2008: 1948 without Dewey?

Fifty-eight years ago, the Republican Party was in an interesting situation.  Out of power since Herbert Hoover's disastrous defeat in 1932, the Republicans facted a Democratic caucus headed by the unpopular Harry Truman and fractured into two (Henry Wallace's Progressives), soon to be three (Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrats), warring factions.  The time looked ripe fr a Republican pickup.  But who should be the standard-bearer at the top of the GOP ticket?

The cast of potential characters was led by this man, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, a bedrock conservative who had been the nominee in 1944 and performed better against FDR than had any of his three previous opponents (Hoover, Alf Landon, and Wendell Willkie).  Dewey's chief rival for the nomination was Ohio Senator Robert Taft, an intractable yet honest arch-conservative; other claimants included moderate Senators Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan and Harold Stassen of Massachusetts Minnesota, and there was a draft campaign afoot for the equally moderate Governor of California, Earl Warren.

Despite the large number of candidates vying for the nomination, the drama played out fairly predictably, as University of Pittsburgh Professor Emeritus James A. Kehl's excellent article describes in detail.  Dewey polled far ahead of Taft on the first ballot, with Stassen a distant third.  The various favorite-son candidates began to see the writing on the wall and started withdrawing in favor of Dewey, who polled even higher on the second ballot.  The anti-Dewey forces called a hurried recess, at which nothing was resolved; when the convention reconvened, everybody dropped out and endorsed Dewey, who was nominated unanimously.  Seeking to build a bridge with the liberal elements of the party, Dewey nominated Warren for the VP slot, a nomination which was endorsed by acclaim.

So far, so good.  But what would have happened if Dewey had dropped out, or been somehow tarnished in such a way as to end his candidacy.  Who would have been the Republican nominee then?

My theory: since the left flank of the GOP was in a dogfight between the gravitas of Vandenberg and the shoe leather of Stassen, it's Taft who stood to capitalize most on the hypothetical removal of Dewey.  Possibly the heavily-recruited Warren could have won on a party unity platform based on star power rather than issues, but all indications are that Warren didn't feel it was his time yet to push for the nomination.  (He would try that four years later, when he lost to Dwight Eisenhower; when he made noise about running against Eisenhower again in 1956, the President shut him up for good by appointing him Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.)  No, the most likely scenario I can envision is that without Dewey, the ultraconservative Taft wins.  (The nomination, not the presidency; if Dewey couldn't beat Truman, I doubt Taft would have had a chance.)

On the flip, why this scenario is relevant for 2008.

The reason lies in an analysis of the 1948 field.  GOP primaries generally take one of three forms.  There's the instant-front-runner-dispatches-everyone-else model, like Ronald Reagan did in 1980.  There's the battle-to-the-death between two candidates of different political stripes that we saw between George W. Bush and John McCain in 2000 or, longer ago, between Gerald Ford and Reagan in 1976.  Finally, there's the 1948 model, where a conservative nominal frontrunner squeezes out a victory among a crowded field of candidates left and right.

2008 is still shaping up, but it's safe to say that it won't be like 1980 -- all the instant frontrunner types, like Jeb Bush, Condi Rice, and Dick Cheney, have passed on the race.  While the second type, the titanic face-off, often takes longer to develop, with someone like McCain emerging from the pack at a relatively late date, that kind of race also tends to require a frontrunner who can be "taken on" by someone else.  At this time in the 1976 cycle, Ford was a sitting President, and in the 2000 cycle Bush was already starting to rake in the megabucks that cemented his position as frontrunner.  Again, that's not happening here.

So it's to be a 1948-style race.  And true to form, the cast of characters is shaping up nicely.  You've got your several nattering moderates, with McCain as Vandenberg, Chuck Hagel as Stassen, and perhaps Mitt Romney as an insurgent Warren.  And you've got your respectable, savvy, hardline conservative, with Kansas Senator Sam Brownback playing the role of Taft.

But here's the question: who's Dewey?

