Long-lived Franklin Roosevelt

What if Franklin Roosevelt had lived until 1948 and been relatively healthy? Would he have run again? If so, when would he have been defeated or stopped running? Were his four election victories a freak circumstance due to the threats from Japan and Germany, or would he have become essentially president for life?


We could also take this the other way. What if FDR had an incapacitating stroke but didn’t die at the time he died historically? Or what if he had the stroke shortly before the election and the people around him tried to conceal it?


If Roosevelt served until 1948, but did not seek reelection, he would still have had the potential to have enormous clout even after he left office. How would another full term for FDR have affected international politics? The development of the Cold War?

(BTW: This is recycled from the Scenario Seeds section of my AH Newsletter)

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Dale Cozort - 11 years of alternate history e-zines at:

http://members.aol.com/althist1/index.htm

(March and May 2008 zines are now up)

Hmmm.. methinks that if he had lived to 48 he would have been so exhausted as to cease running. He probably would not have had the energy to really use his stature on a large scale, though he could have large influence "looking over the shoulder" of his successor (Truman I assume).

However I lack the knowledge to guess at what his actual actions might have been..

We would see a stronger SU and weaker West. FDR was duped continuously by Stalin and would continue to be so. Expect the SU to get their bomb earlier and more technology through the purge against infiltration being initiated earlier.

Foreign policy

Hmm. Hadn't thought much about the foreign policy stuff on this one. I was more focused on the possibility of FDR becoming essentially president for life. On the foreign policy front, I wonder if FDR would have made the same decisions on dropping the A-bomb that Truman did. In terms of relations with the Soviets, Truman did toughen the US stand on them somewhat, but after the Germans were defeated and the Japanese were on the ropes.

Roosevelt's relationship with both Stalin and the Nationalist Chinese were to some extent based on wishful thinking. He feared that the US would slide back into isolationism after the war. If that happened he wanted and needed a strong Soviet Union to keep order in Eastern Europe and to help keep the Germans down. He needed a strong China allied to the United States to counterbalance the Japanese in the long term. He overestimated the Chinese Nationalists until late in the war and underestimated the Soviets. Would Roosevelt have been able to prevent or delay the cold war? Probably not by very much. Stalin needed an external enemy to give him a a reason for the purges he needed to do to in order to reverse the slight loosening of the reins he had been forced to allow during the war.

I don't see him running in 1948. If he did, I don't see him winning. Keep in mind that until he got a third term, the most anyone had had was two. TR tried for a third term and lost (though had Taft stepped aside, that might've gone differently).

As far as dealing with the Soviets go, I think FDR's policies on them might've changed once the war was won and we didn't need their help anymore. I think a large portion of the way he dealt with them was simple pragmatism.