The Rise of Patton
Historian Marsha Spielberg, PhD: "Patton appealed to a Protestant, Anglo-Saxon working class that felt that the Progressive Party was controlled by immigrants and minorities. A prejudiced charge, certainly. But not entirely untrue."
Patton biographer Jim Ducane: "General Patton's campaign ultimately had three main planks: one, increasing the U.S. security presence in Latin America to ensure that criminals of the Great American War were brought to justice. Two, to preserve the Fair Society from both right-wing and left-wing reforms he claimed would destabilize it. Third, he wanted to break an entrenched political class he felt was more concerned with ideology than policy."
On other issues, Patton remained incredibly vague. This proved to be no deterrent to his supporters.
Mike Forester, Patton supporter in 1948: "We liked Patton because he hit all the stuff wrong in Washington. He really felt our frustration. Olson, LaGuardia, even Taft had used similar rhetoric, but the media hated Patton for doing the same. And that's why we loved him. We needed a general to set things right. Taft didn't understand the working people. Taylor was too concerned with other issues. Patton was our man."
Bruce Starr, Patton supporter in 1948: "Yes, I still remember how it was fifty-plus years ago. Those were wild rallies, lots of fun, huge crowds. And the crowds got bigger and bigger! I haven't been to a rally like that since. Hell, the only time before was when my dad took me as a kid to see Floyd Olson's rally in 32."
President Taft was concerned by the rhetoric of Patton, and the idea of a general with no political experience becoming President.
Impersonator of Taft, reading from a letter: "Is this bumbling fool to be our Caesar, our Bonaparte, our Tukhachevsky? Is the legacy of George Washington, the second Cincinnatus, now to be dust upon the wind?"
Taft Biographer Alexander Patterson, PhD: "Taft was everything Patton wasn't: an intellectual, a lawyer, reserved, elitist, and disdainful of loud antics. When he was a student at Yale university, one of his neighbors, the one below him, took up playing the violin, and began practicing at night after classes. Taft grew frustrated with this noise distracting him from his cerebral pursuits, and lowered a ringing alarm clock to his neighbor's window. His neighbor gave up the violin. For Taft, Patton was like that discordant violin sound, a distraction from the worthy cerebration of an intellectual campaign against a Senator Taft respected."
The President's disdain grew into fear as Patton rose in the polls and attracted larger and larger crowds.
Historian Kyle Anderson, PhD: "Taft actually met with Taylor, and privately broached the idea of an anti-Patton unity front. While they both quickly realized that such an act would be politically unfeasible, they agreed that focusing on attacking Patton would be a better strategy than attacking each other."
Marsha Spielberg: "Running from the center, if Patton got into a run-off with either Taft or Taylor, he would be heavily favored to win. Only by ensuring that they went against each other did the two candidates have a chance at winning."
Patton and his dog, Willie
Alexander Patterson: "Taft could not forget Kansan Senator Alf Landon's admirable endorsement of Fiorello LaGuardia to stop Huey Long's scheme to cause a constitutional crisis in the middle of wartime. He also could not forget that Landon's brave move cost him the 1944 nomination that Taft won. While Landon would in his retirement be unanimously proclaimed by a the U.S. Senate to be one of the ten greatest senators in history, and was instrumental in dozens of crucial bipartisan deals in his thirty years in office, including civil rights, Taft always suffered from the belief that Landon should have been president and not him. He worried that he would go down in history as the man who would allow a dangerous demagogue to become president due to his own personal ego."
Taft appealed to Lyndon Johnson to withdraw support for Patton, but was rebuffed.
Historian Martin Luther King Jr., PhD: "Lyndon Johnson knew he was playing with fire, and that Patton could backfire. However, as concerned with a Patton presidency as he was, when he was at huge joint rallies with Patton in Texas, he realized that the General's popularity in the Southern U.S. had saved his reelection campaign - and indeed the People's Coalition."
While Lyndon Johnson disliked some of Patton's rhetoric and certainly his conspiracy theories, he knew that Patton's rise was vital to his own political future. One of Patton's most common refrains related to the conspiracy theory that Luis Miguel Sanchez Cerro, former fascist leader of Peru, was still alive and the U.S. military was not pursuing him properly.
A clip of Patton speaking: "Where's Sanchez? We can't go after Vargas because of some crooked peace deal, but that crazy son-of-a-bitch Sanchez needs to be caught and killed!"
General Sanchez, the notorious fascist dictator, at the beginning of his rule
Peruvian Historian Isabella Rodriguez: "While the Revolutionary Union insurgents continued to publish declarations in Sanchez's name into the early 1950s, there is no verifiable communication from him that dates to late than March 1942, on the eve of the failed counter-attack by his forces to 'liberate' Lima. It is widely believed that the bombardment of Peruvian forces by the United States Air Force in that battle must have killed Sanchez, and his supporters kept up a pretense he was alive for morale. If he lived, he was never caught."
While Patton remained as vague about why he thought Sanchez had never been caught as he was about policy, many Americans, who had hoped for some great trial or announcement of death of the psychotic South American despot, shared his frustration that neither eventuality had been realized. Patton remained in close contention and a likely part of the second round, his poll spike proving to be real and not just a brief phenomenon. Taft and Taylor realized they needed to fight back against Patton's campaign. The only problem was that nothing appeared to be working.
Alexander Patterson: "Taft tried to go after Patton on policy, but it fell flat. The public was apathetic to Taft's detailed plan to increase interest rates and reserve requirements in banks to stop inflation, but was responsive to Patton's tirades against the problems it caused. Taylor tried to go after Patton on ideals, but it didn't work. He insisted Patton did not believe in Floyd Olson's radical vision of a Co-Operative Commonwealth, but many Americans saw in Patton a new strongman akin to Olson, someone who did not care about precedents or norms but would get the job done."