Democratic Party Throughout the winter, spring, and summer of 1940, there was much speculation as to whether Roosevelt would break with longstanding tradition and run for an unprecedented third term. The two-term tradition, although not yet
enshrined in the Constitution, had been established by
George Washington when he refused to run for a third term in
1796; other former presidents, such as
Ulysses S. Grant in
1880 and
Theodore Roosevelt in
1912 had made serious attempts to run for a third term, but the former failed to be nominated, while the latter, forced to run on a third-party ticket, lost to
Woodrow Wilson due to the split in the Republican vote. President Roosevelt refused to state definitely whether he would run for a third term. He even indicated to some ambitious Democrats that he would not run. Two of them thus decided to seek the Democratic nomination. These were
James Farley, his former campaign manager, and Vice President
John Nance Garner. Garner was a Texas conservative who had come to disagree with Roosevelt's liberal economic and social policies, and declined to run for a third term as vice president. However, as
Nazi Germany swept through western Europe and menaced the
United Kingdom in the summer of 1940, Roosevelt decided that only he had the necessary experience and skills to see the nation safely through the Nazi threat. He was aided by the party's political bosses, who feared that no Democrat except Roosevelt could defeat the popular Willkie. At the July
1940 Democratic National Convention in
Chicago, Roosevelt easily swept aside challenges from Farley and Garner. Roosevelt picked Secretary of Agriculture
Henry A. Wallace of Iowa to replace Garner on the ticket. An outspoken liberal who had been a Republican until he joined Roosevelt's cabinet, he met strong opposition from conservatives and party traditionalists. Wallace was also known as "eccentric" in his private life: some years earlier, he had been a follower of
Theosophist mystic
Nicholas Roerich. But Roosevelt insisted that without Wallace he would not run.
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt came to Chicago to vouch for Wallace, and he won the vice-presidential nomination with 626 votes to 329 for House Speaker
William B. Bankhead of Alabama.
Republican Party In the months leading up to the opening of the 1940
Republican National Convention in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Republican Party was deeply divided between the party's
isolationists, who wanted to stay out of
World War II at all costs, and the party's interventionists, who felt that the
United Kingdom needed to be given all aid short of war to prevent
Nazi Germany from conquering all of Europe. The three leading candidates for the Republican nomination - Senator
Robert A. Taft from Ohio, Senator
Arthur H. Vandenberg from Michigan, and
District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey from New York - were all isolationists to varying degrees. Taft was the leader of the conservative, isolationist wing of the Republican Party, and his main strength was in his native
Midwestern United States and parts of the
Southern United States. Dewey, the District Attorney for
Manhattan, had risen to national fame as the "Gangbuster" prosecutor who had sent numerous infamous
Mafia figures to prison, most notably
Lucky Luciano, the organized-crime boss of
New York City. Dewey had won most of the presidential primaries in the spring of 1940, and he came into the Republican Convention in June with the largest number of delegate votes, although he was still well below the number needed to win. Vandenberg, the senior Republican in the Senate, was the "favorite son" candidate of the Michigan delegation and was considered a possible compromise candidate if Taft or Dewey faltered. Former President
Herbert Hoover was also spoken of as a compromise candidate. However, each of these candidates had weaknesses that could be exploited. Taft's outspoken isolationism and opposition to any American involvement in the
European war convinced many Republican leaders that he could not win a general election, particularly as
France fell to the Nazis in June 1940 and Germany threatened the United Kingdom. Dewey's relative youth—he was only 38 in 1940—and lack of any foreign-policy experience caused his candidacy to weaken as the
Wehrmacht emerged as a fearsome threat. In 1940, Vandenberg was also an isolationist (he would change his foreign-policy stance during World War II) and his lackadaisical, lethargic campaign never caught the voters' attention. Hoover still bore the stigma of having presided over the
Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the subsequent
Great Depression. This left an opening for a
dark horse candidate to emerge. A
Wall Street-based industrialist named
Wendell Willkie, who had never before run for public office, emerged as the unlikely nominee. Willkie, a native of Indiana and a former Democrat who had supported Franklin Roosevelt in the
