When Americans turned their attention to the presidential campaign of 1940, a world war had once again ravaged the community of nations. Wars and rumors of war had been brewing throughout the 1930s, first with the invasion of Manchuria by the forces of the Japanese Imperial Army, and then in Europe through the aggression of Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler and Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini, as well as the invasion of Finland by Stalinist Russia. On September 1, 1939, Hitler’s forces poured across the frontier between Poland and Germany, and what would come to be known as the Second World War followed. Great Britain and France declared war on Germany, and in the spring of 1940, France fell after only a few short weeks of resisting the Nazi juggernaut. Britain stood courageously, resolutely alone against what was then the most powerful military force in history, with the United States under the direction of President Franklin Roosevelt providing material aid and, for a time, nonmilitary support.
Thus the crisis of the Great Depression, which had burdened Americans and the world in general for a full decade, gave way to the howling cataclysm of war—not just any war, but a war that would soon surpass even the Great War fought a generation earlier in its total destruction and brutal extermination of human lives, and the burning issue in the American heartland revolved around the nature of the United States’ ultimate response. Hawks and doves, interventionists and isolationists again flocked to their respective corners of the political arena, and the country confronted the choice between internationalism and commitment to war on the one hand, and peace, neutrality, and self-imposed isolation on the other. Roosevelt unequivocally supported the Allies against the totalitarian menace, but he was unable to offer more than material support, owing to the strength of isolationism within the country at that time. Eventually, the president would provide the active protection of the U.S. Navy in convoy escorts across the northern Atlantic well before Pearl Harbor, a deployment that would lead to shooting between the American and German navies months before the Japanese attack in the Pacific; but during the Campaign of 1940, Roosevelt was compelled to reassert, against his own instincts and desires, American neutrality. The crisis was such that for the first time in American political history, an incumbent president broke the tradition of the venerable Pater Patriae, George Washington, and stood for a third consecutive term. (Presidents Grant and Theodore Roosevelt each sought a third term four years after their presidencies had ended, without success.)
As late as 1939, Roosevelt had indicated ambivalence regarding a third term, and he even encouraged other party members to seek the nomination. But with war exploding in Europe and expanding through the first half of 1940, the president, realizing the unprecedented gravity of the situation abroad, decided there was good reason to break tradition. Officially, Roosevelt demurred; but unofficially, he expected to be drafted by the convention, an expectation that was realized on the first ballot. Initially, there was some minority grousing in both parties about Roosevelt’s alleged dictatorial ambitions (and even some supportive of Roosevelt who wanted him to be more like a dictator, at least in the ancient Roman understanding of that role), but the broken tradition, while previously cherished, now seemed insignificant given the magnitude of the decisions at stake. By and large, the critics of Roosevelt’s third run were Roosevelt bashers to begin with.
It is the case that Roosevelt’s second term was not without serious problems. The president committed a costly political miscalculation in his efforts to expand the Supreme Court, a measure that he attempted as a response to a judiciary that was not amenable to some of his New Deal programs, and which therefore blocked some of his efforts on constitutional grounds. Additionally, while it was apparent that many New Deal programs had helped the economy to a certain extent, another economic downturn in 1937—which would be embarrassingly called the “Roosevelt Recession”—was so severe that it threatened to roll back any and all gains made since Roosevelt took office in early 1933. The recession resulted in part from the president’s own efforts to balance the budget, which drained away funds needed to “prime the pump” of the economy. Additionally, some of the New Deal relief programs were reduced, while other programs were simply cut. By 1939, the economic situation was still serious, and it was not until the election year of 1940 that signs of recovery were evident. The Republicans, still in the minority in Congress, became more effective in either blocking or forcing revisions of Roosevelt’s programs, a development that revived their confidence. And Roosevelt himself pulled back from some of his earlier progressivism, concerned that federal spending was becoming too high. Nonetheless, at least within the Democratic Party, the Roosevelt administration was highly lauded, his popularity within the party remained high, and his attempt at a third term, while unconventional, clearly seemed to the Democrats the best course for both party and country.
