"Mr. Chairman and fellow Americans:
"I am profoundly moved by the trust you have placed in me. I deeply feel the responsibility which goes with your nomination for President of the United States at this grave hour of our nation's history.
"That I have not sought this responsibility, all of you know. I told the people of my State, two years ago, that it was my intention to devote my full term as governor exclusively to their service. You have decided other-wise. In accordance with the principles of our republican form of government you have laid upon me the highest duty to which an American can be called. No one has a right to refuse such a call. With the help of God, I will try to be worthy of the trust. I accept the nomination.
"I am happy and proud to be associated with my good friend from the State of Ohio, John W. Bricker. For many months, John Bricker has gone from state to state telling the people of the issues, of the great need for better government, for the sound principles of government, and the leader-ship which will come to it with a Republican victory this year. Never before have I seen such good sportsmenship as that displayed by John Bricker here this morning and I am proud to be associated with him.
"I come to this great task a free man. I have made no pledges, promises or commitments, expressed or implied, to any man or woman. I shall make none, except to the American people.
"These pledges I do make:
"To men and women of the Republican Party everywhere I pledge my utmost efforts in the months ahead. In return, I ask for your support. Without it, I cannot discharge the heavy obligation you lay upon me.
"To Americans of every party I pledge that on Jan. 20 next year our government will again have a cabinet of the ablest men and women to be found in America. The members of that Cabinet will expect and will receive full delegation of the powers of their office. They will be capable of administering those powers. They will each be experienced in the task to be done and young enough to do it. This election will bring an end to one-man government in America.
"To Americans of every party I pledge a campaign dedicated to one and above all others—that this nation under God may continue in the years ahead a free nation of free men.
"At this moment on battlegrounds around the world Americans are dying for the freedom of our country. Their comrades are pressing on in the face of hardship and suffering. They are pressing on for total victory and for the liberties of all of us.
"Everything we say or do today and in the future must be devoted to the single purpose of that victory. Then, when victory is won, we must devote ourselves with equal unity of purpose to re-winning at home the freedom they have won at such desperate cost abroad.
"To our allies let us send from this convention one message from our hearts: The American people are united with you to the limit of our resources and manpower, devoted to the single task of victory and the establishment of a firm and lasting peace.
"To every member of the axis powers, let us send this message from this Convention: By this political campaign, which you are unable to understand, our will to victory will be strengthened, and with every day you further delay surrender the consequences to you will be more severe.
"That we shall win this war none of us and few of our enemies can now have any doubt. But how we win this war is of major importance for the years ahead. We won the last war but it didn't stay won. This time we must also win the purposes for which we are fighting. Germany must never again nourish the delusion that she could have won. We must carry to Japan a defeat so crushing and complete that every last man among them knows that he has been beaten. We must not merely defeat the armies and the navies of our enemies. We must defeat, once and for all, their will to make war. In their hearts as well as with their lips, let them be taught to say: "Never again."
"The military conduct of the war is outside this campaign. It is and must remain completely out of politics. General Marshall and Admiral King are doing a superb job. Thank God for both of them. Let me make it crystal clear that a change of administration next January cannot and will not involve any change in the military conduct of the war. If there is not now any civilian interference with the military and naval commands, a change in administration will not alter this status. If there is civilian interference, the new administration will put a stop to it forthwith.
"But the war is being fought on the home front as well as abroad, while all of us are deeply proud of the military conduct of the war, can we honestly say that the home front could not bear improvement? The present administration in Washington has been in office for more than 11 years. Today, it is at war with Congress, and at war with itself. Squabbles between Cabinet members, feuds between rival bureaucrats and bitterness between the President and his own party members, in and out of Congress, have become the order of the day. In the vital matters of taxation, price control, rationing, labor relations, manpower, we have become familiar with the spectacle of wrangling, bungling and confusion.
"Does anyone suggest that the present national administration is giving either efficient or competent government? We have not heard that claim made, even by its most fanatical supporters. No, all they tell us is that in its young days it did some good things. That we freely grant. But now it has grown old in office. It has become tired and quarrelsome. It seems that the great men who founded this nation really did know what they were talking about when they said that three terms were too many.
