The United States presidential election of 1948 saw the overwhelming defeat of then-President Harry S. Truman at the hands of Thomas Dewey, the Republican governor of New York and former partner in the law firm, Dewey, Cheatem & Howe. Truman was simply unable to overcome the all-but-universal disgust in which voters held his foreign policy, and was further crippled by the devastating three-way split in the Democratic party.