. If his welcome at Los Angeles fell short of Truman's, San Francisco received him with open arms. An audience of 9,000 interrupted him 32 times with applause.
"Great Upsurge." There he submitted his own formula to lick inflation: an efficient administration, elimination of "unnecessary" Government spending, reduction of the national debt, "a great upsurge of production."
Dewey had kept in close touch with the Berlin crisis by calls to John Foster Dulles in Paris. In Portland this week, he said: "Nothing will be said or done in this campaign by myself or the Republican Party which will do anything but strengthen our unity . . . We are pulling together for the good of the country . . . and it would be wise for all of the rulers of the world to know it."
The tone of his campaign was set. He would keep it on a high plane, refuse to be needled into a slugging match with Harry Truman. (Truman's advisers were furious over what they called Dewey's decision to campaign against Joe Stalin.) His manner was friendly, his handling of crowds masterly. Because he was ahead, he could keep to general terms, imply Administration failure without committing himself to specific remedies of his own. He gambled nothing. Some observers, like Columnist Joseph Alsop, found his manner "a trifle too ostentatiously noble," with a "faint flavor of Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn." But they were all agreed on one thing. He was making—and keeping—votes.