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1940 Campaign	Prelude    Acceptance Speech    The “Willkie Special”    Compromises    Defeat

   At the conclusion of any presidential campaign, political pundits develop theories to try to explain the outcome. Although Willkie fought hard and his supporters were truly dedicated to their cause, Willkie, of course, lost to FDR in the general election. Why did he lose? This page chronicles Willkie’s campaign and proposes several answers to that question. No answer can be definitive, however, because national elections are complex affairs and voters’ motivations are difficult to establish with certainty. Moreover, Willkie was a complex and often contradictory man, and the reasons put forward for his defeat are equally complex and sometimes contradictory.

   As the convention demonstrated, a candidate’s momentum or perceived momentum is crucial to his success. Willkie’s campaign was immediately faced with the problem of keeping his supporters energized -- and thus his momentum strong -- for four long months until the November election. Viewed in this light, Willkie’s decision to go on a retreat in Colorado was a bad one. But it’s hard to see any alternative, because Willkie was exhausted by the battle just to get the nomination -- and he needed time to rest and to assemble a campaign staff, not quite from scratch, but almost. To do this, Willkie and his wife Edith, followed by a hoard of reporters and newsreel cameramen, traveled to Colorado Springs for three weeks.

   Just before leaving for Colorado, Willkie announced that Representative Joseph Martin, House Republican leader, would be the new GOP National Chairman and his campaign manager. This move was a deliberate snub of John Hamilton, who was the national chairman at the time. Willkie’s decision angered the party professionals and other powerful GOP leaders, but he had several good reasons to reject Hamilton. One, Hamilton was associated with the disastrous GOP showing in the 1936 election, when Alf Landon lost in a landslide to FDR. Second, Hamilton represented the Old Guard Republicans, the conservative, isolationist GOP insiders who had actively worked against Willkie’s nomination. To submit to these Old Guard politicians would have immediately cost Willkie his power base, the political outsiders who had propelled him to the nomination. Regardless of the political necessity of rejecting Hamilton, the powerful party regulars never forgave Willkie for it, and as a result, the campaign would be continuously beset by tension between the Willkie "amateurs" and the established party professionals.

   Restoring party unity was Willkie’s goal during this working vacation. He partly achieved it, but he never made a real peace with the GOP leaders. Although Willkie met with Herbert Hoover, he did so reluctantly and very briefly, much to the consternation of the Old Guard who revered the ex-president as the emotional and spiritual figurehead of the Republican party. Almost everything else Willkie did and said further alienated GOP leaders and confirmed their fears that Willkie would be an uncontrollable candidate.

   Willkie’s first major public appearance after the nomination was the formal acceptance speech he delivered on August 17 in his hometown of Elwood, Indiana. Ever since FDR accepted his nomination at the 1932 convention, such delayed, formal acceptance speeches were considered passé, but Willkie was hoping that by returning to his small, mid-western hometown he could offset his image as a Wall Street lawyer. The build up for the speech was tremendous. The press was more than willing to hype the event, for the public was still enthralled by the man who had, in effect, hijacked the Republican convention.

Willkie’s acceptance speech, Elwood, Indiana. August 17, 1940.       Credit: The Library of Congress [ VIEW ENLARGED PHOTO ]

   Not surprisingly, Willkie’s speech did not live up to the impossibly high expectations set for it. Although the text was not dull, it was clear that Willkie had not learned (nor would he ever learn) the art of delivering a prepared address using a microphone. In addition, the high heat (102 degrees in the shade) and humidity caused him to sweat profusely, which streaked his glasses and blurred his vision, making it difficult to read the speech. The smooth and confident Willkie who had generated such intense public enthusiasm by his stellar performance in Philadelphia just two months ago was nowhere to be seen that day by the crowd gathered in Elwood. Instead they witnessed, and the press reported on, a speech that simply fell flat. In addition to the problems Willkie had delivering the speech, the speech itself lacked focus and did not clearly outline one or two main points that would constitute his strategy to defeat FDR.

   But Willkie had no time mull over the lukewarm reaction to his acceptance speech, for he had to plan the next stage of his campaign: a barnstorming speaking tour of the country. This would be a "whistle stop" tour by private train, and Willkie hoped that this informal, more personal style of campaigning would be more effective, as it was a much better fit with his personality.

The “Willkie Special” at a stop in Ohio Credit: Lilly Library, IU

   The "Willkie Special" was a train composed of 12 cars, including a private car at the rear with a living room, a dining room, an observation lounge and several sleeping compartments. With 30 campaign staffers and more than 40 reporters aboard, the "Willkie Special" left Rushville, Indiana, (Edith Willkie’s hometown) in early September. The train campaign would last seven weeks and it would pass through 31 states. The train never ventured into the Deep South; Willkie wisely decided that he would never be able to break the lock that the Democrats had on southern votes. The first swing of the trip would take Willkie to the western states, but the first stop was in Chicago, where Willkie would make the first of many the off-the-cuff remarks that would get him into trouble.

