“The Republican Party accepts the purposes of the National Labor Relations Act, the Wage and Hour Act, the Social Security Act and all other Federal statutes designed to promote and protect the welfare of American working men and women, and we promise a fair and just administration of these laws.” Inserting this plank into its 1944 campaign platform, the GOP pledged to sustain these as well as many other programs that were generated by the Democrats under President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Even though the Republican platform abstractly vilified the New Deal on principle, when it came to specifics, much of Roosevelt’s social and economic vision for the country had now been accepted across party lines. Roosevelt grew bolder: In his 1944 State of the Union address, FDR sketched what he deemed a “second Bill of Rights,” or “economic rights” that he conceived as encapsulating his vision of a postwar United States, rights that reaffirmed his general progressive vision and that resonated with the majority of American voters. Roosevelt was so dominant in the political landscape that there was no question of his standing for renomination by his party for a fourth term. Few leaders were trusted to cope with the apocalyptic crises that had roiled across the globe over the past five years, and the Democrats knew better than anyone that FDR had to continue on. Conservatives within the party were far from enamored with the president, but they were in the minority, and they were savvy enough to know that the Roosevelt name was enough by itself to guarantee the nomination.
The only concern at the convention involved the vice presidency. The incumbent vice president, Henry Wallace, was viewed by moderates and conservatives in the party as far too radical, and by most in the party from both sides of the aisle as too eccentric, to be trusted with the responsibilities that might arise in light of the president’s current health. Rumors circulated that Roosevelt’s health had turned for the worse; thus it did not take much imagination to fear the worst-case scenario. Delegates at the convention were determined to prepare for that dreaded possibility in the event that the president was lost, and they were convinced that in the event of such a tragedy, should it come, a President Wallace in command of the enormous military might of the United States was not a prospect to be entertained. Thus the convention sought to replace Wallace, even though Roosevelt himself enjoyed a good relationship with his vice president and would not openly support a movement to dislodge him. Nor would he oppose it, and a brief contest ensued between liberals (who favored renominating Wallace) and moderates (who sought to replace him with Missouri senator Harry S. Truman, a widely respected, capable, plain-spoken, no-nonsense son of the Show Me State). With Roosevelt and Truman on the ticket, the Democrats yet again entered the campaign from a position of strength.
Nonetheless, the Republican Party, while still in the minority and facing an enormously popular incumbent president, had already started to close the gap and had begun to show strength of its own, gaining considerable ground in the 1942 midterm elections, which infused the party with a new sense of confidence. Roosevelt had been pressed by congressional Republicans on tax policy and found himself in the unusual condition of being at a disadvantage. When Roosevelt did not get the tax bill that he wanted, but rather a compromise hammered out between the majority Democrats and minority Republicans, Roosevelt acerbically attacked Congress in general. This provoked Senate majority leader Alben Barkley, a fellow Democrat, to issue a strong rebuttal to the president and, in an act of defiance, resign his position as majority leader (he was immediately reelected by his fellow senators in a show of solidarity, in itself an unexpected swipe at the president). Stung by the actions of his fellow Democrats in the Senate, Roosevelt backed down and sent out olive branches to the Senate leadership.
But the domestic conflicts between the executive and legislative branches were rendered trivial when compared to the events abroad. Between the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the opening of the presidential campaign of 1944, the United States had entered the most destructive and horrific war in history, the devastation of which, in terms of both human life and property, was of a scale hitherto unimaginable, even by the terrible measures set by World War I. The full force and might of American resources were brought to bear in that dreadful cataclysm, resulting in the creation of astonishing military and economic power, the likes of which had not been seen before, even when compared to the greatest empires of the past. Franklin Roosevelt was at the helm of this Herculean effort, and while some grumbled about his disorganized style of management and his odd proclivity for stimulating conflict among his subordinates, he was widely lionized at home and, even more significantly, beloved abroad, acclaimed as a statesman of world caliber.
