Dewey–Stassen debate

Governor of New York Thomas E. Dewey and former governor of Minnesota Harold Stassen engaged in the first United States presidential debate on May 17, 1948. The two candidates were competing for the Republican Party nomination for the 1948 presidential election and held the debate shortly before the Oregon primary election. It focused on a single issue: whether the United States should outlaw the American Communist Party. Stassen argued that it should, while Dewey argued that it should not. The debate was broadcast over radio on approximately 900 networks, with an estimated 40–80 million listeners.

Dewey was the front-runner for the Republican nomination in 1948, but Stassen gained a surge of support as some states held primary elections. Stassen challenged Dewey to a public debate throughout the process. As the Oregon primary election approached, Stassen was the favorite to win its delegates. Dewey agreed to a debate in Portland on the condition that he could set the terms, such as forgoing a live audience.

Both candidates gave a 20-minute speech on his position, and both then delivered 8+1⁄2 minute rebuttals. Stassen believed that the Communist Party was working on behalf of Russia and that failing to ban it would threaten the security of democratic nations. Dewey disagreed, arguing that outlawing the party would be totalitarian and only cause it to work in secret. Stassen made the proposed Mundt–Nixon Bill the center of his argument by incorrectly asserting that its passage would outlaw the Communist Party. Dewey had quotations from Karl Mundt ready to disprove this, and he called Stassen's position a surrender because the bill was not the act of outlawing that Stassen had originally supported.

Dewey's performance was seen as more authentic, drawing from his experience as a prosecutor. He won the Oregon primary and the Republican Party nomination for the 1948 presidential election, but he lost in the general election to incumbent president Harry S. Truman. Stassen's political career went into decline after 1948 as he went on to lose several elections at various levels of government. The following decades spawned a tradition of public debates between presidential candidates.