I cheated and Googled. But the answer is pretty cool!

I didn't have to Google®. (he said with his nose in the air)

Willkie was the 1940 Republican nominee for President. I know this because I used to be a total election geek, and I wanted to know all about all the presidential elections ever.

And believe it or not, I was just thinking about the 1940 election (no, really!) yesterday.

God, I'm such a geek.

Well, they beat me too it. Ran against FDR on the Republican ticket.

No need to Goggle, just be a history buff.

Yes. What McGeehee said.

And if my memory serves me right, if he had been elected he would have died before the term was up.

Bonus Question: If Andrew Johnson would have had the famous one vote go the other way and been removed from office during his impeachment, who would have become President?

"Horse's tail so nice and silky,
Lift it up and you'll find Willkie."

He wrote a manifesto entitled "One World" which I never read tho I posses a copy.

You all still haven't gotten what I think Dean is alluding to.

:-)

Is it this, Michael?:

"Although a Democrat, Willkie became a leading spokesman of business interests opposed to the New Deal. He finally enrolled as a Republican in 1940 and in that year was nominated by the Republican party for the presidency. In his campaign he endorsed President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's foreign policy but attacked the New Deal at home. He later (1941–42) visited England, the Middle East, the Soviet Union, and China as the President's personal representative." (from The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition)

It's rather hard to imagine Al Gore supporting George W Bush's foreign policy or being trustworthy enough to act as his personal representative.

...or GWB supporting Gore's, if the fates were reversed (ie: if it was Gore's brother controlling Florida).

I don't know who he was (I believe he was an Illinois senator but why he's in that 'toon I have no idea) but I do believe he's buried in Rushville, IL according to a Rushville correspondent.

Off to Google to see how much of a fool I've just made of myself...

Not a total fool, as it turns out. I got two words right: "Buried" and "Rushville." Everything else is wrong.

Yes. What McGeehee said.

especially the part about me being a geek, right? :-)

First off, Kevin McGehee may be a total spaz geek, but he is definitely 12,325 points richer. Congrats, Kevin!

In addition, Michael gets double-bonus super-geek points for alluding to another thing that's interesting about Willkie, since he was an advocate for something he called the "United States of the World," and a huge booster for what eventually became the United Nations. Indeed, if he hadn't died unexpectedly, he might very well have been the first Secretary General of the UN. (For 250 Double-Noogie Nerd Points, name who actually held that title, by the way.)

Furthermore, Tom McMahon gets 500 Nuclear Wedgie Points for noticing the fact that if Willkie had been elected President, he'd have died in office. You truly embarass me, Tom, and I promise that if we ever meet in public, I'll say I have no idea who you are. ;-)

Now, here's one I'll bet Ara knows: what movie features a candidate for President who was probably based loosely on Wendell Willkie, and who played him?

Anyone who beats Ara to the answer gets to date Ara's daughter!

Blast it, this isn't fair! I'm saying to myself "ohh, ohh, I know this!"

And I find that a dozen people already answered. Urk. There's too damn many history buffs around here. :)

And the answer to your second question, the answer is "Reds."

Just kidding. :)

Brian, you got the word "in" right too, and possibly "fool". I kid, I kid.

Anyone who beats Ara to the answer gets to date Ara's daughter!

Go ahead...ask my daughter what'll happen to the first boy who shows up at my door. Heh.

P.S. "State of the Union" starring Spencer Tracy and the incomparable Kate Hepburn.

I don't know who the first Secretary General of the UN was, but I did meet a signer of the UN Charter once. In 1978 I met Harold Stassen, the former boy-wonder Governor of Minnesota turned perennial Presidential candidate. "So I got that going for me, which is nice."

Tom: Wow! You've actually met Harold Stassen? May I... touch you?

Ara: Man, good thing you beat the other geeks to it. Otherwise your daughter would have been stuck dating one of these people. Then again, geeks usually have good jobs, so she could have done worse.

All: What? What? No one can name the last guy who won the Democratic nomination for President two times in a row, while losing the Presidency???

As a "gremlin geek," I fondly remember a picture jigsaw puzzle that I had while growing up during WWII. It was a picture of an American fighter plane, in a dogfight, being disassembled by a team of gremlins (much to the dismay of the pilot). I wish I knew which attic that it got left in.

