Politics as Usual

Thomas Dewey, Franklin Roosevelt, and the Wartime Presidential campaign of 1944

Michael Davis

• Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781609091699
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

The presidential election of 1944, which unfolded against the backdrop of the World War II, was the first since 1864—and one of only a few in all of US history—to take place while the nation was at war. After a brief primary season, the Republican Party settled upon New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, the former district attorney and popular special prosecutor of Legs Diamond and Lucky Luciano, as its nominee for president of the United States. The Democratic nominee for president, meanwhile, was the three-term incumbent, sixty-two year-old Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Sensitive to the wartime setting of the election, both Roosevelt and Dewey briefly adopted dignified and low-key electoral strategies early in their campaigns. Within a few months however, "politics as usual" returned as the campaign degenerated into a vigorously fought, chaotic, unpredictable, and highly competitive contest. While Politics as Usual is a comprehensive study of the campaign, Davis focuses attention on the loser, Dewey, and shows how he emerged as a central figure for the Republican Party. Davis examines the political landscape in the United States in the early 1940s, including the state of the two parties, and the rhetoric and strategies employed by both the Dewey and Roosevelt campaigns. He details the survival of partisanship in World War II America and the often overlooked role of Dewey—who sought to rebuild the Republican Party "to be worthy of national trust"—as party leader at such a critical time. Although Dewey fell short of victory, Dewey kept his party unified, helped steer it away from isolationist influences, and rebuilt it to fit into (and to be a relevant alternative within) the post-World War II, New Deal order.

Chapter 1

The Triumph of Politics as Usual, 1941–1945

The Second World War was a watershed event in the history of the United States. It was, as journalist Haynes Johnson observed in the 1990s, “the crucible that forged modern America.”1 Between 1941 and 1945, the United States was changed from a nation of the Great Depression to one of opportunity and prosperity. It was a time of government growth, economic planning, population movement, and social reordering. It was also a time of fierce national debate and partisan division. Contrary to popular belief, World War II did not mute politics as usual in the United States. If anything, it amplified it. After all, at home, wartime changes—whether social, economic, or cultural—often required political responses, which, in turn, frequently sparked public controversies. For example, the United States was unprepared for war in 1941. Yet plants would have to be built to manufacture war goods, and supplies would have to be acquired to maintain those facilities. Furthermore, workers would have to be found to operate those plants—all the while maintaining domestic levels of consumption. Finally, wages and prices had to be brought under control in order to avoid ruinous inflation, and money had to be found to finance the entire war mobilization and production process. Such necessities were neither cheap nor easy and thus triggered much partisan discussion.2

Meanwhile, on the international front, desires for the prevention of future wars, and the postwar peace plans they spawned, also ignited partisan debate. Should the United States promote the creation of an international organization to foster peace after the war? How much authority would any such world body have? Would it undermine the sovereignty of the United States and the power of Congress to declare war and commit American forces to harm’s way? Intricately connected to these questions was partisan blame for the failure to prevent the current war. For example, many Democrats exalted the fallen Woodrow Wilson and the failed League of Nations and criticized Republicans as post-Versailles saboteurs and backward-looking isolationists. World War II, then, did not interrupt American politics. Indeed, the war not only failed to bring about an end of partisan and ideological conflict, it also caused many new issues to emerge and altered existing political alignments.3

One early wartime issue was the very existence of partisanship itself. Some in politics and academia expressed reservations about democratic processes in time of war. Telling enough was the fact that most of these reservations were themselves political. For example, Albert Guerard, writing in the liberal New Republic in early 1943, argued that “If we choose to retain partisan labels, the Democrats, still nominally in power, are bound to suffer heavily. . . . For the Republicans will vote for all the essential war measures, and claim credit for their patriotism; but the Democrats alone will be blamed for the discomforts inevitably arising out of these measures.”4 The result, he predicted, would be a reaction at the ballot box in 1944 that would “engulf the Democratic Party, the New Deal, and with them much of our recent social progress.”5 Others feared that partisanship, with its petty political maneuvering and “carping criticism,” might undermine the war effort both at home and abroad.6