One significant voice of dissent came from the president’s close confidant James Farley, the postmaster general under Roosevelt, who had been at one time one of his more trusted advisers since his early days in New York politics. Farley had objected to Roosevelt’s attempted court-packing and also was unhappy with his decision to run a third time. Having his own presidential ambitions, Farley made it known that he was available as an alternative to FDR. This resulted in a personal break between the two old friends and political allies, and while Farley remained close to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, he would never fully reconcile with the president. Vice President John Nance Garner, a more conservative Democrat who had in his second term come to reject the New Deal, also broke from FDR and stood for the nomination. But aside from these minor challenges, Roosevelt’s renomination went smoothly. Roosevelt remained the party’s standard-bearer, and the Democratic platform again stressed its commitment to the social and economic reforms associated with the New Deal. Roosevelt had also cultivated strong affiliations with a number of influential Republicans, as several members of his administration were drawn from Republican ranks. Thus the president, in spite of the recession and controversies such as the court-packing maneuver, maintained the kind of political strength seldom sustained by a national figure under any circumstances.
The only real controversy at the 1940 Democratic convention involved the choice of a new running mate to replace Garner. Roosevelt wanted zealous New Dealer Henry A. Wallace (formerly a progressive Republican), who was serving as his secretary of agriculture. Delegates wanted to open the nomination for vice president to other candidates, there being a large groundswell from conservative Democrats against Wallace and his more radical approach to the New Deal. Roosevelt bristled upon hearing of resistance to Wallace, threatening to withdraw his name from consideration. This was prevented by the efforts of Harry Hopkins, the First Lady, and others from the brain trust who worked arduously at the convention to successfully generate support for Wallace. Thanks to these efforts, Wallace won nomination on the first ballot, supported by 629 delegates, with conservative Democrat William B. Bankhead receiving 329, former Indiana governor Paul V. McNutt taking 68, and a field of 11 additional candidates (which included Farley and Senate majority leader Alben Barkley) sharing the remaining 32 votes. Aside from this slight difficulty, the path was clear for Roosevelt’s precedent-breaking renomination.
The Roosevelt Coalition, which was forged in the 1930s (and traced back, in some of its elements, to Al Smith’s 1928 campaign), was a strong, diverse, and formidable political force. While it had been gathering and coalescing throughout the 1930s and even the late 1920s, by the election of 1940, it was fully solidified. The Democratic Party was now the home of a mosaic of social and political interests: organized labor, the Catholic voting bloc, the Jewish voting bloc, Southern conservatives who remained loyal to the Democrats in spite of their progressive social policies, nearly every new immigrant group that had gained larger shares of the overall population after the Civil War, the more liberal/progressive farm organizations, urbanites, intellectuals, and notably African Americans, who had begun their mass defection from the Party of Lincoln, their political home since Reconstruction, as early as the election of 1936 (a majority of African Americans still supported incumbent republican President Herbert Hoover in the 1932 election), and had by the election of 1940 generally, but not entirely, moved into the Democratic camp. As many African Americans were de facto disenfranchised throughout much of the country, the African American vote did not carry the national clout that it would in later elections; but in response to FDR and the New Deal policies and programs that he and the Democrats had established, the allegiance had been shifted, and where African Americans could be politically engaged, they were now mostly for Roosevelt and the Democrats.
The Republican convention was more dramatic; the party was sharply divided between isolationists and internationalists, but among the party leadership, isolationism was gaining strength. The leading candidates at the beginning of the convention were Thomas Dewey, a moderate from New York who had gradually drifted toward isolationism; the Old Guard conservative Robert Taft, son of former president and chief justice of the Supreme Court William Howard Taft, of Ohio, and who was a prominent opponent of the New Deal as well as an isolationist; and Michigan senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, another firm opponent of Roosevelt (whom he scornfully referred to as a dictator) and most of the New Deal measures, and who had also moved toward isolationism after having been, for a time and with some qualification, an internationalist. Early polls indicated that Dewey held the strongest support in the party, and he won most of the presidential preference primaries that were held that election season, with Vandenberg and Taft a distant second and third, respectively, and a number of also-rans trailing still farther behind. All three of the front-runners, however, showed their vulnerability in their inability to respond with confidence in the face of developments in Europe. By the time the convention convened in late June, France, Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands had all fallen to Hitler’s armies, and none of the Republican front-runners seemed to know how to address the crisis.
