By Bill Wilson
It may seem odd to look at an election held 72 years ago for some insight into the contest consuming virtually every facet of life in 21st Century America. But the parallels are striking and do provide some guidance.
In 1952 the American people were faced with war – just a few years after the cataclysmic World War. The Democrat incumbent was facing rapidly sinking polling numbers. With little warning, President Truman announced his decision not to seek re-election. That decision immediately propelled Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver to front-runner status. But many inside the Democrat Party opposed his populist stands. Often referred to as a Huey Long wannabe, Kefauver had made many enemies with his crusading hearings on organized crime. Then, like today, the top levels of the Democrat Party could not allow too deep a look at organized crime and its many political ties. As an aside, Nancy Pelosi’s father was one of those who could not allow such a thorough investigation.
So, desperate to find a candidate that would continue the policies, attitudes and relationships of the Democrat Hierarchy, the consensus finally developed among insiders to elevate the Governor of Illinois, Adlai Stevenson. Kefauver led after the first two ballots but was short of the majority. After a number of backroom deals with other candidates, mostly with segregationists in the deep south, the “liberal” Stevenson won the nomination on the third ballot.
And like today, with little time to present their candidates and positions to the American people, the Democrat Party went full-negative. While today the Democrats and the new deposed Joe Biden’s speech writers attack the Heritage Foundation Agenda 2025 – as if anybody in America outside of a tiny number of policy wonks know about it – the Democrats in 1952 attacked someone other than their opponent, Senator McCarthy of Wisconsin. It only confused people then, as it is today.
The entire theme of the Democrat campaign was a contrived series of distortions and willful forgetfulness. Its effort can best be summarized by a poster, below, that tried to gloss over the perpetual war, inflation and shaky economy.
Even their tag line echoes today – Which Will be Safer? Nearly everyday we have some talking head of “mainstream media” or a pseudo-celebrity messaging how scary it will be to elect Donald Trump.
The negative and fear-centric effort failed miserably. The GOP ticket got 442 electoral votes. There are similarities on the Republican side of the coin as well, although the flipped side of that coin.
In 1952 the forces of globalist Wall Street were able to capture the GOP with a real national hero and the use of underhanded tactics that “shifted” 42 delegates from anti-interventionist Senator Taft to Eisenhower. Without those dirty tricks the vote would have gone differently. Another aside, it was those same GOP, Inc. tricks that forced the CIA Director George Bush on the GOP ticket of 1980. There was no support for him. But the “Internationalist Republicans” demanded him. The similarity with 2024 is that when the internationalists came demanding “one of ours” on the ticket and viciously attacked J.D. Vance, the nominee, Donald Trump, had the strength and courage to reject them.
We know that politics runs in patterns. As the old saying goes, history does not repeat itself but it does rhyme. A dysfunctional Democrat/leftist party that cannot figure out who it wants to have as their standard-bearer, the country sick to death of unnecessary wars, inflation and a breakdown of all institutions, and a desperate need for a generational change would have all sounded familiar in 1952. And a battle inside the Republican Party over an America First agenda and the globalist-Wall Street-war machine cabal would be almost identical. The only difference is today the forces of America First have discredited, humiliated and disposed of the “internationalists.” There was no Bush at the recent Republican Convention, only the family’s attack dog Karl Rove sitting on Rupert Murdoch’s knee carping.
Peggy Noonan, respected political commentator and observer of the Wall Street Journal, summed up things best of all when she wrote on Friday, July 19:
“We saw something epochal: the finalization and ratification of a change in the essential nature of one of the two major political parties of the world’s most powerful nation. It is now a populist, working-class, nationalist party. That is where its sympathies, identification and affiliation lie. There will be shifts, stops and accommodations in the future, no party ever has a clear line, history intervenes, but it is changed, and there will be no going back.
“A final point. We have, many of us, for some time—months, certainly the past few weeks—felt various degrees and kinds of horror. But oh these are exciting times. Things are moving, shifting. Again, this is big history. Hold on to your hat.”
Amen! And historic shifts just like in 1952.
Bill Wilson is the former president of Americans for Limited Government.
