WI: Eisenhower runs in 1948

Deleted member 97083

If Dwight D. Eisenhower ran for president 4 years early, in 1948, would he win? If so how would his early administration be?
 
He definitely would have won. Truman was very unpopular at the time; the only reason he defeated Dewey was because of Dewey's overconfidence and his refusal to aggressively campaign. Eisenhower was wildly popular; he would have had no problem winning. I imagine his administration being basically the same, thought with a different Vice President; Nixon wasn't a Senator yet. Eisenhower was part of the liberal Republican faction, so he would have to pick a conservative; maybe someone like Congressman Charles Halleck.
 
Nixon was barely old enough constitutionally to be VP in 1948 but hadn't made a name for himself yet.

I could see an Ike administration beginning in 1949 like this:

State: John Foster Dulles
Treasury: George Humphrey
Justice: Thomas Dewey
Defense: Charles Wilson
Interior: Earl Warren
Agriculture: Ezra Taft Benson
Commerce: Harold Stassen
Labor: Martin Durkin
HEW: Oveta Culp Hobby
 
If Dwight D. Eisenhower ran for president 4 years early, in 1948, would he win? If so how would his early administration be?

Eisenhower as POTUS when Korea breaks out? That's gonna be interesting. Does Ike decide to intervene in the Korean War? Does he fire MacArthur? Will there be a 22nd Amendment stopping him from seeking a third term? You be the judge!
 
I'm not sure Korea will break out, not with a known anti-communist SecState like Dulles in office. The regime in Beijing knows he won't tolerate any nonsense. The same was not true of Dean Acheson. At the same time, Ike taking office in 1949 may well short-circuit Joe McCarthy's rise to notoriety: he may well be a one-term senator.
 
If Dwight D. Eisenhower ran for president 4 years early, in 1948, would he win? If so how would his early administration be?

It would be easier for him to win the Democratic nomination than the Republican. The Democrats were desperate, thinking Truman was almost sure to lose--support for the "draft Ike" movement ranged from left-liberals like Claude Pepper to big-city bosses like Frank Hague to southern conservatives. So Ike if he wanted could almost certainly win the Democratic nomination, and if he did so would be very likely to win in November. It might be a little bit harder for him to win the GOP nomination, because while he was no doubt popular with rank-and-file Republicans, the party leaders--confident of victory--preferred a professional politician they would know as a "real" Republican. (By contrast, in 1952, many of these politicians turned to Ike as the only man who could prevent the "unelectable" Taft from winning the nomination.)
 
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