Henry Jackson (Dewey Defeats Truman)

Henry Martin "Scoop" Jackson (May 31, 1912 – September 1, 1993) was an American politician who was the 39th President of the United States. Prior to that, he was the 40th Vice President of the United States, as well as a Senator and Representative from Washington. Jackson's popularity is historically notable; he is the only politician to spend 16 whole years working in the White House, as both president and vice president, and was on both of the only two tickets to win 49 out of 50 states.

Jackson rose to prominence as a hardline anticommunist in the post-World War II era, denouncing the ideology from the Senate floor and urging presidents from Thomas Dewey to Nelson Rockefeller to take a stronger stance against the Soviet Union, and at times, to even go to war with proxy nations.

He was chosen in 1972 by Edmund Muskie to be his running mate on the Democratic ticket for president; this was a decision widely seen as an attempt by Muskie to appear better on communism in the early days of the Vietnam War than his Republican opponent. The Muskie/Jackson ticket was elected, and Jackson began, behind the scenes, to sketch out a plan for ending Vietnam. The Jackson Plan involved dropping a nuclear bomb on Hanoi, and it was refused by Muskie and classified until 2009. The Vietnam War ended on its own in 1979, before Jackson was commander-in-chief and could make an independent decision.

In 1980, Jackson was elected president, with conservative Senator Robert Byrd as his running mate. The Jackson administration is seen as the pinnacle of the "conservative Democrat" movement, as Jackson was a hardliner on foreign policy, and Byrd was a strong social conservative. Although Jackson was reelected by a wide margin in 1984, this conservative governance led to a liberal backlash in both parties, leading in turn to the election of Lowell Weicker in 1988, and the two-term "New Democratic" presidency of Al Gore, Jr., starting in 1992.

Jackson refused to campaign for Gore's bid in 1992, and instead endorsed his more conservative opponent Doug Wilder in the primaries, and refused an endorsement in the general election. Jackson died on September 1, 1993, at the age of 81.