There were two key elections in which the course of American and world history could have been changed for the better: 1948 and 1952. Had George Patton not died in Germany in 1945, he might well have retired soon thereafter and entered domestic politics, perhaps to run for the governorship of his home state of California in 1946 and then for president in 1948. With his personal popularity, far greater than that of MacArthur or even Eisenhower, he would have made a far stronger GOP candidate than Thomas Dewey did. Given his conservatism and Virginian lineage, Patton might have wrought a Republican revolution in the South 32 years before Reagan. Most likely, Strom Thurmond would not have run as an independent had Patton been a candidate. He would have also retained what were then the "rock-ribbed" GOP strongholds in the Northeast and Upper Midwest, not yet thoroughly corrupted by liberalism, enabling a clear victory over Truman.
A Patton administration would have purged the State Department of the Council on Foreign Relations, Ivy League types who had appeased Stalin in 1945 and who would have later decided on a "no win" war in Korea. The Soviet Union would have been successfully confronted and impelled to withdraw from what would become the Warsaw Pact, as the U.S. had a nuclear monopoly and conventional superiority. Even if Mao had conquered China, a Patton administration would have supplied the Nationalists with the means to continue the struggle. Moreover, a State Department staffed with conservatives would not have encouraged Britain, France, et. al., to abandon their colonial empires, to be replaced in many cases by Marxists and brutal dictators.
Domestically, the New Deal legislation would have been repealed. The budget would have been balanced, and Federal spending severely curbed. Liberal academia would have been denied the Federal funding they received to pursue their agenda. Possibly someone like Clarence Manion, the Constitutionalist dean of the Notre Dame law school, would have become Chief Justice, rather than Earl Warren. A Manion-led Supreme Court would not have done the damage to states' rights that the Warren Court did. Indeed, such a court would have restored the precedents of the conservative Federal courts, such as the "Nine Old Men" derided by FDR.
None of these actions would have necessarily prevented this nation's cultural and moral decline. We would have probably suffered the effects of Kinsey's sexual studies, Hugh Hefner's "Playboy philosophy," the "Beat Generation," rock and roll, Timothy Leary's evangelism for drug use, and the hippie movement. However, the Federal government would not have been a silent partner in the long march of secular humanism and its handmaiden, liberalism, through this nation's institutions. Our main foreign foe would have been placed at bay and perhaps even overthrown after Stalin's death.
Patton's death in Germany precluded this from happening.
There are still open questions about the exact nature of the "accident" that killed Patton.
Stay well - Yorktown
As it was though, MacArthur didn't want to run against a fellow WWII general, so he stepped aside when they drafted Ike. The conservative alternative was then Bob Taft, who wasn't much a fighter, but he was still clearly to right of Eisenhower.
As it was though, MacArthur didn't want to run against a fellow WWII general, so he stepped aside when they drafted Ike. The conservative alternative was then Bob Taft, who wasn't much a fighter, but he was still clearly to right of Eisenhower.