AHC: President Hearst
- Thread starter Jape
- Start date
Hearst was a populist Democrat. He financed a film where and FDR-analogue becomes benevolent progressive dictator, and he's the hero.
So basically think of President Hearst as what libertarians think President Wilson was like.
So basically think of President Hearst as what libertarians think President Wilson was like.
According to Wiki, he didntget involved with her until afterhe'd given up on politics. So any TL that involves a more successful political career likely means any such relationship either neverhappens, or is very discreet.
So, none.
Reading up on the man he seemed quite schizophrenic politically. He aligned himself with progressive and labour ideas but his favourite president was Coolidge. Then you have his megalomania, his fence sitting on authoritarianism and his racism.
He strikes me as the kind of guy who would benevolently nationalise the coal mines and then send in the troops when the miners went on strike.
He strikes me as the kind of guy who would benevolently nationalise the coal mines and then send in the troops when the miners went on strike.
Had Hearst been elected Governor of New York in 1906, he would certainly have been a serious contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1908--though it's hard for me to see him beating Taft. But if instead of being nominated for President in 1908, he remained Governor, and he got re-elected in 1908 and 1910--well, anything can happen in a deadlocked convention, and in 1912 the Democratic presidential nominee would be almost sure to win.
What probably killed Hearst's candidacy in 1906 was Elihu Root's speech against him, "The Demagogue in Politics," http://books.google.com/books?id=wyhAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA203 blaming him for McKinley's assassination. After quoting some of Hearst's attacks on Alton Parker ("a cockroach, a waterbug"), Grover Cleveland ("no more or less than a living, breathing, crime in breeches") and Theodore Roosevelt (one who "has sold himself to the devil and will live up to the bargain"), he added:
"Once only has this method of incendiary abuse wrought out its natural consequence--in the murder of President McKinley. For years, by vile epithet and viler cartoons, readers of the Journal were taught to believe that McKinley was a monster in human form, whose taking-off would be a service to mankind... [Root went on to quote the notorious quatrain Ambrose Bierce had written for the Hearst press on the occasion of the assassination of Governor Goebel of Kentucky: "The bullet that pierced Goebel's breast/ Can not be found in all the West;/Good reason, it is speeding here/To stretch McKinley on his bier." He also quoted an editorial Arthur Brisbane had written in April 1901 that "if bad institutions and bad men can be got rid of only by killing, then the killing must be done." (Hearst later claimed that he had pulled the editorial after reading it in the paper's first edition, and James Creelman claimed that Hearst had sent him as an intermediary to apologize to McKinley for the editorial. David Nasaw, in his biography of Hearst, *The Chief* expresses skepticism about both stories.)]
"What wonder that the weak and excitable brain of Czolgosz answered to such impulses as these! He never knew McKinley; he had no real or fancied wrongs of his own to avenge against McKinley or McKinley's government; he was answering to the lesson he had learned, that it was a service to mankind to rid the earth of a monster; and the foremost of the teachers of these lessons to him and his kind was and is William Randolph Hearst with his yellow journals.
"In President Roosevelt's first message to Congress, in speaking of the assassin of McKinley, he spoke of him as inflamed 'by the reckless utterances of those who, on the stump and in the public press, appeal to the dark and evil spirits of malice and greed, envy and sullen hatred.'...I say, by the President's authority, that in penning these words, with the horror of President McKinley's murder fresh before him, he had Mr. Hearst specifically in mind. And I say, by the President's authority that what he thought of Mr. Hearst then, he thinks of Mr. Hearst now."
FWIW, Taft, TR, and (decades later) Mark Sullivan all thought that this speech was what stopped Hearst from becming Governor. In any event, Hearst never forgave Root. In 1917, when Root was urging the US to enter the war, Hearst reminded his readers that Root, though nineteen years of age in 1864 "did not enlist...WHEN THE NATION'S LIFE WAS AT STAKE...We protest against war being forced on the nation by men who had neither the patriotism nor the courage to fight for the nation in their own youth. The shirkers and slackers of 1861 have no right to be the jingoes of 1917." http://books.google.com/books?id=ObU1AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA1841
So maybe for Hearst to become President it is almost a necessary POD that McKinley not be assassinated...
