President MacArthur's Cabinet.

Hi all. Working on a TL, and among other things, Douglas MacArthur becomes president (elected as Robert Taft's running mate in 1952, and ascends upon Taft's death in 1953).

I am wondering who MacArthur picks for his cabinet. Of course, he is saddled at first with Taft's choices... Who would they be? And then, who would MacArthur replace?

Would JF Dulles have been Taft's choice as Sec State, or would he have gone with an isolationist (Hamilton Fish, Howard Buffett, John Bricker)? Who would have been Sec Def? Attorney General? Would MacArthur's cabinet and policies look that different from Eisenhower's?

Any thoughts and opinions would be greatly appreciated.
 
MacArthur's no isolationist - he's an advocate of rollback. Dulles definitely stays in State. I wonder if James Burnham gets a role in a MacArthur Cabinet? Ned Almond probably serves in a MacArthur cabinet; he was Dugout Doug's chief of staff in Korea, and the two got along very well. As might come as no surprise, he was an ass - though he had the talent of being a racist ass who generally disparaged the abilities of the black troops under his command.

Incidentally, if you're wondering why MacArthur is worthy of being called an ass - beyond his imperial disdain for properly collecting and acting on intelligence, both in the Philippines and in Korea, and his habit of trying to ensure that only MacArthur was credited in press briefings - there's the fact that he actively set policy on the ground in Korea, rather than implementing Truman's policies. What got him fired was that MacArthur sent an ultimatum to the Communist Chinese, strongly suggesting that the UN would escalate the conflict if they did not accept, preempting Truman from offering a more proper cease-fire. Oh, and he undermined the authority of the President by writing to the Republican Speaker of the House to criticize Truman's policy in Korea.
 
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Wolfpaw

Banned
Since Taft is such an important figure in a lot of the research I did/have been doing for Tail-Gunner, I've drawn up a Cabinet for him. Mac's likely to keep most of them given how closely he and Taft's policies lined up.

· State: John Foster Dulles
· Treasury: George M. Humphrey
· Defense: ?
· Justice: C. William O'Neill
· Postmaster General: Guy Gabrielson
· Interior: Douglas McKay
· Agriculture: Ezra T. Benson
· Commerce: Sinclair Weeks
· Labor: Fred A. Hartley, Jr.
 
Holy crap, President MacArthur. The only thing that might save the world is, Russia doesn't have enough nuclear weapons to counterstrike to great enough effect to start nuclear winter... :eek:
 
MacArthur would trust Ned Almond more - he worked with Almond, but not LeMay - but I'm not sure he'd put Almond in Defense. National Security Advisor seems like a better fit for Almond.

LeMay could go to DoD, but I feel like it would be more likely for him to be bumped up, steadily, towards Chief of Staff of the USAF (and maybe even Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff).
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Neither LeMay nor Almond are eligible for SecDef as they have not been out of the military for ten years.
 

bguy

Donor
Since Taft is such an important figure in a lot of the research I did/have been doing for Tail-Gunner, I've drawn up a Cabinet for him. Mac's likely to keep most of them given how closely he and Taft's policies lined up.

· State: John Foster Dulles
· Treasury: George M. Humphrey
· Defense: ?
· Justice: C. William O'Neill
· Postmaster General: Guy Gabrielson
· Interior: Douglas McKay
· Agriculture: Ezra T. Benson
· Commerce: Sinclair Weeks
· Labor: Fred A. Hartley, Jr.

I agree Dulles is the most likely Secretary of State. Taft liked him and appointing Dulles will be a good peace offering to the Eastern Republicans.

Taft really wanted Harry Byrd as Secretary of Treasury as he wanted a fiscally conservative Southern Democrat in the Cabinet.

OTL Taft recommended to Ike a Chrysler Corporation Executive named B. E. Hutchinson for Secretary of Defense. I don't know a whole lot about Hutchinson but from the Papers of Robert Taft it looks like Hutchinson corresponded pretty frequently with Taft about Communist subversion within the government. Taft also recommended Lewis Strauss for Under Secretary of Defense, so Strauss could also work as SECDEF.

Ezra Taft Benson probably isn't real likely at Agriculture since he is distantly related to Taft and it would look like nepotism. OTL Taft recommended Kansas Governor Frank Carlson for the post.

Douglas McKay is certainly possible at Interior though OTL Taft recommended Vernon Romney for the job. Romney was Taft's Mountain States Coordinator in his '52 campaign.

Taft's OTL Labor recommendations were kind of odd since he suggested 2 very different men to Ike: John Danaher, a former Connecticut Senator who was a moderate, and Clarence Manion, the Dean of Notre Dame Law School, who was very, very conservative. If Manion doesn't end up in the Cabinet he is a likely Supreme Court appointment at some point.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Taft really wanted Harry Byrd as Secretary of Treasury as he wanted a fiscally conservative Southern Democrat in the Cabinet.
Now that's an interesting thought. What would fiscal policy under a Taft administration be like? IOTL, Eisenhower kept and in some ways expanded most New Deal programs. A Taft policy would be quite different, and I expect we'd see some significant rollback.
 
Wow, thanks everyone. Interesting that foreign policy is not likely to change as much as it could, given Dulles' involvement. I've read before that he was likely to be tapped for any Republican president in the 1950s... Wasn't sure whether or not that would include Mac.

Re domestic policies, agree that Taft would attempt to roll back... and would have a sympathetic Congress (in theory), at least for the first two years. However, unless butterflies, Taft dies in 1953, and what were MacArthur's domestic positions? I'm wondering about things like the Highway Act, and of course Civil Rights. Does Mac recognize the need for the former? Is he remotely progressive enough to push for the latter? (Keeping in mind that it was REpublicans as conservative as Wm. Knowland who were pushing for it in the 50s).

Ned Almond is an interesting choice. I was also wondering about John Crommelin and Arthur Radford. Obviously, neither for SecDef either. (Although they bent that rule once, for Marshall, right?)
 
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