People who could have been good US presidents.

Or a competitor -- I can see both of their egos being too big for the party.
Going to argue that: TR was about 16 years older, and easily in a position to be a mentor. Further, it seems unlikely that when Churchill would have been rising to prominence, TR would have been alive. I could see a TR administration wherein he was the GOP nominee in 1912 / taking office in 1913 that had Churchill as the Secretary of the Navy. That would be a springboard for higher offices in the 1930s (or even the late 1920s).
 
OK, as I did back on Jan. 24, let me go into more detail re one of my picks, Alfred E Smith:

Governor of NY 1919-1921 & 1923-1929, Smith got bills passed reducing working hours for the
state's workers, improving working conditions, increased teacher salaries(& established equal pay for
women teachers in the bargain), set up housing programs & rent laws, secured bond issues for state hospitals,mental hospitals, & prisons so these facilities could be improved, strengthened NY's labor codes, & abolished censorship of motion pictures. He also knew how government actually worked. He would often sit down & read himself- instead of delegating the chore to staff- legislative bills. Thus he
knew what they were trying to do(or put over).("He just eats documents up" gasped one observer. "Mes-
sages and reports are his meat. Figures talk to him.") But Smith also knew that for government to work,
it had to be efficient. Thus, confronted when he took office by a state government composed of a
tangle of 187 different agencies, he cut them down to 18. He made sure to hire competent people
(when an engineer to whom he'd offered the job of heading NY's Department of Roads protested he
knew nothing about politics Smith replied "That's one of the reasons I want to appoint you. We have had
a good many political superintendents of highways, and now we want one who knows how to build roads.")* Oh, did I mention Smith did all this while CUTTING state taxes?

Furthermore, Smith was honest. Though he came up through the ranks of one of America's most not-
orious political machines- NY's Tammany Hall- not even Smith's political enemies ever questioned his
personal integrity(so fierce a Tammany foe as NYC's famed reform mayor Fiorello La Guardia once
conceded that Smith was the only figure in Tammany whose bank account could withstand examin-
ation).

Finally, Smith had a nice wit. Running against an incumbent Republican who claimed he had personally
saved NY fourteen million dollars, Smith merely stated "All I want to know is- where is it, and who's
got it?" Another time, Smith was one day strolling through a law school library when he noticed one
student huddled over his books. "There," Smith smiled "is a young man studying how to take a bribe,
and call it a fee."**

*- Observer on Smith, & Smith to engineer quoted in Irving Stone, THEY ALSO RAN, pp. 336 & 334 of
the 1964, paperback edition.
**- La Guardia on Smith, "All I want to know--" & "There is a young man--" quoted in Robert A Caro
THE POWER BROKER: ROBERT MOSES AND THE FALL OF NEW YORK, pp. 354, 139, & 713 of the 1975,
Vintage Paperback edition. Moses was an important Smith aide who would go on to have a long career
in NY city & state government as a builder- for better or worse- of highways & many other public works.
 
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OK, as I did back on Jan. 24, let me go into more detail re one of my picks, Alfred E Smith:
I enormously enjoyed this post - a sensible well researched argument in favour of someone who was obviously a strong candidate if he reached the Oval Office, whether by means of election or the Vice Presidency to be a good (in the sense competent and effective) President.
Some of the lists posted give no idea of why or how the individual concerned would have made a good President and some obviously conflate "I share his views on..." with "He would have made a good President". For example:-
Ralph Nader wouldn't have made a good President -too much of a maverick and not a team player. And not good at being conciliatory;
I have already explained above why I don't think Al Gore would have been a good President; and
Henry Agard Wallace was a decent man with progressive political views but he wouldn't even have had the support of a majority of Democrats let alone any bipartisan support for Republicans. He wanted to do what was morally right, not what was realistically achievable at the time. He would have been a weak and unpopular President with a very poor success rate in getting anything through Congress and would have damaged rather than assisted the causes he espoused.

Your post by contrast makes the sort of solid credible case that can be taken seriously. Not necessarily agreed with (though you have actually convinced me on this one) but obviously not a name picked out of a hat either!
 

CoDurham

Banned
  • Richard Nixon in 1960
  • Henry Cabot Lodge
  • Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.
  • Thomas Dewey
  • George Romney
  • Charles Hughes
  • Leonard Wood
  • Jack Pershing
 
Bernie Sanders
Ralph Nader
Dennis Kucinich
Howard Dean (only in 2004)
Al Gore
George McGovern
Eugene McCarthy
Hubert Humphrey
Nelson Rockefeller
Mo Udall
George Romney
Robert Kennedy
Earl Warren
Charles Evans Hughes
James M. Cox
Al Smith
Robert La Follette
William Jennings Bryan
John C. Frémont
Henry Clay
William Henry Harrison
Ross Perot
 

Md139115

Banned
:eek:

I... am utterly flabbergasted.

