Eisenhower single term. Who are the nominees for each party?

Instead of running for reelection in 1956, Eisenhower publicly announces he will not run for reelection well in advance of the election. Say the POD is worsening health, and so he decides to get out.

So who are the nominees for the parties? Without the incumbent Ike, the Democrats have a opportunity and so might not renominate Stevenson. While the Republicans would likely pick Nixon as the VP, thought Eisenhower did have preferences for others. And perhaps the conservative wing could try to seize the reins.

And who would win the election? And their impact compared to a second Eisenhower term.
 
Nixon has the inside track for the GOP.

Indeed. It is probably too early for Goldwater or Rockefeller and too late for Dewey. Warren is on the Supreme Court, McCarthy is discredited, and Taft is dead. Stassen might very well run for the GOP nomination, but I think that would be more likely to hasten his slide into irrelevancy than anything else. I could see Knowland making a serious effort to challenge Nixon from the right (this was before his political career imploded), but I doubt that he would get much further than Stassen.

I agree that Stevenson is probably the favorite to win the Democratic nomination, but with a non-incumbent Nixon being perceived as at least somewhat more vulnerable than an incumbent Eisenhower, maybe LBJ runs that year. For that same reason, maybe JFK and Al Gore, Sr. push harder to be nominated for the running mate position.

Imagine a Lyndon B. Johnson/John F. Kennedy ticket. Between Johnson’s power base in Texas and Kennedy’s popularity among Catholics, it would certainly be a more formidable Democratic ticket than the one offered in 1956.
 
Imagine a Lyndon B. Johnson/John F. Kennedy ticket. Between Johnson’s power base in Texas and Kennedy’s popularity among Catholics, it would certainly be a more formidable Democratic ticket than the one offered in 1956.

True, but with the economy going strong and with the Suez crisis bringing Nixon's foreign policy chops to the forefront of the election, I think Nixon wins fairly easily. He's probably re-elected in 1960 as well.
 
Time again to recycle one of my old soc.history.what-if posts (my apologies for any links that may no longer work):

***

For some months, starting with his heart attack on September 24, 1955, it
was uncertain that President Eisenhower would run for a second term.
Malcolm Moos has written (in the chapter on the election of 1956 in Volume
III of *History of American Presidential Elections 1789-2008* edited by
Gil Troy, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Fred L. Israel) about the months
immediately following the heart attack:

"But even as bold, brave words were spoken about full recovery, it is no
overstatement to conclude that neither Eisenhower nor most of the world
thought he would seriously consider running for the presidency again in
1956. A turbid stream of possible candidates appeared as the months wore
on. In the Republican camp, these included Senator William Knowland, then
Senate minority leader; the former governor of New York, Thomas Dewey;
Vice President Nixon; United Nations Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge;
Governor Christian Herter of Massachusetts; Sherman Adams, assistant to
the president; former governor of Minnesota Harold Stassen; and the
president's favorite brother, Milton Eisenhower, president of Johns
Hopkins University.

"So remarkable was the president's recovery, however, that by the time he
reached Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on November 14 to begin his
convalescence, the question of his own candidacy was very much front stage
center. These were difficult days for the President. Any inactivity
always dampened his morale, and his irritability showed up quickly...At
least two of the capitol's most sensitive, thoughtful reporters--Robert
Donovan, then with the *New York Herald Tribune*, and Edward Folliard of
the *Washington Post*--felt that Ike's chafing, restless retirement for
many weeks at Gettysburg was a powerful factor in his eventual decision to
run for a second term. Yet no one knew. At a press conference at Key
West, Florida, on January 8, 1956, the president spoke of what 'a critical
matter it is to change governments in this country at a time that is
unexpected.' Following the press conference a poll of White House
correspondents indicated that, by a 5-1 margin, this group was convinced
Ike would not run..."

However, Moos continues, at a highly secretive meeting of Ike's closest
friends and advisers days later (on January 13) at the White House, the
first step toward an Eisenhower second-term candidacy was taken. Opinion
was unanimous among this group that Ike should run, though Milton
Eisenhower summed up the reasons both for and against running. Milton
pointed out that Ike was 65, had spent 40 years in public service, and was
entitled to do some of the things he wanted to do but had been crowded out
of a busy life. However, Milton also provided one overriding reason for
the president to run again: Ike's concern for world peace could not be
realized effectively from retirement. It required leadership from the
White House, not from a farm in Gettysburg. Moreover, a Democratic
president--a distinct possibility if Ike should retire--would not want a
retired president intruding on foreign affairs. This was probably the
most persuasive argument for Ike; ever since the Geneva Conference of
1955, Ike felt that he was breaking new ground with the Soviets, that he
had gotten along with Khrushchev, and that there was now a prospect for
easing some of the tensions of the Cold War. No decision was taken at the
conference, but after it was over Attorney General Herbert Brownell said
that he thought Ike would run. And yet, as Moos notes, "in the days that
followed, Eisenhower continued to reaffirm to confidants something he had
said repeatedly both before and after he took office in January 1953: he
wanted to be a one-term president."

