I'd like to repost with a few changes an old soc.history.what-if post of mine:
Because it is obvious that the Republicans didn't stand a chance in 1932, most political speculation has been on Democratic alternatives to FDR. Usually it has been on Democrats who would presumably have been more conservative than FDR--Garner (either by getting the nomination or by Zangara later killing FDR), Smith, Baker, Ritchie, Byrd, etc. (In the case of some of these candidates, calling them conservative may be a bit of an oversimplification, but that's another matter.) However, I haven't seen any posts here about a potential "liberal" or "progressive" rival to FDR--none other than William Gibbs McAdoo. McAdoo in the 1920s was pretty much the leader of the western/southern section of the Democracy, which believed that the party's nominees of that decade--Cox, Davis, and Smith--were too conservative, too tied to northeastern "big business", and of course too "wet" on Prohibition. The 1928 Democratic platform--which went so far as to endorse the protective tariff--and Smith's making the very wealthy ex-Republican John Raskob head of the Democratic National Committee--were particularly upsetting. McAdoo's friend George Fort Milton said that the 1928 Democrats "want[ed] to forget everything Woodrow Wilson ever thought worthwhile." For the McAdoo wing of the party, the model for a Democratic victory should be Wilson's triumphs--especially that of 1916, where he won despite losing almost the entire Northeast. Smith's backers replied that Wilson's victories of 1912 and 1916 were really aberrations, the first caused by the Taft-TR split, the second by the peace issue, and that the last "normal" Democratic victories were by Cleveland, for whom carrying states like New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut was vital.)
The ethnocultural differences between the two wings of the party have been much stressed, and were real, but it is noteworthy that McAdoo was willing to support a Catholic (Thomas J. Walsh of Montana) for president, so long as he was from the West, progressive on economic issues, "dry" on Prohibition, and untied to urban machines.
Smith's easy victory at the 1928 convention would seem to indicate the increasing weakness of the McAdooites, but this ignores a very important factor: many southern and western Democrats may have felt that Smith should get the nomination because Hoover was bound to win anyway. Smith's defeat in the general election would presumably pave the way for a more satisfactory nominee in 1932, which they hoped would be a better year for the Democrats. Of course this ignored the danger of Smith and his friends like Raskob having control of the DNC machinery. By the time the Depression hit, southern and western Democrats were worried that Raskob would try to make Prohibition repeal virtually the sole issue in the 1932 campaign. They tried to counter this by saying that "bread not booze" should be the issue.
So now enter FDR, who becomes talked about as the Democrats' 1932 candidate as soon as he is elected governor of New York in 1928, and especially after his landslide re-election in 1930. At first the McAdooites viewed him as not that much different from Smith--another Tammany-backed, wet, business-oriented Northeasterner. Eventually, the split between FDR and Smith convinced most of them that FDR's progressivism was for real, and at the 1932 convention FDR's strongest support was from the old McAdoo areas and his weakest support was from his own region (the Northeast, where Smith was strong). McAdoo himself, though, would not back FDR until the last minute, very likely because he still hoped to get the presidential nomination himself (though supposedly he was backing Garner and was only interested in running for the Senate from California). He even cooperated with Smith in a stop-FDR drive!
So the question is: is there a realistic POD for McAdoo getting the nomination in 1932 he had failed to get in 1920 or 1924? IMO the crucial decision that made FDR's nomination very probable was that of FDR's bitter opponent Smith not to withdraw. As Douglas A. Craig has put it: "By not withdrawing, he [Smith] unwittingly helped Roosevelt maintain his strength between the vital third and fourth ballots. Had he withdrawn then, William Allen White wrote Ralph Hayes soon after the convention, FDR's support would have evaporated quickly: 'So long as Smith was in, Roosevelt was fairly safe. You cannot imagine the fear and dread of the South and West which even the possibility of Smith's nomination produced.'" *After Wilson: The Struggle for the Democratic Party 1920-1934*, pp. 245-6.
So suppose Smith withdraws, and southern and western delegates decide that they no longer have to back FDR on an anyone-but-Smith rationale. It is not inconceivable that a lot of them will turn to their old hero McAdoo, especially if other candidates like Garner and Baker fell short. (Baker's big problem was the vehement opposition of Hearst.) Obviously, McAdoo would have a lot of problems with bitter memories of 1924. Yet he could point out to Northeasterners that he did ultimately support Smith over Hoover in 1928 (though very late in the campaign). And by 1932, the Klan was a spent force in national politics, and McAdoo on the eve of the convention announced he was for a national referendum on the future of the Eighteenth Amendment. As Craig notes (*After Wilson*, p. 222), this was a considerable change from McAdoo's previous "bone-dry" position, and was doubtless made to encourage the idea of McAdoo as a compromise candidate if FDR should fall short.
