DBWI: No President Robert Taft?

It has been 50 years this month since the death of US President Robert Taft.

In his successful campaign of 1948, Taft promised to reverse much of the New Deal, pass a civil rights law and take an isolationist stance in foreign affairs.

While Taft got off to a good start, his presidency would be a disaster. Most of those problems were caused by his own Republican party.

His attempts to undo the New Deal were met with opposition from Republicans whose congressional districts depended on its programs. When he proposed to privatize the TVA and end lynching, Southern Democrats balked. Not to mention the forced resignation of Attorney General J. Edgar Hoover a month before the 1950 midterm elections when it was found out that the Justice Department secretly approved of illegal surveillance of political opponents (including retired General Dwight Eisenhower) and sent informers into the universities.

In foreign affairs, he continued to recognize Chiang Kai-Shek as President of China although Mao and the Communists took control of the mainland in 1949 and drove Chiang and the Nationalists to the island of Taiwan. In Korea, Taft refused to send troops there explaining that it was a Korean civil war and there were no American interests at stake.

No surprise when Democrats were victorious in the 1950 elections and regained the majority in the House of Representatives.

Then of course, there was the biggest headache: Senator Joseph McCarthy. His claims that communists infiltrated the State Department and various federal agencies were unproven and he came very close to denying Taft the GOP nomination in 1952.

The Democrats went on to nominate Eisenhower for President and he defeated Taft in a landslide.

How would history have changed if the Republicans did not nominate Taft in 1948? Would Truman have been able to win New York and Virginia against any other Republican (Taft barely won New York because Henry Wallace took vote from Truman and won Virginia because Senator Harry Byrd stayed neutral) and with it, win the election?

Had Truman won in 1948, would he have done things differently in China and Korea?

If any other Republican was elected President in 1948, would he have encountered the same problems as Taft or would he have been a two-term President?
 
We should also remember that President Taft simply threw in the towel in the Cold War; Austria joined the Warsaw Pact. Italy, post Tolgetti went full neutral. His defenders will point out that Taft did more than anyone to avert a nuclear war, and that the Soviets may well have felt compelled to intervene in Cuba and otherwise push into the American Sphere of interest without him.


So, if Taft hadn't been president, wouldn't that mean WWIII?


With the fall of the Soviet Union in 2004, I think we can spare some harshness on Mr. Republican; his policies helped our nation avoid nuclear armageddon.
 

JoeMulk

Banned
Taft's attempt to push for civil rights did lead many African-American voters back to the GOP who had been drifting Democrat since FDR. I wonder if Truman's desegregation of the military would have led to a long term pattern where it would have eventually been a Democrat pushing for civil rights leading southerners to abandon the Democrats. OTL Senator Johnson (D)-Texas helped President Rockefeller pass the civil rights act.
 
I think Republicans were pretty much asured victory in 1948, after 16 continuous years of Democratic rule. Despite his reputation now a days, Truman was deeply unpopular by the time he left office-I'm amazed he came so close to winning as it is. The alternative to Taft was Tom Dewey, who imho was a stronger candidate than Taft, being younger and less aposed to the New Deal.

A less polarising pres in the late 1940's/early 1950's could prevent the 'New Society' policies Rocky championed in the 60's. The expantion of the New Deal was a backlash to Taft's unpopular (and ultimately unsuccessful) attempts to cut the New Deal.

Of course, the 'New Society' lead to 'Kennedy Conservatism' in the 1980's.
 
Dewey could have won. Truman faced a divided party between the threat of Dixiecrats leaving and Henry Wallace. Now, would Taft (or Dewey) have won against Wallace? That's a big question.
Would Dewey or Truman have joined NATO? It could potentially have lead to the US and Canada (who was a member until Trudeau pulled out) being more closely integrated with the EU, though I can't see them joining.
Personally, I like Taft's policy of non-intervention, though not as much as Wallace's principled politics. The Truman/Churchill approach on the other hand was a recipe for WWIII. (I happen to like their excellent rebuttals when Truman invited Churchill to speak in Missouri.)
 
Do people seriously believe a Truman presidency would have meant WWIII?

I mean he`d have to have congress agree to a war to begin with. I think if Truman was a president he might want to go into Korea but he`d have hard time convincing both the congress and senate of going.

Personally, I like Taft's policy of non-intervention, though not as much as Wallace's principled politics. The Truman/Churchill approach on the other hand was a recipe for WWIII. (I happen to like their excellent rebuttals when Truman invited Churchill to speak in Missouri.)

Churchill was a smart man, but you can`t use a foreign head of state when you`re campaigning. Truman was clearly desperate.
 
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