Harold W. Dodds, president of Princeton University, disagreed. Political parties, he argued in an article for The Yale Review in the summer of 1942, were essential to both political liberty and national unity. “It is their struggles for power that activate government,” Dodds noted. “Freedom of speech or opinion would be in vain without them to implement our liberties. There appears to be no alternative to elections except tyranny.” Under the two-party system, he added, political parties tended to “dull the keen edges of issues on which people divide rather than to sharpen them by introducing new causes of disunity. It is in their interest to do so. . . . Each side wants to gain the support also of the independent middle-of-the-road voters not affiliated with it. As the two parties bid for votes their programs naturally move to the centre.”7

Writing in his Marxist magazine, Politics, in early 1944, journalist Dwight Macdonald similarly argued that calls for national unity had dangerous implications, noting that “In the totalitarian nations politics has vanished completely, at least in the sense of open, institutionalized contests between various interest groups.” As long as class societies exist, he concluded, the only hope of the submerged majority to change things for their good “will rest on political action, breaking through the fiction of organic unity between the lion and the lamb and setting class groups off openly against each other.”8

For Republicans, as the opposition party, the issues of partisanship and public debate were very important. Certainly, many Republicans had been opposed to intervention prior to Pearl Harbor, but the Japanese attack had changed that. The United States was forced into war, former president Herbert Hoover, a leading non-interventionist, told reporters after the attack, and the country “must [now] fight with everything we have.”9 Even the prewar isolationist group, America First, which included members of all political stripes, dissolved in mid-December 1941, noting that “No good purpose can now be served by considering what might have been, had our objectives been attained. . . . We are at war. Today, though there may be many important subsidiary considerations, the primary objective is . . . victory.”10 Wartime opposition for Republicans, then, was not grounded in questions about the validity of the war but in the actual conduct of the war at home and abroad.

Still, Republicans feared that Roosevelt and the Democrats might exploit patriotic sentiment for either partisan or personal gain. Even the president himself had a reputation for seeking to discredit and silence his foreign policy critics—especially those who had had an isolationist background. According to historian Richard Steele, Roosevelt, in dealing with his foreign policy critics, was guided by an “intolerant, conspiratorial outlook” that led him to conclude too easily that “his long-standing political opponents had now aligned themselves with the nation’s enemies, either to hurt him or to promote their own interest.”11

Specifically, after 1939, Roosevelt equated anti-interventionism (and isolationism) with subversion and believed, as press reports in the early 1940s widely claimed, that Nazi agents and sympathizers, a fifth column, prepared the way for German armies by “boring from within” and “undermining the will and capacity of the democracies to resist.”12 Then, during the 1940 presidential campaign, Roosevelt linked Republicans with this threat, warning audiences that “something evil is happening in this country”—namely, the formation of an “unholy alliance” between Republicans and “the extreme reactionary and the extreme radical elements of this country.” These elements were consistently critical of his administration, the president noted, but even more, they “hate democracy and Christianity as two phases of the same civilization. They oppose democracy because it is Christian. They oppose Christianity because it preaches democracy. Their objective is to prevent democracy from becoming strong and purposeful.” While he was confident “that the rank and file of patriotic Republicans do not realize the nature of this threat,” Roosevelt nevertheless insisted that many, even some of the party’s leaders, had been drawn into such an alliance.13

Shortly after the 1940 election, Roosevelt added—in a letter to speechwriter Samuel Rosenman—that “too many” in the Republican Party were motivated by materialism and had thus come to think “in terms of appeasement of Hitler.”14 There existed, he said in his 1941 State of the Union message, “A small group of selfish men, who would clip the wings of the American eagle to feather their own nests. . . . Partisan groups . . . who wrap themselves in a false mantle of Americanism to promote their own economic, financial, or political advantage.”15

Following Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt became justifiably more concerned with activity that could be deemed “seditious.” Many of those who came to the attention of the administration were, in fact, “rabble-rousers” and unbalanced individuals—“the lunatic fringe,” who, according to Roosevelt’s attorney general, Francis Biddle, “were almost always anti-Semitic and often anti-Catholic.” Still, Biddle recalled, Roosevelt “was not much interested in the theory of sedition, or in the constitutional right to criticize the government in wartime. He wanted this antiwar talk stopped.” Indeed, the president frequently sent the attorney general “brief memoranda to which were attached notes about some of the scurrilous attacks on his leadership, with a notation: ‘What about this?’ or ‘What are you doing to stop this?’”16

