MacArthur vrs Eisenhower 1952

[frozenman]

Discuss with maps please.

[Proud Houstonian]

MaCauther win assuming Korea Still happens aand truman was unpoular

[Alben Barkley]

Why would Ike get more of the blame for Korea than MacArthur, who actually led the troops in that war? Ike was also wildly personally popular and far less polarizing than MacArthur.

I think it’s an Ike landslide, and assuming he’s running as a Democrat, a devastating blow to the GOP. Six elections in a row lost is hard to come back from.

[Agonized-Statism]

MacArthur couldn't win, especially not after his firing. Too much of a political dinosaur to navigate the New Dealer climate. From what I've read, his politics were Gilded Age imperialist, and he was disinterested in anything that wasn't foreign policy. A timeline where he somehow led the war to its conclusion before the election and destroyed the DPRK might be different, but even then, still somewhat closer than Eisenhower's election.

He actually could have done it had he gone ahead with his crazy plan for the radioactive belt on the Sino-Korean border and the nuclear bombings on key Chinese staging areas. I doubt World War III would immediately break out if he got his way with the nuclear option, as it was early enough in the Cold War for the US to get away with that sort of thing, but it would shock the world. The Soviets would condemn it but not risk a nuclear war before they had adequate defenses, and the United States' allies wouldn't condemn it for fear of losing their nuclear umbrella. America would celebrate the nuking and MacArthur would become a war hero who probably pulls the nuclear trick again in Vietnam as president (actually planned in 1954; Operation Vulture, look it up), then starts World War III.