After the United States struggled in the first months of the war, partially accounting for Republican gains in the midterms of 1942, the tide had been turned well before the presidential campaign of 1944. Even though a year of warfare remained ahead as the national conventions commenced (less than a year in Europe, just over a year in the Pacific), there was a strong, confident sense that the Allied powers would in the end be victorious. By the 1944 election season, the U.S. Navy ruled the oceans, and the successful invasion of Normandy was just under way. Roosevelt was an able commander in chief, and the recent successes of the Allies boosted his image at home. Even though Republicans were tempted to publicize scandalous rumors (which have subsequently been proven to be unfounded) that Roosevelt might have known beforehand about the imminent Pearl Harbor attack in time to intercept it but failed to do so, in the end they suppressed the temptation, partly for national security reasons and partly because of Roosevelt’s formidable stature. Even Roosevelt’s strongest critics would not touch him on his statesmanship as a leader of the Allied war effort. The fact that he was admired by both the British leader Sir Winston Churchill and the Soviet leader Josef Stalin lent further credence to his reputation as a statesman. His political enemies might object to his principles and even his personality, but they openly saluted his wartime leadership. Republicans would not, and could not, base their campaign strategy against President Roosevelt on either the New Deal or his leadership at war. Another tack was needed.
Three strategic options remained for the Republicans. First, they could amplify allegations about Roosevelt’s administrative inefficiency and claim that the administration had become enervated, and even slightly corrupt, with age; the argument being that it is natural for the rot to set in if an organization, such as a president’s administration, is around long enough. Second, they could draw attention to what they perceived to be dangerous connections to communism and communist sympathizers, in the same spirit that would later produce the McCarthy hearings of the next decade. And third, they could dwell at length on the health of the president, who at only sixty-two years of age was showing visible signs of fatigue and physical decline. All three approaches would eventually be floated once the Republicans found their candidate.
As the campaign season opened, seven candidates were in the mix: Wendell Willkie, a friendly rival of the president, who had been the Republican candidate in the previous election; Senator Robert Taft, who had come to be known as “Mr. Republican” and who had also been, for a brief time, a possible candidate for the nomination four years earlier; General Douglas MacArthur, the flamboyant current Allied commander in the Pacific theater and a favorite of GOP conservatives; Minnesota’s former governor, Harold Stassen, another naval officer deployed abroad under Admiral Halsey and a supporter of Willkie in 1940; Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio, who received the support of Taft after he himself announced he would not pursue the nomination; Illinois representative Everett Dirksen; and the eventual front-runner, Thomas Dewey of New York, who, like Taft, had also been in the running for the nomination in 1940.
Early in the campaign season, Willkie was the name that entered the minds of most Republicans as the likely nominee. Owing to his restless energy and ongoing achievements, Willkie remained in the public eye and continued to be a popular figure. Even though he and Roosevelt remained friendly toward each other, in public Willkie did not hesitate to criticize the president, and he had continued to draw attention as a leading spokesman for the GOP. By November 1943, a Gallup poll indicated that just under 34 percent of registered Republicans desired that Willkie run again, putting him ahead of the field, with Dewey finishing a distant second at slightly below 18 percent. Hence Willkie once again seemed to be the man for the GOP, and as the campaign season opened, Willkie won the New Hampshire primary and was thus in the position of front-runner. But when Dewey won the Wisconsin primary, crushing the opposition in spite of Willkie’s hard campaigning, a resigned Willkie withdrew from the campaign (not one delegate had committed to his cause), leaving Dewey in a contest with a fairly weak pool. The celebrated MacArthur, who was running war operations in the Far East, could not campaign owing to his command responsibilities in the Pacific, and the other candidates lacked Dewey’s national reputation. In 1940, Dewey was regarded within the party leadership as too young to handle Roosevelt; but now he had more experience and influence in the party, and as a moderate, he easily bridged the gap between Old Guard Republicans and the party’s liberal wing, and he also promised wider appeal in a contest against a widely beloved incumbent. Dewey was easily nominated on the first ballot at the national convention in Chicago; Bricker was selected to run with Dewey in the second spot.
