President MacArthur?

What POD/degree of ASB involvement would be required to have MacArthur get elected President?

Taft wins 1952 nomination, follows through on promise to name Mac his V.P. with responsibility for foreign affairs.

Taft-MacArthur ticket wins.

Taft dies (as in OTL) and Mac, as president, acts more like the slightly leftist ruler of Japan that he performed as, than the wildly rightist ideologue that the rightists believed he was.

Popular, head of a stable America assertive (but not overassertive) in foreign affairs and well-off domestically, President MacArthur is re-elected in 1956.
 
Taft wins 1952 nomination, follows through on promise to name Mac his V.P. with responsibility for foreign affairs.

Taft-MacArthur ticket wins.

Taft dies (as in OTL) and Mac, as president, acts more like the slightly leftist ruler of Japan that he performed as, than the wildly rightist ideologue that the rightists believed he was.

Popular, head of a stable America assertive (but not overassertive) in foreign affairs and well-off domestically, President MacArthur is re-elected in 1956.

The POD for this would be Mac not destroying his reputation in 1950/51?
 
MacArthur enjoyed periods of tremendous popularity amongst the American people only because he told them what they wanted to hear. During the darkest days of the first six months of WWII he boosted morale on the home front with his bold boastings and vainglorious self promotions. This popularity kept his head out of a figurative noose with FDR and forced the President to keep him in the limelight. The total debacle in the Philippines should have resulted in a Court Marshal; MacArthur's failure there was at least on the scale of Kimmel and Short's in Hawaii, and arguably greater.

While a certainly brave and capable officer at the unit level, at the strategic command level I believe him to be only marginally competent. He surrounded himself with incredibly loyal sycophants and apologists who, along with the active participation of Mac himself, covered up and glossed over his numerous mistakes and spun his image to the point of making him a military genius of the first order.

It was this image, cultivated at a time and in an environment which brooded little questioning, which would have potentially propelled him into a position as a running mate to Taft. However, 1952 was an entirely different time from 1942, Vice President is an entirely different position from Supreme Commander of Allied Powers, and politics is an order of magnitude different from the Army (ask Ike). He would have been subject to withering scutiny from the press and I believe that in short order his true image of a marginally competent, vainglorious publicity hound would have quickly surfaced.

I completely agree with the above post in that this TL is utterly dependent on him somehow being able to sidestep his sacking by President Truman in April, 1951. However, given his personality, I believe this to be virtual certainty.

Dave

www.pigboats.com
 

The Sandman

Banned
Mac, as president, acts more like the slightly leftist ruler of Japan that he performed as, than the wildly rightist ideologue that the rightists believed he was.

I assume you mean the period before the reverse course? Because after about 1948, the entire US policy in Japan rather decisively shifted to the right due to fears of Communism.
 

Xen

Banned
What if Red China decides not to get involved in the Korean War for one reason or another? North Korea is dissolved, and a united Korean Republic, friendly to the US emerges as a local power. MacArthur, the attention whore he is, takes the credit and runs for President in 1952 or is elected Veep that year instead.
 
Given that Taft made this decision after 1951 . . .

Really, after MacArthur had been put though the wringer by the extraordinary senate hearings in 1951?

So Taft went into a tough convention (which he narrowly lost) willing to resurrect MacArthur's career?
 

Xen

Banned
MacArthur was then and is now seen favorably by a majority of average Americans. I think he was crazier than a shit house rat, and only slightly more sane than General Patton.
 
The wikipedia-versity of life says:

In the 1952 Republican presidential nomination contest, MacArthur was not a candidate and instead endorsed Senator Robert Taft of Ohio;[41] rumors were rife Taft offered the vice presidential nomination to MacArthur. Taft did persuade MacArthur to be the keynote speaker at the 1952 Republican National Convention. The speech was not well received

If this is correct then the fix wasn't in.

So, MacArthur, who receives a handful of delegates at the '44 and '48 conventions (though he only organised long distance for the second), crashes and burns over his insubordinance to the President in '50, has all his fellow high profile general officers abandon him by '51, is a sound choice for VP to a guy who, if he'd secured the nom in 1952 would have done so with the narrowest of margins?

I doubt it.
 
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