1940 CONVENTIONS

The first historic Party Conventions and Elections in my time was in 1940. With the help of cribbing Wikipedia and my comments I present for your interest:

The United States was emerging from the Great Depression. Roosevelt gave no indication that he would break with the tradition set by George Washington and run for a third term. In fact no President had ever been elected for a third term.

However the war in Europe was rapidly becoming an Allied defeat. As Nazi Germany swept through Western Europe and menaced Britain in the summer of 1940 Roosevelt decided that only he had the necessary experience and skills to see the nation safely through the Nazi threat.

At the Democratic Convention Roosevelt easily swept aside challenges from Farley and John Nance Garner, his Vice-President. Garner was a Texas conservative who had turned against FDR in his second term due to his liberal economic and social policies.

FDR decided to pick a new running mate; he chose Henry A. Wallace of Iowa, his Secretary of Agriculture and an outspoken liberal. He was even accused of having Communist leanings. Wallace was strenuously opposed by many of the party's conservatives, who felt that he was too radical and "eccentric" in his private life to be an effective running mate. However, FDR insisted on his nomination, and he won the vice-presidential nomination by a vote of 626 to 325 for House Speaker William Bankhead of Alabama.

Roosevelt, aware of strong isolationist sentiment in the U.S., promised there would be no foreign wars if he were reelected. Fortunately, the Japanese bailed him out.

As for the Republicans, they were the party of isolationism. The GOP was deeply divided between the party's isolationists, who wanted to stay out of the war at all costs, and the party's interventionists, who felt that Britain and her allies needed to be given all aid short of war to prevent the Germans from conquering all of Europe. The three leading candidates for the GOP nomination were all isolationists to varying degrees. The three frontrunners were Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, and District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey of New York.

Taft was the leader of the GOP's conservative, isolationist wing. . Dewey, the District Attorney for Manhattan, had risen to national fame as the "Gangbuster" prosecutor who had sent numerous infamous mafia figures to prison, most notably "Lucky" Lucian, Vandenberg, the senior Republican in the Senate was considered a possible compromise candidate if Taft or Dewey faltered.

All three men had campaigned vigorously during the primary season, but only 300 of the 1,000 convention delegates had been pledged to a candidate by the time the convention opened. Moreover, each of these candidates had weaknesses which could be exploited.

Taft's outspoken isolationism and opposition to any American involvement in the European war convinced many Republican leaders that he could not win a general election, particularly as France fell to the Nazis in May 1940 and Germany threatened Britain.

Dewey's relative youth - he was only 38 in 1940 - and lack of any foreign-policy experience (One of Obama’s negatives) caused his candidacy to weaken as the Nazi military emerged as a fearsome threat.

In 1940 Vandenberg was also an isolationist whose campaign had been listless.

This left an opening for a dark horse candidate to emerge. A Wall Street-based industrialist named Wendell Willkie, who had never before run for public office, emerged as the unlikely nominee. Willkie considered an improbable choice was a former Democrat who had been a pro-Roosevelt delegate at the 1932 Democratic National Convention.

Willkie had first come to public attention as an articulate critic of Roosevelt's attempt to break up electrical power monopolies. Willkie was the CEO of the Commonwealth and Southern Power Company, which provided electrical power to customers in eleven states.

In 1933 President Roosevelt had created the Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, which promised to provide flood control and cheap electricity to the impoverished people of the Tennessee River Valley. However, the government-run TVA would compete with Willkie's Commonwealth & Southern, and this led Willkie to criticize and oppose the TVA's attempt to compete with private power companies.

Willkie did not dismiss all of Roosevelt's social welfare programs, and in fact he supported those which he believed could not be managed any better by the free enterprise system. Furthermore, unlike the leading Republican candidates, Willkie was a forceful and outspoken advocate of aid to the Allies, especially Britain. His support of giving all aid to the British "short of declaring war" won him the support of many Republicans on the East Coast, who disagreed with their party's isolationist leaders in Congress. Willkie's persuasive arguments impressed these Republicans,

Many of the leading press barons of the era supported Willkie in their newspapers and magazines. Even so, Willkie remained a long-shot candidate. The May 8 Gallup Poll showed Dewey at 67% support among Republicans, followed by Vandenberg and Taft, with Willkie at only 3%.

The Nazi Army's rapid blitz into France in May 1940 shook American public opinion, even as Taft was telling a Kansas audience that America must concentrate on domestic issues to prevent Roosevelt from using the international crisis to extend socialism at home. Both Dewey and Vandenberg also continued to oppose any aid to Britain that might lead to war with Germany.

Nevertheless, sympathy for the embattled British was mounting daily, and this aided Willkie's candidacy. By mid-June, little over one week before the Republican Convention opened, the Gallup poll reported that Willkie had moved into second place with 17%, and that Dewey was slipping. Fueled by his favorable media attention, Willkie's pro-British statements won over many of the delegates. As the delegates were arriving in Philadelphia, Gallup reported that Willkie had surged to 29%, Dewey had slipped 5 more points to 47%, and Taft, Vandenberg and former President Herbert Hoover trailed at 8%, 8%, and 6% respectively.

Hundreds of thousands, perhaps as many as one million, telegrams urging support for Willkie poured in, many from "Willkie Clubs" that had sprung up across the country. Millions more signed petitions circulating everywhere. (Shades of Obama’s text messaging and Dean’s cell phone campaigns)

At the 1940 Republican National Convention itself, keynote speaker Harold Stassen, the Governor of Minnesota, announced his support for Willkie and became his official floor manager. Hundreds of vocal Willkie supporters packed the upper galleries of the convention hall. Willkie's amateur status, his fresh face, appealed to delegates as well as voters.

The delegations were selected not by primaries but by party leaders in each state, and they had a keen sense of the fast-changing pulse of public opinion. Gallup found the same thing in polling data not reported until after the convention: Willkie had moved ahead among Republican voters by 44% to only 29% for the collapsing Dewey.

As the pro-Willkie galleries repeatedly yelled "We Want Willkie", the delegates on the convention floor began their vote. Dewey led on the first ballot but steadily lost strength thereafter. Both Taft and Willkie gained in strength on each ballot, and by the fourth ballot it was obvious that either Willkie or Taft would be the nominee. The key moments came when the delegations of large states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York left Dewey and Vandenberg and switched to Willkie, giving him the victory on the sixth ballot.

These two conventions kept America glued to their radios. The smoked filled rooms provided drama that we do not have today. Instead the conventions have become organized pageants. Give the Republican's credit for having a "people's" convention not a preordained one.

The subsequent passing of the 22nd Amendment of the United States Constitution in 1947 rendered this election the only occasion in American history in which a candidate has been elected for a third term as president (Roosevelt would subsequently be elected for a fourth term, although he died after only a few months in office).