Dewey was youthful, energetic, serious, and buttoned-down. In sharp contrast to the relationship between Roosevelt and Willkie, a tangible animosity existed between Roosevelt and Dewey, both New Yorkers. Dewey had an abrasive, humorless, and somewhat aloof personality that had alienated most of the members of the press working the campaign trail. He deliberately presented himself as the epitome of efficiency, formality, planning, and organization; but for the most part, it left those around him cold. That aside, Dewey was fixated on his desire to portray an image of administrative competence, a key element of the Republicans’ strategy for the general election. However, the claim that Roosevelt was an incompetent and manipulative administrator—one of the three strategic options that the Republicans saw as available to them—was unconvincing. After twelve years of dealing with social, economic, and foreign crises of previously unknown magnitude and gravity, the public was unmoved by such arguments. But Dewey and his supporters continued to strike at what they considered one of Roosevelt’s few weaknesses, and in so doing, they managed to gain some verification for their claims from within the Roosevelt administration. FDR’s secretary of war, Henry Stimson, admitted his disappointment with Roosevelt as an administrator, and there were rumors of discontent at the State Department as well. Roosevelt and the State Department often worked either at cross-purposes or in the dark as to each other’s intentions, causing a climate of confusion among the leadership at State. The Republicans exploited the divisions between Roosevelt and his underlings in the State Department, employing personal attacks and mudslinging to depict the entire department as corrupt and incompetent.
The Republicans’ second strategic approach, alleging communist sympathies in the administration, failed to gain much traction. The red-baiting they employed played well in some parts of the country—but again, only in those parts that were already anti-Roosevelt and thus looking for more reasons to hate “that man.” The old canard that Roosevelt was, in effect, a dictator was no longer available to his enemies, as the American public—indeed, the entire world—had become all too familiar with the real meaning of dictatorship during the course of the war.
The GOP’s last approach, the president’s health concerns, seemed to offer a more promising weapon. However, the president’s critics could only suggest, imply, or insinuate; no one wanted to publicly embarrass Roosevelt over the issue of his physical condition, particularly given the heroic manner in which he overcame his disability, combined with the custom in those days of overlooking and not publicizing the health problems of public figures, and especially personages of Roosevelt’s stature and importance. Everyone knew that such a ploy would also play all too well in Berlin or Tokyo; thus the health issue, which was in fact the best that they had in their arsenal, could only be hinted at obliquely.
Because Republicans had made substantial gains during the congressional and state elections of 1942, Dewey’s candidacy was able to feed off that momentum. Dewey worked hard to make the most of it, and even though Roosevelt’s strengths were formidable, he campaigned aggressively. Dewey assaulted the administration, describing it as an inefficient, backbiting, quasi-socialistic, geriatric empire in decay. Dewey boasted that his administration would be “fresh and vigorous,” bringing needed professionalism and effective leadership to a decaying presidency that was marked by exhaustion and internal bickering. Roosevelt had, in Dewey’s estimation, led the country down the “road to total control of our daily lives” and had left the federal government in a condition of corruption and “disrepute.” Upon closer observation, though, Dewey’s criticisms of the New Deal were not entirely aligned with his views regarding specific New Deal programs; for by and large, he reflected the level to which the Republican Party had indeed, by the mid-1940s, accepted many of the innovations that came out of the Roosevelt years. One wag at the New York Times observed that Dewey had “just about completed the process of running for the Presidency on the domestic platform of the New Deal,” an observation that was shared by the more conservative elements in the GOP, who felt Dewey was too moderate, maybe even liberal.
Dewey tried to compensate in his rhetoric, becoming more acerbic when referring to FDR’s leadership and the moral questions behind the New Deal in the abstract. Roosevelt, Dewey insisted, had governed above the law, and the restoration of the rule of law under a Republican administration was now necessary. Much of what Dewey claimed was not far from Willkie’s criticisms in 1940, or even some of the criticisms that Willkie had offered in the interval; but when the assault came from Dewey, his fellow New Yorker whom Roosevelt disliked, the president took it more personally and, in retrospect, referred to Dewey’s challenge as “the meanest campaign of my life.” Many in the press, whether they supported Dewey or not, found him far less agreeable than Roosevelt. Even with his health in decline, the president remained at ease in conversation and inviting in his demeanor, and he was far more approachable than the officious Dewey.