A nationwide speech by the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Edward J. Flynn, in February 1942 seemed to confirm Republican fears. Flynn charged that Republicans were “not as much interested in the war as . . . [in] controlling the House of Representatives.”17 “[M]y feeling,” he continued, “is that this crisis having occurred during a Democratic administration . . . is ours to direct . . . to an ultimate and complete victory.” Looking ahead to the November midterm elections, he added: “I naturally feel that no misfortune except a major military defeat could befall this country to the extent involved in the election of a Congress hostile to the President. . . . We have not forgotten the obstacles thrown in the path of President Wilson after the first World War and the ultimate victims were people.”18

Republicans were outraged by Flynn’s comments. Congressman Joseph Martin, House minority leader and chairman of the Republican National Committee, accused the DNC chairman of “seeking a one-party system, and of wanting to ‘liquidate’ the Republican opposition.”19 “Republicans,” he said, “will continue to give President Roosevelt one hundred per cent support to win the war. We will continue to put national safety above partisanship. Despite abuse or vilification . . . we will stand by the American right to offer any constructive appraisal or suggestion.”20

Meanwhile, Republican senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio took up the issue in a speech on the floor of the Senate, arguing (even before Flynn’s comments) that “there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government. . . . Of course, that criticism should not give any information to the enemy. But too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think that it will give some comfort to the enemy to know that there is such criticism. . . . Congress does have the job of reasonable criticism. I think it has the job of criticizing the conduct of the war when it is properly subject to criticism. [For example], the surprise at Hawaii should, in my opinion, be investigated by committees of Congress, and not left entirely to the executive department.”21

A few months later, former president Herbert Hoover echoed Taft’s sentiment in a speech before the Annual Assembly of the National Industrial Conference Board, Inc., in New York City. According to Hoover, “Criticism of the conduct of the war may rightly lead to criticism of public officials. In a democracy even the President is not immune from rightful criticism. . . . Patriotism is not devotion to a public servant. It is devotion to our country and its right aims. No public servant can be free of criticism if democracy is to continue to live.”22 Hoover’s speech was well received from many quarters, and was, at Senator Taft’s initiative, printed in the Congressional Record.23

Politics was not abandoned (or stifled) in World War II America. Politicians continued to bicker, issues continued to be debated, and elections continued to be held. Several things contributed to this triumph of politics. First, Congress, as historian Roland Young observed in a splendid 1956 study of the wartime body, continued to carry out its business under the usual paradigm—that is, the two chambers and their committees were organized according to parties.24 Instead of centralizing control in a single, nonpartisan war committee, the Democratic-controlled Congress dispersed power over a wide number of standing committees and newly created investigation committees.25 Thus organized, partisanship was inevitable. Second, the nation entered the war on the eve of the spring and fall midterm elections of 1942. As early as late 1941, then, politicians (even before Pearl Harbor) were positioning themselves for electoral success. And third, Republicans and Democrats viewed US entry into the war through very different lenses. These outlooks, in turn, impacted attitudes and actions toward future policy.

For example, many Republicans interpreted Pearl Harbor as the result of not only Japanese aggression and savagery but also administration ineptness. Indeed, on December 7, Senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota, upon learning of the Pearl Harbor attack earlier that day, accused the Roosevelt administration of “doing its utmost to provoke a quarrel with Japan.” Another Republican prewar non-interventionist, Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, wrote in February 1942 that “it was the ‘interventionists’ (from the President down) who were constantly saying to the country ‘this way lies peace’: and it was the non-interventionists who were constantly saying to the country ‘this way lies a war for which you are totally unprepared.’” In a letter to a constituent that September, Vandenberg added that Roosevelt’s “final ultimatum to Japan two weeks ahead of Pearl Harbor (culminating these policies) made a Japanese attack inevitable.”26

Democrats, meanwhile, construed Republican “isolationist” stances prior to Pearl Harbor as being responsible for America’s lack of preparedness on December 7 and...