"When we have won the war, we shall still have to win the peace. We are agreed, all of us, that America will participate with other sovereign nations in a cooperative effort to prevent future wars. Let us face up boldly to the magnitude of that task. We shall not make secure the peace of the world by mere words. We can't do it simply by drawing up a fine-sounding treaty. It can not be the work of any one man or of a little group of rulers who meet together in private conferences. The structure of peace must be built. It must be the work of many men. We must have as our representatives in this task the ablest men and women America can pro-duce, and the structure they join in building must rest upon the solid rock of a united American public opinion.
"I am not one of those who despair of achieving that end. I am utterly confident we can do it. For years, we have had men in Washington who were notoriously weak in certain branches of arithmetic but they specialized in division. They've been playing up minor differences of opinion among our people until the people of other countries might have thought that America was cleft in two.
"But all the while there was a larger, growing area of agreement. Recently the overwhelming majesty of that broad area of agreement has become obvious. The Republican Party can take pride in helping to define it and broaden it. There are only a few, a very few, who really believe that America should try to remain aloof from the world. There are only a relatively few who believe it would be practical for America or her allies to renounce all sovereignty and join a Super-state. I certainly would not deny these two extremes the right to their opinions; but I stand firmly with the overwhelming majority of my fellow citizens in that great wide area of agreement. That agreement was clearly expressed by the Republican Mackinac Declaration and was adopted in the foreign policy plank of this Convention.
"No organization for peace will last if it is slipped through by stealth or trickery or the momentary hypnotism of high-sounding phrases. We shall have to work and pray and be patient and make sacrifices to achieve a really lasting peace. That is not too much to ask in the name of those who have died for the future of our country. This is no task for men who specialize in dividing our people. It is no task to be entrusted to stubborn men, grown old and tired and quarrelsome in office. We learned that in 1919.
"The building of the peace is more than a matter of international co-operation. God has endowed America with such blessings as to fit her for a great role in the world. We can only play that role if we are strong and healthy and vigorous as nature has equipped us to be. It would be a tragedy if after this war Americans returned from our armed forces and failed to find the freedom and opportunity for which they fought. This must be a land where every man and woman has a fair chance to work and get ahead. Never again must free Americans face the spectre of long-continued, mass unemployment. We Republicans are agreed that full employment shall be a first objective of national policy. And by full employment I mean a real chance for every man and woman to earn a decent living.
"What hope does the present administration offer here? In 1940, the year before this country entered the war, there were still 10,000,000 unemployed. After seven years of unequalled power and unparalleled spending, the New Deal had failed utterly to solve that problem. It never solved that problem. It was left to be solved by war. Do we have to have a war to get jobs?
"What are we now offered? Only the dreary prospect of a continued war economy after the war, with interference piled on interference and petty tyrannies rivaling the very regimentation against which we are now at war.
"The present administration has never solved this fundamental problem of jobs and opportunity. It can never solve this problem. It has never even understood what makes a job. It has never been for full production. It has lived in chattering fear of abundance. It has specialized in curtailment and restriction. It has been consistently hostile to and abusive of American business and American industry, although it is in business and industry that most of us make our living.
"In all the record of the past 11 years is there anything that suggests the present administration can bring about high-level employment after this war? Is there any reason to believe that those who have so signally failed in the past can succeed in the future? The problem of jobs will not be easily solved; but it will never be solved at all unless we get a new, progressive administration in Washington—and that means a Republican administration.
"For one hundred and fifty years America was the hope of the world. Here on this great broad continent we had brought into being something for which men had longed throughout all history. Here, all men were held to be free and equal. Here, government derived its just powers from the consent of the governed. Here men believed passionately in freedom, independence—the God-given right of the individual to be his own master. Yet, with all of this freedom—I insist—because of this freedom—ours was a land of plenty. In a fashion unequalled anywhere else in the world, America grew and strengthened; our standard of living became the envy of the world. In all lands, men and women looked toward America as the pattern of what they, themselves, desired. And because we were what we were, good will flowed toward us from all corners of the earth. An American was welcomed everywhere and looked upon with admiration and regard.