Roosevelt maintained his preferred tactic of remaining above the fray, not mentioning his opponent by name, running on his own record, and reminding the voters of the troubles brought to the country by the former dominance of the Grand Old Party. His lieutenants, however, would target Dewey personally. Harold Ickes had already mocked Dewey’s youth. When the Republican unsuccessfully ran for his party’s nomination in 1940, Ickes commented that Dewey had “thrown his diaper in the ring.” Now in 1944, when the candidate Dewey adopted positions consonant with New Deal accomplishments, Ickes, riffing on the earlier diaper quip, remarked that the Republican nominee had “thrown a sponge into the ring.” For the most part, Roosevelt spent the campaign season dealing with the war, which in itself was the most effective campaigning strategy.
It was not until the final eight weeks of the campaign that the president turned his attention to the Republican challenge. On September 23, with Election Day six weeks away, the president spoke before a meeting of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in an address that was broadcast live to the American public. Roosevelt appeared as vigorous and spirited as ever, dispelling, at least to the audience present and those following the event over radio, the rumors of his poor health. Tapping into the Roosevelt magic, which was palpable even to those tuning in on the broadcast, the speech was immediately recognized as yet another masterpiece, reminiscent of the set of five speeches that he gave late in the Campaign of 1940 that successfully obliterated, once and for all, any serious challenge.
In Lincolnesque fashion, Roosevelt humorously demonstrated his famed mastery of rhetorical wit and timing, a dramatic contrast to the comparatively dry and dour speeches by the ever-serious Dewey. Roosevelt blithely dissected the Republican platform. Like a surgeon, he effortlessly deflated the GOP charge that the country had still been in a depression as it entered the war in 1941. Instructing his audience, Roosevelt quipped, “Now there is an old and somewhat lugubrious adage which says: ‘Never speak of a rope in the house of a man who’s been hanged.’ In the same way, if I were a Republican leader speaking to a mixed audience, the last word in the whole dictionary that I would be using is that word depression.” The highlight of the speech came toward the end, when the president, in a brilliant stroke that epitomized everything about him as a politician, answered Republican allegations that Roosevelt had cavalierly squandered naval resources during wartime to retrieve his lost dog Fala, a Scottish terrier who, as the story goes, had been inadvertently abandoned in the Aleutians during a recent visit to that region by the president. In good humor, Roosevelt chided the Republicans and deflected Republican charges of inefficiency and wasteful self-indulgence in the prosecution of the war:
These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or on my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog Fala. Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my family doesn’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, you know, Fala’s Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republicans’ fiction writers in Congress had concocted a story that I had left him behind on an Aleutian island and had sent a destroyer back to find him—at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three or eight or twenty million dollars—his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself—such as that old, worm-eaten chestnut that I have represented myself to be indispensable. But I think I have a right to resent, to object to libelous statements about my dog.
Those who were in the audience responded with waves of laughter, and with what would become known as the “Fala speech,” Roosevelt had, with just a few expertly timed, humorous sentences, deftly and comically demolished the Dewey campaign. Pining for some excitement after weeks of suffering Dewey’s arid and fussy campaign, the press was yet again completely won over by FDR’s inexhaustible good nature. Reporting on the Fala speech, Time magazine declared that “[Roosevelt] was like a veteran virtuoso playing a piece he has loved for years, who fingers his way through it with a delicate fire, a perfection of tuning and tone, and an assurance that no young player, no matter how gifted, can equal. The President was playing what he loves to play—politics.” Samuel Rosenman, one of the members of Roosevelt’s famous brain trust, remarked that it was Roosevelt’s finest campaign speech, exceeding even his highly lauded efforts toward the end of the 1940 campaign. To this day, it remains a model of political mastery, and it is the sort of rhetorical performance that places Franklin Roosevelt in the same rarified company as Abraham Lincoln.
