markk

The presidential election of 1944 was one that took place under unusual circumstances: for only the second time in the nation’s history, the voters went to the polls to choose a commander-in-chief while the country was at war. Yet as David M. Jordan explains in his history of the contest that year, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s re-election was far from a sure thing. Opinion polls early on showed that, if the war ended before the election, the Republicans would be a slight favorite to win the White House. This made Roosevelt's candidacy an imperative for Democrats, as they believed that even with his increasing health issues victory was possible only with the incumbent at the top of the ticket.

 

Jordan's book provides a blow-by-blow account of the campaign as it evolved over the course of that year. From it he conveys to his readers a good sense of the personalities involved, the issues at play, and the course of the campaign through the conventions and during the two months in which Roosevelt and his Republican challenger, Thomas E. Dewey, canvassed the nation in their quest to win the White House. Yet for all of the strengths of Jordan's narrative, there is little in the way of an in-depth analysis of the broader factors at play or an effort to situate the contest among the other political contests that year, save for an acknowledgement near the end of the book of a few notable victories and defeats suffered by candidates in other races. The absence of any deeper exploration of the forces that shaped the campaign or decided the result is a real disappointment, one that limits the value of Jordan's account of a presidential election with enormous consequences for the postwar world.