What probably killed Hearst's candidacy in 1906 was Elihu Root's speech against him, "The Demagogue in Politics," http://books.google.com/books?id=wyhAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA203 blaming him for McKinley's assassination. After quoting some of Hearst's attacks on Alton Parker ("a cockroach, a waterbug"), Grover Cleveland ("no more or less than a living, breathing, crime in breeches") and Theodore Roosevelt (one who "has sold himself to the devil and will live up to the bargain"), he added:
"Once only has this method of incendiary abuse wrought out its natural consequence--in the murder of President McKinley. For years, by vile epithet and viler cartoons, readers of the Journal were taught to believe that McKinley was a monster in human form, whose taking-off would be a service to mankind... [Root went on to quote the notorious quatrain Ambrose Bierce had written for the Hearst press on the occasion of the assassination of Governor Goebel of Kentucky: "The bullet that pierced Goebel's breast/ Can not be found in all the West;/Good reason, it is speeding here/To stretch McKinley on his bier." He also quoted an editorial Arthur Brisbane had written in April 1901 that "if bad institutions and bad men can be got rid of only by killing, then the killing must be done." (Hearst later claimed that he had pulled the editorial after reading it in the paper's first edition, and James Creelman claimed that Hearst had sent him as an intermediary to apologize to McKinley for the editorial. David Nasaw, in his biography of Hearst, *The Chief* expresses skepticism about both stories.)]
"What wonder that the weak and excitable brain of Czolgosz answered to such impulses as these! He never knew McKinley; he had no real or fancied wrongs of his own to avenge against McKinley or McKinley's government; he was answering to the lesson he had learned, that it was a service to mankind to rid the earth of a monster; and the foremost of the teachers of these lessons to him and his kind was and is William Randolph Hearst with his yellow journals.
"In President Roosevelt's first message to Congress, in speaking of the assassin of McKinley, he spoke of him as inflamed 'by the reckless utterances of those who, on the stump and in the public press, appeal to the dark and evil spirits of malice and greed, envy and sullen hatred.'...I say, by the President's authority, that in penning these words, with the horror of President McKinley's murder fresh before him, he had Mr. Hearst specifically in mind. And I say, by the President's authority that what he thought of Mr. Hearst then, he thinks of Mr. Hearst now."
FWIW, Taft, TR, and (decades later) Mark Sullivan all thought that this speech was what stopped Hearst from becming Governor. In any event, Hearst never forgave Root. In 1917, when Root was urging the US to enter the war, Hearst reminded his readers that Root, though nineteen years of age in 1864 "did not enlist...WHEN THE NATION'S LIFE WAS AT STAKE...We protest against war being forced on the nation by men who had neither the patriotism nor the courage to fight for the nation in their own youth. The shirkers and slackers of 1861 have no right to be the jingoes of 1917." http://books.google.com/books?id=ObU1AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA1841
So maybe for Hearst to become President it is almost a necessary POD that McKinley not be assassinated...
I know EdT did a wonderful vignette about him in "The World of 'Fight and Be Right'" a couple of years ago.
It seems to be a fairly accurate take on his character - I can see him as being somewhat akin to a Corporatist WJB - largely progressive on economic issues and the sort of person who would take a middling approach to race relations (of the 'Lynching really is horrible isn't it, but what can the President possibly do about it...' sort of thing) - a Hearst administration very much depends on the sort of Congress he ends up with. If it is a Democratic majority - chances are that he continues to fight on Trust Busting (probably nationalises the Railways) and picks up on the old Free Silver tradition in the mid-West (which, from many economic history papers I have read, will neither be a disaster, nor make much of a positive difference either...)
If it is a Republican Congress, he probably just makes an effort to rationalise industries on the guise of a "National Business Council" that some liberal Republicans were proposing in the 1920s.
That Coolidge bit is interesting, I hadn't heard of that. They seem on opposite ends, in terms of political style- Coolidge being a reserved spokeman for the middle class and Hearst an outspoken populist.
Do you have a source for that? I'm not doubting you, I'm just curious to find out more about it.
Thank you!
Hearst seems like a Donald Trump of an earlier era- He's very outspoken and always running his mouth off on something "out there" but what he actually believes in seems rather nebulous. I can't pin his political views down any further except for "populist".
Hearst seemed to go from Progressive to reactionary as the years went on. Depends on the date.