NPC in History: "We Want Willkie!"

The casual reader of American history could not be faulted for skimming over the candidacy of Wendell Willkie as the 1940 Republican challenger to Franklin D. Roosevelt. After all, he was just one of four candidates that FDR vanquished in his unprecedented presidential victories.

However, the 1940 election came at a pivotal time in American and world history, and Willkie’s nomination was noteworthy for two major reasons.

First, Roosevelt was the first president to run for a third term, breaking the tradition set by George Washington that had assured limited executive power. Breaking that tradition, especially with Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Josef Stalin seizing unlimited power, riled many Americans.

Second, after Hitler’s Germany invaded Poland in September, 1939, not much happened in the European conflict until the spring of 1940 as the United States got into its election season. Disillusioned by the outcome of The Great War, as the World War I was known at the time, Americans were reluctant to get involved in a new war. What difference did it make to them that Czechoslovakia and Poland had been overrun by German forces?

Isolationism was a powerful force in American politics in the early months of 1940, and two of the likeliest candidates for the GOP nomination – Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio and Sen. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan – embraced it. Also in the running was Thomas Dewey, the youthful special prosecutor from New York City.

But when Hitler’s Blitzkrieg overran Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and France in a matter of weeks in April and May, leaving Great Britain alone between Germany and the United States, isolationism began to crumble. Out of all of this for the Republicans came the unlikeliest of candidates, Wendell Willkie.

A native of Indiana, he was a Wall Street corporate lawyer and executive who had never run for public office. In fact, he had been a Democrat, voting for Roosevelt in 1932. As an opponent of Roosevelt’s New Deal, he voted for Republican Alf Landon in 1936. But he didn’t switch parties until 1939. He did not enter any primaries in the 1940 race, but with the help of widespread newspaper and magazine publicity, he went to the Republican convention as the alternative candidate to the isolationists.

His candidacy caught fire, and that brought him to National Press Club on June 12, 1940, just days before the Republican convention. Oddly enough, his speech was off the record, as many of the early Club luncheons were. Reporters got insights into Willkie that they could use as they put together their convention coverage, but they could not report it.

Willkie had gained a reputation as an inspirational speaker, who denounced the New Deal as ineffective government control of the economy while still supporting FDR’s plans to prepare for war. He could easily spout quips, something not common for politicians of his day.

Only one quote escaped from the Club luncheon:

When a reporter asked him without warning, “Mr. Willkie, why did you leave your party?” He shot back, “I did not leave my party. My party left me. I am a Jeffersonian Democrat, and I have never deviated from the principles of Thomas Jefferson.”

At the Republican convention, a Willkie backer controlled the tickets to the public galleries, filling them with supporters chanting, “We Want Willkie.” By the sixth ballot, Willkie had trounced his opponents. His nomination meant that whomever won the 1940 election, Britain would have American support against the Nazis. Some historians have said Willkie’s nomination assured that the United States entered World War II as a united nation, instead of split between internationalists and isolationists.

As a side note, this photo of Willkie taken by a Harris & Ewing photographer gives some idea of how uncomfortable speaking at the Club on a hot day could be. With all the windows open, Willkie still looks fatigued. Another photo taken that day shows him mopping sweat from his face after sitting down.

This is another in a series provided by Club historian and past president Gil Klein. Dig down anywhere in the Club’s 111-year history, and you will find some kind of significant event in the history of the world, the nation, Washington, society, journalism and the Club itself. Many of these events were caught in illustrations that tell the stories.