Raskob would no doubt say the same thing about a McAdoo nomination he did about FDR's in OTL in a letter to Harry Byrd: "When the Democratic Party, born and bred in the fine, old aristocracy of the South, and always fostered and nourished by a conservative people, is turned over to a radical group, such as Roosevelt, Hearst [in the early 1930s Hearst had shown temporary signs of reverting to his earlier radicalism], McAdoo, Senators Long, Wheeler, and Dill, and is taken out of the hands of such men as you, Governor Ritchie, Carter Glass, Mr. Reed, Colonel Breckinridge, Governor Smith, John W. Davis, Pierre S. du Pont, Governor Cox...etc., one cannot help losing faith in the ability of that Party, under such leadership, to command that confidence necessary to elect." Craig, p. 247. Raskob did console himself that at least the conservatives got FDR to run on a conservative platform. Like FDR, McAdoo would no doubt pledge himself to the platform and thereby win the reluctant support of the conservatives during the campaign. But after winning the presidency--memories of 1924 might lead to him losing a few northeastern states like Massachusetts, which FDR narrowly carried, but I have no doubt that McAdoo would defeat Hoover overwhelmingly--I do not see him paying much more attention to the platform than FDR did. (In OTL, McAdoo as Senator from California from 1933 to 1938 was a supporter of the New Deal.)
Some historians have doubted the sincerity of McAdoo's progressivism, pointing to his role as a lawyer for big oil interests (something which hurt him badly in 1924, after the Teapot Dome scandal hit). Yet FDR was involved with plenty of business ventures, some of them speculative, in the 1920s--and in 1928 he wrote to businessmen that they should support Smith because Hoover as Secretary of Commerce had shown too great a tendency to meddle with business! All in all, I don't see any reason to think McAdoo would have been any less liberal as a president than FDR. Whether he had FDR's political skills is another matter--and he certainly wasn't his equal as a speaker. Also, he would have been 73 years old in 1936--but then so was Reagan in 1984. (McAdoo definitely would not have run for a third term in 1940--he was to die in early 1941.)
One might question whether the Georgia-born son-in-law of Woodrow Wilson (and favorite candidate of the Klan in 1924) could accomplish the political realignment of blacks which FDR (with Eleanor's help of course) was to accomplish in OTL. Yet after all, FDR accomplished this largely through his economic programs--which McAdoo supported. (Also, as commissioner of the nation's railroads during World War I McAdoo had issued an order dictating that blacks and women working for the railroads should get the same pay as white men for equal work. Admittedly, he may have done this at the behest of the railroad unions, who thought that if the railroads had to pay blacks equally, they just wouldn't hire them. But whatever the motives of McAdoo's equal pay order, it was welcomed by African Americans at the time.) Also, despite the fact that the Klan had backed him in 1924 (above all because of his stance on Prohibition) there is no evidence that he shared the Klan's anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic views. In 1911, he had chaired a national citizen's committee demanding the abrogation of the US-Russia passport treaty on the ground of Russia's limitations on travel rights for American Jews. (IIRC, that was actually what brought him to Wilson's attention.) In 1924 his backers included Catholics like James Phelan and Jews like Bernard Baruch.
Unfortunately, both McAdoo's autobiography (*Crowded Years* [1931]) and the only other book-length biography I have seen of him (John J. Broesamle's *William Gibbs McAdoo: A Passion for Change, 1863-1917*) deal only with his life up to World War I. A number of other books deal with the 1924 fiasco but the only work I know of that includes much information about his later career is the doctoral dissertation at http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15799coll127/id/140194 From this it is evident that McAdoo was not only a supporter of the New Deal domestically but a strong supporter of FDR's foreign policy in 1939-41: "In correspondence with Cordell Hull, McAdoo praised the Roosevelt policy of “armed neutrality” that was put into force in 1939, and was even more effusive about the “destroyers for bases” plan that was prominent in 1940.907 In fact, McAdoo suggested that the United States should request bases at Singapore and Hong Kong as well, since the security offered by our Pearl Harbor facility was so questionable!" (Indeed, his fears about Pearl Harbor were quite prescient--he expressed his concerns to FDR as early as 1938!--though they were based partly on the standard Californian doubts about the loyalty of the largely Asian population of Hawaii.)
