1944 Presidential Election
The Presidential Election of 1944 in the United States saw Franklin D. Roosevelt running for a fourth term as President, making him the only president to be elected to a fourth term. Roosevelt's running mate was Harry S. Truman. The election took place during World War II, and Roosevelt's leadership during the war was a key factor in his re-election.
5 Key excerpts on "1944 Presidential Election"
eBook - ePubFranklin D. Roosevelt
The New Deal and War
- Michael Heale(Author)
- 2002(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In 1944, with the United States at war, the electorate gave the Commander-in-Chief a similar margin of victory over his new Republican rival, the Governor of New York, Thomas E. Dewey. It was only Roosevelt’s death in April 1945 that finally removed ‘that man’ from the White House. Roosevelt owed his political longevity in large part to crisis. Both depression and war were of terrifying proportions. The whole future of American capitalism had been called into question when the banks were collapsing and a quarter of the labour force was out of work, while Hitler’s astonishing success in conquering much of continental Europe in 1940, paralleled by Japanese expansionism in the Far East, promised a conflict of greater magnitude than even the sanguinary First World War. But a president who responded ineptly to crisis might not have been re-elected. President Hoover’s helplessness in response to the Slump cast an unhappy shadow over the Republican party for many years, while Roosevelt’s self-confidence and patent humanity in the face of both domestic and foreign crises served him and the Democrats well. Here was a president who seemed to feel some empathy with hungry and desperate Americans and with the victims of fascist aggression. His policies did not please all Americans, and he made his share of mistakes, but he showed that he was prepared to look for solutions and to use the powers at his disposal constructively. During these years Washington became a city of frenetic activity, and Roosevelt’s command of his administration could not be doubted. If his enemies reviled him with a chilling bitterness, this was in part because his confidence and charisma early made him a president of massive stature. The poet Carl Sandburg in a radio broadcast in 1940 spoke of the president as ‘a not perfect man and yet more precious than fine gold’. To personal charm Roosevelt added a pragmatic temperament...
eBook - ePubI Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman
Based on His Notes and Diaries Made at the Time
- Fleet Adm. William D. Leahy(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Arcole Publishing(Publisher)
...17—PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1944; PROSPECTS OF VICTORY IN EUROPE The interval between the Quebec Conference in September, 1944, and the three-power conference at Yalta in February, 1945, was marked by increasing gravity of post-war problems that came to the fore as the defeat of Germany and Japan became more and more a question of time. The matter of continuing lend-lease to our allies after the fighting should end was in constant controversy; the President became more and more enamored of his idea of the United Nations Organization to preserve the peace, a working draft of which was completed at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in Washington after many weeks of discussion; the long-drawn-out Chiang-Stilwell dispute was to reach its climax, and before we left for Yalta an organized Communist opposition to Chiang’s National Government had arisen in China. However, perhaps the most interesting experience of this period for me was to observe a small part of the complicated election machinery which enables our country to select every four years, in democratic fashion, its chief of state. As a high-ranking member of the armed services, it had been my fixed policy not to participate in domestic partisan politics. This personal attitude was in no sense a disparagement of American politics but was one generally followed by the professional leadership of the armed services, which must work in harmony with both Republican and Democratic administrations to protect at all times the security that makes our democracy possible. World War II provided an incontestable demonstration that, at least for the United States, our democratic form of government was the best in both peace and war that the mind of man had evolved...
