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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent, old-fashioned work of political history...,
By Commander Adama (USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Never Again: A President Runs for a Third Term (Hardcover)
Herbert Parmet is a fine political historian of the "old" school (pre-political correctness), and "Never Again" ranks as one of his best books. Written with co-author Marie Hecht in 1968, "Never Again" is the story of the dramatic and colorful 1940 presidential campaign, which featured two of the most attractive and dynamic presidential candidates of the twentieth century: Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt and Republican Wendell Willkie. Roosevelt was running for an unprecedented third term as President, and Willkie may rank as the ultimate underdog, dark-horse presidential candidate.
Willkie wasn't even a politician in 1940 - he'd never held a single political office. Instead, he was a dynamic and self-made businessman from Indiana who kept up the pretense of being a shrewd country boy who'd made "good" in the big city of New York. In reality Willkie was an extremely intelligent and well-read man who had become popular with Liberal Northern Republicans by becoming an articulate and thoughtful critic of Roosevelt's New Deal programs. Willkie had been raised as a Democrat and had given money to Roosevelt's first presidential campaign in 1932, only to regret it when FDR used the federal government to break up the electrical power monopoly (Commonwealth and Southern), of which Willkie was CEO. He only switched to the GOP in the late thirties, which led many conservative Republicans in the Midwest to oppose him as a "Johnny-come-lately" who was too liberal for most Republicans. It's hard to imagine someone like Willkie being nominated by the Republicans today - he was a supporter of the New Deal welfare programs, and his main criticism of FDR was that his New Deal programs needed to be more friendly to businesses and corporations and that the bloated gov't bureacracy created by the New Deal should be streamlined. Most conservative Republicans simply wanted to abolish the New Deal and go back to the small gov't, low-tax days of the past, which Willkie said was impossible. Willkie's nomination at the GOP Convention in Philadelphia in June 1940 was something of a miracle, and this book is at its best when describing Willkie's dramatic come-from-nowhere rise to the nomination. In January 1940 few Republicans had even heard of Wendell Willkie. However, the other leading candidates all had serious flaws - the frontrunner, New York's famed District Attorney Thomas Dewey, was only 38 years old, and many Republicans felt that he was simply too young and inexperienced in foreign affairs to be President. When the Nazis conquered France and Western Europe in May 1940, Dewey's stock dropped quickly. The conservatives' favorite candidate was Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio, but his bland speaking style and icy personality led some Republicans to fear that he would lose as many votes as he attracted. Taft was also an isolationist who wanted to avoid war at all costs, and with the Nazis menacing Britain as the Convention began, some Republicans felt that his isolationism would be a handicap in a campaign against FDR. In effect, Willkie stepped into a vacuum, and his colorful personality and dynamic speaking style won over many converts who liked him in spite of his liberalism and recent conversion to Republicanism. At the GOP Convention - the authors note that no one who was there would ever forget it - Willkie's supporters packed the galleries and kept yelling "We Want Willkie". Willkie trailed in the early voting, but he steadily gained strength on each ballot until he was finally nominated, to the delight of his supporters, who cried, stomped their feet, and danced in the aisles. Roosevelt, meanwhile, cleverly played a waiting game and only agreed to run at the last minute. The presidential campaign itself was something of an anticlimax - the inexperienced Willkie waged a gallant campaign, but lost his voice and had to speak in a whisper for most of the fall. Roosevelt wound up winning an historic third term by a comfortable 55-45% margin, but Willkie did claim the highest vote ever recorded by a GOP presidential candidate, and the authors argue that if World War Two had not been going on, Willkie might well have won (FDR was afraid he was going to lose right up until election night). In a nice contrast to modern campaigns, FDR met Willkie after the election and came to have a great deal of respect for him, even noting that it was "too bad that we (Democrats) lost him". If you're a political buff then this book should be a delight (I'd also recommend reading Herbert Parmet's "Jack: The Struggles of John F. Kennedy", which is one of the best political biographies of JFK that I've read). Recommended!
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