Some years ago I speculated in soc.history.what-if
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/KPdTom1BiWQ/O_c3nwWwDuwJ about a Blaine candidacy in 1888:
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Could James G. Blaine, if nominated, have defeated Grover Cleveland in 1888? I believe he could have. Blaine's old enemy, Roscoe Conkling, who had "knifed" him in 1884, was dead. "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" were four years in the past. Cleveland's vetoes of pension bills hurt him with Civil War veterans, and his call for a lower tariff hurt him with industrial workers. Blaine had lost New York by only a thousand votes in 1884. Most likely he would carry it in 1888 (Harrison carried it by 13,000), and if he won it, he would win the presidency even if he lost Harrison's state of Indiana.
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/u/usa/pres/1888.txt The Mugwumps would oppose him again, but by themselves they would not be enough to defeat him.
The basic problem was that the "Plumed Knight" did not want the job in 1888:
"Since his close defeat by Cleveland, Blaine had combined a satisfying private life with just enough politicking to remain the peerless leader of his party... The publication in 1886 of the second volume of his monumental *Twenty Years in Congress* together with his effective speaking campaign in the state and congressional election that same year only enhanced his stature. But Blaine had decided that he had would not again run for the Presidency. The 1884 canvass had cost him a great deal of money and even more heartache. Both he and his wife had been pilloried with insults and abuse; he wanted no more of this. Moreover, Blaine worried about the state of his health. Minor ailments, he imagined, portended grave illness. In mid-1887 he removed his family to Europe for an 'indefinite stay' in the hope that the grand tour would provide him with rest and relaxation. It would also keep him far away from his political friends who repeatedly urged him to remain available for the 1888 Republican nomination.
"Blaine traveled in Europe from June, 1887 to early August, 1888, well past the Republican national convention in Chicago. Even before he sailed, he importuned his followers not to work for his nomination, and once abroad he remained consistent in his attitude. When in January 1888 his Paris letter [of December 1887, denouncing Cleveland's call for lower tariffs] was interpreted in most quarters as an announcement of his candidacy, the Plumed Knight dispatched a crisp note from Florence, Italy to Republican National Chairman B. F. Jones. 'I wish to state to members of the Republican Party,' Blaine wrote, 'that my name will not be presented to the National Convention.' Persistent rumors of his availability impelled Blaine, in May, to repeat his disclaimer in even stronger terms to editor Whitelaw Reid of the New York *Tribune.* " Robert F. Wesser, "Election of 1880" in Volume II, *History of American Presidential Elections 1789-1868 (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Fred L. Israel, and William P. Hansen, eds ), pp. 1628-9.
Suppose Blaine was more anxious for revenge against Cleveland, and did run and won both the nomination and the election? Of course in many ways Blaine's administration would resemble Harrison's (in which of course Blaine served as Secretary of State). Yet Harrison was somewhat cold, and irritated party bosses like Matthew S. Quay of Pennsylvania, Thomas C. Platt of New York, and Thomas B. Reed of Maine on patronage and other matters. It is possible that Blaine could do a better job of holding the Republican Party together than Harrison. Given the state of his health, though--and while being president might not worsen it, it probably won't help it, either--I don't see him running for re-election in 1892, and whoever the Republicans do nominate--maybe McKinley?--would be an underdog against Cleveland.
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In another post
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/FH-95hsOl_0/iAyigPCFfjoJ I discussed a possible Walter Q. Gresham candidacy:
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See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Q._Gresham for a brief biography.
It would have been fascinating (for me, anyway) to see him win the 1888 Republican nomination and go on to defeat Cleveland. Imagine a Republican president in 1889-93 who believed in tariff reduction and opposed imperialism and excessive spending. No billion dollar Congress, no McKinley Tariff, no US support for the overthrow of Liliuokalani. (No wonder that by 1892 Gresham had abandoned the Republican party and even flirted with Populism before deciding to back Cleveland...)
The only problem is that I have a hard time seeing him get nominated. True, he had advantages. Like Benjamin Harrison, he was from Indiana, a pivotal state in the Gilded Age (though as a judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals he lived in Chicago). He combined military, political, and legal experience. As a judge, he gained popularity with his decision in the "Wabash case" where he opposed Jay Gould's attempt to manipulate a railroad's reorganization. He had the support of the Illinois and Minnesota delegations at the convention, and especially of Joseph Medill's *Chicago Tribune* which represented western Republicans who were skeptical of the extreme protectionism of some Easterners. (Gresham was not a free trader. He had no problem with the protectionist plank in the 1884 platform. But he thought that the Republicans went way too far in 1888 when their platform called for addressing the surplus by doing away with *all* federal internal taxes before making the slightest dent in the
protective system...) He was the favorite candidate of the Mugwumps, many of whom were somewhat disillusioned by Cleveland's record on civil service (though Cleveland's 1887 call for lower tariffs did re-kindle some of their support). On the first ballot at the convention, he finished in second place, behind John Sherman.
But the obstacles seem just too great:
(1) Harrison won control of the Indiana delegation in his struggle with his fellow Hoosier Gresham.
(2) The Blaine supporters much preferred Harrison to Gresham. (Indeed, many of them at first backed Harrison simply to block the front-runner John Sherman and to create a deadlock which they assumed would be resolved by a stampede to Blaine. When Blaine definitely ruled out accepting the nomination, they found Harrison a satisfactory substitute.)
(3) The very fact of Gresham's support by the Mugwumps and the *Chicago Tribune* made some Easterners shudder. (True, Gresham also had the support of the *Tribune*'s rival the *Chicago Inter-Ocean* which claimed that Gresham was "as good a protectionist as Blaine." Charles W. Calhoun, *Gilded Age Cato: The Life of Walter Q. Gresham*, p.96
https://books.google.com/books?id=otUeBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA96 But, as Calhoun noted, this was not very reassuring, because Gresham refused to discuss the matter publicly; his associates merely referred questioners to a mildly protectionist speech he had given in 1884--and if anything he had moved away from protectionism in the intervening years.)
(4) In spite of all this, Gresham might have had a chance if Thomas Platt, the Stalwart boss of New York, would support him. (Platt's first choice was nominally Chauncey Depew, but nobody took Depew's candidacy seriously. The question was who Platt would switch to. He definitely did not want John Sherman, who as part of the Hayes administration had participated in the purge of the Stalwarts from the New York Customs House.) Platt actually did make overtures to Gresham before and during the convention, saying that Gresham was the most electable candidate. (There were concerns that Harrison's vote against the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 might hurt him with the labor vote.) Gresham's widow Martha Gresham later claimed in her biography of her husband that Gresham could have had the nomination if he had been willing to promise Platt the Secretaryship of the Treasury. At one point Platt apparently also suggested a Gresham- Depew ticket. Most likely, though (as Mrs. Gresham recognizes) the overtures were really a feint to pressure Harrison into promising the moon (not to mention the Treasury...) to Platt.
As it turned out, Gresham did not get a single vote from either the New York or Pennsylvania delegations in the convention, despite the attempts by Gresham's backer John W. Foster to reassure Platt and Pennsylvania's boss Matthew Quay that they would be treated fairly in matters of patronage.
Probably to get Gresham nominated we have to have his Indiana rival Harrison somehow eliminated from the race. (One other possibility: Make Blaine a candidate. This will *probably* lead to Blaine's nomination but instead it just might lead to Gresham as the successful candidate of an "anyone but Blaine" movement.)
Any thoughts?