"At times, we had our troubles; made our share of mistakes; but we faltered only to go forward with renewed vigor. It remained for the past eleven years, under the present national administration, for continuing unemployment to be accepted with resignation as the inevitable condition of a nation past its prime.
"It is the New Deal which tells us that America has lost its capacity to grow. We shall never build a better world by listening to those counsels of defeat. Is America old and worn out as the New Dealers tell us? Look to the beaches of Normandy for the answer. Look to the reaches of the wide Pacific—to the corners of the world where American men are fighting. Look to the marvels of production in the war plants in our own cities and towns. I say to you: our country is just fighting its way through to new horizons. The future of America has no limit.
"True, we now pass through dark and troubled times, scarcely a home escapes the touch of dread anxiety and grief; yet in this hour the American spirit rises, faith returns—faith in our God, faith in our fellowman, faith in the land our fathers died to win, faith in the future, limitless and bright, of this, our country.
"In the name of that faith we shall carry our cause in the coming months to the American people."
-Thomas Dewey's Acceptance Speech, June 28, 1944*
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"I have already indicated to you why I accept the nomination that you have offered me—in spite of my desire to retire to the quiet of private life.
"You in this Convention are aware of what I have sought to gain for the Nation, and you have asked me to continue.
"It seems wholly likely that within the next four years our armed forces, and those of our allies, will have gained a complete victory over Germany and Japan, sooner or later, and that the world once more will be at peace—under a system, we hope that will prevent a new world war. In any event, whenever that time comes, new hands will then have full opportunity to realize the ideals which we seek.
"In the last three elections the people of the United States have transcended party affiliation. Not only Democrats but also forward-looking Republicans and millions of independent voters have turned to progressive leadership- a leadership which has sought consistently—and with fair success—to advance the lot of the average American citizen who had been so forgotten during the period after the last war. I am confident that they will continue to look to that same kind of liberalism to build our safer economy for the future.
"I am sure that you will understand me when I say that my decision, expressed to you formally tonight, is based solely on a sense of obligation to serve if called upon to do so by the people of the United States.
"I shall not campaign, in the usual sense, for the office. In these days of tragic sorrow, I do not consider it fitting. And besides, in these days of global warfare, I shall not be able to find the time. I shall, however, feel free to report to the people the facts about matters of concern to them and especially to correct any misrepresentations.
"During the past few days I have been coming across the whole width of the continent, to a naval base where I am speaking to you now from the train.
"As I was crossing the fertile lands and the wide plains and the Great Divide, I could not fail to think of the new relationship between the people of our farms and cities and villages and the people of the rest of the world overseas- on the islands of the Pacific, in the Far East, and in the other Americas, in Britain and Normandy and Germany and Poland and Russia itself.
"For Oklahoma and California, for example, are becoming a part of all these distant spots as greatly as Massachusetts and Virginia were a part of the European picture in 1778. Today, Oklahoma and California are being defended in Normandy and on Saipan; and they must be defended there—for what happens in Normandy and Saipan vitally affects the security and well-being of every human being in Oklahoma and California.
"Mankind changes the scope and the breadth of its thought and vision slowly indeed. In the days of the Roman Empire eyes were focused on Europe and the Mediterranean area. The civilization in the Far East was barely known. The American continents were unheard of.
"And even after the people of Europe began to spill over to other continents, the people of North America in Colonial days knew only their Atlantic seaboard and a tiny portion of the other Americas, and they turned mostly for trade and international relationship to Europe. Africa, at that time, was considered only as the provider of human chattels. Asia was essentially unknown to our ancestors.
"During the nineteenth century, during that era of development and expansion on this continent, we felt a natural isolation—geographic, economic, and political—an isolation from the vast world which lay overseas.
"Not until this generation—roughly this century—have people here and elsewhere been compelled more and more to widen the orbit of their vision to include every part of the world. Yes, it has been a wrench perhaps—but a very necessary one.
"It is good that we are all getting that broader vision. For we shall need it after the war. The isolationists and the ostriches who plagued our thinking before Pearl Harbor are becoming slowly extinct. The American people now know that all Nations of the world- large and small- will have to play their appropriate part in keeping the peace by force, and in deciding peacefully the disputes which might lead to war.
"We all know how truly the world has become one- that if Germany and Japan, for example, were to come through this war with their philosophies established and their armies intact, our own grandchildren would again have to be fighting in their day for their liberties and their lives.
"Some day soon we shall all be able to fly to any other part of the world within twenty-four hours. Oceans will no longer figure as greatly in our physical defense as they have in the past. For our own safety and for our own economic good, therefore -if for no other reason- we must take a leading part in the maintenance of peace and in the increase of trade among all the Nations of the world.
"And that is why your Government for many, many months has been laying plans, and studying the problems of the near future—preparing itself to act so that the people of the United States may not suffer hardships after the war, may continue constantly to improve their standards, and may join with other Nations in doing the same. There are even now working toward that end, the best staff in all our history- men and women of all parties and from every part of the Nation. I realize that planning is a word which in some places brings forth sneers. But, for example, before our entry into the war it was planning. which made possible the magnificent organization and equipment of the Army and Navy of the United States which are fighting for us and for our civilization today.
"Improvement through planning is the order of the day. Even m military affairs, things do not stand still. An army or a navy trained and equipped and fighting according to a 1932 model would not have been a safe reliance in 1944. And if we are to progress in our civilization, improvement is necessary in other fields—in the physical things that are a part of our daily lives, and also in the concepts of social justice at home and abroad.
"I am now at this naval base in the performance of my duties under the Constitution. The war waits for no elections. Decisions must be made- plans must be laid—strategy must be carried out. They do not concern merely a party or a group. They will affect the daily lives of Americans for generations to come.
"What is the job before us in 1944? First, to win the war—to win the war fast, to win it overpoweringly. Second, to form worldwide international organizations, and to arrange to use the armed forces of the sovereign Nations of the world to make another war impossible within the foreseeable future. And third, to build an economy for our returning veterans and for all Americans—which will provide employment and provide decent standards of living.
"The people of the United States will decide this fall whether they wish to turn over this 1944 job—this worldwide job—to inexperienced or immature hands, to those who opposed lend-lease and international cooperation against the forces of aggression and tyranny, until they could read the polls of popular sentiment; or whether they wish to leave it to those who saw the danger from abroad, who met it head-on, and who now have seized the offensive and carried the war to its present stages of success—to those who, by international conferences and united actions have begun to build that kind of common understanding and cooperative experience which will be so necessary in the world to come.
"They will also decide, these people of ours, whether they will entrust the task of postwar reconversion to those who offered the veterans of the last war breadlines and apple-selling and who finally led the American people down to the abyss of 1932; or whether they will leave it to those who rescued American business, agriculture, industry, finance, and labor in 1933, and who have already planned and put through much legislation to help our veterans resume their normal occupations in a well-ordered reconversion process.
"They will not decide these questions by reading glowing words or platform pledges—the mouthings of those who are willing to promise anything and everything—contradictions, inconsistencies, impossibilities—anything which might snare a few votes here and a few votes there.
"They will decide on the record—the record written on the seas, on the land, and in the skies.
"They will decide on the record of our domestic accomplishments in recovery and reform since March 4, 1933.
"And they will decide on the record of our war production and food production- unparalleled in all history, in spite of the doubts and sneers of those in high places who said it cannot be done.
"They will decide on the record of the International Food Conference, of U.N.R.R.A., of the International Labor Conference, of the International Education Conference, of the International Monetary Conference.
"And they will decide on the record written in the Atlantic Charter, at Casablanca, at Cairo, at Moscow, and at Teheran.
"We have made mistakes. Who has not?
"Things will not always be perfect. Are they ever perfect, in human affairs?
"But the objective at home and abroad has always been clear before us. Constantly, we have made steady, sure progress toward that objective. The record is plain and unmistakable as to that—a record for everyone to read.
"The greatest wartime President in our history, after a wartime election which he called the "most reliable indication of public purpose in this country," set the goal for the United States, a goal in terms as applicable today as they were in 1865—-terms which the human mind cannot improve:
"'. . . .with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the Nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all Nations.'"
-Franklin Roosevelt's Acceptance Speech, July 20, 1944*
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[1]: Same as in OTL
[2]: Same as in OTL
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