Any thoughts?
Because it is obvious that the Republicans didn't stand a chance in 1932, most political speculation has been on Democratic alternatives to FDR. Usually it has been on Democrats who would presumably have been more conservative than FDR--Garner (either by getting the nomination or by Zangara later killing FDR), Smith, Baker, Ritchie, Byrd, etc. (In the case of some of these candidates, calling them conservative may be a bit of an oversimplification, but that's another matter.) However, I haven't seen any posts here about a potential "liberal" or "progressive" rival to FDR--none other than William Gibbs McAdoo. McAdoo in the 1920s was pretty much the leader of the western/southern section of the Democracy, which believed that the party's nominees of that decade--Cox, Davis, and Smith--were too conservative, too tied to northeastern "big business", and of course too "wet" on Prohibition. The 1928 Democratic platform--which went so far as to endorse the protective tariff--and Smith's making the very wealthy ex-Republican John Raskob head of the Democratic National Committee--were particularly upsetting. McAdoo's friend George Fort Milton said that the 1928 Democrats "want[ed] to forget everything Woodrow Wilson ever thought worthwhile." For the McAdoo wing of the party, the model for a Democratic victory should be Wilson's triumphs--especially that of 1916, where he won despite losing almost the entire Northeast. Smith's backers replied that Wilson's victories of 1912 and 1916 were really aberrations, the first caused by the Taft-TR split, the second by the peace issue, and that the last "normal" Democratic victories were by Cleveland, for whom carrying states like New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut was vital.)
The ethnocultural differences between the two wings of the party have been much stressed, and were real, but it is noteworthy that McAdoo was willing to support a Catholic (Thomas J. Walsh of Montana) for president, so long as he was from the West, progressive on economic issues, "dry" on Prohibition, and untied to urban machines.
Smith's easy victory at the 1928 convention would seem to indicate the increasing weakness of the McAdooites, but this ignores a very important factor: many southern and western Democrats may have felt that Smith should get the nomination because Hoover was bound to win anyway. Smith's defeat in the general election would presumably pave the way for a more satisfactory nominee in 1932, which they hoped would be a better year for the Democrats. Of course this ignored the danger of Smith and his friends like Raskob having control of the DNC machinery. By the time the Depression hit, southern and western Democrats were worried that Raskob would try to make Prohibition repeal virtually the sole issue in the 1932 campaign. They tried to counter this by saying that "bread not booze" should be the issue.
So now enter FDR, who becomes talked about as the Democrats' 1932 candidate as soon as he is elected governor of New York in 1928, and especially after his landslide re-election in 1930. At first the McAdooites viewed him as not that much different from Smith--another Tammany-backed, wet, business-oriented Northeasterner. Eventually, the split between FDR and Smith convinced most of them that FDR's progressivism was for real, and at the 1932 convention FDR's strongest support was from the old McAdoo areas and his weakest support was from his own region (the Northeast, where Smith was strong). McAdoo himself, though, would not back FDR until the last minute, very likely because he still hoped to get the presidential nomination himself (though supposedly he was backing Garner and was only interested in running for the Senate from California). He even cooperated with Smith in a stop-FDR drive!
So the question is: is there a realistic POD for McAdoo getting the nomination in 1932 he had failed to get in 1920 or 1924? IMO the crucial decision that made FDR's nomination very probable was that of FDR's bitter opponent Smith not to withdraw. As Douglas A. Craig has put it: "By not withdrawing, he [Smith] unwittingly helped Roosevelt maintain his strength between the vital third and fourth ballots. Had he withdrawn then, William Allen White wrote Ralph Hayes soon after the convention, FDR's support would have evaporated quickly: 'So long as Smith was in, Roosevelt was fairly safe. You cannot imagine the fear and dread of the South and West which even the possibility of Smith's nomination produced.'" *After Wilson: The Struggle for the Democratic Party 1920-1934*, pp. 245-6.
So suppose Smith withdraws, and southern and western delegates decide that they no longer have to back FDR on an anyone-but-Smith rationale. It is not inconceivable that a lot of them will turn to their old hero McAdoo, especially if other candidates like Garner and Baker fell short. (Baker's big problem was the vehement opposition of Hearst.) Obviously, McAdoo would have a lot of problems with bitter memories of 1924. Yet he could point out to Northeasterners that he did ultimately support Smith over Hoover in 1928 (though very late in the campaign). And by 1932, the Klan was a spent force in national politics, and McAdoo on the eve of the convention announced he was for a national referendum on the future of the Eighteenth Amendment. As Craig notes (*After Wilson*, p. 222), this was a considerable change from McAdoo's previous "bone-dry" position, and was doubtless made to encourage the idea of McAdoo as a compromise candidate if FDR should fall short.
