Rooney's Presidential Election Rankings

[Rooney]

#49: The Election of 1956

The election of 1956 lands at forty-nine on the list. This election was a rematch of one of the truly great contests in American history. In 1952 victorious Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower gave into the pressure and admiration of the American people and allowed himself to be made into a presidential candidate. An epic Democratic Convention elevated Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson to the unenviable position of opposing the war hero. Stevenson proved himself to be a scrappy underdog and made the campaign a memorable bout. 1956 was very much the opposite. While it had some moments of suspense and drama the entire election was a very mild affair. This is quite disappointing considering that the world was on fire in 1956.

President Eisenhower had made it known to his wife that he wanted to only serve as single term in office. A series of health related shocks and surgeries in 1955 seemed to edge him that way. In March of 1956, after “facing the sheer, God-awful boredom of not being president”, Ike announced he would seek a second term in office. One potential area of dramatic tension in the Republican Primary came with Eisenhower’s strange ideas about reelection. He had told Press Secretary James Haggerty that he had visions of ditching the GOP and running as a “third choice” candidate. He had toyed with naming his brother Milton as vice-president. He also brought up the name of Treasury Secretary Robert Anderson and even Democratic Ohio Governor Frank Lausche. When Milton told Ike that this dream was absurd Eisenhower attempted to pry the devious Vice-President Richard Nixon from the chair one heartbeat away by naming him Defense Secretary. Despite the fact that the vice-presidency isn’t worth a bucket of warm piss Nixon knew that it was his best chance for the presidency. At the GOP Convention in San Francisco gadfly former “Boy Governor” Harold Stassen attempted to lead a conclave for former Massachusetts Governor Christian Herter. However, this did not amount to a heal of Boston baked beans. The 1956 Republican Convention at the Cow Place in San Francisco was a real downer. This was not to be repeated when the GOP came back in 1964.

The 1956 contest is greatly aided by the Democratic Primary. Stevenson had been an all but announced candidate for the 1956 nod as soon as he conceded the 1952 election. Known for his whit (“Eggheads of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your yolks!”) and intelligence, Stevenson was the darling of the progressive, internationalist wing of the Democratic Party. The enigmatic former First Lady of the World Eleanor Roosevelt gave vocal support to “the Man from Libertyville.” Stevenson, however, was forced to battle for the nomination. In 1956 there was to be no draft. This lessens the drama but ups the campaign joy. His major opponent was the comic book crusader Senator Estes Kefauver. After taking on the crime families of New York, Harry Truman and Tales from the Crypt, Kefauver was back to make his second run for president. The battle between Kefauver and Stevenson was a great one in the history of Democratic Primaries. Kefauver’s upset wins in New Hampshire, Indiana and Minnesota allowed him to stay into the battle all the way to June. Stevenson was thoroughly disgusted by the primary campaign. In the pivotal California primary he was forced to don blue jeans, a bolo tie and a ten-gallon Stetson hat in a parade. Following the parade he threw the tie off in disgust and loudly declared for all to hear: “God, what a man won’t do to get public office!”

The additional wildcard of millionaire New York Governor W. Averell Harriman, the candidate backed by the exiled Harry Truman, adds a great deal to the 1956 contest. In May 1956 Stevenson and Kefauver also squared off in one of the first televised presidential debates. These factors led to a good convention in Chicago. What added even more spark to the election was the open battle for vice-president. Senator Kefauver faced off against the youthful, if unaccomplished, Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy of Massachusetts. While JFK’s father Joe told him not to touch the vice-presidency because “Stevenson is a loser” Kennedy was able to make a strong bid for the nod. It took two ballots for the experienced Kefauver to dispatch of the neophyte Kennedy. The emergence of the doomed Stevenson-Kefauver ticket is a great election story and one that adds a great deal of drama to the campaign.

“Eisenhower stands for “gradualism.’ Stevenson stands for ‘moderation,” comedian Mort Stahl said during his San Francisco night club act. “Between these two extremes, we the people must choose.” Stahl’s bit of gibe says a great deal about the election of 1956. The year was not a placid year but the election was. While Hungary was invaded by the Red Army and French, British and Israeli paratroopers landed in Egypt, neither military event played out a great deal in the election. Stevenson did not let the fact that he was down badly in the polls stop him from campaigning hard. He attacked Nixon as unfit for the presidency in four years. He came out for farm relief and nuclear arms limitation. He openly questioned the intelligence of the “hidden hand presidency.” Eisenhower opposed Stevenson’s call to end the draft.

Despite his strong campaign, Stevenson never stood a chance. When Stevenson asked a farmer who was upset about Ike’s farm policy, “But why aren’t people mad at Eisenhower?” the farmer replied: “Oh! No one connects Ike with his Administration.” A campaign that could have been a close one if Nixon had taken on Stevenson was a landslide because the incumbent was such a beloved figure. Stevenson is to be applauded for trying to make the election a contest but in the end Eisenhower was too much of an institution to be toppled. Perhaps Chicago businessman and NFL hockey team owner “Dollar” Bill Wirtz put it best: “If the Electoral College ever gives an honorary degree, it ought to go to Adlai Stevenson.”  

[Rooney]

#48: The Election of 1928

Landing at number forty-eight on the list is the election of 1928. President Coolidge called it quits in South Dakota in 1927 leaving the path open for hos progressive (if meddlesome) Secretary of Commerce Herbert Clark Hoover. Hoover steamrolled his way into the GOP nomination and over big city New York Governor Alfred E. Smith. It was the election which pitted the East Side against West Branch.

The Republican Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, was a repeat of the 1924 affair. Hoover, though he underperformed in the primaries, was the easy winner on the first ballot. Governor “Pockets” Frank Lowden was the only opponent who seemed he could take on Hoover. However, he dropped out of contention the day before the convention opened. With Coolidge refusing a draft and Vice-President Charles Dawes an unpopular, pompous jackass there was no one who could stop the Hoover tidal wave. “Who but Hoover?” was more than just a slogan; for Old Guard Republicans it was the dim, sad reality. Coolidge’s “Wunduh Boy” was an easy winner in both the primary and the general election. A hero for his work in Belgium during World War I, leading the 1927 relief of the Mississippi flood and meddling in many free market affairs as Commerce Secretary, Hoover was a national figure who was popular with the populace. His very name was a synonym for trim efficiency: “I’ll never learn to Hooverize when it comes to loving you.”

The Democratic Convention was a good deal more interesting because the candidate who emerged as the nominee was as different from the straight laced Quaker Hoover as night and day. Ebullient and friendly, Governor Alfred Smith had no education but did not need it to become the multi-term governor of the Empire State. A fixture of Tammany Hall and a hard drinking Irish Catholic, Smith grew up on the sidewalks of New York and did not hide from the fact. While more closed minded neighborhoods in Kansas and Iowa hardly were taken by Smith, the cigar munching politico was beloved by his fellow urban Catholics. At the Democratic Convention in Houston, Texas, Smith did not face serious opposition. Congressman Cordell Hull and Senator James Reed ran as pro-prohibition Protestants and were both soundly defeated on the first ballot. The great drama that came from the Democratic Convention was that a Roman Catholic was placed at the top of a national ticket from a major party. Smith, who had sought the nomination in 1920 and 1924, took the prize but in the end would prove to be hardly a match for the Republican Roaring Twenties. In the end the boulder donning guv was Hooverized by Main Street.