I just read through all 132 posts, and not once did I see the man that the Founding Fathers themselves considered the most qualified man to be president, had he not been in poor health.


Therefore, I humbly submit for consideration the great thinker, inventor, statesman, diplomat, political theorist, scientist, postmaster, founder, civic father, governor, delegate, fellow of the Royal Society, holder of honorary doctorates from both Oxford and Cambridge, chess grandmaster, wine connoisseur, lecher, and above all else, printer... Dr. Benjamin Franklin.
 
:eek:

I... am utterly flabbergasted.

I just read through all 132 posts, and not once did I see the man that the Founding Fathers themselves considered the most qualified man to be president, had he not been in poor health.


Therefore, I humbly submit for consideration the great thinker, inventor, statesman, diplomat, political theorist, scientist, postmaster, founder, civic father, governor, delegate, fellow of the Royal Society, holder of honorary doctorates from both Oxford and Cambridge, chess grandmaster, wine connoisseur, lecher, and above all else, printer... Dr. Benjamin Franklin.
One problem: Franklin was 81 when the Constitutional Convention was in session. My guess is that he would have declined outright based on his age and health (as I understand it, gout can be an unholy terror, for openers). If by some machinations the American Revolution happened 25 years earlier, well, that would be a different story.
 
Apologies if I'm being necropholic here but I'd like to, as I did on Jan.24 & Feb. 4, go
into greater detail on one of my choices for
POTUS, Norman Thomas:

Six time Presidental candidate(every Presi-
dental election from 1928-1948)of the Soc-
alist party, Thomas gave up a clerical career
for politics. He advocated improving the con-
diction of poor sharecroppers in the South,
health insurance, civil rights, better wages
for labor, civil liberties for all, & against in-
terming Japanese Americans during WWII.
In his 80's, though nearly blind & crippled by
arthritis, he campaigned against the Vietnam
War. Abroad, though no friend of Comm-
unism, he pressed for a less bellicose Amer-
ican foreign policy. In other words, Thomas
sought a more just, equitable, & peaceful
America. Sounds like good POTUS material
to me! And though Thomas of course never
got even close to being elected, he never
lapsed into hatred or bitterness(he told anti-
Vietnam war students that "I don't like the
sight of young people burning the flag of my
country, the country I love"; instead of bur-
ning the flag they should wash it.*)

Of course I readily admit that a Socalist being elected POTUS is as ASB as you can
get, EXCEPT in the early 30's, & then only
if you can(somehow)butterfly away the New
Deal. Then Thomas could have gotten in. But
I doubt he'd have pulled in with him Socalist
majorities in Congress. His own biographer
admits that "The art of ruthless political management, of deals & horse trades, eluded Thomas. He was the inspirer, the
agitator, the idea man, the reformer---"*
So could Thomas have been an effective POTUS?

Well, a Thomas presidency would have meant a political earthquake which would,
I think, have scared many members of Congress into being- @ least for a while- cooperative(IOTL, the situation in early 1933 seemed so dire that members of Congress bent over backward to give FDR all he wanted; "The house is burning down" cried
Republican Congressman Bertrand H Snell
of New York "and the President of the United States says this is the way to put out the fire."**) Furthermore, Thomas possessed a warm, captivating, even charming person-
ality that I think would have gone down well even with those who disagreed with him &
have won @ least some over(Harry Truman
liked Thomas enough that after a meeting
with Thomas in 1951 he actually invited
Thomas to send him more suggestions of
things to do, even though he had just
received two additional letters from Thomas.*) At any rate, it'd been interesting to see Thomas try.

As I'm sure is evident by now Norman Thomas is a hero of mine, & I hope I've shown why. Let me close with an excerpt from one of the 20 books Thomas somehow
found time to write:

"At this moment if I looked from some dis-
tant planet on our struggles as one looks at a horse race, I should be inclined to bet on
disaster, the triumph of ignorance, hate, and
greed. But...through the ages, we men have
won for brotherhood victories that have kept
our race alive & moving forward, even when
the odds against it were great. Our obliter-
ation---is not inexorably decreed by fate---"*

I keep hoping- even praying- that Thomas is
right.

*- Thomas on washing the flag, "The art of
ruthless---", Truman & Thomas, & "At this
moment---", W.A. Swanberg, NORMAN
THOMAS: THE LAST IDEALIST(1976), pp.
486, 207, 344, & 494.

**- Quoted in Godfrey Hodgson, ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN, p. 55 of the 1981,
Touchstone paperbacks edition.
 
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Bob Dole
Al Gore
Michael Dukakis
John Kerry

Decent men that lost the election Al Gore made a fine VP and John Kerry an exellent secretary of state

Hillary Clinton, then we would live in a safer would
 
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