If you'd asked me a year and a half ago, I'd have said Bill Frist would play Dewey.  For a while, the golden boy of the GOP Senate looked destined for the nomination.  But then his inner stupidity and inability to out-think Harry Reid asserted themselves, and Frist's star dimmed.  He was replaced by George Allen, who looked even more likely to become the nominee; he was even wined and dined by Pat Robertson, the dean of the Christian right, much to the chagrin of Brownback.  But with scandal upon scandal heaped on his struggling campaign for re-election -- everything from putting a dead elk's head in a black family's mailbox to standing on a stage with the leaders of the KKK to spitting on his ex-wife -- a fact has begun to dawn inexorably on the GOP leaders: Allen's done as a 2008 candidate.  Whether he wins or loses his re-election bid, there's no way that anybody's going to support a racist, sexist, bullying jackass in a field this broad.

And something else has begun to dawn on the GOP, too: that as of right now, there is no one waiting in the wings to take over for Allen.  That as of right now, there is no Dewey.

This is incredible.  A GOP race without a Bob Dole?  Without a George H. W. Bush?  Without a Dwight Eisenhower?  This never happens.  And certainly not at a time like this, when the party is bracing for its worst defeat since 1982.  Not exactly the time you want to see a dearth of leadership at the top.

So a couple of things could happen at this point.  One of the "moderates" could step up and try to become Dewey.  Perhaps McCain, or perhaps a surprisingly strong Romney, who seems to be all the rage among a certain set that, by all rights, he shouldn't play with at all.  What is it about this guy that attracts so many GOPers, even though he's a Mormon, from Taxachusetts, and experienced the crassest faux-"conversion" on abortion since Dennis Kucinich?  (Sure, he saved the Olympics, but so did Peter Ueberroth, and we saw how much that did for him in the 2003 California Gubernatorial recall.  Erm, my mom supported him.)  As for Hunter, even if he weren't caught up in the Duke Cunningham scandal, his position as a largely unknown Congressman will probably kill any chance he'd otherwise have.  If Jack Kemp and John Kasich couldn't play in Peoria, then I don't think Hunter can.

But if none of these men steps up -- and if no one else emerges into the field -- then our hypothetical scenario from above will play out.  And the big, BIG winner will be none other than -- Senator Sam.

If you want to see what a Brownback candidacy will look like, check out this Rolling Stone article, which gives a good assessment of Senator Sam's platform:

After little more than a decade in Washington, Brownback has managed to position himself at the very center of the Christian conservative uprising that is transforming American politics. Just six years ago, winning the evangelical vote required only a veneer of bland normalcy, nothing more than George Bush's vague assurance that Jesus was his favorite philosopher. Now, Brownback seeks something far more radical: not faith-based politics but faith in place of politics. In his dream America, the one he believes both the Bible and the Constitution promise, the state will simply wither away. In its place will be a country so suffused with God and the free market that the social fabric of the last hundred years -- schools, Social Security, welfare -- will be privatized or simply done away with. There will be no abortions; sex will be confined to heterosexual marriage. Men will lead families, mothers will tend children, and big business and the church will take care of all.

The Washington Post gives a taste of the rhetoric in store for us:

Brownback examines his soul for hate and tries to excise any malignancies. Some years back, he says, he apologized to Hillary Clinton at a prayer breakfast for having despised her and her husband.

"I'm ashamed to say it but I did. And I felt -- justified in my hate," he says, his tone bitter, as if reliving an ancient betrayal. "I disagree politically but there is no call to hate. And it was wrong, it's a sin, and I went to her and I apologized." ...

"Instead of getting angry at somebody for opposing you on something, you're just praying for them," he says. "You just pray blessings on them, blessings on their family."

Make no mistake, folks -- Senator Sam is not an idiot, and he is not a joke.  He is the single biggest threat for the Presidency that the Christian Right has ever had.  Robertson, Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes, and Gary Bauer were all gadflies; but Brownback is an honest-to-goodness sitting Senator with the gravitas to pull off a victory.  In addition, he has mastered the rhetoric of compassion that Buchanan and Forbes in particular lacked -- and that makes him an even stauncher threat.  And his vision of America is so paleolithic as to defy belief.

Senator Sam is the real deal.  And for the sake of everyone involved, I hope a new Dewey emerges, and fast.  Because without a Dewey, we're likely to get one giant helping of Senator Sam for our 2008 GOP foe -- and for America's sake, I hope that doesn't happen.

[Update] Bob Johnson's humorous diary at dKos provides an excellent counterpart to this story by reminding us of that more famous tale about Thomas E. Dewey: