Neither Harry Truman nor Dwight Eisenhower had much to say when they met shortly after the election in November 1952. Truman had brought the president–elect to the White House for a briefing by top officials. The briefing had gone well, or so Truman thought, and had given his successor a good tutorial in the difficult problems that confronted the country. Eisenhower had a different recollection. Grim and uncomfortable throughout the meeting, he said little and was convinced that he had learned even less. Inauguration Day saw no improvement. Truman had declined Eisenhower's invitation to return to Missouri on board the presidential plane, and Eisenhower had refused to join Truman for refreshments before the ceremony. According to some accounts, the two men traded insults or sat in stony silence as they rode together to the Capitol. It was a hostile transition, as Stephen Ambrose has said, and a suitable capstone to one of the most vicious political campaigns in recent memory.

Conservative Republicans were unable to get Senator Taft on the ticket in 1952, but they controlled the party's convention and wrote a campaign platform that vilified the Truman administration and the Democratic party as being riddled with corruption, full of Communists, and basically un–American.