One of the great myths of the 1928 election is that Smith lost because of his religion. He lost because no Democratic could win in 1928 with a booming Stock Markey and easy credit sustaining the economic bubble known as the Roaring Twenties. However, his religion did not help his cause. Smith’s campaign manager was businessman John J. Raskob, a wet Catholic, and his campaign song was the diddy “The Sidewalks of New York.” These campaign choices only alienated Middle America from the Democratic standard bearer. Smith made it clear that he believed the separation of church and state and Hoover, to his credit, did not directly attack Smith’s religion. In the end, however, he also did not do a great deal to stop the attacks. The Protestant assaults on Smith’s religion add some bigoted suspense to the race but in the end the election was never so close that religion could turn it against either candidate. “Well,” Smith is said to comment after the election was said and done, “The time has not come where a man can say his beads in the White House.”

In the end the 1928 election involved two unique candidates. It is by no means a boring election but compared to other races it does not register as one of the greats. Hoover’s victory was only a matter of time. Democratic attacks on him failed to register. The production of a falsified photo showing Hoover dancing with a black woman in Mississippi did not bring the Solid South or border states back to the Democratic fold. The final election results are unique, no doubt. Hoover carried such Democratic standard states as Texas, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia and Tennessee. Smith, on the other hand, carried nine out of the top ten most populous American cities. This is a result that matters. In 1932 the South would head back to the Democrats but the GOP has never managed to reclaim the urban environments which clamored to Smith. The Coolidge prosperity is what won the election for Hoover as well as the Great Engineer’s personal popularity. 1928 was an election in which GOP newspapers asked, “Smith or Hoover? Who would you want to run your business?” As happens so often, the interview process was not needed as the job was already safe for one applicant.     

[Rooney]

#47: The Election of 2004

Landing at number forty-seven is the reelection victory of George W. Bush. Following the free-for-all that was the 2000 election the general canvass of 2004 was hardly as exciting. This is not to say that Bush’s reelection lacked suspense and drama but the cast of characters assembled was uninspiring. In the end a seemingly back and forth battle had a straight forward ending that could have been predicated from the start.

After his highly unique election in 2000, President George W. Bush had managed to deficit spend his political capital into two tax cuts and two wars. The genesis of the global “War on Terror” allowed for him to grab unimagined presidential powers. The Patriot Act, National Security Letters, indefinite detainment, extraordinary rendition and billions in overspending were all given the thumbs up by a Congress composed of limited government Republicans. These decisions proved to be, uniquely, popular and polarizing. The haughty left mocked George W. Bush as “chimpy” and questioned his literacy, but as they chortles down their herbal teas a Neoconservative junta in the West Wing set about building up the “Bush Brand” for the 2004 reelection bid. Karl Rove and Andy Card proved highly adept at molding the illegal Iraq War into a worthy struggle. Despite rising casualties, no WMDs and the fact that the new Iraqi “government” was held up by American bayonets, the Mad Men of the RNC were able to sell the war to the American people as just and necessary. Polls in January 2004 showed both Bush and his war polling at 51% of higher in terms of approval. The economy “grew” steadily, with unemployment so low Hubert Humphrey would have called it “full employment”, as the Neoconservative junta built up a persona around Bush that would prove unbeatable in the general election. The “crazy cowboy” image Bush had attained in Europe was effectively spun as a positive. Bush, who fancied himself an international sheriff of sorts, was portrayed the leader of a posse who were going to throw the noose around the neck of terrorist leaders and their supporters in world capitals throughout the Middle East. In the United States of 2004 this image was a hard one to beat. The Democrats needed to produce an unbeatable candidate who could counter this image and show the nation that the U.S. needed to reject the Neoconservative sheriff’s posse. The man they nominated was not the right man for the job.

The election of 2004 is made disappointing because the eventual Democratic nominee was hardly the correct foil for the Bush image. Senator John Forbes Kerry (JFK?) was not a bad nominee by any means. He was a solid Great Society liberal who was hawkish on foreign affairs. He could debate well and, while not a soaring public speaker, had competence on the stump. His wife was loaded with cash and he had been a senator since 1985. His Vietnam War experience and three Purple Hearts technically should have appealed to defense minded swing voters and independents. This leads to the question: “If Kerry was such a solid candidate then why was he not the best man to take on the president?” The answer is that Kerry was far too much like Bush. The 2004 election falls low on the list because there was little to no contrast between the two candidates. They argued about tax cuts but only in the sense of how much money the rich should be given back. They disagreed on the Iraq War but only in terms of how the war should be fought, not whether it should have been fought. Kerry’s vote for the Iraq War Resolution coupled with his selection of pro-Iraq War Senator John Edwards as his running-mate effectively made Iraq a null-and-void issue. The Kerry/Edwards campaign was simply a non-neoconservative Republican campaign. Yes, Kerry gave lip service to liberal standards like health care and the minimum wage but his campaign never really found an issue to run on. In the end Kerry was simply “Not Bush.” That type of a campaign can be effective but it is hardly memorable. Memorable campaigns give people something to vote for, not just against.

The great tragedy of the 2004 election is that in 2003 it looked as if the race was going to be an epic struggle of the neocons versus the doves. Powered by youthful supporters and the internet, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean looked to be the likely opponent to take down King George the Second. I will admit that I was a “Deaniac” in 2003 so this part of the post may seem biased…because it is. Governor Dean was not a perfect candidate. He had the tendency to ramble, get off message and say things that could be easily misconstrued by the media. Dean was also rabidly leftist on issues like war, health care and the economy. The Bush Campaign was well prepared to oppose Dean. The campaign that Rove and Card had worked up to battle Dean was akin to Nixon’s 1972 smear fest against Senator George McGovern: “Acid, amnesty and abortion.” Dean, however, showed he was willing to fight back. An election between Bush and Dean would have been a great contest between two different ideologies. While Dena was a pragmatic centrist as governor, his presidential campaign was a left-wing dovish crusade against the Neocons in the White House.

Would Dean have won? This is doubtful. The Democrats felt the same way. Kerry appeared to be more “electable” in the general election. Dean rubbed people the wrong way, or so it appeared. Kerry was more center-left and did not appear weak on defense. The 2004 Democratic Primaries proved to be anti-climactic. Kerry won Iowa and New Hampshire. While John Edwards and General Wesley Clark won a handful of contests Kerry was never seriously challenged from January 2004 until the start of the general election in July 2004. This is no good for campaign ratings.

It can be argued that the general election of 2004 was exciting because it came down to a few key states. The struggle for Ohio and Pennsylvania are both case studies in voter outreach and campaign organization. Yet in the end Bush won Ohio and Kerry took Pennsylvania, both of which polls generally pointed to in the closing days of the campaign. The Real Clear Politics average of polls in Ohio, for example, showed Bush leading by 2.1%. He ended up winning the state by about that margin. While the campaign’s polls were close the eventual victory of Bush was a sure thing throughout much of October.