JW

Dean: That two-time loser would be, of course, Adlai Stevenson of Illinois. My Grandpa Hub had his picture taken with Adlai. But that couldn't hold a candle to the picture of him with the Lone Ranger! I mean, the Lone Ranger had a mask and a neat cowboy outfit. Much, much neater than an old bald guy in a rumpled suit.

The first Secretary-General of the UN was Kurt Waldheim, ex-President of Austria, who's been in the news lately with the California recall and so forth. (At first I was thinking Dag Hammarskjold, but I'm pretty sure he came afterwards.)

Did Adlai Stevenson run twice? If not, I think we'd have to go back to Al Smith.

The voices in my head tell me that the answer to Tom's question is Benjamin Wade.

Interestingly, it turns out that Wilkie's running mate, Charles L. McNary, predeceased him.

The first Secretary General of the UN was Trygve Lie from Norway. Dag Hammerskjold was the second. Waldheim served in the 70's I believe.

Adlai Stevenson did run twice -- in 1952 and in 1956 -- and lost to Ike both times.

Shouldn't that be McGeekhee?

Chris, you win the prize: Benjamin Wade, President Pro Tem of the Senate, would have become President had Andrew Johnson been removed from office. The guy missed becoming President by one vote, yet nobody knows who he is. In fact, Chris, you're the first person ever to answer this question correctly when I've asked it. Very, very impressive!

Oh my goodness, this little cartoon fella got to me and at my age you would think I would remember him. It is in the back of my mind somewhere!

I love flying an airplane & can tell you the Gremlin was the finest! She was built so fast & furious. We couldn't build them any time to soon. No seriously. That Gremlin was built like no other!

During WWII, another plant had to be built just to keep up demand. That plane is amazing! Amazing!! Our men and women in those factories worked overtime, endless hours. But I will tell you this country was working hard to help out.

Golly, even women came from all over to fly! Women were even dropping out of college. The government decided to drop the mandatory required amount of flying hours necessary so a woman could get up in that air fast!

I bet Uncle Willie (the famous airman that Dean just recently wrote about, dropping chocolates) flew the Gremlin when he wiggled that airplane for those children! Dean did a fine job when he wrote up the story of how our air campaign during WWII played a major part in our victory.

That little cartoon fella just brought out some wonderful memories for me. My first ride in a Gremlin...goggles, old WWII leather snapped cap, and a long white wool scarf around my neck. (Pitter patter, goes my heart) How I did love flying in my friends Gremlin. Anyone who loves to fly knows what I am feeling.

So the "One World" manifesto (I think I know which stack of boxes it is in down in the basement) would have been his proposal for a league of nations.

EEKS!!! I MADE AN AWFUL MISTAKE - THE AIRPLANE I AM TALKING ABOUT IS A GRUMMAN!!! GEEZ! SORRY!!

BUT THE STORY I WROTE IS TRUE AND I BET THE LIL GUY IS A GRUMMAN.

GREMLIN are old cars! I IS SORRY! I BET YOU GUYS WILL LAUGH AT ME FOREVER!

(giggle,giggle,giggle) yep, I am the ole gal that loves to hang around this blog.

I hope Arnold chimes in! He will know about the Grumman Airplane during the war.

Now I am going to write on the chalk board 500 times, Grumman!

Darn. Late to the party.

Willkie was also FDR's opponent for the election following FDR's second term. Washington's two-term precedent had by then become sacred, so a lot of Democrats feared the "President-for-Life" thing and set up "Democrats for Willkie".

FDR's win that year and in 1944 spurred the Presidential term limit amendment (can't recall the number) which made Harry Truman the last President eligible for a third term and Eisenhower the first term-limited President.

Oh, and Johnson (Andrew, I mean) had lots of close calls. He wouldn't have been VP except that Lincoln wanted to build a coalition party for the 1864 election to stave off the Democrats. (It's arguable that the attempt failed, and Johnson's presence on the ticket had little effect.) Had Lincoln stuck to the Republican party, President Hamlin might have been able to fend off the Radicals, and Reconstruction might have gone differently (read: better for just about everyone involved).

Any of that worth anything?

I promise I didn't Google until after I posted the above. The amendment was the 22nd, ratified in 1951.

