Wi Charles Evans Hughes had won the 1916 election?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1916

Sp, what if Charles Evans Hughes had won the election instead of Woodrow Wilson? I'm not sure if it's possible, but I'm interested in how WW1 and the peace afterwards would have shaped up without Wilson in charge; that is if America even gets involved in WW1. I don't know what the Republican party's stance on the war was so I'd like to know. Don't know enough about American politics of the era nor about Hughes as a person to be sure.
 
Well, if Teddy Roosevelt preserved any meaningful influence in the GOP (he had bolted in 1912 but came back and supported Hughes in 1916), America would have found some reason to enter the war ASAP. Ironically, that might not have made a huge difference. New Presidents were not inaugurated until March (this was true until sometime in FDR's Presidency). So Hughes assumes office in March, 1917. When Wilson was President, the US entered the war in November 1917 if I am not mistaken. Maybe under Hughes the US would have entered a few months earlier. It's really a damn shame ... this was not really a war we should have entered, IMO, with the benefit of hindsight. Oh well ...

I would like to think Hughes would have been more realistic and flexible after the war than Wilson and perhaps a more durable peace could have been created ... but with France and to a lesser extent England out for blood (understandably enough) that would have been a challenge.
 
President Hughes comes up here periodically. The foreign policy differences are not all that big. USA joins the war a little bit earlier. The most significant delta is Leonard Wood not Persching will lead the AEF and so a President Wood down the road is likely if he does not screw up as a general. As for the peace there are also some Wilsonian ideas in Hughes though I don't see him as inflexible as WW. He may alter the League of Nations enough from Wilsonism (IIRC Taft had some interesting ideas) to appease Hydrochloric Acid (HCL) so America joins it.

An important domestic delta is that the racial segregation of the civil service that Wilson implemented is likely to be dismantled.
 
I thought that Wilson planned to ask his VP to resign, to appoint Hughes S of S and then to resign to avoid a long lame duck period in that situation.

I fear that the US still goes to war.

The optimistic version of this is

1) Republicans get blame for US in WW1, lose heavily in 1920.

2) Rather consevative Democrats take charge in the 20s

3) The progressive elements take charge of the Republican Party

4) The New Deal becomes a Republican thing, without the disadvantage FDR had of needing to be nice to Southern Racist in Congrss (though in this super optimistic view FDR is still President as a progresive Republcian)

5) Most events 1933-45 are the same except that the new deal makes fewer concessions on race.
 
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