Raskob would no doubt say the same thing about a McAdoo nomination he did about FDR's in OTL in a letter to Harry Byrd: "When the Democratic Party, born and bred in the fine, old aristocracy of the South, and always fostered and nourished by a conservative people, is turned over to a radical group, such as Roosevelt, Hearst [in the early 1930s Hearst had shown temporary signs of reverting to his earlier radicalism], McAdoo, Senators Long, Wheeler, and Dill, and is taken out of the hands of such men as you, Governor Ritchie, Carter Glass, Mr. Reed, Colonel Breckinridge, Governor Smith, John W. Davis, Pierre S. du Pont, Governor Cox...etc., one cannot help losing faith in the ability of that Party, under such leadership, to command that confidence necessary to elect." Craig, p. 247. Raskob did console himself that at least the conservatives got FDR to run on a conservative platform. Like FDR, McAdoo would no doubt pledge himself to the platform and thereby win the reluctant support of the conservatives during the campaign. But after winning the presidency--memories of 1924 might lead to him losing a few northeastern states like Massachusetts, which FDR narrowly carried, but I have no doubt that McAdoo would defeat Hoover overwhelmingly--I do not see him paying much more attention to the platform than FDR did. (In OTL, McAdoo as Senator from California from 1933 to 1938 was a supporter of the New Deal.)
Some historians have doubted the sincerity of McAdoo's progressivism, pointing to his role as a lawyer for big oil interests (something which hurt him badly in 1924, after the Teapot Dome scandal hit). Yet FDR was involved with plenty of business ventures, some of them speculative, in the 1920s--and in 1928 he wrote to businessmen that they should support Smith because Hoover as Secretary of Commerce had shown too great a tendency to meddle with business! All in all, I don't see any reason to think McAdoo would have been any less liberal as a president than FDR. Whether he had FDR's political skills is another matter--and he certainly wasn't his equal as a speaker. Also, he would have been 73 years old in 1936--but then so was Reagan in 1984. (McAdoo definitely would not have run for a third term in 1940--he was to die in early 1941.)
One might question whether the Georgia-born son-in-law of Woodrow Wilson (and favorite candidate of the Klan in 1924) could accomplish the political realignment of blacks which FDR (with Eleanor's help of course) was to accomplish in OTL. Yet after all, FDR accomplished this largely through his economic programs--which McAdoo supported. (Also, as commissioner of the nation's railroads during World War I McAdoo had issued an order dictating that blacks and women working for the railroads should get the same pay as white men for equal work. Admittedly, he may have done this at the behest of the railroad unions, who thought that if the railroads had to pay blacks equally, they just wouldn't hire them. But whatever the motives of McAdoo's equal pay order, it was welcomed by African Americans at the time.) Also, despite the fact that the Klan had backed him in 1924 (above all because of his stance on Prohibition) there is no evidence that he shared the Klan's anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic views. In 1911, he had chaired a national citizen's committee demanding the abrogation of the US-Russia passport treaty on the ground of Russia's limitations on travel rights for American Jews. (IIRC, that was actually what brought him to Wilson's attention.) In 1924 his backers included Catholics like James Phelan and Jews like Bernard Baruch.
Unfortunately, both McAdoo's autobiography (*Crowded Years* [1931]) and the only other book-length biography I have seen of him (John J. Broesamle's *William Gibbs McAdoo: A Passion for Change, 1863-1917*) deal only with his life up to World War I. A number of other books deal with the 1924 fiasco but the only work I know of that includes much information about his later career is the doctoral dissertation at http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15799coll127/id/140194 From this it is evident that McAdoo was not only a supporter of the New Deal domestically but a strong supporter of FDR's foreign policy in 1939-41: "In correspondence with Cordell Hull, McAdoo praised the Roosevelt policy of “armed neutrality” that was put into force in 1939, and was even more effusive about the “destroyers for bases” plan that was prominent in 1940.907 In fact, McAdoo suggested that the United States should request bases at Singapore and Hong Kong as well, since the security offered by our Pearl Harbor facility was so questionable!" (Indeed, his fears about Pearl Harbor were quite prescient--he expressed his concerns to FDR as early as 1938!--though they were based partly on the standard Californian doubts about the loyalty of the largely Asian population of Hawaii.)
Any thoughts?
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