The October Surprise that year was the October 29, 2004, release of yet another Osama bin Laden video. The media hyped this up as a main reason Bush was reelected but it was not. By October 29, 2004, Bush led in the national polls despite three weak debate performances.

Kerry Campaign was simply unable to catch fire with the nation’s voters. The main reason why 2004 falls in at forty-seven is that it offered little surprises. In the Democratic Primary Kerry won easily. He was able to revive a dying campaign, that is true, but he took the ball and ran it across the line with ease once his campaign was up and running. The Republicans offered no surprises the whole election. Bush fell below 50% approvals occasionally and Kerry led nationally at different points but in the end the incumbent president won reelection. The closeness of the race is hardly a reason to place it high on the list. Close elections can be as anti-climactic as landslides if the candidates are not interesting. The election between Kerry and Bush was a lot of shouting over very few differences.             

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

That last sentence is a nice summary of some of these low-ranked elections.

[SPC]

I'm guessing 2012 is #46 then.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

I'm guessing 2012 is #46 then.

Nah, 2012 was honestly pretty fun in both the primary season and some debate moments.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I'm guessing 2012 is #46 then.

Nah, 2012 was honestly pretty fun in both the primary season and some debate moments.

2012 should be #27 since 9+9+9 = 27 and it can't be #47% now.

[Rooney]

#46: The Election of 1908

Winding up at number forty-six on the list is the battle of the two Williams. In 1908 the eccentric and enigmatic Theodore Roosevelt sat out the race and allowed his friend and protégé
William “Big Bill” Taft to take the reins as the Republican standard bearer. The Democrats plodded out well-worn candidate William Jennings Bryan. The boy orator was now losing his hair and his prestige. The Great Commoner, the old war horse, stood no chance against Taft, the Secretary of War.

“What is the real difference between the Democratic and Republican Parties?” puzzled Joseph Pulitzer in 1908. The war lover was correct to puzzle until his puzzler was sore because there were precious few differences between Taft and Bryan on most important public policy issues. The trust busting, railway regulating, interventionist government of Teddy Roosevelt was the only issue of the campaign and both Bryan and Taft supported the reforms. “The voters,” declared the conservative Washington Post, “refuse to go into hysteria over the puny little questions that divide the two parties.”

On the Republican side there was precious little struggle. On the night of his great victory in 1904, TR had announced he would not be a candidate in 1908. Roosevelt famously wrote to military advisor Archibald Butt that he would “gladly give a hand” if he could take back those words. Roosevelt loved the presidency and the press loved Roosevelt. His big teeth, oversized mustache, high pitches voice and bombastic energy made for great print copy. Who could take his place? The answer was none but Roosevelt made sure his protégé was given the position. The friendly and magnanimous Secretary of War William Howard Taft was the only serious candidate for the nomination in 1908. It is a unique fact that 1908 was the first election in which statewide presidential primaries came into vogue. However, they made precious little difference in either of the major party’s final nomination. Conservatives in the form of Joe Cannon and Joseph B. Foraker vied against Taft as did another Roosevelt man: Senator Philander Knox. Taft, prodded on by an ambitious wife with an appetite for power to meet Bill’s for food, entered into several state primaries and won most of them. The legal minded Taft won the party’s nomination with over 700 delegate votes on the first ballot at the convention in Chicago. The greatest excitement of the convention was the forty-nine minute demonstration for TR accompanied with the chant of, “For-four-four years more!” Teddy, however, pulled the strings to make sure that Congressman “Sunny Jimmy” Sherman was nominated as Taft’s running-mate mate on the first ballot. As Taft left the convention it was joked that T.A.F.T. stood for “Take advice from Theodore.”

On the Democratic side William Jennings Bryan, the elder statesman of the Party of Jackson, was the only real candidate for the nomination. Bryan was so much the front-runner for the nomination that at the Denver convention his handlers made sure that the demonstration for him lasted exactly one-minute longer than the demonstration Bryan had received for the “Cross of Gold” speech in 1896. “Are we over time yet?” they asked each other as they checked their pocket watches. After being paired with perennial loser John W. Kern as his running-mate, the ticket of perennial losers decided to not campaign for the first few weeks. Bryan instead worked on his newspaper, The Commoner, and Kern went home to Indiana to sew wild oats. “Shall the people rule?” Bryan asked. He declared this question to be the “pivitol issue of the campaign” and in the end the people would not rule in favor of him.

The reason why the election of 1908 is placed at number forty-six is because it has excellent candidates but they had very little to argue about. “Hit them hard old man!” Roosevelt had advised Taft. Taft only liked to hit hard when he was playing baseball. He knew that Bryan had nothing to offer the nation that Teddy had not already done. In fact, Bryan made one of the main themes of his campaign the fact that he could bust trusts better than Taft. He argued he was the better heir to the Roosevelt legacy. Taft gave some public addresses but he hated them. He told his wife Helen that the idea of giving his acceptance speech in Cincinnati before a crowd of a few hundred people hung before him “like a dark nightmare.” It is unique to mention that Taft and Bryan had their speeches recorded for the phonograph and played around the nation. However, this did not change the outcome.

Taft beat Bryan and beat him badly. Gadflies commented that everytime Bryan was nominated for president he was nominated in a city further and ruther away from the White House. Some wagged that in 1912 he would be nominated in Los Angeles and in 1920 Manila and in 1924 Shanghai. Bryan himself asked his readers to answer “THE RIDDLE OF 1896” and explain to him why he had lost so badly. The fact was that Bryan scared people. He promised to nationalize the railroads if elected president. This turned the railroad magnates against him and towards Taft. Despite the Hepburn Act and its unpopularity with railway men it was far better than nationalization. Businessmen supported Taft and the people loved Teddy. In the end there could be no other alternative to a Taft victory. Bryan joked that he felt much like the drunken man who was thrown from a bar three times. When the drunk came back a fourth time he proclaimed indignantly: “Something tells me you fellows don’t want me around!”                    

[Rooney]

#45: The Election of 1936

Coming in at number forty-five is the election of 1936. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s massive reelection is an incredible victory for the forces of progressive labor in the United States and a catastrophic defeat for the “me-too” branch of Republicanism. The reason why it lands at number forty-five is simply because the election offered few surprises and the Republican Party failed to learn much from the contest. “There is one issue in this campaign,” FDR told Raymond Moley, “It’s myself, and people must be either for me or against me.” In the end the people would be overwhelmingly for the sunny chief executive.

