Wendell Willkie One World Pdf
Malena Bower
On the assumption Roosevelt would not seek a third term, Willkie had been spoken of as a possible Democratic presidential candidate as early as 1937. He raised his stock considerably when on January 3, 1938, he debated Assistant Attorney General Robert H. Jackson on the radio show Town Meeting of the Air. With the topic of the debate being the cooperation between the public and private sectors, Willkie came across as a businessman with a heart, while Jackson appeared dull. A stream of positive press mentions for Willkie continued through 1938 and into 1939, culminating with a favorable cover story in Time magazine in July 1939.[36] Willkie was initially dismissive of the many letters he received urging him to run for president, but soon changed his mind. Van Doren thought Willkie could be president, and worked to persuade her contacts. After hosting the Willkies for a weekend, Fortune magazine managing editor Russell Davenport became convinced Wendell Willkie had presidential timber; he devoted the magazine's April 1940 issue to Willkie, and later served as his campaign manager. In that issue, Willkie wrote an article, "We The People: A Foundation for a Political Platform for Recovery," urging both major parties to omit anti-business policies from their party platforms, protect individual rights, and oppose foreign aggression while supporting world trade. This piece won him applause and supporters from the press.[37]
Democracy and our way of life is facing the most crucial test it has ever faced in all its long history; and we here are not Republicans, alone, but Americans, to dedicate ourselves to the democratic way of life in the United States because here stands the last firm, untouched foothold of freedom in all the world.[61]
Roosevelt had been surprised by the outcome of the Republican convention, having expected to oppose a conservative isolationist. The polls showed Willkie behind by only six points, and the president expected this to be a more difficult race than he had faced in his defeats of Hoover and Landon. Roosevelt felt that Willkie's nomination would remove the war issue from the campaign.[64] Roosevelt was nominated by the Democratic convention in Chicago in July, though he stated that because of the world crisis, he would not actively campaign, leaving that to surrogates.[65] The fact that both major-party presidential candidates favored intervention frustrated isolationists, who considered wooing Charles Lindbergh as a third-party candidate.[66]
Conservatives and isolationists had little enthusiasm for the Willkie campaign, and the moderates wanted to see stronger positions on progressive issues and foreign policy. Publisher Henry Luce decried both Roosevelt and Willkie for failing to be honest with the American people, "America will never be ready for any war until she makes her mind up there is going to be a war."[68] (italics in original) Despite his pledge not to campaign, Roosevelt made inspection tours to military installations, well covered by the press. The president did not mention Willkie by name, seeking to avoid giving him publicity. According to Susan Dunn in her book in the 1940 campaign, this forced Willkie "to box against a phantom opponent and carry on a one-sided partisan debate ... Even in Willkie's speeches, Roosevelt occupied center stage".[69] Willkie promised to keep New Deal social welfare programs intact, expand Social Security, and provide full employment, a job for everyone: "I pledge a new world".[70]
We both came in amity,
Wartime allies of the KMT
While you were feted at the seat of honor
I was fettered in this penal horror.
Diplomatic affections may run hot and cold,
Such is the way of the world,
Or as the French say, C'est la vie,
All waters flow down to the sea.