On the first ballot of the convention, Dewey won the most delegates with 360. Taft came in second at 189, but Vandenberg, who had shown stronger than Taft in the primaries and earlier polls, managed just 76 delegates and trailed far behind in fourth. A number of also-rans (including former president Herbert Hoover, who won 17 delegates on the first round and would peak at 32 delegates on the third) shared 270 first-round votes. Significantly, in third place, with 105 delegates, was a newly emergent candidate, Wendell Willkie, a liberal Republican, former Democrat (having only recently switched parties), and Wall Street lawyer. Willkie, who had little political experience but who had recently earned a national reputation for his skilled leadership as president of the privately owned power company Commonwealth and Southern, had suddenly appeared as a serious candidate in the wake of the Nazi push in Europe. A recent radio debate between Willkie and Roosevelt’s solicitor general, Robert H. Jackson, on the merits of free enterprise, had also drawn considerable attention to the Republicans, as many listeners were impressed by Willkie’s presence and command of the issues. Willkie was also a more appealing choice to the internationalist wing of the party, having identified with the internationalism of President Woodrow Wilson in the 1920s, and he now supported increased measures to assist Great Britain against Nazi Germany.
With the front-runners wavering, Willkie pressed forward, stumping the country prior to the convention to gain momentum; the move paid off, as he outvoted Vandenberg on the first round. On the second ballot, Dewey still held the lead, but he lost ground, winning 338 delegates as both Taft and Willkie gained strength, winning 203 and 171 delegates, respectively. In part, Dewey’s age—at thirty-seven, he was one of the youngest candidates to have ever sought the nomination from a major party (only William Jennings Bryan, at thirty-six in 1896, was younger), prompting Democrats to joke that he had “thrown his diaper in the ring”—worked against him, now that the crisis in Europe was spiraling quickly downward and tensions in the Pacific were increasing; and both Taft and Willkie were regarded as more seasoned and ready to confront what was sure to lie ahead. On the next ballot, Dewey slipped to 315 delegates, with Willkie leaping over Taft to win 259 delegates to Taft’s 212.
By the fourth ballot, Willkie took the lead with 306, with Dewey slipping to third behind Taft, setting up a fifth ballot in which Willkie showed 429 delegates to Taft’s 377, with Dewey fading fast to 57 delegates and now in fourth place behind Pennsylvania’s governor, Arthur H. James, who took third with 59 delegates. Even though Taft’s position had improved, and though he won more delegates on the fifth ballot than Dewey had held at any point in the balloting, it was clear that the momentum was Willkie’s. On the next ballot, moved by spirited chants of “We Want Willkie” loudly cascading from the gallery, the delegates cast 655 votes for Willkie, giving him the nomination. Taft finished with 318 delegates, while Dewey dropped to just 11, just one vote ahead of Hoover. Willkie’s victory hinged on New York, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, all of which switched to Willkie as a bloc on the sixth ballot. “Win with Willkie” was now the Republican battle cry as the campaign moved toward the general election. Anticlimactically, Oregon’s Senator Charles McNary (the Senate minority leader) was selected to run for the vice presidency.
The Republican platform, as one would expect, criticized Roosevelt’s New Deal, even though by 1940, most of the New Deal programs were supported, at various levels, by the majority of members in both parties. Significantly, the party stated its opposition to any involvement of American troops in a “foreign war,” expressing the GOP’s affinity with the isolationist elements that FDR was fighting against in his efforts to aid the Allied cause. The Republicans did call for renewed defense spending to prepare in the event of conflict, and they also added support for the provision of aid to “all peoples fighting for liberty,” so long as that aid did not violate international law and treaties or compromise the United States’ own self-defense. Interestingly, the Republican Party added a forward-looking clause promoting “equal rights for men and women,” the first such clause to appear in the platform of either of the two major parties; the Democrats would follow suit four years later. Among the other planks, Republicans issued a sharp warning to those engaged in un-American activities, associated such activity with the New Deal (and by implication, the president), and promised to thwart all attempts by those fifth-column “borers from within” who threatened the American way of life.
Against Roosevelt, Willkie deployed a two-pronged attack. The first prong depicted the Republicans as the best party to ensure that the United States remained at peace; but Willkie’s approach was not isolationist, as he agreed that the current administration’s defense program was, for the most part, reasonable. He did openly question the president’s foreign policy, musing aloud that Roosevelt seemed to be “deliberately inciting us to war,” a refrain that did appeal to the isolationists. But he also made it known that he sympathized with those countries that had recently lost their freedom, and on the whole, he appeared more of an internationalist than an isolationist. His main charge was against Roosevelt’s apparent eagerness to fight a foreign war. The second prong of Willkie’s challenge attempted to associate the New Deal with European totalitarianism. “[If] you return this Administration to office,” he declaimed in California, “you will be serving under an American totalitarian government before the long third term is up.” However, it must be noted that while Willkie criticized the “defeatism” of the New Deal and spoke vaguely about its threat to freedom, he had in fact supported many of Roosevelt’s programs, and he continued to do so as he accepted the Republican standard. His vision for the future was framed in terms of “unlimited productivity,” which he contrasted to the “distributed scarcity” of the New Deal. Willkie consistently made claims that Roosevelt was an enemy of liberty, and he punctuated claims of his opponent’s authoritarian ambition by referring to Roosevelt as “the third term candidate.” Understandably, “No Third Term” became one of the key Republican slogans.