The New Deal, which Roosevelt promised in the far more memorable 1932 canvas, had not created prosperity. Millions of people still wanted for jobs, housing and food in the summer of 1936. Despite millions in government spending and a strange group of Utopian socialists called the “Brain Trust” trying out their weird societal views for the first time, unemployment was still high and the GDP was still abysmal. However, the nation felt like happy days were indeed here again. FDR’s first term in office is one of the turning points in American political and governmental history. It is an era all to itself in not just government programming but propaganda. New Deal sponsored art, photography, radio and drama programs pumped the idea that the depression was ending into the minds of Americans on a daily basis. The propaganda worked and it worked well. In 1936 millions of Americans felt that the government had saved them from the doldrums of the depression and that they were far better off in 1936 than they had ever been during the Republican 1920s. FDR’s New Deal propaganda machine is to be applauded. It made an election that should have been competitive into a walk for the man who pulled the strings from behind the curtain. FDR was indeed the Wizard of Oz and no one throws the wizard from the Emerald City.

The assassination of Huey “Kingfish” Long stole a fascinating component from the 1936 campaign because the candidacy of the wild Louisiana governor would have made the election fall in the top ten. He had threatened that he would run on his socialistic “Share Our Wealth” platform as an independent in 1936. His 1935 assassination ended those plans and cast the idea of a Long 1936 candidacy into the realm of “what-if.” T. Harry Williams, the incredible historian, has written that Long had no intention of running in 1936 but instead running another candidate under the “Share Our Wealth” independent banner. If this is the case the death of Long does not totally ruin the 1936 race but even a 3rd party campaign from a Long surrogate would have made the election more dramatic.

To unseat Roosevelt the Republicans did not have a very deep bench. Former President Herbert Hoover, the only nationally known candidate, was sitting in toxic expulsion at the Waldorf-Astoria. The party’s pathetic Cleveland convention named the moonfaced Kansas Governor Alfred Landon as the party’s nominee. A former Bull Mooser who had introduced New Deal like programs in the Sunflower State, Landon was not a conservative alternative to FDR. No, he was simply a pale pink of the real red. During the campaign Landon himself attacked the New Deal and Roosevelt but failed to answer how he would repeal the New Deal. The GOP slogan in 1936 was “Off the rocks with Landon and Knox.” The two Republicans never managed to even see the rocks; they were sunk far before that.

The general election campaign itself was given some life by Socialist Norman Thomas and Union Party candidate Congressman William Lemke. The anti-New Deal pixie triumvirate of Father Charles Coughlin, Dr. Francis Townsend and the Reverend Gerald L.K. Smith formed the backbone of the Union Party movement. “Liberty Bill” Lemke was simply a good face to put on an odd operation. Critics pointed out that Liberty Bill might also be cracked. Norman Thomas brought his folksy charm to the campaign trial once again. When asked if FDR had carried out the Socialist Platform of 1932 Thomas quipped: “If he has he has carried it out on a stretcher.” The antics of Coughlin and the Hearst papers against Roosevelt also make the election memorable. Who could forget Coughlin’s wonderful nicknames for Roosevelt? I personally like “Franklin Double-crossing Roosevelt” the best. That is memorable.

FDR’s class warfare campaign in 1936 is also very memorable, Railing against the “malefactors of great wealth” he told the nation that he “welcomed the hatred” of the Melons, Morgans and Insuls. His government had already targeted Andrew Mellon’s art collection and raised taxes on the rich. He gave fiery speeches in defense of labor and the social security act. His government also targeted those businessmen who donated to the Republican campaign. Roosevelt’s bloody assaults on the wealthy and business would be copied by Democrats for years to come going all the way to Barack Obama’s 2012 successful reelection campaign. The 1936 FDR campaign is important to political history because it shows how effectively candidates can run against wealth in a capitalist nation.

The hilarious results of the 1936 Literary Digest poll, the powerful FDR campaign and the laughably pathetic Republican campaign all create a memorable campaign. The main reason why it is ranked at this place is because the campaign does not stand up that well when compared to the other candidates for the top sports. In the end the screaming of the Radio Priest and the blustery anger of the “malignant rich” could not stop the Roosevelt Express. FDR’s first reelection was a forgone conclusion. Alf Landon himself commented the night before the election on what his odds against Roosevelt were. He commented, “No chance.”

[Rooney]

#44: The Election of 1888

The contest of 1888 lands at number forty-four and one can argue it is one of the most unknown energetic campaigns in American history. The struggle between an incumbent president and a Civil War general would seem to be one of the most memorable races in American history. Additionally, it was an election which was ran and won on one issue: tariff. I cannot think of many one-issue campaigns in American presidential history. 1888 was battled out on one issue and one issue alone: the tariff. This makes the election a fine historical anonymity and a lot of fun.

The Democrats in 1888 had only one candidate. President Stephen Grover Cleveland had called on Congress in December 1887 to lower tariffs. “What’s the good of being elected or reelected unless you stand for something?” Cleveland had asked his cabinet. Grover the Good also vetoed a silly Civil War pension act and also created the Federal Trade Commission during his first term in office. The head-on struggle between the Democratic House and the Republican Senate over the tariff reduction galvanized the GOP and lionized the president in his party’s ranks. The Democratic Convention in reliably Democratic St. Louis nominated Cleveland by acclamation. The campaign was not aided by the tagging on of the 75-year old former Ohio Senator Allen G. Thurman as Cleveland’s running-mate. The Democratic Party faithful were not inspired by the Cleveland/Thurman Ticket. Cleveland refused to campaign at all as incumbent president. Cleveland’s refusal to allow cabinet secretaries campaign for him forced the brunt of the campaign on the elderly Thurman’s shoulders. The old man collapsed at one point on the stump. A collapsing old man is the best way to sum up the Democratic campaign. Thankfully, the Republicans were not as pacific.

The great bright spot of the 1888 canvas is the Republican campaign. Following their narrow defeat in 1884, the Republicans were determined to toss “Fat Grover” out of office and retake the reins of government. A raucous and hilarious convention in Chicago attracted an incredible number of simply joyous candidates. The front-runner when the convention opened was the eccentric judge and Treasury Secretary Walter Q. Gresham. The aging sage of Ohio John Sherman, patrician NY Central Railroad President Chauncey Depew, silver mained Senator William Boyd Allison of Iowa and Indiana Senator and General Benjamin “Grandfather’s Hat” Harrison rounded out the interesting array of candidates. The back and forth struggle between Gresham, Sherman and Depew allowed for Harrison to emerge from obscurity in his Indianapolis law office to become the party’s nominee on the eight ballot. The convention was simply the tip of the Republican iceberg. The general election allowed for them to show exactly how vicious an uncaged elephant can be.   

The well-oiled Republican machine makes the campaign worth following. The GOP was backed by big money interests who wanted to see high tariffs. High tariffs, after all, allowed for inferior products to be sold cheaper than far better foreign goods. That is just good, government backed business. Millions of dollars flowed into the Republican war chest, which was managed by the multimillionaire Philadelphia merchant John Wanamaker. Harrison ran an epic “front porch” campaign from his home in Indianapolis which would be copied by Bill McKinley in 1896 and Warren Harding in 1920. The stories of the thousnads of men and women around the country who travelled to Indianapolis to see the Republican candidate make for excellent campaign anecdotes, which in the end is one of the hallmarks of a good election.