No doubt the Fala speech was not the only reason why President Roosevelt was elected to a fourth term, but it reveals, perhaps more than any other moment in the campaign, the difference between Franklin Roosevelt and just about every other politician then or now. On Election Day, Roosevelt won slightly more than 25,600,000 votes to approximately 22,000,000 for Dewey (or approximately 53% to 46%, with the remaining 1% going to minor candidates), which converted to an Electoral College victory of 432 to 99 (or 81% to 19%). It was another Roosevelt landslide, at least in terms of electoral votes; but compared to his previous three victories, it was the least impressive. Dewey won the ten states that Willkie won in 1940, with the exception of Michigan, which went to FDR, and also added three more—Wyoming, Wisconsin, and Ohio—for a net gain of two states in what was overall the strongest Electoral College finish by a Republican since Hoover in 1928, which was at that time the last GOP victory. It should be noted, however, that Dewey received about 220,000 fewer popular votes than Willkie had in 1940. In defeat, Willkie’s total popular vote in 1940 was still the highest ever received by a Republican candidate to that date, Dewey unable to surpass that figure in spite of his gains in the Electoral College. Interestingly, Dewey failed to win New York, which many felt was in play after Willkie nearly took it from Roosevelt four years earlier (and would have taken if it had not been for the support for Roosevelt from the American Labor Party, which made the difference for FDR in New York on Election Day), and Roosevelt actually showed strength in the home state of the two rivals, beating Dewey there by taking 52 percent of the vote, 2 percentage points better than his finish against Willkie.
To the sorrow of a nation, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s fourth term came to an abrupt end nearly three months after his fourth inauguration. As some anticipated might happen, the indomitable Harry Truman became the thirty-third president of the United States on April 12, 1945, shortly after President Roosevelt passed away. Even though it was apparent to many that the president’s health had declined, and obvious to insiders that he was indeed failing, his death was still a traumatic shock. Roosevelt was the kind of politician that one would either fervently love or despise, but in the end, the entire nation mourned his loss. Roosevelt’s combination of courageous leadership, illimitable optimism, high-spirited wit, stirring vision, fearless commitment, and genuine goodwill were difficult to resist, even to his enemies. A young congressman from Texas, Lyndon Johnson, on hearing of the president’s death, tearfully professed an affection nearly universally shared: “He was like a daddy to me always, he always talked to me just that way. He was the one person I ever knew—anywhere—who was never afraid. Whatever you talked to him about, whatever you asked him for, like projects for your district, there was just one way to figure it with him. I know some of them called it demagoguery; they can call it anything they want but you could be damn sure that the only test he had was this: Was it good for the folks?”
Regardless of one’s final assessment of the wisdom of his political principles and the ultimate success or failure of their application, or of the nature of his ambitions and the motivations behind his ascent, Franklin Roosevelt was and remains the defining political figure of what many have called the “American Century,” and he was a towering international statesman during what was, by any and all criteria, far and away the worst war in human history. His importance in that capacity cannot be overstated. Perhaps, as recounted by biographer Jean Smith, the testimony of Sir Winston Churchill, the eminent British prime minister who worked with FDR as closely as anyone possibly could, provides the final word on both the personal character and lasting importance of Franklin Roosevelt. As Roosevelt and Churchill parted company at the conclusion of one of their many wartime meetings, Churchill, nervously watching as the president’s plane taxied toward departure, candidly and perhaps in a rare moment of unguarded humility, confessed to an aide his innermost feelings about Roosevelt: “He is the truest friend; he has the furthest vision; he is the greatest man I have ever known.”
Divine, Robert. Foreign Policy and the U.S. Presidential Elections, 1940–1948. New York: New Viewpoints, 1974.
Evans, Hugh. The Hidden Campaign: FDR’s Health and the 1944 Election. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2002.
Fraser, Steven. “1944.” In Arthur M. Schlesinger, Fred L. Israel, and David J. Frent, eds. Running for President: The Candidates and Their Images. Vol. 2. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Friedman, Leon. “Election of 1944.” In Arthur M. Schlesinger, Fred Israel, and William P. Hansen, eds. History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968. Vol. 2. New York: Chelsea House, 1985.
Smith, Jean Edward. FDR. New York: Random House, 2007.