WI: President William Douglas

A

AndrewH

Well-known member
Alright, so getting the infamously antagonistic liberal Justice William Orville Douglas into the White House is almost comically simple - get him nominated as FDR's veep instead of Truman in 1944, and when Roosevelt passes in '45, bam, he's in the White House.

However, once he takes the oath of office and becomes President, is where things get really interesting. While it's up for debate how effective he was as a Justice (seeing how his opinions and rulings were typically written in less than twenty minutes), Douglas' tireless work ethic as President would have dramatically changed America in ways Truman couldn't (or wouldn't, depending on your point of view). Described by Lucas Powe as "a man of action, not reflection," Douglas would have pursued stronger protections for individual liberties and rights, but by 1945, he hadn't became the liberal partisan that we know today - in fact, in the words of Richard A. Posner, "when Douglas had thought he had a shot at the presidency, he had been a liberal justice, but respectably so - to the right, for example, of Frank Murphy." He was an anti-communist, and while I can't find any sources on whether he would've dropped the Bomb on Japan, he was no peacenik. Personally, he was a fascinating figure, and seemingly spurred on by bitterness on not becoming Vice President and then President (although you can't blame everything on that; he just seems like a bad person overall), Douglas became a hard drinker, started pursuing women over forty years younger than him, and became distant from his direct family. While I doubt all of that could be butterflied if he became President, the string of divorces he went through while as a Justice on the Court would most likely not happen.

So, as President, what could Bill Douglas get up to?
 
Frankly, it's hard to imagine any president not dropping the bomb on Japan. They might chose different targets, and they might only drop one but considering how little the radiation impact was understood and the nature of the war/Russian intervention/fact that Japanese peace proposals were continuing to insist on conditions in spite of the public policy/fact that Invasion in 1945 was already being discarded I don't think ANY potential president wouldn't have tried.

As President I can't speak about his specific domestic policies. I would note that Truman was very much hampered on that front, and the Fair Deal was pretty stillborne. Douglas might be able to manage his platform better but I doubt it. It's possible, that he might not push the Marshal Plan, and outside of that event whatever foreign policy he has would be dictated by what happens when Stalin tries the Blockade of Berlin and what his China Policy would be, but I'm sure someone else knows better then me on that and I doubt me listing a bunch of potentials would be too helpful.
 
Japhy said:
Frankly, it's hard to imagine any president not dropping the bomb on Japan. They might chose different targets, and they might only drop one but considering how little the radiation impact was understood and the nature of the war/Russian intervention/fact that Japanese peace proposals were continuing to insist on conditions in spite of the public policy/fact that Invasion in 1945 was already being discarded I don't think ANY potential president wouldn't have tried.

As President I can't speak about his specific domestic policies. I would note that Truman was very much hampered on that front, and the Fair Deal was pretty stillborne. Douglas might be able to manage his platform better but I doubt it. It's possible, that he might not push the Marshal Plan, and outside of that event whatever foreign policy he has would be dictated by what happens when Stalin tries the Blockade of Berlin and what his China Policy would be, but I'm sure someone else knows better then me on that and I doubt me listing a bunch of potentials would be too helpful.
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Good points on the foreign policy front - I was still a bit unsure considering some of Douglas' later positions, but you were pretty informative about that. I didn't actually consider how people didn't know much about radiation at the time, so I'd agree with you there.

I think there's a case to be made that Douglas could've been more successful or less successful than Truman for a variety of reasons. Douglas was still close to the majority of Congressional Democrats at the time, and he had the LBJ mentality of "I am the only person on Earth who is qualified to be President," and given that he had the same force of will as him, Douglas could do a lot. However, he was nowhere near as skilled as LBJ when it came to Congressional procedure, and if he didn't get his way on something, he would pout for about a week and then move on. I'm of the mind that he'd do better than Truman in this situation, but Douglas could fuck it up somehow anyways.

Also, assuming Dewey wins the nomination in '48 and conditions are broadly the same which is admittedly a big ask, I'd say the GOP wins that one.
 
Avalanches said:
Good points on the foreign policy front - I was still a bit unsure considering some of Douglas' later positions, but you were pretty informative about that. I didn't actually consider how people didn't know much about radiation at the time, so I'd agree with you there.

I think there's a case to be made that Douglas could've been more successful or less successful than Truman for a variety of reasons. Douglas was still close to the majority of Congressional Democrats at the time, and he had the LBJ mentality of "I am the only person on Earth who is qualified to be President," and given that he had the same force of will as him, Douglas could do a lot. However, he was nowhere near as skilled as LBJ when it came to Congressional procedure, and if he didn't get his way on something, he would pout for about a week and then move on. I'm of the mind that he'd do better than Truman in this situation, but Douglas could fuck it up somehow anyways.

Also, assuming Dewey wins the nomination in '48 and conditions are broadly the same which is admittedly a big ask, I'd say the GOP wins that one.
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Broadly I agree with all of this but I'll admit If we were talking about a few other VP picks I'd be on surer footing.

