A while ago I found this article in the New Yorker about a potential FDR/Willkie cross-party ticket in 1944. Even though it's unlikely, how would this change American politics if this happened? Additionally, assuming Willkie survives his OTL fatal heart attack and lives for at least another year (Willkie was only 52 so he could possibly live for a while longer).
Roosevelt/Willkie '44
- Thread starter wilcoxchar
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Unity tickets would become an established piece of American politics in wartime.
Two, the VP nomination amendment happens earlier, whether Willkie lives or not.
Third, you get a Sam Rayburn postwar presidency!
Two, the VP nomination amendment happens earlier, whether Willkie lives or not.
Third, you get a Sam Rayburn postwar presidency!
Paul V McNutt
Banned
Third, you get a Sam Rayburn postwar presidency![/QUOTE]
The law putting the speaker right behind the vice president did not pass until 1946. I do not know when in 1946. So you could get a whomever is Secretary of State presidency.
The law putting the speaker right behind the vice president did not pass until 1946. I do not know when in 1946. So you could get a whomever is Secretary of State presidency.
I read that article, and what FDR talked about was forming a long-term political alliance with Willkie, *not* having him on the ticket in 1944--indeed he wrote his letter to Willkie on July 13th "even as F.D.R. was getting ready to ask Senator Harry Truman to be his running mate" and said “I want to talk to you about the future, even the somewhat distant future, and in regard to the foreign relations problems of the immediate future.”
Note btw that both FDR and Willkie were residents of New York, so its electors could not vote for both--though of course Willkie might have moved a la Cheney in 2000.
Maybe. Since most of a probable Roosevelt/Willkie administration would be postwar though, it would more likely be taken as a test of true bipartisanship in government or something like that. Also, you'd probably get a more isolationist reaction within the GOP after a prominent GOP internationalist has seemingly defected. Bob Taft '48 maybe?
Wilkie had a home in Indiana and he based his 1940 campaign from there.
BTW, it was hard enough to get the Democratic convention to dump Wallace for Truman, a loyal Democrat. It might be even harder to get them to replace him with Willkie. But anyway, as I already stated, nothing in the article cited indicates that FDR was contemplating any such thing. I don't know why everyone here keeps interpreting a contemplated long-term political alliance with Willkie as meaning an FDR-Willkie ticket.
His attempts to portray himself as a Hoosier boy do not seem to have been particularly persuasive to the voters--the famous crack was that he was the "barefoot boy of Wall Street." And by 1944 he would be four more years removed from his Hoosier roots--he had even been spoken of as a candidate for governor of New York in 1942. At least Cheney had once represented Wyoming in Congress...
I don't see how Willkie helps FDR much in fast-tracking the ideological party system and Southern Republicanization. If Willkie rejoined his old party, would there be much reaction beyond "Dem admits he's a Dem" from GOP conservatives?