One of Thomas Dewey's nicknames was 'The Little Man' -who does he remind you of?

[Ye We Can]

Lol.

Thomas Dewey gets a really bad rap on here. While he certainly did blow it in 1948, it wasn't because he didn't have it in him to run a feisty campaign, he miscalculated on what voters were looking for.

Dewey ran partisan and bombastic campaigns for New York Governor and in 1944 was a partisan mudslinger: He almost implied publicly that Roosevelt was in on the Pearl Harbor attack, for example, and George Marshall once had to implore Dewey not to talk about certain actions in the Pacific as it would compromise American intelligence.

Dewey concluded in 1948 that the aggressive approach that he had used in 1944 had lost him more voters than he gained and decided to run like an incumbent against Truman hoping that Truman would sink himself, and then became vulnerable to the empty-suit accusations that Truman threw as Dewey lacked the stature of Roosevelt.  His own advisers didn't help either, assuring him over the course of the campaign that his lead was unassailable: On one occasion, for example, Truman in a speech implied Dewey was linked with fascist ideals; Dewey wanted to hit back hard, but his advisors stopped him.  Dewey was certainly capable of being feisty, partisan and "alive" on the trail (look at what he did to Harold Stassen's career), he just miscalculated on what voters were looking for.

Tl;Dr Comparing Tom Dewey to Marco Rubio is an insult to Tom Dewey.