Meanwhile, the uncertainties were fraying the unity of the Republican
Party. Senator Knowland, leader of the party's conservative wing, said he
would announce his candidacy if Ike did not announce by February 15, while
Stassen said he would wait until July if necessary. On January 30, a
strongly worded front-page editorial in the *New York Herald Tribune*
urged the president to run again, foreseeing a Republican defeat if he did
not (it cited a Gallup poll showing Ike leading any Democratic challenger
3-2 and a *Des Moines Register and Tribune* poll showing that the
Republicans would lose Iowa without him). Amidst all the contradictory
indications, Ike said that he would make his decision by March 1.

The key development was Ike's checkup at Walter Reed Hospital in February.
The damaged heart showed no signs of enlargement since Ike had returned to
more or less normal physical activity. At a press conference three days
later, the celebrated heart specialist, Dr. Paul Dudley White, stated that
Ike should be able to carry on "his present active life" satisfactorily
for the next five to ten years. Asked if he would vote for the president
if he ran again, White said that he would. The following day Ike went to
Georgia for some golf and quail hunting, and was elated that the strenuous
walking "didn't bother me." On March 1, he announced his candidacy. For
now, this ended speculation. It seemed sure that the Republicans would
nominate Eisenhower and Nixon again.

But then, on June 8, Eisenhower was operated on for an intestinal
obstruction (ileitis). This was serious surgery, especially for a man who
had had a severe heart attack months earlier, and it was remembered that
Eisenhower had stated at a March 7 press conference that he would withdraw
from the race if his physical condition was to be impaired. Once more the
names of Knowland, Dewey, Nixon, Herter, and Milton Eisenhower were
mentioned as presidential possibilities; the name of Goodwin Knight,
governor of California, was also mentioned. "Interestingly, although none
of these possibilities generated strong support among the party
professionals, a Gallup poll indicated that Milton Eisenhower would be the
strongest candidate if his brother decided not to run." (Moos) Anyway,
Eisenhower recovered quickly, so it was soon settled that he would run--
though in view of his recent health problems it was thought by some that
he should drop Nixon in favor of a less controversial running mate.
Harold Stassen came out in favor of replacing Nixon with Herter. Some
felt that the dump-Nixon move had at least tacit support from Ike, who did
indeed suggest to Nixon that a cabinet position might be a better
launching pad for a 1960 presidential candidacy than the vice-presidency.
But Nixon would have none of that, and Herter announced that he himself
would nominate Nixon for the vice-presidency at the GOP convention. In
the fall campaign, Stevenson's last minute attempt to use the "health
issue"--and the prospect of a Nixon presidency sometime during the next
four years--turned out to be an utter failure.

I have gone into this in some detail because although we have on a few
occasions discussed Ike's dying and Nixon becoming president, I don't
think we have much discussed what would happen if Ike's health condition,
though not serious enough to kill him or prevent him from functioning as
president, was nevertheless serious enough to persuade him not to run
again. What, for example, if the diagnosis at Walter Reed Hospital had
been more ambiguous? What if Ike had a second, though milder, heart
attack before March 1, or what if he had his ileitis attack in early 1956,
instead of in June (by which time he was firmly committed to running if at
all possible)? In short, suppose Ike firmly announces by the spring of
1956 that he will not run again.

Let's look at some of the possible candidates:

(1) Richard Nixon--the most obvious choice but a polarizing figure. Not
only did Democrats hate him and independents view him with suspicion, but
some people in the right wing of the GOP resented him for what they
regarded as his (and Ike's) betrayal of Joe McCarthy.

(2) William Knowland--hero of the conservatives, but might have trouble
with the independent vote. An example of the sort of thing that might
scare them about him: "...in 1954 when the PRC announced it had sentenced
as spies thirteen Americans, eleven of whom had served as fliers during
the Korean War, Knowland proposed an ultimatum: release the fliers or
face a US naval blockade. Ike rejected this, saying that a blockade meant
war. (IIRC the Chinese released the fliers the next year as a 'goodwill
gesture' in connection with the Bandung Conference.)"
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/62d4f6a1e431856f

(3) Christian Herter--could there be some early "birtherism" here? Herter
had been born in Paris, the son of American expatriate artists who moved
back to the US when Christian was nine. The overwhelming weight of legal
opinion in 1956 (as well as earlier and later) was that the foreign-born
children of US citizens temporarily living abroad were "natural born
citizens" eligible for the presidency. Yet this didn't prevent
conservatives, suspicious of yet another "Eastern Establishment"
candidate, from using the issue against him when Stassen suggested him as
a replacement for Nixon as Ike's running mate. A more serious obstacle
was Herter's health: "he suffered from severe arthritis for the last
twenty years of his life [Herter died in 1966] and frequently had to use
crutches." Michael S. Mayer, *The Eisenhower Years*, p. 299. When Ike is
retiring for health reasons, this is not what you want in a successor...

(4) Thomas Dewey--the two losses of 1944 and 1948 are enough to rule him
out IMO.