eBook - ePub50 Speeches That Made the Modern World
Famous Speeches from Women's Rights to Human Rights
- (Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Chambers(Publisher)
...5 Franklin D Roosevelt American statesman Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) came to power as US President during the Great Depression of 1929–39, which he met by launching his innovative New Deal programme. On the strength of his success in these reforms, Roosevelt was re-elected by a landslide in 1936, and secured a third term in 1940 and a fourth in 1944. During the late 1930s, he endeavoured to avoid involvement in the coming European conflict, but on the outbreak of World War II he modified the USA’s neutrality in favour of the Allies. Eventually, the USA was brought fully into the conflict by Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor (December 1941). Roosevelt died three weeks before the Nazi surrender. ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself’ 4 March 1933, Washington, DC, USA Franklin D Roosevelt’s first inaugural address, delivered in the depths of the Great Depression, brought a much-needed message of hope. With over half the American workforce unemployed, farm prices at rock bottom and industry in disarray, the country was in despair. On accepting the nomination as Democratic candidate for the 1932 election, Roosevelt had promised a ‘New Deal for the American people’. Now he was able to begin implementing policies that were little short of revolutionary in a country deeply mistrustful of socialism. Roosevelt had been remarkably vague during the election campaign about how he planned to tackle the huge economic problems facing the nation. Now he set out his vision clearly and confidently, speaking both to the crowd gathered at the White House and to the country at large via radio broadcast, which was to become his favourite medium. His tone is solemn, but displays the forthright style that was his trademark. All the major tenets of the New Deal are here, presented almost as a covenant between the government and the people...
eBook - ePub- Arthur M. Schlesinger(Author)
- 2004(Publication Date)
- Mariner Books(Publisher)
...The towering figure of Franklin Roosevelt, the generally accepted wisdom of his initiatives of 1940 and 1941, his undisputed authority as Commander in Chief after Pearl Harbor, the thundering international pronouncements emanating from wartime summits of the Big Two or the Big Three—all these gave Americans in the postwar years an exalted conception of presidential power. This conception was strengthened by the vivid memory of the poor congressional performance in the years between Versailles and Pearl Harbor—a performance generally regarded as compounded of presumption, ignorance and folly. Willkie in 1943 had spoken of devoting the rest of his life “to saving America from the Senate.” 34 Roosevelt himself evidently saw little prospect of congressional improvement. On the boat back from Yalta, he shocked the young Charles E. Bohlen by the “bitterness” with which he denounced the Senate “as a bunch of incompetent obstructionists.” Roosevelt named no senators but gave the impression “that the only way to do anything in the American government was to bypass the Senate.” 35 War had accustomed those in charge of foreign policy to a complacent faith in the superior intelligence and disinterestedness of the executive branch. Dean Acheson of the Department of State observed that members of Congress by definition represented narrow constituencies. The Secretary of State came to them “bearing words of troubles about which Congress does not want to hear.” Foreign policy was a “troublesome intrusion” into their consuming concern, which was domestic affairs. The characteristic congressional mood was consequently one of “exasperated frustration” and “sulky opposition.” Of his experience in the mid forties as Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations, Acheson observed that “those who assert that I do not suffer fools gladly... do me less than justice for these anguishing hours.” Nothing pleased the Hill...
eBook - ePubHow Did We Get Here?
From TR to Donald Trump
- Robert Dallek(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Harper(Publisher)
...While the great majority of Americans favored Britain in the war, they remained opposed to belligerency. But settled in his third term with no election on the horizon, Roosevelt moved closer to direct involvement in the fighting by authorizing the convoying of American supply ships into war zones. Still, his control of foreign affairs remained precarious. After agreeing to supply Moscow with lend-lease goods when Hitler invaded Russia in June 1941, Roosevelt came within one vote of losing the peacetime draft in the lower house. The Japanese solved Roosevelt’s dilemma of how to help defeat the Axis powers when they staged a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, and Germany and Italy declared war on the United States on December 11. Once in the war, Roosevelt had two compelling goals: to defeat the Axis powers and to bring the country through the fighting ready to accept an end to isolationism and a postwar part in international affairs. Both aims required skillful management of a host of domestic political crosscurrents. Because public opinion wanted principally to strike back against Japan first, and Moscow urged a quick second front in the West to ease the pressure on Soviet forces fighting for their lives, Roosevelt had to find ways to satisfy or at least partly meet these conflicting demands. American domestic opinion received assurances of Pacific and East Asian action by sending General Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell to command American and Chinese forces in China, Burma, and India. At the same time, the incarceration of Japanese-Americans in the United States gave Americans the feeling that we were fighting back...
