Dewey was too moderate and bland for my tastes. I can see why he got the nomination in ‘44 after running a competitive campaign against FDR in ‘40, but he wouldn’t have been my first choice. I see the primary system worked differently back then... only a handful of states had primaries, Dewey actually fared poorly in them and only won 3 states, but did much better at the convention. General MacArthur (!) actually won the Illinois GOP primary. Wow. Hard to imagine being an Illinois primary voter in the 40s.
My first choice for most of those 40s and early 50s presidential campaigns would have probably been Bob Taft, but Governor John W. Bricker would have been the choice for conservatives by the time Illinois voted anyway. It’s a lot of the same names running from 1940 to 1952 (Stassen, Taft, Wilkie, Dewey, Warren, MacArthur, etc.) Makes me realize the sucky crop of candidates we’ve had in recent GOP primaries isn’t much different.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_%28United_States%29_presidential_primaries,_1944
I was thinking, too, that Bricker might’ve been an excellent choice for Chief Justice at the start of Ike’s term. He was one of only a handful of Republican Attorneys General during the 1933-37 period, followed by 6 years as Governor (1939-45). Had he not stepped down as Governor to run as Dewey’s VP in 1944, he would’ve likely won a 4th 2-year term as Governor (instead, they narrowly elected Conservative Democrat Frank Lausche).
He won the open Senate seat of Harold Burton (a Republican appointed to the Supreme Court by Truman) in 1946 and was reelected in 1952. Unfortunately, because Lausche was Governor and that one seat was the difference between a GOP or Dem majority for the 1953-54 Senate, Lausche would’ve appointed a Dem (as he got to the Summer of ‘53 when Taft died, though we got the seat back in ‘54).
Bricker could’ve conceivably served on the court until his death... in 1986 ! Just in time for Rehnquist to succeed him as he did Warren Burger. Instead, alas, Bricker was one of the class of enormous casualties of 1958 against the execrable leftist Democrat Stephen Young (the mentor of Howard Metzenbaum, who was his campaign manager).
Who knows what either a President or Chief Justice Bricker would’ve done to reign in the government and/or SCOTUS ? He was a big believer in local government and right-to-work. Right-to-work ought to be a Constitutional Amendment.