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(OOC: Since there's already an active Macarthur TL I figured I'd do one for my second choice, Patton)


“The Presidency of George S. Patton may go down as the most unlikely political happening of the 20th century. In any case, Patton’s ambivalent stances on race, fierce anticommunism and involvement in Korea and Indochina have left a legacy that baffles and divides pundits and political scholars even today.” –From Blood, Guts and Politics: Patton Examined by Hugh M. Cole (Random House, 1985)


“In order to understand how I came to enter the field of politics, one must first understand how my departure from the United States Army came about. The year was 1945, the war in Germany had just concluded and after some statements my superiors considered unsavory I found myself transferred to a paper command and feeling slightly melancholy. I had gone out for a drive one fine afternoon when a truck pulled in front of my vehicle. The car was barely damaged, but by some stroke of piss-poor luck I suffered a bad break in my right leg which, after some swearing and protestation, required that I be laid up in a hospital for some time to recover. I had been there about a week when General Eisenhower came to visit me. “George,” he said, in the familiar voice which I had so become accustomed to throughout four decades of working with the man. “You’ve really done yourself up good haven’t you?” Chagrined, I admitted I had. After some small-talk, Eisenhower got to the heart of his visit: “George, I’ve been consulting with some of the other generals and we all think its best you retire. For your health, I mean. You’ve done your country proud, you deserve to live out your twilight in peace.” Here I protested a bit, as I was well aware of what my superiors thought of me and felt this to be a sellout; if memory serves, I placated Eisenhower by telling him I’d sleep on it. The next day, a promotion order from General Eisenhower arrived at my bedside, his little incentive for my retirement. With much trepidation I accepted the fifth star and retired from this nation’s Army on January the 18th, 1946.


“I spent the next year doing speaking engagements and enjoying, for the first time, the retired life. In 1947 the Chairman of the Democratic Party addressed me about the possibility of throwing my name into the ring for the election in ’48. Well, I was no politician, I told him, but that didn’t seem to bother him. The man talked at length a bit about my war record, asked me my stances on a few things, and concluded that I would be an acceptable candidate to challenge what he viewed as an ineffectual Truman. I was still unsure about the whole thing, but after some discussion with the wife I decided to throw in. If nothing else, it would provide me something to occupy myself with for the next year.” – From War and Peace as I Knew It by George S. Patton


PATTON TO SEEK DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION; TRUMAN STILL LEADING HANDILY –New York Times below-fold headline, 2/17/48


“Managing Patton was a hell of a job. Within a week everyone on the staff, myself included, learned that one doesn’t manage General Patton so much as one damage-controls for him. Here was a man strong in his opinions, whose brain-mouth filter was not always to be relied upon. He wasn’t a politician, didn’t have much political sense and a lot of us secretly wondered whether he’d have a snowball’s chance in hell when the debates and convention came up. There was one thing, though, that he had and Truman didn’t: whenever he talked, no matter to whom or on what, people listened. I suppose they saw that here was a man who had been to hell and back, who wasn’t afraid to tell you exactly what he thought and why he thought it, and they respected that.” –From Inside The Patton Administration: An Unauthorized Biography by Frank E. McKinney, Patton Chief-of-Staff.
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