1932 United States presidential election, was considered an improbable choice. Willkie had first come to public attention as an articulate critic of Roosevelt's attempt to break up electrical power
monopolies. Willkie was the CEO of the
Commonwealth & Southern Corporation, which provided electrical power to customers in eleven states. In 1933, President Roosevelt had created the
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which promised to provide
flood control and cheap electricity to the impoverished people of the
Tennessee Valley. However, the government-run TVA would compete with Willkie's Commonwealth & Southern, and this led Willkie to criticize and oppose the TVA's attempt to compete with private power companies. Willkie argued that the government had unfair advantages over private corporations, and should thus avoid competing directly against them. However, Willkie did not dismiss all of Roosevelt's
social welfare programs, indeed supporting those he believed could not be managed any better by the free enterprise system. Furthermore, unlike the leading Republican candidates, Willkie was a forceful and outspoken advocate of aid to the
Allies of World War II, especially the United Kingdom. His support of giving all aid to the British "short of declaring war" won him the support of many Republicans on the
East Coast of the United States, who disagreed with their party's isolationist leaders in Congress. Willkie's persuasive arguments impressed these Republicans, who believed that he would be an attractive presidential candidate. Many of the leading
press barons of the era, such as Ogden Reid of the
New York Herald Tribune, Roy Howard of the
Scripps-Howard newspaper chain and
John and
Gardner Cowles Jr. publishers of the
Minneapolis Star and the
Minneapolis Tribune, as well as
The Des Moines Register and
Look magazine, supported Willkie in their newspapers and magazines. Even so, Willkie remained a long-shot candidate; the May 8
Gallup Poll showed Dewey at 67% support among Republicans, followed by Vandenberg and Taft, with Willkie at only 3%. The
German Army's rapid
Blitzkrieg campaign into France in May 1940 shook American public opinion, even as Taft was telling a Kansas audience that America needed to concentrate on domestic issues to prevent Roosevelt from using the war crisis to extend
socialism at home. Both Dewey and Vandenberg also continued to oppose any aid to the United Kingdom that might lead to war with Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, sympathy for the embattled British was mounting daily, and this aided Willkie's candidacy. By mid-June, little over one week before the Republican Convention opened, the Gallup poll reported that Willkie had moved into second place with 17%, and that Dewey was slipping. Fueled by his favorable media attention, Willkie's pro-British statements won over many of the delegates. As the delegates were arriving in Philadelphia, Gallup reported that Willkie had surged to 29%, Dewey had slipped five more points to 47%, and Taft, Vandenberg and Hoover trailed at 8%, 8%, and 6% respectively. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps as many as one million, telegrams urging support for Willkie poured in, many from "Willkie Clubs" that had sprung up across the country. Millions more signed petitions circulating everywhere. At the
1940 Republican National Convention itself, keynote speaker
Harold Stassen, the Governor of Minnesota, announced his support for Willkie and became his official floor manager. Hundreds of vocal Willkie supporters packed the upper galleries of the convention hall. Willkie's amateur status and fresh face appealed to delegates as well as voters. Most of the delegations were selected not by primaries, but by party leaders in each state, and they had a keen sense of the fast-changing pulse of public opinion. Gallup found the same thing in polling data not reported until after the convention: Willkie had moved ahead among Republican voters by 44% to only 29% for the collapsing Dewey. As the pro-Willkie galleries chanted "We Want Willkie!" the delegates on the convention floor began their vote. Dewey led on the first ballot, but steadily lost strength thereafter. Both Taft and Willkie gained in strength on each ballot, and by the fourth ballot it was obvious that either Willkie or Taft would be the nominee. The key moments came when the delegations of large states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York left Dewey and Vandenberg and switched to Willkie, giving him the victory on the sixth ballot. Willkie's nomination was one of the most dramatic moments in any political convention. Having given little thought to whom he would select as his vice-presidential nominee, Willkie left the decision to convention chairman and Massachusetts Representative
Joseph Martin, the House Minority Leader, who suggested Senate Minority Leader
Charles L. McNary from Oregon. Despite the fact that McNary had spearheaded a "Stop Willkie" campaign late in the balloting, the convention picked him to be Willkie's running mate. ==General election==