Most voters were not persuaded by this line of reasoning, but Willkie’s first prong, the promise of peace, did draw some attention and, subsequently, support to his campaign. Lend-Lease, Roosevelt’s plan to supply Great Britain with fifty destroyers in exchange for the use of British naval bases, helped to provoke the issue. Initially, FDR had requested Willkie’s public endorsement of the plan. Willkie declined the invitation and initially issued a lukewarm rebuke of the president for not allowing enough time for public debate over the issue of military aid to Britain. However, Willkie soon changed his tone when political allies urged him to assume a more severe criticism. “The most arbitrary and dictatorial action ever taken by a President in the history of the United States” was Willkie’s second, modified response to Lend-Lease; and from this point, Willkie increased the volume of his antiwar rhetoric and showed some drift toward a de facto isolationism.
Willkie, who began the campaign from a position supportive of Britain, thus transformed himself into an isolationist; in the process, he became increasingly shrill, alarming his audience with memories of the Great War (now called World War I) and the specter of “wooden crosses for sons and brothers and sweethearts” if Roosevelt returned for a third term. The Republican’s rhetoric intensified even to the point of acrimony directed against Roosevelt, with whom he had actually enjoyed an amicable relationship. Typically, Roosevelt remained above the fray, choosing to ignore Willkie’s newly found isolationist rhetoric. But when polls indicated that Willkie had gained support, Roosevelt reassured the American public that he did not intend to lead the United States into another foreign war. Toward the end of the campaign, Roosevelt placated nervous handlers with a bold reminder: “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign war.” Roosevelt quietly instructed his more nervous advisers and handlers that a direct attack on the United States was not a “foreign” war, and he was careful to remark, “Of course we’ll fight if attacked.”
Willkie was an energetic campaigner, stumping hard across the country, but not always with good results. This was particularly true in the early days of his campaign; then, his speeches, while earnest, were amateurish compared to those of the president, and when he committed himself to outlandish charges about Roosevelt “selling Czechoslovakia down the river at Munich”—making a false claim, as neither Roosevelt nor any of his emissaries were present at Munich or even remotely involved in the appeasement that occurred there—Willkie’s press secretary had to withdraw the claim to save face. On domestic policy, Willkie continued to criticize the New Deal in the abstract but tended to concede some of its successes. As the campaign moved into its latter weeks, Willkie’s charge that Roosevelt’s domestic policy was a step toward totalitarianism, along with his claims that the president was tilting toward war, began to gain some traction. The polls began to show gains, and there was a sense of momentum in the Republican camp.
Roosevelt responded with restraint. When he spoke, he spoke as the president, even when it was clear that his pronouncements were thinly veiled to address issues in the campaign. And he sustained his typical grace and eloquence, an effective contrast to Willkie’s unskilled, almost awkward oratory. After a period of reserve, and beginning in late October as the election approached, the president finally made his move and, with impeccable timing, delivered a series of five extraordinary speeches that were more openly political than his previous, low-keyed responses to Willkie, and that forthrightly and expertly defended his administration. This set of speeches, which have been regarded as among his best, succeeded in deflating much of Willkie’s rhetoric. In the fifth speech, given in Cleveland in early November just days before Election Day, Roosevelt gave what many regard to be one of his greatest speeches, observing that
There are certain forces within our national community, composed of men who call themselves American but who would destroy America. They are the forces of dictatorship in our land—on one hand, the Communists, and on the other, the Girdlers. It is their constant purpose in this as in other lands to weaken democracy, to destroy the free man’s faith in his own cause. In this election all the representatives of those forces, without exception, are voting against the New Deal. You and I are proud of that opposition. It is positive proof that what we have built and strengthened in the past seven years is democracy! This generation of Americans is living in a tremendous moment of history. The surge of events abroad has made some few doubters among us ask: Is this the end of a story that has been told? Is the book of democracy now to be closed and placed away upon the dusty shelves of time? My answer is this: All we have known of the glories of democracy—its freedom, its efficiency as a mode of living, its ability to meet the aspirations of the common man—all these are merely an introduction to the greater story of a more glorious future. We Americans of today—all of us—we are characters in this living book of democracy. But we are also its author. It falls upon us now to say whether the chapters that are to come will tell a story of retreat or a story of continued advance. I believe that the American people will say: “Forward!” (American Presidency Project)
It was a brilliant speech delivered in FDR’s incomparable style, striking a noble chord throughout. Bringing the speech to its conclusion, the president confidently affirmed that
In that building of [the future] we shall prove that our faith is strong enough to survive the most fearsome storms that have ever swept over the earth. In the days and months and years to come, we shall be making history—hewing out a new shape for the future. And we shall make very sure that that future of ours bears the likeness of liberty. Always the heart and the soul of our country will be the heart and the soul of the common man—the men and the women who never have ceased to believe in democracy, who never have ceased to love their families, their homes and their country. The spirit of the common man is the spirit of peace and good will. It is the spirit of God. And in His faith is the strength of all America. (American Presidency Project)
If there had been any doubt that the president could deflect Willkie’s challenge, it was now allayed. Willkie did not have an effective counter-response to the president’s latest volley, and on Election Day, Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the first, and only, president to be elected to a third term.
