July 27, 2005
THE DIRTIEST TRICK (via The Mother Judd):
How Willkie Ran, Lost and Helped Win the War (TODD S. PURDUM, 7/25/05, NY Times)
It is June 1940. France has just fallen to the Nazis. A conservative, isolationist Republican Party, incensed at the prospect of a third term for Franklin D. Roosevelt, nominates a liberal, interventionist political newcomer named Wendell Lewis Willkie. His moderate candidacy gives Roosevelt the cover he needs to pass a draft, swap American destroyers for bases from a beleaguered Britain and win re-election by five million votes.Fiction? Nope, just improbable fact, recalled with relish by Charles Peters, West Virginia lawyer, John F. Kennedy campaign worker, Peace Corps official and founder of The Washington Monthly, who may be Washington's most prominent cockeyed optimist, in his new book Five Days in Philadelphia: The Amazing 'We Want Willkie!' Convention of 1940 and How it Freed F. D. R. to Save the Western World.
"This is the plot that saved America," Mr. Peters said recently in his living room perched in a wooded cul de sac above the Potomac River, as he explained his fizzy, nonfiction book that could be a rejoinder to "The Plot Against America" (Houghton Mifflin), Philip Roth's darkly imagined 2004 novel in which Charles A. Lindbergh wins the 1940 Republican nomination and the presidency and there are scattered pogroms in the country.
"Because you realize," he added, referring to Willkie's conservative rival, Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, that "Bob Taft would have been the nominee. He was Charles Lindbergh, except for the anti-Semitism, so Roth's nightmare could have come true. He was a very nice, very principled man, but he was dead wrong at the crucial point in our history."
It was a disaster not just for the country, which was deprived of a genuine opportunity to debate whether we had any national interest in the war in Europe, but for the Republican Party, as the conservative base was alienated from the Eastern establishment that ran the party and proceeded to offer up a series of liberal Republican presidential candidates who ran on what Phyllis Schlafly called me-tooism. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 27, 2005 10:46 PM
And FDR was a lying son-of-a-bitch, who why promising to keep America out of a European War. was doing everything he could to involve us in it.
Posted by: jd watson at July 28, 2005 5:48 AMbart:
Why? What could Germany do even after it declared war? Mature people don't react to meaningless threats.
Posted by: oj at July 28, 2005 9:39 AMJust substitute "Kerry" for "Wilkie", and notice how the former helped reelect his opponent, too.
Another attempt by the semi-rational Left to protray their current general hostility to all things American, and their inability to rein in the irrational Left, as "patriotic". (The irrational Left doesn't care how it's seen.)
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at July 28, 2005 11:30 AMIs this a re-post? And why is OJ addressing Bart?
Posted by: Shelton at July 28, 2005 12:01 PMOJ,
Why you deleted my comment, I have no idea.
But to attempt to respond, the Germans, at minimum, after declaring war, would have been able to target our merchant shipping wherever it could be found, not just the stuff that was headed to Britain. That alone gave the threat meaning. Or do you feel that the wanton attacks by German U-Boats on American merchant ships should be permitted without a response?
Posted by: bart at July 28, 2005 1:00 PMThey were at war with Britain. We could have either stopped shipping to their enemies or begun shipping to them as well.
Posted by: oj at July 28, 2005 1:28 PMI repeat OJ. Germany declared war on us, before we declared war on them. That would give them the right to attack our merchant ships, regardless of their destination. Is that an acceptable state of affairs to you or isn't it? Do you believe that U-Boats should be have been allowed to sink our merchant ships regardless of their destination?
Oh, and while we were a non-combatant, before the German declaration of war against us, it was a violation of the rules of war for Germany to sink our merchant ships even if they were headed for Britain loaded to the gills with armaments. If Germany had a problem with our behavior, they could have negotiated their way out.
Posted by: bart at July 28, 2005 2:06 PMbart:
Yes, they had a right to attack our ships. We were supplying their enemies.
Posted by: oj at July 28, 2005 2:35 PMNot until a formal declaration of war by Germany against the US.
Posted by: bart at July 28, 2005 2:57 PMA 'right'? Granted by whom?
Posted by: ratbert at July 28, 2005 3:18 PMYes. If we discovered that Syria was shipping large volumes of weapons to zarqawi it wouyld constitute an act of war that we'd respond to.
Posted by: oj at July 28, 2005 3:18 PMOJ,
We would demand that Syria ceased and desisted.
Then we would wait to see if they hadn't.
If they hadn't we would demand that they ceased and desisted, stating that if they don't we'll go to the UN for the appropriate sanction.
If they don't stop, we'll go to the UN, get the right to attack. Then, we would demand Syria stop doing what it was doing.
If they continue, then it would go to Congress to authorize the action.
IOW, we wouldn't just start blasting immediately. By the time we got around to actually doing something to protect our troops, Baby Assad would be Grandpa Assad.
Posted by: bart at July 28, 2005 4:07 PMbart;
Yes, it's an act of war, as was our arming the Nazis' enemies.
Posted by: oj at July 28, 2005 5:08 PMOrrin's right, of course. We could have let the Poles handle it. After all, they are such valuable allies . . .
Posted by: Harry Eagar at July 28, 2005 7:07 PMoj,
So what exactly is your point besides the one on your hood? And does your wife know how solicitous you are of the rights of Nazis?
The Nazis attacked our shipping prior to their declaration of war against us. Those actions alone are justification enough for war, just as when the British attacked our ships in 1812, we were justified in going to war.
Harry,
The evolution of the Poles is one of the untold stories of the modern world.
Before WWII, Poland had laws concerning Jews virtually identical to the Nuremburg laws. And Polish immigrants to America and their children from the same period had really retrograde attitudes towards Jews.
In the intervening six decades or so, the attitudes of ordinary Poles have changed. If anything, the Polish government, if not the Church, is philo-semitic. Polish immigrants fleeing the Communists have zero tolerance for the anti-semitic nonsense which earlier generations absorbed. Just play competitive chess and you'll see the difference.
Posted by: bart at July 28, 2005 8:42 PMbart:
Yes, their attacks on our ships were an act of war. War with the Nazis was justified for myriad reasons. It was just a stupid idea.
The Wife has never figured out either what the point was of killing Americans in order to transfer Eastern Europe from Hitler to Stalin.
Posted by: oj at July 28, 2005 8:47 PM