The dirty tricks of the Republicans are also the thing of electoral legends. They called the incumbent president the “Beast of Buffalo” and accused him of being a drunkard who beat his young wife Francis Folsom Cleveland. Republican women groups even whispered that Francis beat Grover. The First Couple were both accused of being drunks who gambled on Sundays. These attacks alone are rapturous but the underhanded tactics of the Murchison Letter place the Republican campaign into the stuff of underhanded legend. In a campaign where the Republicans made British bashing a past time, they managed to troll the British minister in Washington. Sir Lionel Sackville-West replied to a man named “Charles F. Murchison” who had inquired of him on how to vote in November. Murchison claimed to be an American citizen of English birth who wished to vote for the candidate who would best serve the needs and desires of the British Empire. Murchison praised Cleveland for his devotion to “free trade” and assaulted Harrison as a high-tariff man who was on, “the American side of all questions.” However, Cleveland had stood up the Britain when it came to fishing rights between Canada and Maine. Murchison wanted to know if Cleveland was a man that a Brit could trust. Sackville-West fell for the 19th century Rick-roll and replied that Cleveland was the best choice for the British lion. The Republican ran with the story and portrayed Cleveland as a Red(coat). Cleveland asked the British to recall Sackville-West. In the end, “Murchison” turned out to be Republican dirty trickster Charles Osgoodby and the British diplomat was played by some truly clever tricksters. In my opinion the Murchison Letter is probably the most clever, inventive dirty trick every played in the history of presidential campaigns.

The final results are also intriguing. Cleveland won the popular vote but lost his home state of New York. The excellent Republican campaign in the Empire State, coupled with deep divisions in the Democratic Party of New York, won the state and the election for Harrison, the little general. The Election of 1888 is by no means a “bad” election. I find it to be an exciting one which shows real differences between two candidates and some clever campaign tricks. It is ranked at forty-four simply because there are other elections which had greater contrasts and more clever campaign capers. I take my hat off to Cleveland, Harrison, the tariff and that dastardly Murchison Letter!     

[windjammer]

Great job Rooney!

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

It must be hard for you to do these rankings at this point.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

It must be hard for you to do these rankings at this point.

I'm quite sure he can manage.

[Rooney]

Great job Rooney!

Thank you very much, windjammer, I appreciate it.

It must be hard for you to do these rankings at this point.

I have a list made out but I have the terrible little habit of changing it at the last minute. I have also been swamped by my work the last few days. I hope to have another one up soon.

[Rooney]

#43: The Election of 1872

Landing at number forty-three on the list is the election of 1872. The campaign of 1872 has great moments of excitement but the fact that it had a widely popular candidate in the running never put the outcome in a doubt. President Ulysses S. Grant, the savior of the Union, was the assured winner from the very beginning. The scandals of his administration made for some limited political hay for his hapless opponents. The best thing to come from the election was a party movement which, had it not been fumbled, could have led to the emergence of a unique Fourth Party system.

The Liberal Republican movement was a unique amalgamation of elitist New England Republicans, “political reformers” from the Midwest and old Southern Whigs. Angered by “Grantism”- a newly coined verb meaning corruption- and the fact that Ulysses Grant did not have an Ivy League law degree, Charles Sumner and Charles Francis Adams decided to bolt the Republican Party. Grant, the great hero of the Union who had aptly led the ship of state since 1869, would not be thrown from the Republican presidential nomination by the perennially unlikable and smug Sumner or Adams. The Democrats were still rebuilding themselves from the 1866, 1868 and 1870 elections. They stood no chance at ousting Grant. Thus, the Liberal Republican movement was born.

Led by the defeated 1848 communist revolutionary, Union General and Missouri Senator Carl Schurz, “reform minded citizens” met in Cincinnati in May 1st, an appropriate date for Schurz and his strange fellows. After putting together a progressive, pro-civil service reform, anti-corruption platform, the real fun of the convention began. The eccentric publisher of the New York Tribune and former Congressman Horace Greeley emerged as the party’s presidential standard bearer over Adams, Senator Lyman Trumbull and Chief Justice Salmon Chase. With his big head, cherubic face, flashy blue eyes and outrageous facial hair Greeley seemed as if he had stepped from the pages of a Dickens novel. The anti-Grant cabal was overwhelmed in grief. The Nation commented that Greeley’s nomination was the greatest national disappointment since the news of the first Battle of Bull Run. The New York Times, a good Republican publication, commented that Greeley’s nomination was a “joke” and added insult to injury “If any one man could send a great nation to the dogs, that man would be Mr. Greeley.” Greeley was a lover of odd causes for the 1870s. He supported vegetarianism, communal living, free love and free thinking. A strong supporter of civil rights he had also called for Lincoln to work out a negotiated peace with the Confederacy and had donated money to bail Jefferson Davis out of prison. The 1872 campaign was given a mixed blessing by Greeley. The enigmatic printer turned politician campaigned across the nation on his behalf, the first candidate to do so since Stephen Douglas in 1860.

The failure of the Democrats to nominate their own candidate detracts from the election. Greeley won the nomination of the party he had long accused of being the right arm of Lucifer. A joke was spread around the nation that when Dr. Livingstone returned from five years in African isolation he was told a few things by Henry M. Stanley, his rescuer. Stanley told Livingstone of the Austrian-Prussian War, the execution of the Mexican Emperor Maximillian and the defeat of Louis Napoleon at the hands of Bismarck and the Prussians. Finally he mentioned that Greeley had been nominated for president by the Democratic Party. “Hold on,” Livingston told Stanley, “You have told me stupendous things and confiding with simplicity I was swallowing them down; but there is a limit to all things, and when you tell me that Horace Greeley is become the Democratic candidate I will be hanged if I believe it!”

The general campaign of 1872 was a great deal of fun. The Liberal Republicans ran against Grant with a vengeance. They called the president an “ape”, “barbarian”, “dime store Caesar” and “king of corruption.” Greeley, realizing that the fight was in vain, fought his very best. He attacked the gold cornering scheme of Fisk and Gould, the Credit Mobiler scandal, the corruption in the Bureau of Indian Affairs and spoke in favor of civil service reform. “While there are doubts as to my fitness for president,” Greeley said at a campaign stop, “Nobody seems to deny I would make a capital beaten candidate!” Thomas Nast, the partisan Republican political cartoonist who would end his odd days as Ambassador to Ecuador, agreed to make Greeley a “capital beaten candidate.” His cartoons were called a “shower of mud” by the New York Sun. Nast drew Greeley as a near-sighted, pumpkin-headed buffoon in baggy pants with strange novels and tracts falling from his overstuffed pockets. Nast famously drew Greeley grasping hands “across the bloody chasm” with the KKK, John Wilkes Booth and Jeff Davis over the grave of Abraham Lincoln. Greeley replied by making lofty, statesman-like speeches which even impressed his long-time rival Henry Raymond at the New York Times. “The voice of a statesman,” Raymond was forced to concede in October 1872 after hearing Dr. Greeley speak for himself.

