God_of_Belac said:
Harry Truman: Could FDR win a 4th term with a female vice president, and how would she handle the end of WWII?
I'll just tackle what looks like the easiest one for now, because it's more or less impossible. While your others would have been thrust into power by virtue of their birth, Truman was *picked* to be VP, as he was elected to his previous possitions.
Moreeover, in 1944 we were hardly ready for a female a heartbeat away from the Presidency. They had only had the vote for a generation, and the only equivalent to feminism in place at the time would be Rosie the Riveter. So FDR would have to have been crazy to pick him -- er, her.
HOWEVER, if you really want FDR to pick a female running mate, your best bet would be any of that generation's feminists, rather than a conveniently female Truman. Unfortunately, most of them were communists too, making them more or less unelectable. There were a few women in Congress, although they were unlikely choices:
Margaret Chase Smith is the most likely possibility, although she was an independent:
http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/smith-mc.html
Ruth Thompson was in the House of Reps, but she was a Republican, as was Edith Nourse Rogers:
http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=T000216
http://www.greatwomen.org/women.php?action=viewone&id=127
That leaves Jeannette Rankin, who would never have been selected because she had voted against America's entry into both WWI and WWII, and suspected that FDR had "deliberately provoked the attack on Pearl Harbor":
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blbio_jeannette_rankin.htm
Perhaps the best bet for a female running mate for FDR would be Nellie T. Ross, who was the first female governor (Wyoming, 1925-27) and also had been vice-chair of the DNC. FDR had appointed her as the Director of the US Mint. I doubt she would ACCEPT a political appointment, given her mixed experience as governor, but I suppose she might have.
http://www.galegroup.com/free_resources/whm/bio/ross_n.htm
Assuming FDR is re-elected and dies on schedule shortly afterwards, I imagine that President Ross would have been very understated, as the biography suggests she conducted her governorship; essentially the opposite of OTL Truman. Quiet and reserved, I think she would have gone the route of demonstrating US nuclear power to the Japanese rather than actually using it on a city -- inviting Japanese dignitaries to a test out in the ocean perhaps, or simply detonating off the coast of Japan. I don't know if this would work; if it didn't, Russia would simply invade the islands and turn them into sattelite states as it had in Eastern Europe.
After the war, she would have favored pulling out of Europe and focusing her attention on domestic issues. She probably would have acted to increase governmental efficiency while extending the New Deal, but otherwise would have been a rather unremarkable President. As with her governorship, she would have viewed her presidency as an accident, and her policies as the continuation of someone else's: "is this what FDR would have done in my place if he were still here?"
Without Truman's bombast and given the fact that she was female in the pre-modern feminist generation, and also given that most Americans would have viewed the USSR's post-war victories in Europe and (possibly) Japan as her fault, she almost certainly would have been defeated by Dewey in 1948.
The real impact would be on future generations. A female presidency, even an unremarkable one in terms of its policies, would send ripples throughout American culture. Women growing up in the 40's and 50's could not be told, as ITOL, that their careers lay only in teaching, nursing, and homemaking. While it would still take The Pill to jumpstart the sexual revolution, the feminist one would happen then, rather than in the late 60's and early 70's.
Our political landscape today would be far more equal, essentially a generation ahead of its OTL status. However, it would take the political parties some time before they were willing to risk a female presidency again. We would see viable female candidate by 2000, however; perhaps even as early as 1992. President Hillary anyone? And I don't mean 2008/12.
