No Ike in 56.

What if Ike decides to not run in '56? Who would the GOP run? Nixon? Warren? Stassen? Who would the VP be? Who would the Democrats nominate? Who would win?
 
It would be nice to see Governor Christian Herter of Massachusetts run against Richard Nixon.

Republican Nominations:
Vice President Richard Nixon
Governor Christian Herter of Massachusetts
Ambassador William Howard Taft III of Ohio
Former Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota

As do democratic party
1952 candidate and Former Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois
Former Republican Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon
Senator Lyndon B. Johnson from Texas
 
Democrats in Ike's second term criticized him for being "weak" on defense. It was probably just younger fellows criticizing an older fellow. Plus, Ike had a heart attack and I think several strokes from which he largely recovered.

And the whole dynamic that you're a lame duck most of your second term was probably not well understood.

So, with a middle-of-a-roader in office from '57 till '61 maybe things go better. There is a lot of luck and it's hard to tell for sure.
 
At the time (I'm old enough to remember Ike as president--barely), Ike favored Thomas Dewey. In 1956, he was 54 years old: pretty much par for the course. He had the credentials as a governor of New York. Trouble is, he also had the baggage of 1948 and 1944 (although the latter, IMO, shouldn't count since that was a wartime election and his opponent was Franklin Roosevelt). The memory of 1948 was still very strong with a lot of GOP bigwigs, so unfortunately Dewey was a non-starter.

Herter wound up succeeding Foster Dulles at State IOTL. Maybe he'd be acceptable as an Ike successor. Nixon...at age 43, the youngest elected president. If he'd gotten the backing of Dulles and a few of the more conservative members of the administration, he might just have pulled it off with perhaps Herter or possibly a young undersecretary named Nelson Rockefeller. I believe by then Harold Stassen was well on his way to becoming something of a joke, so I doubt he'd have been in the mix.

You can bet that Adlai Stevenson would have gotten the Dems' nod. His VP choice might be different, though: possibly John F. Kennedy might have gotten the nomination as opposed to Estes Kefauver. (There's an interesting prospect: two zillionaires running for the vice presidency.)
 
At the time (I'm old enough to remember Ike as president--barely), Ike favored Thomas Dewey. In 1956, he was 54 years old: pretty much par for the course. He had the credentials as a governor of New York. Trouble is, he also had the baggage of 1948 and 1944 (although the latter, IMO, shouldn't count since that was a wartime election and his opponent was Franklin Roosevelt). The memory of 1948 was still very strong with a lot of GOP bigwigs, so unfortunately Dewey was a non-starter.

Herter wound up succeeding Foster Dulles at State IOTL. Maybe he'd be acceptable as an Ike successor. Nixon...at age 43, the youngest elected president. If he'd gotten the backing of Dulles and a few of the more conservative members of the administration, he might just have pulled it off with perhaps Herter or possibly a young undersecretary named Nelson Rockefeller. I believe by then Harold Stassen was well on his way to becoming something of a joke, so I doubt he'd have been in the mix.

You can bet that Adlai Stevenson would have gotten the Dems' nod. His VP choice might be different, though: possibly John F. Kennedy might have gotten the nomination as opposed to Estes Kefauver. (There's an interesting prospect: two zillionaires running for the vice presidency.)

I read that if Ike didn't run Alf Landon would have thrown the Kansas delegation behind Nixon, even getting then Kansas Governor Fred Hall as his running mate. Might not have gone anywhere, but it is interesting to consider.
 
President Nixon ( 1957-1965) might escalate the Vietnam War.

What Viet Nam war?

All right, I'll grant that cold warrior Nixon wouldn't tolerate any communist incursion (see Foster Dulles' creation of SEATO) but who's to say he'd do what Kennedy and Johnson did? If anything, he's likely to ensure that the Soviets didn't try anything funny in Cuba if indeed they made inroads. I wouldn't be surprised if Nixon, a total gamesman when it came to foreign relations, found a way to support Castro just to screw over the Soviets.
 
Democrats in Ike's second term criticized him for being "weak" on defense. It was probably just younger fellows criticizing an older fellow. Plus, Ike had a heart attack and I think several strokes from which he largely recovered.

And the whole dynamic that you're a lame duck most of your second term was probably not well understood.

So, with a middle-of-a-roader in office from '57 till '61 maybe things go better. There is a lot of luck and it's hard to tell for sure.

Ike was criticized for being weak on defense because cutting the defense budget was a pillar of his policy for his entire administration.
 
Ike was criticized for being weak on defense because cutting the defense budget was a pillar of his policy for his entire administration.

That was because he didn't trust, with good reason, the Military-Industrial Complex. Would Nixon have continued those policies had he been elected in '56 or even '60? Hard to say.
 
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