In many ways the campaign of 1872 was the Vanderbilt Election. Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, master of the New York Central Railroad, was closely tied to almost all of the major and minor candidates for president in 1872. Vanderbilt and his son-in-law William Allen gave freely to the Grant campaign chest. The president himself wrote a thank you letter to Vanderbilt for the money he gave to the cause. Vanderbilt had given financial support to Greeley on more than one occasion. Charles O’Connor, the Roman Catholic Bourbon Democratic presidential nominee, was Vanderbilt’s corporate counsel for years. Even the gadfly candidacy of Victoria Woodhull was tied to the Commodore. Woodhull, an apparent stockbroker and attorney who would do time behind bars for mail fraud, was nominated by the hopeless People’s Party. Woodhull adds a lot of color to the campaign even though her ticket took very few votes. Woodhull had exposed the pious Henry Ward Beecher as a philanderer, been divorced, lived by the dictates of free love and had attended the First International. She met Cornelius Vanderbilt during her work as a spiritual medium. Yes, Vanderbilt even had his hands in the pockets of the Woodhull candidacy. 1872 was the Commodore’s election.

Election Day 1872 was even an exciting day. Susan B. Anthony was famously arrested for trying to vote and fined $100. The Judge would famously declare the fee already paid and let the case drop. The abolitionist Frederick Douglass, the unwilling running-mate of Woodhull, also served as a New York elector for Ulysses Grant. The election results themselves are worth noting. President Grant won a massive victory which showed the people were behind him and his administration. He became the second Republican to be reelected president joined the (at that time) small club of reelected presidents. Electors from Arkansas and Louisiana were rejected. Then, the funny yet faithful Greeley died November 29, 1872, leaving his negligible electoral votes to be fought for by many neophytes.

Poor Greeley died having lost everything. His wife passed way in October 1872, he lost the election by a landslide, was defrauded out of millions by conman Phillip Arnold and Whitelaw Reid, owner of the New York Herald, took over the New York Tribune in a hostile takeover. Mark Twain, an admirer and sometime friend of Greeley, referred to Reid as “Outlaw Reid” due to the takeover. Greeley descended into madness. A few days before his death he confronted Reid at the swanky Delmonico’s Restaurant, yelling in his face, “You son of a bitch, you stole my newspaper!” The 1872 campaign was greatly aided by the eccentric Greeley. Sam Grant, always too shy to campaign on his own behalf, was quiet but his opponent was a good sport. The 1872 campaign is an exciting one in which the ending was known from the beginning. Greeley did not let the election become a boring campaign. He fought hard. Perhaps Greeley put it best himself when he wrote: “Apathy is a sort of living oblivion.” His life may have fallen apart in 1872 but Greeley could leave knowing that his campaign was not one of “living oblivion.”

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

I think this one probably should be lower. Unpopular Democrat dies before he could even lose properly? Compare 1888, which was stolen, but from the Democrats by the Democrats.

Tell me, which one is more interesting?

[Rooney]

I think this one probably should be lower. Unpopular Democrat dies before he could even lose properly? Compare 1888, which was stolen, but from the Democrats by the Democrats.

Tell me, which one is more interesting?

1872 has the far more interesting cast of characters. 1888 had it's good moments, no doubt, but I stand by my choice. 

[Maxwell]

This is a great series, and I like your reasoning and a lot of things I didn't really know about.

[Mechaman]

This is a great series, and I like your reasoning and a lot of things I didn't really know about.

Yes.

I especially liked the description of the Murchison Letter by Rooney.  Wikipedia's description of it was quite brief and gave more of an impression that it was an outreach attempt at Irish Catholics (which given the amount of hostility against Republicans, why bother?) rather than, as Rooney pointed out, yet another attempt at playing the AMERICA! card by the Republican Party (which they did since the Civil War at the time).  Given that Cleveland lost New York state by only a percentage point, Rooney's explanation makes a lot more sense.

[Cassius]

This is very well-written and informative. Do carry on!

[Rooney]

#42: The Election of 1832

Ranking at number forty-two is Andrew Jackson’s landslide reelection. This election has an incredible premise and involves the first political conventions in American history. Additionally, it hosts the first third party challenge in American political history. The battle between Old Hickory, the Great Compromiser as a firm anti-Mason is a strong campaign with an expected outcome. Jackson, the people’s hero, was an easy winner but the campaign was a hard fought campaign.

The election of 1832 began as early as 1830. President Andrew Jackson had declared the Second Bank of the United States an enemy of the common man. The Democratic Party aimed at dismantling the bank by taking away its charter to do business. Henry Clay, leader of the National Republican opposition to Jackson, decided to make the bank a campaign issue in 1832. Believing the bank to be overwhelmingly popular with the nation’s voters, the clever Clay maneuvered to put Mr. Biddle’s Bank’s up for re-charter in July 1832. As the Kentuckian expected Jackson vetoed the re-charter of the bank in 1832. This led to Nicholas Biddle withholding money from the U.S. and brining about a small recession that summer and early fall. The Jackson campaign was able to spin the “stingy banker Biddle” against Clay. Jackson was no fan of “rag, tag banks” but he especially disliked massive corporate banks backed by federal money. Jackson’s assault on the “Monster Bank” and his brilliant veto message were just the class warfare that was needed for him to win reelection by a landslide. “The veto works well,” Jackson assured his friend John H. Eaton, “instead of crushing me as was expected and intended, it will crush the Bank.” The fact that the Bank War falls into the campaign of 1832 earns it excellent marks in terms of historical importance and drama.  

King Caucus was dead by 1832. The controversial congressional caucus system which selected Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and William H. Crawford was relegated to the ash heap of history by the Ant-Masonic Party. In September 1831, this third party nominated former Attorney General William Wirt at a peaceful gathering of delegates. This nominating convention inspired the National Republicans and Jackson’s Democratic Party to hold their own conventions. The Democratic Convention in Baltimore is especially important because it adapted a rule which would make the 1912, 1920 and 1924 Democratic convention magnificent catastrophes: the two-thirds rule. At the 1832 convention the Democrats made the rule that the presidential nominee needed to win two-thirds support from all delegates to be nominated for the presidency. This wonderful little rule worked well when Old Hickory was the nominee but it would give elections lovers the world over limitless amounts of joy in the years to come.

The general election of 1832 was a great deal of fun. Nicholas Biddle made a strange bedfellow for Henry Clay. Biddle was the son of a long-line of Philadelphia gentry. Educated at home and abroad, Biddle had worked in the printing business and had emerged as a leading banker with the help of his brother Thomas. Biddle did not swear, drink or gamble. He was considered a boring, straight laced bank executive. The Jackson people attacked Clay as a drinker, womanizer, gambler and duelist. Clay was all four and he knew it. Biddle believed that Jackson appealed to the “Great Unwashed” and declared the Bank veto message a “manifesto of anarchy.” Biddle printed over 3,000 copies of the president’s veto message with condescending annotations. His printing company sent these out to voters in the Middle and Western states to show them how barbaric Jackson was. This backfired as people seemed to like Jackson’s dedication to hard currency and opposition to corporations and “rag money.”

