alternatehistory.com

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?
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