In regards to Dewey I would say he's in a strong position. It was never an official policy but everyone in the GOP basically went into 1944 knowing they wouldn't win. Dewey getting the nomination then was, in a lot of ways sort of part consolation prize and partly a coupon for him to be the 1948 nominee. Obviously the Party right wasn't too thrilled but the Conservative wing of the GOP was still a mess. (I could talk about what Robert Taft ran on in 1952 and how wonderfully contradictory it was but thats a whole other discussion) The only really possible opponents has are Warren, who basically respected the unspoken 1944 agreement and Harold Stassen, who was viable. That said electorally speaking Stassen isn't all that different then Dewey so it would be easy enough to imagine the GOP operating pretty much the same in the General.
 
Japhy said:
Frankly, it's hard to imagine any president not dropping the bomb on Japan. They might chose different targets, and they might only drop one but considering how little the radiation impact was understood and the nature of the war/Russian intervention/fact that Japanese peace proposals were continuing to insist on conditions in spite of the public policy/fact that Invasion in 1945 was already being discarded I don't think ANY potential president wouldn't have tried.
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I don’t know much about this, but wasn’t there serious discussion of having a demonstration bomb? Was that still a serious possibility by the time of Roosevelt’s death?
 
Wolfram said:
I don’t know much about this, but wasn’t there serious discussion of having a demonstration bomb? Was that still a serious possibility by the time of Roosevelt’s death?
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There were proposals, but at the time they lacked support. Plenty of Military, Civil and Scientific figures are on the record saying they opposed its use at all or on an urban target at the time but frankly, theres nothing to show for quite a few of them. And the ones that did were intensely wishy-washy about it, or left their criticisms to the cocktail lounge, or simply weren't people who would ever have been considered for part of the discussion on use.

The Targeting Committee didn't meet until May of 1945, nor did its military or scientific advisory groups but the meetings only did a perfunctory discussion about a demonstration bomb or attempting to find a purely military target because a basic consensus had been developing for several months before hand. The effectiveness of the Bombs was agreed by all sides to be vastly increased if its first military use came as a shock out of the blue.

There are schools of thought (And if there was a literal school it would be at my Alma Matter who's history department was controlled bottom up by revisionist history on the bombs and other, far less savory aspects of the "Innocent Japan" Mythos) that FDR or Wallace or some other "more moral", "less racist", "less Anti-Soviet", "more educated", or what-have-you President would have disregarded the committee. But Any Democrat who became President in 1945 is likely to appoint the exact same people to the Targeting Committee, just as the Joint Chiefs will assign the same planners to it and the Manhattan Project would appoint the same Scientific Advisers. And frankly, it becomes very hard to imagine anyone disagreeing with the report on the table from a blue ribbon group of experts.

Obviously with perspective about the regime reaction to the bombs ( ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) and the Operational and Strategic success of the Soviet intervention I think we'd all love to see the bombs not dropped. But it was a war, it had been a long war and even the best estimates, taken from the perspective of how the Japanese had acted the whole war, assumed the war would at least take most of 1946, if not longer. They thought they had a shortcut to ending it. Obviously other issues, like the Soviets were a factor, but they did think they could end the war with it. And that if it didn't end the war by breaking the Japanese government's stubborn fanaticism that it would make military victory easier. They were wrong but how could they have actually known?
 
Japhy said:
There were proposals, but at the time they lacked support. Plenty of Military, Civil and Scientific figures are on the record saying they opposed its use at all or on an urban target at the time but frankly, theres nothing to show for quite a few of them. And the ones that did were intensely wishy-washy about it, or left their criticisms to the cocktail lounge, or simply weren't people who would ever have been considered for part of the discussion on use.

The Targeting Committee didn't meet until May of 1945, nor did its military or scientific advisory groups but the meetings only did a perfunctory discussion about a demonstration bomb or attempting to find a purely military target because a basic consensus had been developing for several months before hand. The effectiveness of the Bombs was agreed by all sides to be vastly increased if its first military use came as a shock out of the blue.

There are schools of thought (And if there was a literal school it would be at my Alma Matter who's history department was controlled bottom up by revisionist history on the bombs and other, far less savory aspects of the "Innocent Japan" Mythos) that FDR or Wallace or some other "more moral", "less racist", "less Anti-Soviet", "more educated", or what-have-you President would have disregarded the committee. But Any Democrat who became President in 1945 is likely to appoint the exact same people to the Targeting Committee, just as the Joint Chiefs will assign the same planners to it and the Manhattan Project would appoint the same Scientific Advisers. And frankly, it becomes very hard to imagine anyone disagreeing with the report on the table from a blue ribbon group of experts.

Obviously with perspective about the regime reaction to the bombs ( ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) and the Operational and Strategic success of the Soviet intervention I think we'd all love to see the bombs not dropped. But it was a war, it had been a long war and even the best estimates, taken from the perspective of how the Japanese had acted the whole war, assumed the war would at least take most of 1946, if not longer. They thought they had a shortcut to ending it. Obviously other issues, like the Soviets were a factor, but they did think they could end the war with it. And that if it didn't end the war by breaking the Japanese government's stubborn fanaticism that it would make military victory easier. They were wrong but how could they have actually known?
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Even when they know about Unit 731, many people on the Western Left still say the Americans were worse for dropping the bombs.
 