“The Jackson cause is the cause of democracy and the people against a corrupt and abandoned aristocracy,” the Jackson press wrote time and time again. The Clay and Biddle campaign had no idea the can of worms they had opened when the made the Mammoth Bank an issue in 1832. “Prince Hal” was outfoxed by the earthy Jackson at every turn in the 1832 campaign. Jackson’s surrogates declared the campaign as a struggle between “The People’s Champion” and “Czar Nick” Biddle.  Clay’s National Republicans struck back by declaring it was Jackson who was the real tyrant. Daniel Webster declared that through the bank veto Jackson had become Louis XIV and proclaimed, “I am the state!” Screamed one anti-Jackson campaign line: “THE KING UPON THE THRONE: THE PEOPLE IN THE DUST!!!” Clay’s Bankites made great usage of political cartoons. These drawings portrayed Jackson as a corn poe king being crowned by a devilish Martin van Buren, his running-mate. They portrayed Jackson as a doddering Don Quixote tilting toward the marble pillars of the bank. Most ludicrous, one cartoon portrays Jackson and Clay in a horserace with Clay leading by half and length. That was, as Jackson well knew, a delusion.

Wonderful viciousness punctuates the 1832 race. Jackson was attacked as being seriously ill or near death. Francis P. Blair, a Democratic newspaper publisher, released a hilarious story painting Clay as a philandering gambling drunkard. Writing in the Washington Globe, Blair wrote that once Clay got into a drunken brawl in Lexington, Kentucky, and was taken in by a friend and his lovely young bride. “He was taken to a kind friend’s house. He was treated with the utmost courtesy and tenderness by that friend’s wife and family.” While enjoying that great care, Blair concluded, Clay repaid the courtesy by sleeping with the man’s wife and “winning the money of his kind host.” Clay almost got into a fist fight with Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri when Clay made a speech declaring that Benton had stated that Jackson was a lawless man. Benton, who had brawled with Jackson in 1813, declared Clay a liar. Benton nearly punched Clay but two senators restrained the massive Missouri lawmaker. “I apologize to the Senate!” Benton declared, “but not to the Senator from Kentucky.” The brutal campaign was felt amongst the common voters. Late one night in Kentucky, it is said, a farmer split a dressed pig into halves and left it outside his home to be taken to market for sale the next morning. When he woke up he found half the hog was gone. “I have been robbed by a Clay man!” the farmer told the local sheriff. “How do you know it’s a Clay man who has done it?” the sheriff asked. The farmer laughed and replied: “Because a Jackson man would have gone the whole hog!” Yes, it was a wonderfully brutal campaign of mud and muck.

Another excellent factoid in this race is the South Carolina nullification struggle in 1832. Jackson’s strong stance for tariff reform as opposed to nullification led to his own vice-president resigning and the South Carolina Democratic Party turning on him. The Nullifier Democrats in South Carolina cast their electoral votes for Virginia Congressman John Floyd. This small rebellion, however, proved to be unimportant because the voters of the Palmetto State did not matter in the end.  

The election of 1832 was a lot of fun and drama but falls at number forty-two because the end was never in doubt. Jackson told his friend and Kitchen Cabinet member Isaac Hill, “It’ll be a walk. If our fellows didn’t raise a finger from now on the thing would be just as well done.” The huge landslide he and Van Buren won was a testament to that logic. Mile long Jackson parades in New York City and a massive rally for Old Hickory in Clay’s hometown of Lexington turned out to be an accurate reflection of the will of the people. The election of 1832 was a campaign that Jean-Jacques Rousseau would have been proud of. The “General Will” of the people was heard loud and clear. The Banksters under Biddle and Clay spent freely but lost badly. Clay was so shocked by his massive beating that he declared he was :shocked and alarmed” by the election. William Wirt, the Anti-Masonic candidate, knew it all too well: “My opinion is that [Jackson] may be president for life if he chooses.”

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

About how much research did you put into this?

[Rooney]

About how much research did you put into this?

I wrote for over an hour. I looked at a few different books and tracts. Hope you enjoyed it.

I also thank everyone for their kind remarks. Another election will be up tonight!

[Rooney]

#41: The Election of 1944

Taking the spot of number forty-one is FDR’s wartime mandate. The election of 1944 offered a highly dramatic and suspenseful vice-presidential battle which would decide far more than an election. The outcome of those heated days in Chicago would change the history of the post-World War II world.

The first wartime presidential election since 1864, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared he would run for a fourth term. “The first twelve years are the hardest,” Roosevelt clipped as he entered the race. The United States was embroiled in World War II. Over a million men were stationed all over the globe battling the Axis Powers. Roosevelt (Dr. Win the War) had been as controversial as commander-in-chef as he had been as the New Deal chief executive. Japanese internment, price controls, a national draft, million dollar armament deals and a very cozy relation with the murderous Joseph Stalin were all controversial aspects of Roosevelt’s war time stewardship. However, by July 1944 the war had turned around in Europe and the Pacific. Some wondered if the imperialistic FDR would hold an election at all with the war waging. “All these people here haven’t read the Constitution,” Roosevelt joked with the press when they asked him about canceling the election, “Unfortunately, I have.” FDR had no reason to cancel the 1944 contest because he knew he would win it and win it by a wide margin.

The Republican primary campaign is a little disappointing. There was an incredible number of interesting characters in the campaign. The front-runner, and eventual nominee, for the party’s presidential nomination was the suave, urbane New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey. A fearless District Attorney who put Lucky Luciano behind bars (before FDR got him out in 1942), Dewey was targeted by Dutch Schultz’s notorious Murder, Inc., before being elected governor in 1942. A trained opera singer turned attorney, Dewey’s deep baritone voice and charismatic debating style made him an effective governor and candidate. He was challenged by the right from Ohio Governor John W. Bricker and from the left by Wendell Wilkie, the 1940 GOP nominee who had transformed into Eleanor Roosevelt’s BFF. Following a thrashing of Wilkie in the Wisconsin Primary the “Stop Dewey” movement focused on General Douglas MacArthur. “Old Brass Hat” MacArthur stayed out of the race in order to complete the conquest of the Pacific. That was probably an easier task than taking on FDR. Dewey won the nomination on the first ballot with only one delegate from Wisconsin voting for MacArthur. The reason: “I am a man, not a jellyfish.” Dewey wanted the progressive Governor of California Earl Warren as his running-mate but the big Swede did not want anything to do with the hopeless Dewey cause. Instead Dewey tapped Bricker and came up with one of the most catchy slogans in American political history: “Win the war quicker with Dewey and Bricker!” The 1944 Republican Chicago Convention is a real let down. Dewey and Bricker were easily nominated. The 1944 campaign is not saved by anything the Republicans pulled. No, when the Democrats were blown into Chicago that is when the campaign fireworks began.

