WI President Ronald Reagan... in 1952

[loneranger]

Kind of a weird jumble of ideas, but I was thinking of some comparisons between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, re-reading bits of World of Laughter, World of Tears, and came up with a pretty horrible idea (but hopefully in a readable way?). Basically a similar POD to WOLWOT, wherein Ike has a heart attack and drops from the race, but instead of picking Disney as a compromise candidate, the GOP picks Ronald Reagan for much the same reasons (PR).

Now, there will need to be a slight bit of further back work. Reagan, while a popular actor by the early 40s, was not a mega-star of the likes the GOP would be looking for. However, boosting Ronnie's acting career and pushing his turn to conservatism (or not, if you prefer) is a pretty simple ask, IMO.

Alright AH.com... What if?

 

[TheGuyWhoHeartsHistory]

Considering that the Republican party was not quite as extremist as it became in the 1980s, I'm not sure Reagan could have won the Presidency, let alone the nomination.

 

[loneranger]

Considering that the Republican party was not quite as extremist as it became in the 1980s, I'm not sure Reagan could have won the Presidency, let alone the nomination.

Reagan was originally a Democrat, I could see his aims lining up broadly with the Eastern Establishment.

 

[TheGuyWhoHeartsHistory]

Reagan was originally a Democrat, I could see his aims lining up broadly with the Eastern Establishment.

I have a feeling his attempts at forcing morality onto Americans would enrage them.

 

[loneranger]

Ronald Reagan perhaps saw his most success in cinema after World War II. He had made a few good connections during the war and got lucky several times, starring in It's A Wonderful Life, Red River, and A Streetcar Named Desire all successively serving as hits for his career and leading to the term "The Reagan Luck" referring to actors who have multiple hit films in a row. This enhanced status from these films led to Ronald Reagan being chosen as a dark horse compromise candidate following a deadlocked 1952 Republican Convention.

 

[Heliogabalus]

I'm not sure what Reagan's views were by 1952, but all Wikipedia says is "He moved to the right in the 1950s, became a Republican in 1962." So, at this point, he would presumably still be a liberal FDR-style Democrat. You'd need an earlier PoD to make him move to the right earlier, or perhaps simply make him become a liberal Republican rather than a Democrat early in his life.

 

[loneranger]

I'm not sure what Reagan's views were by 1952, but all Wikipedia says is "He moved to the right in the 1950s, became a Republican in 1962." So, at this point, he would presumably still be a liberal FDR-style Democrat. You'd need an earlier PoD to make him move to the right earlier, or perhaps simply make him become a liberal Republican rather than a Democrat early in his life.

He and his wife were FBI informants in Hollywood so I imagine he might be uncomfortably lined up with people like McCarthy while having views similar to Dewey and co.

 

[TheGuyWhoHeartsHistory]

He and his wife were FBI informants in Hollywood so I imagine he might be uncomfortably lined up with people like McCarthy while having views similar to Dewey and co.

I have a feeling that he wouldn't get elected for that reason alone.

 

[loneranger]

President Reagan during one of his own "Chats with the Nation", inspired by FDR's Fireside Chats he addressed the country by television roughly once a month throughout his Presidency.

 

[loneranger]

Who would be apart of the 1950s Reagan era cabinet? Since he might be close to the Eastern establishment, I would suggest someone from the Taft faction.

Taft himself is not long for this world. The only other person I can think of from there is Henry Cabot Lodge Jr, but he is about the same age as Reagan. I'm thinking with a candidate so young they might want an old hand in the VP spot. Who might that go to?

And perhaps Ike could be Secretary of State?

 

[Heliogabalus]

Who would be apart of the 1950s Reagan era cabinet? Since he might be close to the Eastern establishment, I would suggest someone from the Taft faction.

Taft himself is not long for this world. The only other person I can think of from there is Henry Cabot Lodge Jr, but he is about the same age as Reagan. I'm thinking with a candidate so young they might want an old hand in the VP spot. Who might that go to?

Everett Dirksen, Charles A. Halleck, or William Knowland could work. They were all politically experienced conservatives.

 

[loneranger]

Everett Dirksen, Charles A. Halleck, or William Knowland could work. They were all politically experienced conservatives.

 

[David T]

In 1952, Reagan was still a Democrat, though a Democrat-for-Eisenhower. It was his years with GE when he really became a conservative under Lemuel Boulware's tutelage. http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/32681

 

[loneranger]

In 1952, Reagan was still a Democrat, though a Democrat-for-Eisenhower. It was his years with GE when he really became a conservative under Lemuel Boulware's tutelage. http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/32681

It might be interesting to have 40s!Reagan connected to the Hoover Commission in some way, that might be fun. Or just have him meet historically conservative actors during his career.

OR have him switch parties in the 50s. He was virulently anti-Communist in a way the Republicans were and the Democrats were not. Maybe he has a big speech called "I Used To Be A Democrat".

 

[loneranger]

The Reagan Administration (1952-1960)
President: Ronald Reagan
Vice President: Everett Dirksen
Secretary of State: Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.
Secretary of Treasury: Arthur Burns
-Undersecretary: Milton Friedman
Secretary of Defense: Douglas MacArthur
Chief of Staff: Roy Cohn

Dwight Eisenhower had a heart attack a few months before the Republican National Convention in 1952. He didn't feel comfortable moving forward with his campaign. However, he also didn't feel comfortable endorsing either Taft or Dewey, the two other major power players in the 1952 elections. Dewey was damaged from losing '44 and '48, while Taft was also experiencing health problems and didn't have an acolyte strong enough to contend for the nomination. Though the who suggested it is now lost, someone suggested Ronald Reagan.

