Decisive U.S. elections? Try this one
The upcoming election for president has already been called “the most important” election of this century, and perhaps, the most important of all time.
There are rivals, of course. The election of 1860 brought Lincoln to power and tripped off the Civil War while the election of 1864 helped to seal Union victory. The election of 1932 ushered in the New Deal and the modernization of the United States.
In 1980, voters chose Ronald Reagan. The affable Reagan presided over an era of conservative ascendancy that extended beyond his years in the White House.
The elections of 2016 and 2020 were both important. Their true measure may ultimately depend on what happens this November, however.
A very good argument can be made that “the most important” election in American history was the election of 1940. If so, locals played a distinctive role in the contest that pitted President Franklin Roosevelt, the Democrat, against Wendell Willkie, the Republican.
Richard Moe, the author of “Roosevelt’s Second Act,” one of at least five books about the 1940 campaign, writes that the election affected “the course of the United States on the eve” of World War II, “but also affected how the world would be after war was over.”
Hitler, Mussolini, and Churchill are three of the names that spill across the newspapers of 1940. Thanks to Hitler, war raged throughout much of Europe. The dictators held the whip hand, the democracies were reeling
The question confronting American voters was whether to join the fight with Britain against the Nazis, or to remain on the sidelines, husbanding both men and armaments in the confident hope that the Atlantic Ocean was too wide for Germany to advance on the United States.
The fact that FDR was running for an unprecedented third term added spice to the election. Willkie, a businessman and former Democrat who campaigned tirelessly, spoke himself hoarse while denouncing Roosevelt as a would-be dictator “in fact if not in name.”
No man – not even FDR – was “indispensable,” Willkie said.
Sticking close to the White House with occasional campaign stops masquerading as defense inspection tours, Roosevelt maintained a statesman-like demeanor while courting political disaster. Late in the campaign, he presided over the first peacetime draft in American history. With Hitler on the move and the Japanese menacing the Far East, he repeatedly pitched the idea that the country’s defense stretched all the way to Europe and beyond.
Despite his disclaimer that American boys would never be sent to fight in a “foreign” war, the president’s critics decried FDR as a warmonger. No one was more vociferous in this regard than John L. Lewis, the president of the powerful United Mine Workers.
A presidential ally during the 1936 election, Lewis, the founder of the 3.5 million-strong Committee of Industrial Organization (CIO), turned on FDR in 1940. Late in October and then on Election Day eve, Lewis charged that a vote for Roosevelt was a vote for war.
“His every act,” Lewis said of the president, points to America’s inevitable involvement in the affairs of Europe and war. “America needs no superman. America wants no royal family,” Lewis added for good measure.
The union leader’s goal was to rally millions of blue collar workers against FDR and for Willkie. Lewis promised to resign as CIO president if his message fell on deaf ears and FDR was re-elected. He seemed sure that miners and other working men and women would follow his lead.
A Roosevelt rally organized by local UMW leaders in the coal and coke capital of Uniontown on the night of Oct. 25 clearly indicated that Lewis’s confidence was badly misplaced.
Billy Hynes, District 4 UMW president, wired his chief the following day: “Our people are for [Roosevelt] and as an American citizen I am for Roosevelt.” District 5 boss Pat Fagan of Pittsburgh sent the same message.
Before November was out, Lewis had resigned his CIO post.
Roosevelt’s 1940 victory – 55% of the popular vote to go along with 449 Electoral College votes – was not nearly as massive as his win in 1936. Likewise, he carried every coal region in the country, but at reduced margins. He eased his way to victory in the largest of the regions – Western Pennsylvania – by 107,412 votes, down considerably from his 327,454 vote margin of 1936.
Thirteen months after the 1940 election the United States was at war, not because of FDR, but because of the Japanese sneak attack on Hawaii.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.