WI: Dewey was elected in '48

One of the most famous pictures possibly in us political history is Truman holding "Dewey defeats Truman" but in reality Truman won. What if that newspaper headline was true? How would that change our world?
This is a collab timeline so you are all welcome to post your updates! Have fun with the scenario!
 
For one forecast, see "What Dewey Will Do"--an analysis of the (assumed) new administration from the November 1948 Kiplinger's Magazine. https://books.google.com/books?id=3wUEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA10

Kiplinger's analysis: John Foster Dulles will be the key man on foreign policy. More aid to China (when this was written, few Americans realized how soon Chiang Kai-shek would be routed). No tax cuts, and maybe even some increases--Dewey believed in a balanced budget, and felt that defense spending needed to be increased. Taft-Hartley will be kept with some mild pro-labor revisions. Union leaders will have to deal with the Department of Labor instead of getting special treatment at the White House. Dewey will advocate anti-lynching and anti-poll-tax legislation but the article gives the impression he will not press for them very hard, lest they lead the South to oppose the rest of his program. The Communist Party will not be outlawed, but Communists will be removed from government. No "theorists" or "professors" for the Supreme Court, but seasoned practicing lawyers and judges. And so on...

I would add that in terms of personnel, it may look like a four-years-early version of the Eisenhower administration: Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Attorney General Herbert Brownell, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Brownell_Jr. Press Secretary James Hagerty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hagerty ...
 

CaliGuy

Banned
For one forecast, see "What Dewey Will Do"--an analysis of the (assumed) new administration from the November 1948 Kiplinger's Magazine. https://books.google.com/books?id=3wUEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA10

Kiplinger's analysis: John Foster Dulles will be the key man on foreign policy. More aid to China (when this was written, few Americans realized how soon Chiang Kai-shek would be routed). No tax cuts, and maybe even some increases--Dewey believed in a balanced budget, and felt that defense spending needed to be increased. Taft-Hartley will be kept with some mild pro-labor revisions. Union leaders will have to deal with the Department of Labor instead of getting special treatment at the White House. Dewey will advocate anti-lynching and anti-poll-tax legislation but the article gives the impression he will not press for them very hard, lest they lead the South to oppose the rest of his program. The Communist Party will not be outlawed, but Communists will be removed from government. No "theorists" or "professors" for the Supreme Court, but seasoned practicing lawyers and judges. And so on...

I would add that in terms of personnel, it may look like a four-years-early version of the Eisenhower administration: Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Attorney General Herbert Brownell, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Brownell_Jr. Press Secretary James Hagerty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hagerty ...
Question--how would having Earl Warren in the VP's office (and later, presumably in retirement) rather than on the U.S. Supreme Court have affected the U.S. Supreme Court? Indeed, would the U.S. Supreme Court have been as "activist" in the 1950s and beyond without Earl Warren's leadership and influence?
 
Could Dewey still help the KMT to hold a position on the mainland?

It's too late for that.

He could shift the blame for the fall of China on the Democrats, which means he would not have the same need to prove his communist credentials in Korea that Truman did, so no Korea War. In addition, North Korea thought they could invade the South after a few diplomatic flubs by the State Department. With a different Secretary of State, those diplomatic flubs could be invaded, thus no Korean War.
 
Could Dewey still help the KMT to hold a position on the mainland?

Let's bear in mind that Dewey will not be inaugurated until January 20, 1949. By that time IMO the outcome of the Chinese Civil War was decided. It is possible, as Jay Taylor argues, that "had Chiang pulled out of Manchuria even as late as the spring of 1948, he might have had enough military strength to hold the line at either the Yellow River or the Yangtze, albeit only with large-scale U.S. military and economic aid." http://www.thegeneralissimo.net/excerpts.htm But he didn't, and by the fall of 1948, well before Dewey would be inaugurated, Chiang was facing disaster in Manchuria. The decisive defeat for the KMT was the Liaoshen Campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liaoshen_Campaign which ended in November 1948 with the Communists in control of all of Manchuria and with the PLA enjoying numerical superiority for the first time in the war.

After that, events proceeded very rapidly;

"On November 29, 1948, the Chinese Communists' People's Liberation Army (PLA), fresh off a decisive victory in Manchuria, launched the Pingjin Campaign. They captured Zhangjiakou to the northwest on December 24 and Tianjin to the southeast on January 15, 1949. With the defeat of the Nationalists in the Huaihai Campaign further south, Fu Zuoyi and over 200,000 Nationalist defenders were surrounded in Beiping. After weeks of intensive negotiations, Fu agreed on January 22, 1949, to pull his troops out of the city for "reorganization by the PLA." His defection spared the city, its residents and its historical architecture from imminent destruction. On February 3, the PLA marched into Beiping."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Beijing

Given that Dewey would not be inaugurated until January 20, he obviously could not have prevented the fall of Beiping (Beijing).

"After the decisive Liaoshen, Huaihai and Pingjin campaigns, the CPC wiped out 144 regular and 29 non-regular KMT divisions, including 1.54 million veteran KMT troops. This effectively smashed the backbone of the KMT army. [42] On 21 April, Communist forces crossed the Yangtze River, and on 23 April they captured the KMT's capital, Nanjing.[27]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_War

I can't see three months of added US military aid preventing the PLA from crossing the Yangtze (and in the real world not all the aid is going to get there within three months anyway) and saving a disintegrating KMT. The only possible way to save south China for the KMT would IMO be a quick and massive deployment of US troops--something that nobody seriously advocated AFAIK. Even MacArthur said that anyone who favored sending US troops to fight on Chinese soil "should have his head examined." https://books.google.com/books?id=DUg2KGMQWHQC&pg=PA396
 

ben0628

Banned
It's too late for that.

He could shift the blame for the fall of China on the Democrats, which means he would not have the same need to prove his communist credentials in Korea that Truman did, so no Korea War. In addition, North Korea thought they could invade the South after a few diplomatic flubs by the State Department. With a different Secretary of State, those diplomatic flubs could be invaded, thus no Korean War.

Keep in mind South Korea technically started the Korean War. Rhee wanted a war with the North (so that the US intervenes and unifies the peninsula for him) and his troops had actually been skirmishing with NK troops before the NK invasion occured. War in Korea is still a possibility
 

bguy

Donor
I would add that in terms of personnel, it may look like a four-years-early version of the Eisenhower administration: Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Attorney General Herbert Brownell, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Brownell_Jr. Press Secretary James Hagerty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hagerty ...

I'm still skeptical about Brownell as AG. Dewey's Cabinet is already looking very New York heavy if he goes with Dulles at State, Robert Lovett at Defense, and Roger Strauss at Commerce. (And that's without even considering the possibility that he might put Elliott Bell at Treasury.) If he gives the AG slot to Brownell then we are looking at potentially 5 Cabinet members being from New York. That's nearly half the Cabinet and would play really poorly with the rest of the country. (Besides which Brownell is more useful to Dewey as a political operator than a lawyer, so he's probably going to end up as Dewey's Chief of Staff.)

CaliGuy said:
Question--how would having Earl Warren in the VP's office (and later, presumably in retirement) rather than on the U.S. Supreme Court have affected the U.S. Supreme Court? Indeed, would the U.S. Supreme Court have been as "activist" in the 1950s and beyond without Earl Warren's leadership and influence?

Well its been alleged that there was a deal between Dewey and J. Edgar Hoover that Hoover would support Dewey's presidential run in exchange for Dewey making Hoover his AG and then putting him on the Supreme Court when there's a vacancy. Assuming that actually happens that's a pretty enormous change. Hoover seems to have opposed the Brown decision, so Justice Hoover will presumably vote to uphold separate but equal. And if he has Hoover to back him up Stanley Reed probably votes for upholding segregation as well. (Especially since it seems to have been Warren IOTL who finally convinced Reed to join the majority.) If Hoover and Reed are both in opposition then a ruling striking down segregation starts to look a little dicey. Frankfurter really didn't want to issue a ruling that the South would ignore, and Jackson wanted to avoid bringing "the Court into contempt and the judicial process into discredit", so they both might buckle if its obvious there won't be a unanimous decision against segregation. (Though their opinions will be much more along the lines of "segregation is horrible, but it needs to be Congress that gets rid of it rather than the Court" as opposed to Hoover and Reed's opinions which will likely be explicitly pro-segregation.) And at that point we've only got 3 definite votes for striking down segregation (Black, Douglas, and Burton). That said President Dewey will get to put at least one more justice on the Supreme Court, and whoever wins the 1952 election will get to replace Chief Justice Vinson, so it's still possible that the Court ends up with an anti-segregation majority. The interesting question is if the anti-segregation forces do have enough votes for an outright majority (and if they've already lost Frankfurter and Jackson anyway), do they swing for the fences and order an immediate end to segregation (as opposed to OTL's "all deliberate speed" approach)? If the Supreme Court orders an immediate end to school segregation and the South is feeling emboldened because segregation only lost on a 5-4 decision, the 1950s are likely to get very volatile very quickly.
 
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