   The huge crowds Willkie drew in Chicago were indicative of the enthusiastic receptions he would receive throughout this trip, with few exceptions. Everyone, whether friend or foe, wanted to get a glimpse of this unconventional political maverick. In downtown Chicago, his motorcade was barely able to navigate through the crowds of people spilling into the streets. Navigation was further hampered by a blizzard of confetti and ticker tape tossed from above.

   Two other significant events took place that day. His last campaign stop was at a Negro League ballpark, where Willkie told nearly 10,000 blacks that if elected, he would work to abolish Jim Crow laws and other aspects of racial discrimination. By doing so, Willkie signaled early on in the campaign that he was going after the black vote, a section of the voting population traditionally conceded to the Democrats. The second notable event of that day was when Willkie misspoke at a rally in the Chicago suburb of Cicero. Willkie was criticizing the corrupt democratic politics in Chicago when an audience member reminded him that he was in Cicero, not Chicago. Willkie replied with: "Well, then, to hell with Chicago!" This unguarded remark got prominent play in Chicago's newspapers the next day, and it hurt Willkie’s popularity throughout the Midwest.

   Also soon apparent in the first stages of the campaign was the strain on Willkie’s voice. He used microphones when he was at auditoriums or stadiums before thousands of people, but whenever he could, he liked to position himself as close to a crowd as possible and shout his message as if he were a revivalist preacher. Often, Willkie would order his campaign train to make an unscheduled stop if he saw that a crowd, even a small crowd, had gathered along the tracks to get a glimpse of him. He would then say a few words to them from the rear of his campaign car. This brutal speaking schedule, combined with his three-pack-a-day cigarette habit, soon meant that his voice was reduced to a whisper. The campaign brought in a California throat doctor with experience treating Hollywood actors, who ordered Willkie to rest his voice. Willkie reluctantly did so, but never enough to allow his voice to fully recover. For the rest of the campaign, Willkie’s voice was scratchy and weak, which disappointed many voters seeing him for the first time and who expected him to be the political hellraiser who commandeered the GOP convention in Philadelphia.

Willkie on the campaign trail [ VIEW ENLARGED PHOTO ] Credit: The New Deal Network

   While Willkie’s voice was cracking due to stress, so too were the campaign staffers aboard the “Willkie Special ” Much to the delight of the GOP party regulars who Willkie snubbed in Philadelphia, Willkie proved quite inept at organizing a presidential campaign. Willkie upset a lot of local GOP officeholders and party officials when he refused to meet with them when the campaign train pulled into town. Such slights, which Willkie dismissed as inconsequential, were extremely damaging to his cause, because he alienated the very people who would otherwise have been knocking on doors for him.

   There was also stress between two distinct camps of campaign staffers on the train. The party professionals, who tried desperately to get Willkie to take their advice, were continuously clashing with the political amateurs on board. Both sides were unyielding in their determination that "their" candidate do things "their" way. For his part, Willkie never seemed too interested in getting the two camps to make peace with one another. Rather, Willkie would typically agree that whatever advice he was being given at the time was good advice, and that surely that was the way things are going to be done from now on. But things never did change; the chaos continued and mutiny was always just below the surface. The reporters onboard the train called it a "squirrel cage." Things were so bad that a senior campaign aide was quoted as saying the train was run like "a whorehouse on a Saturday night when the Madam was away and the girls were running it to suit themselves."

   Some of the chaos was attributable to Russell Davenport, a former editor at Fortune magazine who was Willkie’s chief speech-writer. By all accounts, Davenport was as disorganized as Willkie. As a result, Willkie’s speeches were finished at the last minute, and handed to the candidate moments before he had to read them. This, and the candidate's natural tendency to speak his mind, led to numerous misstatements that had to be retracted or clarified the next day.

   With the advantage of hindsight, several political analysts have also criticized Willkie for virtually ignoring his running mate, Sen. Charles McNary, for the entire campaign. They rarely appeared together in public, fueling not-so-unfounded rumors that Willkie did not care for McNary. Certainly, they were odd running mates, as McNary's views on important issues differed significantly from Willkie’s. (McNary was a committed isolationist, for example.) Perhaps more important, however, was that by not forging stronger ties with his running mate, Willkie deprived himself of the advice and experience of a very shrewd politician.

   Willkie’s disorganization was infamous, and it showed most clearly when his campaign failed to pick one or two main themes with which to attack Roosevelt. For a while, Willkie focused on FDR's unprecedented try for a third term. Then he switched to attacking FDR's foreign policy, saying that the president was not giving voters a clear picture on whether or not America would soon be entering the World War. And on occasion, his speeches delved into detailed critiques of New Deal policies and programs that were way over the heads (and way below the interest level) of his audiences. Ironically, however, the Willkie campaign suffered from one of the few themes that was consistent. Essentially, Willkie argued that he liked the social goals of FDR's New Deal programs, but he disagreed with the way they were carried out. This didn't endear him to the pro-business Republicans who formed the core of his party, because they disliked such New Deal programs as Social Security, unemployment relief and minimum wage laws. And blue-collar workers weren't concerned with Willkie’s philosophical quibbles with the New Deal; all they knew (and cared) about were the many jobs that FDR had created.