Henry Agard Wallace was simply a strange cookie. A utopian socialist working as vice-president, Wallace admired Siberia and regularly wrote a mystic shaman for political advice. The 1944 election is made exciting because Wallace is a great character and his struggle to stay on the ticket is a wonderful political cloak and dagger story. FDR did not personally dislike Wallace. In fact FDR wanted to keep Wallace on the ticket. Roosevelt did not seem to care who his running-mate was as he was reshaping the post-war world in his own image. While Roosevelt didn’t care the political bigwigs of the Democratic Party certainly did. They knew FDR was a dying man and that they were picking not one but two presidents at the Chicago convention. On July 20, 1944, the Democratic Convention nominated FDR for a fourth term overwhelmingly. Wallace delivered a solid New Deal speech leading delegates to cheer for over half and hour, “We want Wallace! We want Wallace!” Democratic National Chairman Robert E. Hannegan did not want Wallace. FDR, who said he “liked” and “respected” Wallace, was not willing to make a fight over the second place spot. FDR personally liked “assistant president” Jimmy Byrnes as vice-president but Sidney Hillman of the AFL/CIO could not stand the anti-labor Byrnes. Party leaders sat around in their hotel rooms, smoking heavily and thinking about who would work bes to beat Wallace. Hannegan, a Missouri man, decided that Senator Harry S Truman (the “Senator from Pendergast”) would be a fine choice for second place. Truman rejected the idea at first but Hannegan refused to let him run. FDR himself interceded. When Truman was cornered in Hannegan’s hotel room the president called him up. “Have you got that fellow lined up yet?” FDR asked in a rehearsed phone call. “No,” said Hannegan, “he is the contrariest damned Missouri Mule I’ve ever dealt with.” “Well,” FDR replied with drama dripping from his every word, “you tell him, if he wants to break up the Democratic Party in the middle of the war, that’s his responsibility.” Truman had heard the whole thing because FDR spoke so loudly. “If that’s the situation I’ll have to say yes,” a bewildered Truman responded, “but why the hell didn’t he tell me in the first place?” Wallace’s support from labor and the big cities kept him in the lead on the first ballot. However, his failure to win on the first ballot allowed for Hannegan to rally enough large Northern, Midwestern, and Southern states to the Truman banner to win Give em’ Hell Harry a victory on the second ballot. One humorist called Truman the “Missouri Compromise.”

The dramatic battle between Truman and Wallace is only added to by the presence of Red Sydney Hillman. New York Times columnist Arthur Krock reported that FDR had told Hannegan in regards to the Vice-Presidential pick: “Go down and nominate Truman before there’s any more trouble. And clear everything with Sidney.” Red Sidney Hillman was the head of the Afl/CIO PAC and close friends with communist Earl Browder. The Republicans jumped on the red baiting issue with gusto. “Everything in your government will be cleared with the radical Sydney Hillman and his communist friend Earl Browder,” Governor Bricker warned voters, “if Roosevelt and Truman win election this November.” One Republican poet even Waxed eloquent against the communists:

Clear it with Sidney, you Yanks
Then offer Joe Stalin your thanks,
You’ll bow to Sid’s rule
No matter how cruel
For that’s the directive of Frank’s

Red baiting was a new tool in the Republican box of dirty tricks. It was played to the hilt in the 1944 campaign. Dewey accused Roosevelt of cozying up with the Soviet Union and allowing Stalin to murder and imprison millions of innocent Eastern Europeans. The young and dynamic Dewey assaulted the “tired old men” in the Roosevelt government who had been allowed to “grow old in office.” Herbert Brownell, Dewey’s campaign manager, urged Dewey to attack Roosevelt over his poor health. In July 1944 Roosevelt suffered a collapse in San Diego. The ebullient FDR referred to his ailment as “the collywobbles” and laughed as reporters asked if he felt he could survive another four years at the helm. Had Dewey chosen to run against Roosevelt’s health that would have made for an interesting campaign dynamic. In the end Dewey proved too magnanimous to go into the mud over Roosevelt’s health. This would not be the only time Dewey pulled his punches.

Continued on next post.        

[Rooney]

The Pearl Harbor issue adds some excellent drama to the 1944 campaign. Republicans began to question how much Roosevelt knew about the Japanese surprise attack. Dewey himself spoke about the issue. General George C. Marshall sent intelligence officer Carter C. Clarke to speak one-on-one with Dewey. Dewey told Clarke that military cryptographers had cracked “certain Japanese codes before Pearl Harbor” and that FDR “knew what was happening before Pearl Harbor.” “Instead of being reelected he ought to be impeached,” Dewey said to Clarke. Clarke demanded that Dewey drop the Pearl Harbor issue but Dewey, who had stood up to mobsters with tommy guns, refused to be intimidated by the little intelligence officer. General Marshall, who was afraid that the investigation of Pearl Harbor might reflect dimly on him, refused to back off on the issue. Marshall met with Dewey himself and browbeat him by declaring that the U.S. government had no prior knowledge of Japanese codes before the Pearl Harbor attack. Marshall accused Dewey of aiding the enemy by bringing Pearl Harbor into the debate. No one knows what else Marshall said or threatened in the meeting but we do know that in the end Dewey relented to stop the political questions about Pearl Harbor. It is now known that Japanese codes had been cracked by the MAGIC decoding machine and that Marshall was not entirely truthful with Dewey. However, Dewey dropped the issue and in doing so gave up a second effective issue that could have been used in the 1944 general election against FDR.

The general election of 1944 is a good one but by no means great. Organized labor came out in force for Roosevelt. The United Steel Workers released a fairly hilarious cartoon called “Hellbent for Election” in which they compared the Republicans to Hitler. The AFL/CIO sent campaign workers door to door in order to ask people, “Where were you in 1932?” Dewey’s attacks on the “tired old men in Washington” was successfully countered by Senator Robert Kerr’s keynote address at the DNC. He named the “tired old men” of the Roosevelt government. “Shall we discard as a ‘tired old man’ 59-year old Admiral Nimitz…62-year-old Admiral Halsey…64-year-old General MacArthur…66-year old Admiral King…64-year-old General Marshall? No, Mr. Dewey, we know we are winning the war with these ‘tired old men’ including the 62-year old Roosevelt as their commander-in-chief.” The Republicans more or less swallowed their tongues on the age issue following this brilliant rebuff.

The 1944 campaign was a good one in many ways. The final results are interesting themselves. Dewy won an impressive 46% of the vote against the popular war time leader. Roosevelt remembered the 1944 contest as the “meanest of my life” but his big win was hardly unimpressive. Republicans even went after Fala, FDR’s little dog. They claimed that FDR had sent a destroyer to pick up Fala who had been left at a Pacific island. Roosevelt joked that while his family did not despise the attacks “Fala does.” Roosevelt’s massive win was a sweet victory over the Republicans and it would be the last time he would be able to do it. He would be dead by April 1945 and the Missouri Compromise would be in the president’s chair. Dewey, to his credit or disgrace, refused to concede the race at first. It was not until 3:16 a.m. the morning after the election that Dewey admitted Roosevelt beat him. “I still think he is a son of a bitch,” Roosevelt bitterly told a friend. Dewey would be back in four years and would surrender as much ground as he had in 1944. However, that would happen in a much more exciting race.