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Nineteen forty-four was an election year and it couldn’t have come at a worse time. America was at war, and while the tide seemingly had turned against Germany and Japan, there was more than a year of bloody fighting ahead.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt already had broken with tradition by running for and winning an unprecedented third term in 1940. There was considerable speculation he planned to seek a fourth.
When asked by a reporter if he intended to seek reelection, Roosevelt brushed the questioner off with an evasive reply. “He could’ve said yes, no, or perhaps,” said Paul Mallon in his nationally syndicated column in the Coleridge Blade. “Instead he chose to sidestep the question as too small for his consideration.”
Mallon noted that Roosevelt had stopped talking about the New Deal, hoping the public would forget its economic failures and unsuccessful policies and focus instead on his new program to promote world peace. The plan, however, was contingent on reaching an agreement with Josef Stalin to work together to forge a new world order.
Roosevelt’s new crusade was to create an organization to replace the failed League of Nations. As originally proposed, the four major allies: Great Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, and China would take responsibility for maintaining world peace — using military force if necessary. All other nations would be disarmed.
The idea was that each of the so-called “Four Policemen” would settle disputes in a designated part of the world. The United States would police the Western Hemisphere; Britain would handle Western Europe; the Soviet Union would take care of Eastern Europe and Western Asia; China was responsible for East Asia.
Obviously, nations who were not members of the favored four did not wish to be subjected to rule by those who were. When the United Nations was established in 1945, the “four policemen” became the Security Council. Other nations were invited to join the General Assembly. The Security Council, however, was granted less power to police the world than Roosevelt had hoped for.
By the time the UN was established, two of the four policemen – Great Britain and China – were nearly bankrupt, and China would soon become communist. That left only two of the original policemen and they soon would be embroiled in what became known as the Cold War.
Most Republicans were not interested in policing the world. Roosevelt realized that, should a Republican win the presidency in 1944, his grand plan would most likely go out the window.
The Republican National Convention was held in Chicago in June 1944. The leading candidate was 42-year-old Thomas E. Dewey, the popular governor of New York. Dewey had previously made a name for himself by prosecuting organized crime figures such as Lucky Luciano while serving as a New York City district attorney.
The honor of nominating Dewey for the presidency went to governor Dwight Griswold of Nebraska. Ohio Governor John W. Bricker, who had withdrawn his own candidacy in favor of Dewey, was nominated for vice president. When the ballots were tabulated, Dewey was nominated by a vote of 1056 to 1. The lone dissenting vote was for General Douglas MacArthur who was rather busy with the war in the Pacific. Bricker was nominated unanimously.
In his address at the convention, Dewey stated he would not accept any plan that involved the creation of a super state. Former president Herbert Hoover made a similar statement in his convention address. “It is obvious that the idea of a world super-government, no matter how idealistic, is already dead, “he said. “Peace must be based on cooperation between independent sovereign nations.”
At the time of the Republican convention, Roosevelt had not yet announced whether or not he would run – although it was widely believed that he would. Even if Roosevelt should decide to run again, the Republicans thought they had a good chance of winning the White House. The President’s popularity had slipped since 1940 and outside of the Solid South, Republicans held a majority of the governorships and had active political organizations in many of larger states. Both the Senate and the House, however, were controlled by Democrats.
There were rumors that Democrats might not be able to count on the Solid South to help push them over the top. Dissatisfaction was brewing over proposed New Deal social reforms. Shortly before the Democratic convention, party leaders in Texas instructed electors to vote for the party’s nominee only if the convention continued to support segregated schools and did not support opening the primary election to negros.
There was concern that should the 23 Texas electors join the eight dissatisfied North Carolina electors in rejecting the Democratic candidate, Republicans could take over the White House.
The Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago July 19-21. One week before the convention opened, Franklin D. Roosevelt announced that he would be willing to serve a fourth term.
Roosevelt did not attend the convention in person. Instead, he addressed the delegates by radio from his private train somewhere in California. When his remarks were broadcast over the public address system, the delegates erupted in cheers. Roosevelt was nominated on the first ballot. The real fight would be over the candidate for vice president.
Incidentally, among the attendees at the 1944 Democratic National Convention was James A. “Art” Walz who owned the Hartington Hatchery.
Walz told the Cedar County News he also planned to attend the International Baby Chick Convention, which also was being held in Chicago. Whether he was more interested in the chicks or the Democrats was not reported.
Walz had a brother named Raymond. Raymond Walz was the father of James Frederick “Jim” Walz. Jim Walz was the father of Tim Walz, the man Kamala Harris chose to be her vice presidential running mate in 2024.