   The campaign's disorganization and the inconsistency of Willkie’s messages were reflected in the pre-election polls. Willkie's standings in the polls slipped from dead even with FDR in early September to 45 percent later in the month. The Gallop poll on October 6 had even worse news for Willkie: his opponent was now leading in 42 states and Willkie was projected to win just 32 electoral votes. The depressing news from the pre-election polls caused the candidate to make several desperate last-minute appeals for votes. Some of these statements represented complete reversals of Willkie’s previously stated positions, which angered those who supported Willkie because they thought him to be a man of principal and not political expediency.

   Primary among Willkie's turnarounds was a clumsy, eleventh-hour appeal to the isolationists -- previously the subjects of his most fervent attacks. On several occasions during an October swing through the isolationist Midwest, Willkie said that re-electing Roosevelt would guarantee that American troops would be sent to fight in Europe's war. In a nationally broadcast radio address, he even alleged that FDR had made secret deals that would commit American troops to the war. These last-minute declarations, however, had their intended effect: Willkie's position in the polls began to rise. He had made particularly impressive gains in the isolationist Midwest, where he moved ahead of Roosevelt in five states.

Willkie hit by egg (Chicago)

   Willkie’s surge in the polls caused FDR to change his campaign strategy, which up to that point had been to ignore Willkie's attacks. Roosevelt maintained that he was too busy being President to campaign, and that he was more concerned with dealing with Hitler's increasing aggression. But throughout the campaign, FDR had been making what amounted to campaign speeches, but he had the advantage of delivering them at official presidential functions, such as after inspecting a defense plant. But in late October, just weeks before election day, FDR finally began making campaign appearances. In these speeches, Roosevelt aggressively responded to Willkie's charges and he angrily denied that he had made secret agreements committing the country to war. It was this intense period just before election day, when personal attacks and counterattacks were launched daily, that have lead many people to remember this campaign as being extremely bitter.

   Anyone doubting that the 1940 election was contentious and emotional should note how frequently Willkie was the target of thrown objects while campaigning. Never before had a presidential candidate endured this many physical assaults from anonymous detractors hiding in the cover of the crowd. Objects thrown at Willkie included eggs (the most common object tossed), tomatoes, oranges, potatoes, at least one cantaloupe, ashtrays, rocks and even chairs. Some, but not all, of these attacks were mentioned in the stories filed by the reporters travelling with the campaign. Willkie usually took these attacks in stride, but in Pontiac, Michigan, he lunged at the person who threw an egg that missed him but splattered onto the clothes of his wife. Willkie sprang toward his assailant, but wisely stopped himself before he did anything. But by far the most serious incident took place at a campaign speech in New York City's Madison Square Garden, when a man was wrestled to the ground after he pulled a loaded handgun from his jacket as he approached Willkie.

   On the eve of the election, the polls gave FDR a slight edge in the popular vote, but because several key states were undecided, the election was too close to call. A record 50 million voters went to the polls on election day, motivated by a belief that the outcome would determine the course of history. The final tally gave Willkie 22.3 million votes, five million fewer than FDR's 27.3 million votes. Although Willkie received more votes than any previous GOP candidate had ever managed to get, he carried only ten states, including his home state of Indiana. Despite the large margin of Electoral College votes (FDR's 449 to Willkie's 82), the election was close. A transfer of just 600,000 Roosevelt votes to Willkie, distributed in 10 key states, would have made Willkie president. And although Willkie was certainly disappointed that he lost, he was consoled by the near-universal belief that any other GOP nominee that year (Taft, Dewey or Vandenberg) would have been crushed by FDR.

   Why did Willkie lose? A remark made shortly after the election by a top Willkie aide summed it up: "The collapse of the Allies made Roosevelt's election a certainty no matter what Willkie did." Although Willkie was admired by a broad cross section of America, many voters clearly felt that it was unwise to change administrations while Hitler was threatening the world. Willkie was also hurt by his connection to the C & S Corp. If Willkie's campaign had a consistent theme, it was on the evils of the New Deal, which Willkie criticized for stifling the healthy competition under which industry thrives. Yet most of the population associated Willkie with the monopolistic utility industry. Finally, Willkie simply could not compete with the successes of the New Deal. For many voters, memories of the Great Depression were still fresh, and far more relevant than the threat of war or the fear that a third term for FDR would lead to a dictatorship. Although the New Deal was not perfect, it significantly improved the lives of millions of Americans, and they rewarded FDR for this by giving him their votes.

   But for Willkie, all the stresses and indignities of the presidential campaign were now behind him, and he would soon move into the next phase of his public life. Although Willkie is remembered most for his unlikely path to the GOP nomination and the subsequent presidential campaign, this was just the beginning of his influence on national affairs. The public's fascination with this unconventional politician continued after the election, which permitted Willkie to avoid the obscurity that usually awaits defeated presidential candidates. Willkie took advantage of this unique situation and led the "Loyal Opposition" (a phrase he borrowed from the British political system) to FDR and his administration.

GOP CONVENTION

1940 CAMPAIGN

LOYAL OPPOSITION

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Original content Copyright  ©  by Timothy D. Walker    Your  comments  are appreciated
Willkie campaign buttons courtesy of  Stephen Cresswell
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