DBWI: James M. Cox loses in 1920

What if president Cox had lost the 1920 election to Warren G. Harding? What effects would we see on the world today?

OOC: POD would be I suppose Woodrow Wilson keeping the US out of the World War as that's the only way that I could see Cox winning since Harding's "Return to Normalcy" was a rather reactionary reply to the Wilson presidency and America at war. Unless, of course, you can come up with something better where we still enter WW1 and Cox is still elected.
 
The Democrats would have regained the presidency sometime in the next 20 years, and it is possible that under a Democratic President the United States would have joined the League of Nations. Although isolationist sentiment would still have been strong in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s.

In August 1921, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Cox's Vice President contracted the illness which left him paralysed and meant that he had to resign his office. I don't envisage him resuming his political career.
 
What hurt Warren Harding was the revelation that his mistress revealed that he fathered her unborn child. Cox was able to squeak to victory.

The Cox Presidency was a disaster. The US was in an isolationist mood and wanted to make peace with Germany. But Cox insisted that the US join the League. Coupled with the recession of 1923-1924, Herbert Hoover won a landslide victory in 1924.

Thanks to Hoover, Wall Street and the banking industry were reformed and Social Security became a reality. His Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon convinced Hoover to veto the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill.

Despite a prosperous economy in 1932, the Republican party was hurt by its divisions between the progressives (pro-Hoover) and the conservatives. The conservatives got their man, Senator Calvin Coolidge nominated for President. Luckily, Cordell Hull won the White House back for the Democrats otherwise the Republican Vice Presidential candidate William Thompson would have succeeded Coolidge who died in January 1933. Thankfully, this country never had to experience the corrupt administration that Thompson had as mayor of Chicago.

Most of Hull's time in office was spent during the American-Japanese war of 1933-1938. We defeated the Japanese and forced that country to become a democracy. Again, a country exhausted from war was opposed to fighting another one in Europe despite pleas from President Hull. It was no surprise that General Douglas Macarthur ran a single issue campaign of never starting a war and defeated Senator Harry Byrd to win the White House in 1940.

The UK and France were forced to sign a humiliating armistice with the German Reich in 1940. Both Churchill and De Gaulle were forced to go into exile in Canada. After King George lost his wife and children in the bombing of Buckingham Palace, Churchill had no choice but to resign as Prime Minister. The British were lucky not to lose their colonies in Africa and the Caribbean but to cut their expenses, they had to give India its independence in 1941.

Stalin wasn't so lucky. The German blitzkrieg on Moscow destroyed over 80 percent of the city and Stalin was incinerated to death in his underground bunker. The Soviet Union's experiment in Communism ended. After 3 years as military governor over most of Russia, General Rommel was relieved to give power to that country's first democratically elected President Vyacheslav Molotov (he was the only person that Hitler approved of to run Russia which promised not to spread Communism to the rest of Europe).

Hitler would marry his longtime companion Eva Braun in a 1943 wedding ceremony whose guests included Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek, US Vice President Hamilton Fish and Secretary of War Charles Lindbergh.
 
I found a biography of Harding once, it described him amiable guy and loyal friend. It sounds to me like he could have used those people skills to become an effective president.
 
Last edited:
Top