Roosevelt won in another landslide, but it was not nearly as staggering as the previous two victories. FDR won over 27,300,000 popular votes (or just under 55%), which was about 400,000 less than in 1936, and which converted to 449 votes in the Electoral College drawn from 38 states (winning 85% to 15% in the Electoral College). Willkie won over 22,300,000 popular votes (just over 45%) and 10 states for a total of 82 electoral votes. He took Michigan, Iowa (the home state of Henry Wallace, FDR’s running mate), and Indiana from Roosevelt in the Midwest, and Maine and New Hampshire in New England; he was particularly strong in the Great Plains states, where he took North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas; and finally, in the Intermountain West, he won in Colorado, which had twice gone for Roosevelt in 1932 and 1936. By any standard except his own past triumphs, Roosevelt’s victory was impressive.
Willkie, while soundly defeated, still offered signs of hope for the Republicans. Against a very popular president, he won six million more votes than Landon had in 1936, and seven million more than Hoover in 1932. In fact, Willkie’s total popular vote amounted to the highest number of votes for a Republican candidate in history, exceeding Hoover’s previous record, set in 1928, by over 900,000 votes—a figure that demonstrated that the GOP, while now out of the White House for the longest streak in the party’s history, still a minority in both houses of Congress (although gains were made in the Senate, with some ground lost in the House), and still burdened by the blame for the Great Depression, was nonetheless still a viable political force. Willkie also won 1,147 counties in 1940 compared to Landon’s meager 459 in 1936. Interestingly, while Roosevelt took what was, at that time, the six largest Electoral College states (in order, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Texas, and California), his margin of victory in New York, his home state, was much slimmer than in the previous two elections; significantly, Willkie actually outpolled FDR among New York Democrats (48% to 45%), even to the point of beating Roosevelt in all but three New York counties. Only with the addition to Roosevelt’s cause of just over 400,000 votes from the minor American Labor Party was the president able to carry New York. Willkie also beat Roosevelt in a majority of the counties in Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio—the second-, third-, and fourth-largest Electoral College states—but FDR won in the bigger cities in those states, notably Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Cleveland, and Youngstown (Cincinnati, by leaning toward Willkie, being the only exception), and thus by holding his urban base managed to retain the big states for the Democratic ticket. While Roosevelt won in every major city (except Cincinnati) throughout the country, Willkie took the Great Plains and Midwestern farm vote away from FDR, winning significant swaths of rural country. In Nebraska and Kansas, for example, Willkie almost shut FDR out, winning in all but four counties in Kansas and all but eight counties in Nebraska, with similar results in the Dakotas.
Unfortunately, the Campaign of 1940 grew acrimonious toward the end; but shortly after the election, Roosevelt and Willkie reconciled. Willkie’s finest moment came in his defeat when he delivered a gracious concession, calling for the end of antagonistic politics. Willkie became a political ally of Roosevelt’s, working closely with the president throughout his next term and winning the president’s deepening friendship. This was a most fitting turn, for such amity and mutual loyalty among American leaders became vital during the terrible challenges and hardships that awaited the country in the months and years ahead.
The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15893#ixzz1IrXVzcXp.
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