OK, OK, a Grumman is a plane, a Gremlin is one of the top 100 monsters of all time.

...Darn, my hand is sore. I wrote 500 times. (giggle) Looks like I double booked my error above, on top of that, geez...

Tom, now I am going to have nightmares. I looked at all those Gremlins! Hey! The Lone Ranger was the Best! He was the ultimate! My brother and I played, The Lone Ranger and Tonto all the time as kids- no fair, I had to be, Tonto! We must have been the first kids in town to own the Lone Ranger gear!

Back to something you are found of remembering and I think it is really neat. I do recall when Harold Stassen was a candidate. My Dad was always interested in politics, that is putting it mildly. He had been a tremendous writer for the San Francisco Chronicle sometime in the 40's and wrote about everything. Anyway, in 78 he brought ole Stassen up quite a bit. My Dad was really wise about politics and he could talk for hours on the subject. GOOD FOR YOU TOM, to have met him!

Oops. I meant to say that the guy was one of the first U.S. delegates to the UN, not its first Secretary General. Sorry. But yes, I meant Stevenson. :-)

I first heard of Wilkie when I was a small child watching a re-run of one of those old (old even then!) shows starring Lucille Ball and Gale Gordon. Gordon's character, a stuffy business man, turned out to have a Willkie campaign button that he kept as a souvenir. His "Willkie button" became a running gag through the episode, and of course I had to ask one of my elders what a "Willkie button" was.

Here's a bit of Willkie trivia from the libertarian part of the nerd-o-sphere. Ayn Rand worked on his campaign.

About that cartoon. Is that the one in which, as the plane is about to crash, Bugs pulls a big lever that stops the plane in mid-air, and says something like "Lucky this thing's got air-brakes"?

Nah, I'm pretty sure this is the one where it stops in midair because it runs out of gas. There's another one with the air-brakes though.

First off, Kevin McGehee may be a total spaz geek, but he is definitely 12,325 points richer. Congrats, Kevin!

How do those points translate into dollars, Dean? I mean, the only total spaz geek I ever heard of before was Bill Gates, and I need to know if these points make me richer -- I mean, more of a total spaz geek -- than he is.

McGehee,

Speaking as someone who has amassed more geek points that I can count, I'd say that you can take your geek down to the local newstand and present them, along with a one-dollar bill, and they'll give you a copy of today's Wall Street Journal.

I think the plane runs out of gas just before it hits the ground and Bugs says to the audience "You know how it is with those A-Cards, folks"

The Harold Stassen experience is something I have a greater understanding of, now that I'm 25 years older. On the one hand, he looked kinda pathetic, standing on the back of his station wagon tailgate and handing out his buttons and his brochures to anyone who would take them. On the other hand, he knew full well that he really didn't have a chance to win, but even so enjoyed the process of getting out and talking to people and shaking their hands and all that stuff. In that sense, campaigning was a heroic act for him, not giving in to the despair of old age. Now that I'm older, I have a lot more admiration for him; he truly was one of the good ones.

Janelle:
I remember Grumman, and I'm not NEAR as old as Arnold is!! Heh.

Actually, Grumman was still around not too long ago, as they built the F-14 Tomcat.

The Ironworks had a good time with the "Cat" names. I remember the F4F Wildcat, the F6F Hellcat, and the F8 Bearcat. Since everyone else is doing it, geek points to the first person who knows what the F5 and F7 were! :)

Bonus points for the Grumman "cat" name that didn't have the word cat in it...

Well, I don't think that the Grumman aluminum canoes and mailtrucks had "cat" in their names...

More nearly on topic, I was in the basement last night, doing the laundry, and I dug out my copy of Willkie's "One World". It is first of all a description of a trip around the world which he made in 1942, via military aircraft. He met with King Farouk, Joseph Stalin, Chiang Kai-shek, and with military leaders and ordinary people. While optimistic, he was not blindly idealistic, and thus not, as the ditty I quoted suggested, a horse's ass.

can anyone tell me what she-ra said when she raised her swaord? and dont tell me "by the power of greyskull", that NOT what she said, I have bugged everyone i know in their 20's about this,PLEASE help!!!!

Does anyone know the names of the Warner Bros. chipmunks (? ground squirrels?) w/ the British accents??

Key word: indubitably

Thanks!