Japhy said:
Broadly I agree with all of this but I'll admit If we were talking about a few other VP picks I'd be on surer footing.

In regards to Dewey I would say he's in a strong position. It was never an official policy but everyone in the GOP basically went into 1944 knowing they wouldn't win. Dewey getting the nomination then was, in a lot of ways sort of part consolation prize and partly a coupon for him to be the 1948 nominee. Obviously the Party right wasn't too thrilled but the Conservative wing of the GOP was still a mess. (I could talk about what Robert Taft ran on in 1952 and how wonderfully contradictory it was but thats a whole other discussion) The only really possible opponents has are Warren, who basically respected the unspoken 1944 agreement and Harold Stassen, who was viable. That said electorally speaking Stassen isn't all that different then Dewey so it would be easy enough to imagine the GOP operating pretty much the same in the General.
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While this is me just speculating, I wouldn't be surprised if Douglas would try and pull a Cleveland and run in '52 or even '56, given favorable conditions to the Democrats. Douglas was dogged by his brief miss at becoming FDR's veep, so I would imagine that someone who was that consumed by anger over that would be someone who would try and get back his old job.

The Lone Centurion said:
Even when they know about Unit 731, many people on the Western Left still say the Americans were worse for dropping the bombs.
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Yeah, nobody says that chief.
 
Avalanches said:
While this is me just speculating, I wouldn't be surprised if Douglas would try and pull a Cleveland and run in '52 or even '56, given favorable conditions to the Democrats. Douglas was dogged by his brief miss at becoming FDR's veep, so I would imagine that someone who was that consumed by anger over that would be someone who would try and get back his old job.
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I would definitely say that makes sense. Especially considering that Stevenson got the nomination in 1952. Not to mention the fact he did manage to get it again once and was very capable of securing it a third time in 1960.
 
Avalanches said:
While this is me just speculating, I wouldn't be surprised if Douglas would try and pull a Cleveland and run in '52 or even '56, given favorable conditions to the Democrats. Douglas was dogged by his brief miss at becoming FDR's veep, so I would imagine that someone who was that consumed by anger over that would be someone who would try and get back his old job.
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Considering Douglas' behaviour at the end of his tenure on the supreme court, I can 100% see this happening.
 
I think that in terms of foreign policy, three things make it likely that the US-Soviet relationship will go badly no matter who's President:

1. The US and USSR are both great powers, and have rival geopolitical goals. It's difficult for countries to remain friendly when they want opposite things, and have the power to make changes that the other one doesn't want.

2. Under Stalin the Soviets accepted the doctrine that capitalism and communism would inevitably come into conflict, probably at some point in the near future. A lot of the things the Soviets between 1945-1953 were based around this idea. So even if a US President tries to be friendly with the Soviets it's unlikely that they'll reciprocate.

3. There was widespread anti-Communist sentiment in America. Although not as bad in Truman's first term as his second this sentiment still makes it so that a President who plays nice with the Soviet Union is going to be attacked for being soft on Communism.

Because of this I think that Douglas's term in office would see a lot of the same developments as Truman. The US is going to develop a policy of containment, and for the first couple of years both sides of the Cold War are going to grow increasingly agitated at each other. The first moment where differences could emerge is in the response to the Berlin Blockade. I don't know enough about Douglas to say what he would have done, but the option of using an armored column to break the blockade was proposed to Truman, who rejected it. If Douglas decided to go with that plan it would cause WWIII, or at the very least tensions ratcheting up to levels that they didn't reach IOTL.

The other big thing that Douglas could change is Israel. Many in the State Department (including Secretary of State George Marshal) thought that recognizing Israel was a bad idea, as it would lead to enmity between the US and the Arabs that could hurt US oil supplies in the event of WWIII. Truman decided to recognize Israel based on his feeling that it was just, as well as the advice of his former business partner (a secular Jew). Again, not sure what Douglas would do, but he could choose to refuse Israel recognition, which would completely reshape the Cold War in the Middle East.
 
There was a very strong minority opinion in the state department and a lot of political pressure as well to recognize Israel.
 
Japhy said:
There was a very strong minority opinion in the state department and a lot of political pressure as well to recognize Israel.
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The consensus among Truman’s foreign policy heads (to my knowledge) was not to recognize Israel.

Douglas, assuming he keeps the same people, would most likely follow their lead, although there is a case to be made that he would follow the OTL path of Truman in that regard.
 
Avalanches said:
The consensus among Truman’s foreign policy heads (to my knowledge) was not to recognize Israel.

Douglas, assuming he keeps the same people, would most likely follow their lead, although there is a case to be made that he would follow the OTL path of Truman in that regard.
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I agree with that. I just kind of take an issue with the idea that Truman did it because one of his friends was Jewish. There was much more then that.
 
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