(5) Milton Eisenhower--an educator and former government official with no
experience in electoral politics, and too far to the left for some
Republicans who thought even his brother Ike was too liberal. OTOH, as
the Gallup Poll showed, he was popular and could help the GOP with
independents. For that reason, I wouldn't rule him out as a ticket-
balancing running mate for a more conservative presidential nominee.

(6) Henry Cabot Lodge--disliked by conservatives for managing Ike's
campaign against Taft in 1952. And of course he had lost his most recent
election (for re-election to the US Senate in 1952) to John F. Kennedy.
Still, his denunciations of Communists at the UN did make him popular.
Again, less plausible as a presidential nominee than as a running mate for
a more conservative candidate--we could see a Nixon-Lodge ticket four
years earlier than in OTL.

(7) Harold Stassen--still relatively young (49) and not yet the figure of
fun he would later be, but he had not won an election for many years, had
failed in his 1948 and 1952 bids for the GOP presidential nomination, and
was disliked by conservatives.

(8) Sherman Adams--there was a joke in the mid-1950's:

First Democrat: Wouldn't it be terrible if Ike were to die and Nixon
would become President?

Second Democrat: Or worse--if Sherman Adams were to die, and Ike would
become President!

The joke reflected the power exercised by Adams, former Governor of New
Hampshire, in the Eisenhower White House. His official title was
Assistant to the President, but he was popularly known as Ike's "Chief of
Staff" which indeed was how Eisenhower conceived Adams' role, although Ike
eventually shied away from the characterization, saying "the politicians
think it sounds too military." A moderate Republican, Adams had wanted
Ike to dump Nixon for Earl Warren in 1952, opposed Joe McCarthy, supported
civil rights, and assisted in the appointment of Fred Morrow, the first
African American to hold an executive position in the White House.
Perhaps his biggest obstacle was his unpopularity among Republicans for
rejecting access to the president except to those he felt had the most
pressing issues. This behavior earned Adams the nickname "The Abominable
No-Man."

"Yet another nickname of Adams, 'The Boss,' reflected another criticism:
the perceived belief that Adams wielded an incredible amount of power when
it came to Presidential decisions. Though the suggestion that Adams would
be 'Assistant President' rather than simply an assistant *to* Eisenhower
went back at least as far as [Martin S.] Hayden's [1952] profile, some
grumbled that Adams was influencing the President by choosing which people
saw him and what matters were most important. This perception gained
momentum after Eisenhower suffered a heart attack and Adams was
instrumental in guiding the White House staff in their actions during the
President's recovery. Eisenhower was quoted as saying, 'The only person
who really understands what I'm trying to do is Sherman Adams.' A 1957
Newsweek article deemed Adams the 'second most powerful man in the White
House.' Despite the accusations, Adams said in a 1957 interview that he
wouldn't want to be President. 'You wouldn't have to be around here very
long to see why I wouldn't want the job,' he said."

http://downfalldictionary.blogspot.com/2009/09/sherman-adams-coating-of-scandal.html

All in all, Adams is just too unpopular with Republicans, especially
conservative ones. His only real power base is Eisenhower's own trust in
him, and once Ike decides to retire, he will not be able to dictate his
successor.

(9) Goodwin Knight--probably not well-known enough outside California.

I would have to say Nixon is the most likely choice, with Knowland the
second most likely. (The "Eastern Establishment" wing of the GOP is going
to have a hard time without a candidate approaching Ike's popularity.
Some people from that wing might support Nixon as the lesser evil against
Knowland.) As I noted, I could see a Nixon-Lodge ticket four years
earlier than in OTL. How would it do against Stevenson-Kefauver? (This
assumes that the Democrats nominate the same ticket they did in OTL--but
would they? The knowledge that they would not have to face Ike might
bring some Democrats into the race who declined to run in OTL.)
Undoubtedly it would not win nearly as overwhelmingly as Ike-Nixon did in
OTL. That Eisenhower's personal popularity played a big role is shown by
the fact that he could not bring Republican majorities with him for either
house of Congress in 1956. There was considerable dissatisfaction in the
Midwest and West with Republican farm and conservation policies--this was
shown by a decline in Ike's vote in some farm-belt and western states
compared to 1952, and especially by Republican losses further down the
ticket. The losses on the presidential level in those states would
doubtless be greater if Ike isn't running again. Yet I also have a hard
time seeing Stevenson winning, unless Knowland is his opponent. For one
thing, Stevenson, divorced and somewhat dovish, was always weak (for a
Democratic candidate of that era) with Catholic voters. And he might not
get as overwhelming an African American vote as the Democrats needed,
either--compared to, say, Harriman, Stevenson took a moderate stand on
civil rights in order to conciliate the South, whereas Nixon was
considered more pro-civil rights than Eisenhower.

Thoughts?

***

I would add to that post that while, as I said, some new candidates might enter the race for the Democratic nominarion, I think the Democrats still go with Stevenson. His defeat in 1952 was blamed on the personal popularity of Ike and on the unpopularity of the Truman administration (especially because of the Korean War). I think he could convincingly argue that he had done about as well against Ike as any Democrat could have done in 1952.
 
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