Willkie spent much of 1943 preparing for a second presidential run, addressing Republican and nonpartisan groups.[118] He did not meet with Roosevelt; with the presidential election approaching and with both men likely to run in it as candidates, their continued association would have been awkward.[119] Although they differed with him on many issues, Republican leaders recognized Willkie's appeal and they had wanted him to campaign for the party in the 1942 midterm elections, but he went around the world instead.[120] The huge publicity received by the titular head of the Republican Party as an emissary for a Democratic president frustrated leading Republicans.[121] In 1942, the Republicans gained seats in both the House and the Senate. Though they still remained in the minority, they formed a Conservative coalition with Southern Democrats that took control of domestic issues in Congress. Few Republican members of Congress were by then willing to support Willkie, and he dropped to second place behind General Douglas MacArthur in polls of likely voters in the party's 1944 presidential primaries.[122] By 1943, even liberal Democrats did not doubt Willkie's progressive credentials. He spoke of appointing an African American to either the cabinet or the Supreme Court, and he warned California's Republican committee that the New Deal was irreversible and he stated that all they would get by opposing it was oblivion.[123]
On March 16, his first day of campaigning in Wisconsin, Willkie made eight speeches, and the pace took a toll on his voice. The weather did not cooperate, and he travelled 200 miles (320 km) through a blizzard to reach a rally in the northern part of the state. Willkie attracted large crowds in most places, and he told them that the Republican party would fail unless it accepted the New Deal and recognized the need for the U.S. to remain active in the world after the war. The Democrats, he alleged, had been in office too long and they did not have the vision that was needed in the postwar world.[128] Willkie's speech in Milwaukee attracted 4,000 people to a hall that could hold 6,000, and he left the state on the 29th for Nebraska, where he had also entered the primary. Once he was gone, Dewey's backers, including most of the Wisconsin Republican leadership, flooded the state with billboard advertisements and radio commercials.[129] On April 4, Dewey gained 17 of Wisconsin's 24 delegates, Stassen 4, and MacArthur 3.[130] Willkie's delegates ran last in every district.[131] The following night, after giving his speech in Omaha, Willkie addressed the crowd:
Soon after the 1940 convention, Roosevelt described Willkie's nomination as a "Godsend to our country", because it ensured that the presidential race would not turn on the issue of aid to Britain.[142] Walter Lippmann believed Willkie's nomination to have been crucial to Britain's survival, "second only to the Battle of Britain, the sudden rise and nomination of Willkie was the decisive event, perhaps providential, which made it possible to rally the free world when [Britain] was almost conquered. Under any other leadership but his the Republican party in 1940 would have turned its back on Great Britain, causing all who resisted Hitler to feel abandoned".[143] Charles Peters wrote that "it is arguable that [Willkie's] impact on [the United States] and the world was greater than that of most men who actually held the office [of president]. At a crucial moment in history, he stood for the right things at the right time."[144] When Georgia Senator Zell Miller, a Democrat, gave the keynote address at the 2004 Republican National Convention, he urged unity instead of partisan strife in the War on Terror, and recalled Willkie's actions, "He gave Roosevelt the critical support he needed for a peacetime draft, an unpopular idea at the time. And he made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue."[145]
Correspondent and author Warren Moscow wrote that after 1940, Willkie helped Roosevelt, who was always careful not to go too far in front of public opinion, "as a pace-setter with the President's blessing".[149] Willkie's global trip and the publication of One World increased public support for the idea that the United States should remain active internationally once the war was won, and should not withdraw into a new isolationism.[150] Indiana University president Herman B Wells noted that One World "has had such a profound influence on the thinking of Americans".[151] Historian Samuel Zipp noted, "He launched the most successful and unprecedented challenge to conventional nationalism in modern American history ... He urged [Americans] to imagine and feel a new form of reciprocity with the world, one that millions of Americans responded to with unprecedented urgency."[152]
His advocacy came at a cost to his standing in the Republican Party. According to Moscow, "his appeal for the party to be the party of the Loyal Opposition, supporting the President, was treason to the diehards; his trip around the world marked him as a Presidential agent seeking to infiltrate the Republican Party".[119] This decline was accelerated as it became apparent that Willkie was a liberal, standing to the left of Roosevelt and proposing even higher taxes than the president was willing to stomach.[153]
Though he never became President, he had won something much more important, a lasting place in American history. Along with Henry Clay, William Jennings Bryan, and Hubert Humphrey, he was the also-ran who would be long remembered. "He was a born leader," wrote historian Allan Nevins, "and he stepped to leadership at just the moment when the world needed him." Shortly before his death, Willkie told a friend, "If I could write my own epitaph and if I had to choose between saying, 'Here lies an unimportant President', or, 'Here lies one who contributed to saving freedom at a moment of great peril', I would prefer the latter."[157]
After surviving several heart attacks, Willkie finally succumbed, dying on October 8, 1944 at age fifty-two. ER in her October 12, 1944 "My Day" column eulogized Willkie as a "man of courage [whose] outspoken opinions on race relations were among his great contributions to the thinking of the world." She concluded, "Americans tend to forget the names of the men who lost their bid for the presidency. Willkie proved the exception to this rule."