When a Foreign Government Interfered in a U.S. Election — to Reelect FDR

Politico Magazine ^ | January 16, 2017 | Steve Usdin

[logician2u]

Covert intelligence operations, propaganda, fake news stories, dirty tricks—all were used in a foreign government’s audacious attempt to influence U.S. elections. It wasn’t 2016; it was 1940, and the operations were employed not by a hostile adversary, but by America’s closest ally, the United Kingdom.

Though technology has advanced, and the two nations’ motives could not have been more different, critical aspects of Russia’s alleged covert efforts to bolster the campaign of Donald Trump echo the tactics that Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service pioneered seven decades ago. In 1940, as war raged in Europe, British intel officers in New York and Washington worked to elect candidates who favored U.S. intervention, defeat those who advocated neutrality, and silence or destroy the reputations of American isolationists they deemed a menace to British security. Scores—perhaps hundreds—of Americans who believed that fighting fascism justified unethical and, at times, illegal behavior, worked for British intelligence or cooperated with London’s efforts.

[logician2u]

Before anybody complains that this article feeds conspiracy theories, let me assure you that in the year-and-a-half before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor there really were some conspiracies going on in this country. The conspirators were doing some of the same things we are seeing in the news today: name-calling, running fake news stories, hiring publicists/attorneys/ordinary people to plant loaded questions on targeted politicians, front groups created to hide association with powerful interests, the list goes on.

Of particular interest is how the GOP, lacking any pro-war presidential candidates early on, ended up with a nominee in the image of FDR in the 1940 election. Imagine that.

An echo, not a choice.

[mosesdapoet]

With that slogan “A choice not an echo” The Chicago Tribune and it’s publisher the late Col McCormack comes to mind.

[Impy]

Wilkie was an interventionist so I would like to believe that Churchill didn’t try and help FDR beat him.

[logician2u]

That would be Phyllis Schafly, I believe. She wrote the best-seller with that title.

I just twisted the subject and predicate to reflect what the 1940 election was. (And a number since then, IMHO.)

[logician2u]

That’s covered in the rather lengthy article. Most of the Brits’ effort was concentrated on defeating isolationists such as Hamilton Fish. They came close in ‘40, got him redistricted and defeated in ‘44.

[mosesdapoet]

That would be Phyllis Schafly, I believe. She wrote the best-seller with that title.

When she was a kid that paper hammered FDR and “Me Too” Republicans. Both slogans “A choice not an echo” and “Me too Republicans” originated on its pages during FDR’s time.

[Fiji Hill]

In the 1950's, Me-Toos called themselves "Modern Republicans." If you're interested in their ideology, A Republican Looks at His Party by Arthur Larson (New York: Harper, 1956) is one of their manifestos. Today, they are called RINOs.

[mosesdapoet]

Is that what you read ? Well I lived through it. Look up Wendell Wilke and the Chicago Tribune. Get edumacated

[iowamark]

A reprint of the official BSC history written just after the war by Roald Dahl and Gilbert Highet.

[logician2u]

Thanks.

I hanker for the old days when the Tribune wasn't linked up with the LA Slimes and all their staff of socialist writers and cartoonists (e.g., Conrad).

I'm not old enough to remember Col. McCormick but have heard a lot from the in-laws who lived in Chicago in that era. It's a different paper now, unfortunately.

[SunkenCiv]

...critical aspects of Russia’s alleged covert efforts... differ from those of the UK in 1940, insofar as the UK's efforts in 1940 are not imaginary. The motivations of the Demagogic Party and their Partisan Media Shills are Stalinist, of course.

[lavaroise]

This is shocking in light of how Bush Jr seem to promote a British type globalist empire with Compassionate Conservatism being a sort of state supported Anglican theocratic moralizer for open borders etc

[SunkenCiv]

Ping..

[Hojczyk]

Like the US never interfered in an election..Obama Israel..

The Pope and Reagan.. Poland..many more..

[Impy]

I don’t see any mention of them involving themselves in redistricting in the article

A)Not cool!
B)I want to see THAT James Bond movie

What the deal with that 1944 race, DJ, new districts, Fish lost to a fellow Republican, who failed to beat him in the primary but won in November on the rat line and was himself defeated in the primary in ‘46?

[fieldmarshaldj]

In 1932, NY was awarded 2 additional House seats (since there hadn’t been a national reapportionment since 1912). Presumably, there must have been an impasse between Dem Governor Herbert Lehman and the Republican legislature, so the seats were both up as at-large for the entire state. Another decade passed and in 1942, they had elected Democrats to both seats until that year when a Republican woman (Winifred Stanley) managed to capture one and Thomas Dewey won the Governorship.

Presumably, Dewey and the GOP legislature were able to come up with a plan to redistrict the two at-large seats into 45 districts, hence the unusual 1944 redistricting. Dewey was not a fan of Fish and had his district chopped up into 3 districts, which forced Fish into new counties (Fish didn’t live in the new 29th, but in the 27th, which was stretched down to the Bronx, which wouldn’t have been hospitable to him). When liberal Republican Augustus Bennet couldn’t beat Fish in the primary, he had the Democrat line and used all the other party lines (except the miniscule Jeffersonian Party) to narrowly beat Fish (though he served as a Republican during his single term). Bennet, as you cited, would lose renomination as a Republican in 1946 to FDR’s first cousin, Katharine St. George, who would hold the seat until losing in the anti-Goldwater backlash of 1964.