"The actor?" Yes, the actor.

Ronald Reagan had been a prominent Hollywood Democrat in the 1940s, starring in a string of hits after World War II which greatly increased his national prestige. He was an informant for the FBI on Communist activity in Hollywood and had been a friendly witness for the HUAC a number of times. He was also shifting towards the Republican sphere, influenced by his wife Jane. This is why he was chosen to give a speech to the Republican National Convention, titled simply "I Didn't Leave the Democratic Party, The Democratic Party Left Me", a powerful and moving speech that caused many viewers at the 1952 convention to say "that man could be President some day".

Of course, they didn't mean that year, but this is why Reagan was on the minds of the GOP power players when they tried to find a compromise candidate for the deadlocked 1952 RNC.
~ The Reagan Revolution, blog post, 10/12/2006

 

[loneranger]

While a 1950s President Reagan would be horrible on a lot of things like Civil Rights and the like, might we see a President who responds quicker and more forcefully to the Soviet launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957? An earlier boost to NASA, maybe even with a promise similar to JFK's "We Will Land A Man On The Moon" could be fun. Obviously we couldn't land on the moon in the 1950s, but even a few years earlier start might do wonders for us.

 

[David T]

It might be interesting to have 40s!Reagan connected to the Hoover Commission in some way, that might be fun. Or just have him meet historically conservative actors during his career.

OR have him switch parties in the 50s. He was virulently anti-Communist in a way the Republicans were and the Democrats were not. Maybe he has a big speech called "I Used To Be A Democrat".

Reagan did become anti-communist by 1948, but for some years this simply led him to be an anti-Communist liberal:

"Furthermore, even after he resigned from HICCASP because he thought it communist-dominated, he still considered himself a liberal for some years. In 1947 he helped found the California chapter of Americans for Democratic Action--an anticommunist group, to be sure, but definitely liberal, and a frequent target of attacks from the Right. In 1948, he headed the Labor League of Hollywood Voters for Truman, and gave a radio address under the sponsorship of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union on behalf of the president and Minnesota Democratic Senatorial candidate Hubert Humphrey. He praised Humphrey for "fighting for...adequate low-cost housing, for civil rights, for prices people can afford to pay and for a labor movement free from the Taft-Hartley law" while his Republican opponent was "the banner carrier for Wall Street." He added that "high prices have not been caused by higher wages, but by bigger and bigger profits." As late as 1950 he taped a number of three-minute radio spots for Helen Gahagan Douglas that were widely aired in California." https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/oh9hIbluDv0/AznwthTQhzsJ

Again, even in 1952 it is doubtful Reagan could be considered a conservative. He was a Democrat for Eisenhower, to be sure, but there were millions of them, many not particularly right-wing. Reagan did "meet historically conservative actors during his career." But they didn't radically change his politics--Lemuel Boulware did.

And btw, why in the world would he be connected with the Hoover Commission even if he were a conservative? The Hoover commission was a wonkish thing; they were not looking for celebrities.

 

[loneranger]

 

[David T]

Kind of a weird jumble of ideas, but I was thinking of some comparisons between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, re-reading bits of World of Laughter, World of Tears, and came up with a pretty horrible idea (but hopefully in a readable way?). Basically a similar POD to WOLWOT, wherein Ike has a heart attack and drops from the race, but instead of picking Disney as a compromise candidate, the GOP picks Ronald Reagan for much the same reasons (PR).

Now, there will need to be a slight bit of further back work. Reagan, while a popular actor by the early 40s, was not a mega-star of the likes the GOP would be looking for. However, boosting Ronnie's acting career and pushing his turn to conservatism (or not, if you prefer) is a pretty simple ask, IMO.

Alright AH.com... What if?

Actually, it's not that simple a task. You can always change people's politics, I suppose, but Reagan was just not that great an actor. He was unlikely to become a megastar.

And even changing his politics is probably going to require far too much time to have him a plausible GOP candidate by 1952. There is a reason it took so long in OTL. Let's not forget that his father, Jack Reagan, an unemployed shoe salesman, got a job with the WPA, and that even in the 1980s Ronald Reagan was defending the WPA: "Now a lot of people remember it as boondoggles and...raking leaves" Reagan stated--but added that this was not correct. "Maybe in some places it was. Maybe in the big city machines or something. But I can take you to our town and show you things like a river front that I used to hike through once that was a swamp and is now a beautiful park-like place built by WPA." See pp. 212-217 of William Leuchtenberg, *In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Bill Clinton* (1993 edition) for a review of Reagan's early liberalism.

 

[loneranger]

Reagan did "meet historically conservative actors during his career." But they didn't radically change his politics--Lemuel Boulware did.

I shudder at the thought of this hellish friendship, but Reagan was in the MPA with Ayn Rand during the 1940s and she wrote several pamphlets for the group and she published The Fountainhead in 1943.

Actually, it's not that simple a task. You can always change people's politics, I suppose, but Reagan was just not that great an actor. He was unlikely to become a megastar.

I agree, actually. But fame is a fickle thing. A modern example might be Norman Reedus from The Walking Dead. His character, Daryl Dixon, doesn't require much acting from him really, and he's not amazing in his other roles. Yet he is loved because he's a star on the silver screen equivalent of a popcorn flick. I'm sure Ronnie could do something similar.

It's A Wonderful Life, while being a classic today, was not as well received in it's release year. While Reagan's performance will be greatly inferior to Stewart's, perhaps butterflies lead to the film becoming a hit immediately instead of it's pseudo-cult following that developed over the years.