I Like Ike - Military Presidential Candidates From Eisenhower to Tom Cotton

In the election year of 1948, Republican Party bigwigs were feeling pretty pleased with themselves. President Harry Truman's Democratic Party was splintering, with Southern 'Dixiecrats' bolting in protest of Truman's civil rights agenda and Henry Wallace leading the Progressive Party leftward. The GOP was far ahead in fundraising, and Truman trailed Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey by double digits in the polls, while the American press lauded Dewey and his 'dream ticket' running mate Earl Warren.

But as the Democrats assembled for their national convention in July 1948 one man had the power to change everything. To reignite the Democratic fire. To pull in undecided independents. To wipe the floor with Tom Dewey like he had with the Wermacht in World War II. That man was General Dwight. D. Eisenhower.

In the run up to D-Day in June 1944, Eisenhower was under unbelievable strain. As Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, the success or failure of the largest landing in military history would rest on the Kansan's broad shoulders. In his wonderful book The Guns at Last Light, Rick Atkinson reveals that Ike wasn't sleeping much, was smoking up to 80 Camel cigarettes a day and, as a result, couldn't shake the throat and respiratory infections that'd bothered him for months.

Though the 156,000 British, American and Canadian troops who stormed the beaches of Normandy endured heavy losses, they eventually prevailed and less than a year later, Hitler's would-be empire lay in ruins. Lauded as the mastermind of D-Day, Eisenhower served as military governor of the US Occupied Zone in Germany and then as US Army Chief of Staff. When he retired from military service in 1948, the five star General understandably wanted a quieter life away from the gaze of an adoring public, and thought he'd be getting one as the President of Columbia University.

This new, sedate role in academia have been enough for Eisenhower, but many Americans wanted their beloved war hero to pursue a different and more prestigious Presidency - one that would see him in the White House.

One of the many criticisms - a lot of them unfair - of Harry Truman was that he had little political experience before ascending to the highest office in the land after FDR's death in April 1945. He had only been Vice President 82 days, and had been in the Senate for nine years before Roosevelt chose him as his unlikely running mate - a short track record in Washington compared to other heirs apparent. Yet while Eisenhower had proved his political skill in working with Allied governments and tempestuous military figures like General George Patton, he had no background walking the corridors of power. So like his fellow Midwesterner Truman, who was from Missouri, Eisenhower was hardly a classic candidate for President.

This didn't deter the Republicans and Democrats from courting him in 1948. Before they nominated Dewey, the GOP figured that Ike could help them win an election for the first time since Herbert Hoover's victory in 1928. When he rebuffed them, the Democrats took their turn at persuading Ike to run in place of Truman, whose reputation still paled in comparison to that of his predecessor and who almost everyone - including First Lady Bess Truman - thought would lose come November. FDR's son James Roosevelt, tried to bring his family name and position of influence with California's Democratic organization to bear on Eisenhower. Powerful party men like New York mayor William O'Dwyer and Frank Hague of Jersey City then started petitioning the General. And labor chiefs Phil Murray of the CIO and Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers, whose endorsements would guide millions of blue collar voters, also joined the call of duty.

It wasn't just establishment figures who wanted Ike to knock Truman aside, but also the youthful and increasingly popular Americans for Democratic Action (ADA). In June, another son of FDR, Elliot, drew cheers from an ADA rally in New York when he read a non-committal letter from Eisenhower that stated, "I am anxious to do my duty, but felt that it was my own problem to determine whether a sense of duty could call me into the political field." Though this was hardly a notice of acceptance, the ADA faithful drew hope from the fact that it wasn't a denial, either.

A month later, as delegates converged to select the Democratic Party candidate, ADA volunteers handed out hundreds of "I Like Ike" buttons. It seemed from the groundswell of sentiment in Philadelphia that all Eisenhower needed to do was say "yes" to become the Dem's nominee.

Click here to finish reading this article via the Huffington Post.

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I Hear That Train A-Comin': Cameron Should Follow Truman's Whistle Stop Lead With Early Campaigning

It appears from recent statements in the House of Commons and from Downing Street that the only vote David Cameron is concerned about is the Scottish independence referendum. While it's certainly an important matter that will help decide the future of the UK, Cameron should also be thinking about voters in another election battle: his own. While the next General Election is 10 months away, looking to the example of Harry Truman's 1948 Whistle Stop campaign as an example of how an embattled leader can get his message out to the electorate well before they head to the polls.

This time in 1948 was not kind to President Harry Truman. The Soviet Union started the Berlin Blockade, which cut off food, coal, medical supplies and all other road, rail and river traffic to East Berlin. The Communist takeover of China continued, while Communist forces also threatened to depose the Greek ruling party.

Things were little better back in the US. Franklin Roosevelt's former Vice President Henry Wallace leading a left-leaning breakaway of the Democratic Party on one of Truman's flanks, while the Southern Democrats (aka Dixiecrats') used the issue of states' rights to mask their racism as they too broke away from Truman because he supported civil rights. Later that year the States' Rights Democratic Party leader, Strom Thurmond, would outrageously declare that "there's not enough troops in the army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our swimming pools, our homes, and into our churches."

Truman could have waited until the autumn to launch his bid to beat Thurmond, Wallace and Republican candidate Thomas Dewey. After all, by mid October in his final election cycle, his predecessor, FDR, had only given two major speeches. But Truman was not beloved by the party faithful as Roosevelt had been, and wartime unity was a thing of the past. So the President used a speaking engagement at the University of California's Berkeley campus as an excuse to go on a "non-political inspection tour" of the Western United States. In fact, this "Shakedown Cruise" as one member of his new Research Division called it, certainly was political, with its aim being for Truman to share the main concepts of the Democratic platform from as many train platforms as possible.

Heading out in mid June, Truman's train rumbled across thousands of miles of track - 9,505, to be precise. He delivered 76 speeches in 18 states in just 15 days and while some of those were to large audiences, most were to small groups who had gathered at train stations in small towns. Truman would come out to the rear platform of his armor-plated living quarters - which included a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and formal dining room - speak for a few minutes, shake a few hands, and then head on down the line.

During these brief speeches, Truman discussed conservation, reclamation and power projects in the West, the precarious situation in Germany, provision of low cost housing and government support for farmers. But he saved his most energetic words for the Republican-controlled 80th Congress, which he felt had blocked all of his party's major legislation just for the sake of obstruction. He warned that if people voted the same way as they had in the 1946 midterm elections, they would get more of the same inaction from another "do nothing Congress", which he claimed was "the worst we've ever had" (today's Democrats may have something to say about that.) Insulted, the man who many felt controlled that Congress, Ohio's Robert Taft (the son of former President William Howard Taft), complained that Truman was "blackguarding Congress at every whistle stop in the West." Rather than firing back at the man whose motto was "The duty of opposition is to oppose," the wily Truman embraced the "Whistle Stop" slogan, and took advantage of the outrage from the small towns he spoke in, whose residents were offended by Taft dismissing them as inconsequential.

Click here to keep reading this article via The Huffington Post. 

Want the full story of Truman's Whistle Stop Tour and remarkable 1948 election victory? 

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