Although John has been very busy with his work in the Army Staff lately, he still finds a day to attend a gathering of the family bigwigs. Pen ~ Fun ~ Cabinet www.biquge.info In half a month, the Republican convention will hold a presidential election in Philadelphia, and the Vanderbilt family has come to make a statement.

Although since Roosevelt announced that he would run again, the Republican side has not been very optimistic. The general preference is to choose the strong president who has "succeeded" in leading them out of the economic crisis to lead the country through this period of war.

However, as a part of the core strength of the Republican Party, the Vanderbilt family still has to stand firm and do its best to help their party colleagues fight this election.

This was John's first time at such a family meeting, and four years ago he was his branch manager in Cincinnati, and he was only qualified to participate in the discussion according to the family's "meeting meeting."

In previous years, such matters were usually presided over by the family's representative in politics, Cousin William. The lobby brother Cornelius is responsible for mobilizing the family's media power, while Harold and Alfred are responsible for cheering on the business and academic worlds, respectively.

Today, John is also one of the family bosses, especially after entering the army staff, he can be regarded as half of the "officialdom", and naturally has a certain right to speak in this regard.

There are now three investors in front of their families' decision-makers: Thomas Dewey, Robert Taft, and Arthur Vandenberg.

Of the three, the most familiar with the Vanderbilt family is 56-year-old Arthur Vandenberg. Vandenberg has been a senator for 18 years and has been the Republican leader of the Senate since 1937.

In terms of justice, Vandenberg completely defeated Taft and Dewey in terms of political skill and governance experience. In particular, in recent years, he has succeeded in bridging the contradictions between the two major factions in the party (the moderate establishment representing the Northeast and West Coast and the traditional conservatives representing the Midwest and South), and has pushed his prestige and appeal to a fairly high level.

In terms of personal interests, Vandenberg and William have been friends and political partners for decades, and the cooperation between the two has always been very tacit. John also had a close personal relationship with his nephew, Hoyt Vandenberg.

It stands to reason that the Vanderbilt family should do everything in their power to support Vandenberg's candidacy. But the problem lies precisely with Vandenberg himself.

Although Vandenberg was the oldest and had the highest status in the party, he was not very motivated. In a sense, he was even a little reluctant to run this time.

In recent years, due to the successive defeats of the Republican Party in previous elections, there has been a strong call for fresh blood in the party. A group of "old faces" were defeated in the general election one after another, but a group of young party members from the grassroots level achieved good results in the 1938 midterm elections.

Therefore, as a veteran of the party, it is understandable that Vandenberg is unwilling to consume his hard-earned popularity and prestige in this election with low odds of victory. So, he was the first to be knocked out of the funding list by the Vanderbilt family.

The remaining two candidates, Taft and Dewey, are both newcomers. Taft had just become a U.S. senator the year before and had entered national politics. And Dewey, still and still in New York State, is his attorney general. In contrast, the Vanderbilt family is a little more familiar with Taft.

The senator is a member of the Taft family, a well-known political family in the United States. His grandfather, Alfonso Taft, served as Secretary of War and Attorney General during Grant's presidency. His father, William Taft, was the 27th President of the United States and the 10th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

In particular, Taft Sr., the fattest president in U.S. history (weighing 332 pounds when he took office), left behind not only Washington's 3,000 Japanese cherry trees, and the famous "Golden Dollar Foreign Trade" policy, but also a vast family network.

Taft Jr. has had a smooth ride since entering politics, making it to Congress after serving for many years as a U.S. senator from Ohio. Even before John's crossing, the Tafts were still active in American politics. Taft Jr.'s son is also a senior U.S. senator, and his grandson is the governor of Ohio.

The Vanderbilt family and the Taft family have been friends for several lifetimes, and even John had a lot of dealings with Taft Jr.'s younger brother (the mayor of Cincinnati) when he was in the Cincinnati branch. In a sense, Taft, who has always sided with the big capitalists, firmly upheld the liberal capitalist tradition, advocated government savings, balanced budgets and reduced concentration of power, was "his own man".

And unlike his "foolish dad" who dozed off easily because he was too fat (President Taft had narcolepsy, he dozed off when meeting foreign heads of state, and always gave the impression of being clumsy), he was an energetic, intelligent politician who was good at grasping the backbone of a myriad of complex relationships. In recent years, he has been extremely active in the Senate, helping John and his big families to resist Roosevelt's New Deal and suppress the union movement.

John also knew that it was he who succeeded in enacting the Taft Hartley Act in 1947, which gave the capitalists the right to organize anti-union action and free them from the oppression of the Wagner Act.

So, at the meeting, both Harold and Cornelius made clear their support for Taft.

However, William and John were not very optimistic about him. If it was at another time, it would be nice to support little Taaffe to take it off. But the 1940 presidential election was somewhat peculiar. When electing a president, people pay more attention to his foreign policy than to domestic economic policy.

Taft was a staunch isolationist (not only opposed to the United States' entry into the war, but also opposed the establishment of NATO by the United States after the war), while the Vanderbilts were more on the side of the main war. So, both John and William advocated for Dewey, who was younger than Taft.

Compared to Taft, Dewey's political experience was more shallow. The 38-year-old New York State prosecutor is a political "dark horse" who started by fighting gangsters and fighting corruption. Through the iron-fisted crackdown on the New York gangs and the corrupt Tammoni Association, he climbed from an obscure lawyer and assistant to the center of the national political scene in just a few years.

Currently, Dewey has a strong reputation among voters at the bottom, and his trademark toothbrush mustache was once very popular in New York State. According to a Gallup poll, 33 percent of Republicans see Dewey as the first choice for presidential candidates, significantly ahead of other potential candidates.

"Dewey wasn't a match for Roosevelt's old fox, but he was still young, had a lot of potential, and was worth investing in for the long term." Politics is about taking one step and looking at three steps. In William's view, the family could use Dewey as a long-term supporter.

"I don't think the chances of winning this time are big anyway, so it's better to let Dewey, a young man, make an appearance and accumulate some experience. After all, losing to Roosevelt was not a shame for him, and if he could go back and forth with the other party for a few rounds, he would make a lot of money. ”

John's ideas are closer to William's. Although, he himself did not like Dewey, the iron-faced and selfless "anti-black hero". But he believes that what the Republican Party needs most now is not the throne of the White House, but to cultivate a new generation of leading figures as soon as possible. Dewey had a good foundation in the group, and cultivating it well would help reverse the image of the "bigwig party."

Harold, on the other hand, thought that Dewey's overly ruthless image of the iron mask was very bad for the election. After all, the public generally chooses to stay away from such people. Lack of affinity and lack of knowledge of compromise would be Dewey's fatal wound.

Between Taft and Dewey, the Vanderbilt family's decision-making faction split into two factions, and the dispute continued into the night.