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Banned
The incident would have had no more affect on MacArthur's political future than it did Eisenhower's. Eisenhower also participated in the operation as did George Patton.No, don't let anyone fool you. No way does the working man, or veteran, or their families, forget the Summer of 1932. It wasn't that MacArthur followed his orders. He exceeded them by firing the Washington Hooverville. It was that HE PERSONALLY, AS THE US ARMY CHIEF OF STAFF, oversaw an operation fit to be commanded by a Colonel, at most.
And he did it in his Class-A uniform, complete with all ribbons and medals, and slapping a riding crop in his hands! Doing this with the full knowledge that the newsreel cameras were running. All he would have needed to complete the picture was to get on a black horse and start speaking in a spanish accent. I imagine the Communists must have had a propaganda field day. He became the instant national darling of the ultraright, but the pariah of the entire left AND center.
If he got the nomination, Truman will win, in 1948 and/or 1952. If Truman's not running, Stevenson's facing the only candidate he CAN beat.
While the number of troops would have normally been a Colonel's command, the fact remains that President Hoover ordered MacArthur to take personal command of troops. There is no way that MacArthur or any other soldier was going to disobey a lawful direct order from the President.
No shots were fired by the Army.
MacArthur never received Hoover's orders to stop at the Anacostia bridge, George Van Horn Moseley's account notwithstanding.
Moseley's account is contradicted in the accounts of Assistant Secretary of War, F. Trubee Davidson, Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Brigadier General Perry L. Miles, who commanded the 16th Infantry Regiment.
Interesting note: The Patman Bill (Bonus Bill) was also vetoed by President Rooseveldt in 1934.
With the Democratic Party split into three factions and a Republican candidate who was not afraid to be more confrontational (unlike Thomas Dewey), it would have been an easy win for MacArthur, provided that other skeletons in MacArthur's closet were not exposed. --There was the matter of the teenage Philippine mistress that could have sunk him, as well as being divorced from his first wife.