1952 GOP Convention
Sixty years ago, on March 11, New Hampshire did what it has since done 15 more times, held the first presidential primary in the nation.
On the ballot was Robert Taft, who twice before had sought the Republican nomination but been aced out. That was attributed to his vigorous opposition to the New Deal that many liberal Republicans at least half-supported, his prewar anti-interventionism and his postwar opposition to alliances like NATO and the Marshall Plan. One scholarly critic later called his foreign policy views "the psychology of the moat."
Also on the ballot was the lionized hero of World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower. It was a bit tricky. Still serving as NATO's supreme commander, he could not be involved in political activities or would run afoul of Army regulations. But the 1949 rewrite of the New Hampshire primary law allowed someone to participate without an overt decision on his part. All he had to do was "allow" his name to be placed on the ballot, a permission he granted. Gov. Sherman Adams filed the paperwork. He would later become Eisenhower's White House Chief of Staff but lost the job in a scandal over a vicuña fur coat.
The five-star general did not spend a single minute campaigning in the state. Gov. Adams was his proxy in that task. Taft called Ike the "phantom candidate." But when the votes were counted, it was Eisenhower 46,661 and Taft 35,838. He snagged all 14 delegates, every county, and every city but Manchester, which gave Taft a slim lead. A month later, Eisenhower retired from his NATO job and began overtly campaigning. Despite the New Hampshire win and his vast popularity, however, Ike was at a seeming disadvantage.
With the bloody Korean War grinding on, McCarthyism in full bloom and conservative philosophy having taken stronger hold of the party, Taft had laid out his strongest effort yet. The father of billionaire Warren Buffet, former Nebraska Rep. Howard Buffett, became his campaign manager and his supporters controlled most of the Republican leadership, including the Republican National Committee and the convention's committees. He had the inside track.
By the time the convention opened in Chicago that July, Taft had amassed 516 delegates and Ike had 414. The governor of California, Earl Warren, had 76. His strategy for getting the nomination was directed at keeping Eisenhower and Taft from a first-ballot win and then, somehow, wrangling enough votes into his camp. It didn't work out that way.
On the convention's first day, Eisenhower's floor manager, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge II of Massachusetts, argued that Taft's forces had cheated in the South, particularly Georgia and Texas, by keeping Eisenhower supporters off their delegations. Lodge proposed to replace the Taft delegates from those states with Eisenhower partisans, a proposal they called "Fair Play." But for contested delegations to be seated, the convention would have to vote.
Taft said the claims of cheating were false and sought to strike a deal in which he and Ike would split the delegations. But Lodge feared this would undermine his efforts, vetoed the deal and made a bargain with a Congressman Senator named Richard M. Nixon for the vast majority of California's 70 delegates. The convention voted 658 to 548 in favor of the proposal. That left the Texans and Georgians free to vote for Eisenhower. Several uncommitted delegations, including those from Michigan and Pennsylvania with their 116 delegates, also supported the general.
There were rumors after the convention that the chairmen of these uncommitted states, such as Arthur Summerfield of Michigan, were secretly pressured by Dewey and the GOP's Eastern Establishment to support Eisenhower; however, these rumors were never proved. (Summerfield did become Ike's Postmaster General following the election.)
At their convention also held in Chicago, the Democrats drafted Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson who had repeatedly turned down entreaties to run. It took three ballots, but he eventually won the nomination, having been handed a diehard segregationist Senator from Alabama, John Sparkman, as a running mate. With the helpful Nixon as his running mate, Eisenhower went on to win the election over Stevenson, taking 39 states and receiving 55 percent of the popular vote. At the Inaugural in January, he took the oath of office as the first Republican president in 20 years. Taft, just 63 years old, died from complications of cancer less than seven months later.
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Sources: The Papers of Robert A. Taft: 1949-1953; Principles Without Program: Senator Robert A. Taft and American Foreign Policy, by John Moser; Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made, by Jim Newton; Time Magazine, Feb. 11, 1952; 60 Years of the New Hampshire Primary, by David Boeri; Wikipedia.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2010:
There's a saying in journalism: "If it bleeds, it leads."
The saying traditionally applies to crime reporting, but can be expanded to describe how the traditional media and many blogs approach any story they perceive as "dramatic", or better yet, "dangerous."
Last week's national security headlines were a classic example of drama triumphing over careful, in-depth reporting. I'm talking about this particular headline, and all the variations thereof, describing a "report card" issued to the Obama administration:
US gets 'F' in preparation for threat of biological terrorism, report concludes [...]
Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it?
The problem is, that article, and many others, are misleading in a number of ways; their superficial, black-and-white treatment of a very important subject misses some critical points that really need to be highlighted. [...]
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