Stassen is not the best running mate in any election other than the 1940 election.Probably Harold Stassen
Governor Earl Warren of California would be a good call, similar to Richard Nixon.During the first ballot at the 1952 Republican convention, Taft sent a message to California Senator William Knowland requesting a meeting after the first ballot was over to see if they could "work something out", so that certainly sounds like Taft was going to offer the vice presidency to Knowland. Taft's friends also said that Taft was going to go with either Knowland or Everett Dirksen and of those two Knowland does make more sense. He's a young, World War 2 veteran from an important swing state that the Republicans lost in 1948. He supported NATO (which will help reassure Republican internationalists about a Taft candidacy.) He's a fiscal conservative but is good friends with one of the leading Republican liberals, Earl Warren, (even serving as Warren's campaign manager at the convention that year.) And Knowland provides geographical balance to the ticket (which Dirksen does not).
Being from Ohio, Taft will be looking for a running mate to assist his election.
Stassen is not the best running mate in any election other than the 1940 election.
Governor Earl Warren of California would be a good call, similar to Richard Nixon.
Probably Harold Stassen
Since this is the second thread in the last month or so to make the 1952 election cycle rockin' good fun by the displacement of Eisenhower, how do the Democrats react? The Republican National Convention concluded roughly ten days before the Democrats met. Do we think there are significant knock-on effects? Does Harriman get a boost or is he still seen as too elite and too liberal to go taking risks with the Solid South base? And on that front, does the nominee decide to go with someone like Kefauver because Tennessee was already one of the first swing states in the region (and to put a little youth on the ticket opposite Knowland) or like Fulbright who was already building foreign-policy experience if it is indeed Stevenson rather than the well-traveled Harriman?
Could someone launch an effort to draft George Marshall -- he was a Georgian, after all (not as the presidential candidate but as VP, a sort of counter-Ike.) And what is Tricky Dick up to as his vice presidential star fades? Does he decide then and there that he's going to become the reasonable face of HUAC and displace McCarthy, doing his career-long head-fake towards moderation while pursuing his own relentless agenda? Does he decide, inbetween senatorial cycles, to throw his hat in and run for Governor of California in '58 to build a power base for the 1960 convention if Taft wins? And if Taft doesn't win does he move even faster on something like a HUAC coup to keep himself on the front pages when it comes time to defeat the Democrat in '56? Questions, questions...
I assume Eisenhower said no to Dirksen due to his speech which is a shame. Dirksen was a good man.In OTL, Taft recommended Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois to serve as Eisenhower's vice presidential nominee, however, Eisenhower rejected his recommendation. Like Eisenhower, it would probably be in Taft's best interest to select a vice president outside of the Midwest. Here are some potential candidates that hailed from the west (which the Republican Party looked to swing away from the Democrats):
- Senator William F. Knowland of California
- Governor Daniel Thornton of Colorado
- Governor Arthur B. Langlie of Washington
And without him we probably wouldn't get the Civil Rights Act.I assume Eisenhower said no to Dirksen due to his speech which is a shame. Dirksen was a good man.
As for Nixon's prospects for 1960, I guess that will depend on who President Knowland picks for his veep in the 1956 election? Any ideas on that score? I would think Knowland would need an eastern liberal for geographical and ideological balance. Maybe Christian Herter?
I would think either Herter or one of the Lodge brothers (Henry Cabot of course, or John who was I think the younger of them and governor of Connecticut in the early Fifties), or if he went the route of someone like Nixon or my suggestion of LBJ to get a fresh face on the ticket, Prescott Bush who was still a freshman senator in '56 (and at that point would satisfy the party liberals because of Bush's opposition to Joe McCarthy.)
The bigger question though may be Knowland himself. Eisenhower had been one of the master officers of the greatest (in the sense of measurement) war in the history of mankind, and that colored his approach to things like Operation Vulture (the planned bombing campaign in support of Dien Bien Phu that was to include battlefield nukes), the Suez Crisis, how much to be seen publicly backing the Hungarian revolt, whether to "unleash Chiang [Kai-Shek]" with regard to China and things like the Quemoy/Matsu crisis, etc. Knowland on the other hand was a fire-eating anticommunist without the experience of ordering a million men into armed struggle knowing tens of thousands of them would die. We might have a rather more "exciting" 1950s particularly with him busy trying to prove he was a worthy successor to the first Republican to claim the White House since Hoover. "Living up to the job" was enough to push Johnson, a man of titanic ego and real power in Washington even before he was Kennedy's VP and successor, into Vietnam full force even as he agonized about whether it was a bad idea. How would Knowland do faced with the crises of the Fifties?