Who do you feel are people who would’ve made great Presidents had they been elected, but lost either the nomination of their party or the general election?
Myself (in chronological order, not order of preference.
Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. I think he would’ve handled our entry into WWI better, and might have handled what would become the League of Nations issue more handily. He would also have likely staved off the rise of Conservative Republicanism for a few more years given how popular he was.
Leonard Wood in 1916 or 1920. TR’s protege and a great Progressive Republican who I feel would’ve done a better job than Wilson.
Thomas Dewey in 1948. Truman’s best work as President I feel occurred prior to his second term, and perhaps the Korean War may not have happened or would have been handled better by a President Dewey. Also, Dewey’s position as the Eastern Establishment Republican might have kept the Conservative wing at bay for a while more.
Wayne Morse or Stu Symington in 1960. Morse because he would not have escalated Vietnam further, and Stu because I feel he would’ve made for a stronger leader on the world stage than Kennedy and Johnson were given his more experienced background in politics.
Hubert Humphrey in 1968. We would’ve had an earlier end to Vietnam and an even greater society.
Either Gerald Ford or Jerry Brown in 1976. Either one would’ve done I feel a better job than Carter did.
Mario Cuomo in 1992. He was an excellent governor, an orator on par with Obama, and would’ve been the first Italian-American President in our history; and given his skills he might have had a less disastrous first term than Clinton did.
Henry Clay. One of the men who engineered the compromise of 1820 and clearly good for trying to prevent regionalism from tearing apart the Union. Questions about trying to avert or mitigate the civil war can start here.
Samuel Tilden Instead of the compromise that led to the end of reconstruction and the “Solid South”, Tilden himself would probably have been a better. The man broke with Tammany Hall’s corruption, and I see him being a better President than Hayes.
William Jennings Bryan With Bryan at the helm, we are looking at the start of “Christian Socialists” in America. Bimetallism, someone who will not get into a gigantic boondoggle over Cuba and the Philippines or roll into the “White Man’s Burden” Interestingly, the Evangelical-Archcapitalist alliance of modern times probably wouldn’t form either.
Eugene Debs Imagine president Bernie Sanders in an era where children die in coal mines and it’s still acceptable to shoot and kill striking workers. This would undoubtedly be at least FDR levels of reforms a generation early, but Debs would also defuse the “Red Scares” caused by misunderstanding social democrats.
Huey Long Another wave figure that would have massive implications for the future. A more aggressive belief in social works, taxing the wealthy and helping the poor than even FDR, Long may very well mean a faster recovery from the depression.
Earl Warren Want to imagine Blacks lining up for the GOP? A President Warren means an earlier fight over civil rights and no ‘Southern Strategy’; it may very well even mean that both Democrats and Republicans remain “big tent” parties.
Paul Wellstone It’s easy to want someone better than Al Gore running for the Democrats–how about someone that’s going to fight hard for campaign finance reform and opposed the Iraq War in its own time?
I would like to mention Daniel Webster. He was a patriot and statesman the likes of which have seldom been seen.
Going a different route, I’ve long held the opinion that President Nixon in 1960 would have been FAR better than President Nixon in 1968. Kennedy got awfully lucky with the Cuban Missile Crisis. I don’t think that things would have gotten nearly that close to the brink under Nixon. In addition, I think that Nixon’s years in political exile changed him for the worse. I highly doubt that anything like CREEP or Watergate would have happened earlier, even under similar circumstances.
George Pendleton probably was the best likely candidate in 1868. He was an experienced politician and a reformer.
But he had several strikes against him. He was a Democrat at a time when the Republicans were dominating national politics. He had favored negotiations with the Confederates during the war, which was a thoroughly discredited position after the war had been won. And his opposition to corruption made him enemies in his own party.
The result was Pendleton didn’t get the nomination and Grant won the election anyway. While Grant was a good person and a great general, he was generally a failure as a President.
It’s pretty well known that Nixon was really messed up after having the election stolen from him by a guy he considered a friend. After that, his attitude was he would do whatever it took to win, because if the Democrats could do it in 1960 and get away with it, so he could he. The humiliation the press put him through after his loss in '62 to Pat Brown only cemented this sense of “fuck 'em all” and turned his distrust of the press into outright hate.
Not exactly matching your criterion since he didn’t exactly “lose” the nomination, but I think if Bobby Kennedy had survived he would have made a good president, certainly better than Nixon.
Walter Mondale. Hubert Humphrey. Both great Minnesotans who truly cared about the people. Let’s not miss our chance with the third great Minnesotan, Al Franken.
I just recently re-read a 1992 collection of alternate history stories, edited by Mike Resnick. The collection is called Alternate Presidents, and the cover is great – it has a triumphant Thomas E. Dewey holding up a newspaper whose headline reads Truman Defeats Dewey!
It features stories by several SF writers, and covers some of the cases listed here:
Huey Long gets elected instead of FDR, and ends up confronting Hitler.
Teddy Roosevelt runs in his progressive “Bull Moose” party against Taft, and wins.
As the cover suggests, Dewey does defeat Truman
William Jennings Bryan wins
*Tilden wins
the collection also has some other interesting and provocative choices:
Benjamin Franklin is chosen instead of Washington as the first president
Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president (in 1872) wins, and introduces some surprisingly liberal ideas
In his series on US history, Oliver Stone spends a lot of time on John Nance Garner, FDR’s veep for three of his terms, who was replaced for the last term. Stone clearly felt that he would’ve been a radical departure from what Truman was if he took over after FDR’s death.
Are you sure it was Garner? He was FDR’s veep for his first two terms but not his third. I think you mean Henry Wallace who was VP from 1941 to 1945 before being replaced by Truman.
A Dukakis win in 1988 might have led to a marginally better presidency from 1989-1993, but much more importantly, might have spared us from much grief since 2001.
2008- John McCain. One of my favorite politicians and he should have been President in 2000.
2004- Joe Lieberman. I still think Lieberman was the right guy for that time, although I shudder to think about a rise in anti-semetism in the wake of a financial crisis with a Jewish President in charge. But he probably would have beaten Bush and was a fundamentally decent guy.
2000- Al Gore. Gore would have made a great President and I’m not happy he ended his political career.
1988- Jack Kemp. Reagan 2.0, probably with a lot more competence.
1992- Ross Perot. Came around 24 years too early when Americans only thought they were fed up with politics as usual.
Your assertion is contrary to his decision against contesting the 1960 election. If he really did feel that way, it’s hard to imagine that he would have let concern for the country stand in his way.
