United States Presidential Election, 1948 (Papa Mac)

The United States presidential election of 1948 was the 41st quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1948. Republican nominee Douglas MacArthur, the General of the Army, defeated liberal Democratic nominee Claude Pepper, winning 47 out of 48 states.

This election marks the beginning of what has been called "the Conservative Empire" in American politics. MacArthur, outmaneuvering moderate Vice President Thomas E. Dewey and liberal Governor Earl Warren after President Hoover's decision not to run for a fourth term, was the most conservative presidential nominee in US political history, and his running mate, Robert Taft, the most conservative member of the Senate. Public frustration with the ongoing war effort led to their nomination, and, with the nomination of extremely liberal Senator Claude Pepper and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas with the Democrats, the political parties became, in a very real way, about pro-German or pro-Soviet sympathies. MacArthur, with Taft as his proxy as he was in Japan for most of the election, was able to stoke anticommunist rage enough to decisively defeat the Pepper / Douglas ticket.