Reviewed by Bradley T. Swain

As the 2012 presidential election campaign enters the home stretch, the last thing Americans may want to do is steep themselves in the details of another presidential contest. But the 1944 campaign that pitted three-term President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) against New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey was no ordinary presidential election. And Stanley Weintraub, biographer and military historian, author of dozens of books and countless articles and reviews, is no ordinary storyteller.

A fourth term for Roosevelt was by no means a certainty. As the campaign began, Roosevelt was already the United States’ longest serving president, finishing his third term and, like all presidents, beginning to look old and tired. He had a lot to be tired about. He was fighting the Great Depression, fighting World War II on two fronts and fighting the crippling effects of polio. Unsurprisingly, FDR was not eager to jump into another race.

Final Victory opens with a vivid description of the president’s physical condition on the morning of July 20, 1944, illustrating the causes of uncertainty. The president’s son, James, believed that his father had had a seizure on the presidential train while stopped in San Diego. The president believed he had simply “downed his breakfast too quickly.” Weintraub, deeply probing research sources, postulates that this was just the latest in a series of episodes that made the president’s staff concerned that Roosevelt was not up to another four years. One specialist diagnosed the president with “congestive cardiac failure and hypertensive heart disease” and remarked that FDR “could expire at any time.” (Photographs throughout the book illustrate Roosevelt’s declining physical condition during the campaign.) Ultimately, the president — though mindful of his health — decided to run again. Why? As Weintraub states, “his party had nowhere else to go, and he liked his job, and felt that no one any better at running the country and the war was still out there.”

Roosevelt’s Republican opponent would not be so easy to decide. The party had an interesting lot to choose from. Military hero General Douglas MacArthur believed that he was “the rescuer of the Republican Party from three terms of Rooseveltian attrition.” Other potential candidates included Wendell Willkie, Roosevelt’s 1940 Republican opponent, and Robert Taft, a senator from Ohio and son of William H. Taft, former U.S. president and Supreme Court chief justice. With precision Weintraub shows how each eventually failed to capture the nomination. Ultimately the Republicans nominated Thomas E. Dewey, sitting governor of New York, mainly because Dewey, “had offended no factions in the party.”

With the contenders now set, the issues take center stage. It is here that Weintraub shines. His extensive quotations from both newspapers and candidate speeches provide historical context. Sometimes such detail can detract from a narrative, but Weintraub skillfully and seamlessly weaves together his varied sources to tell a fabulous tale. The Democrats’ message was twofold and simple: “Do you want to change the horse in mid-race when the end is almost near?” “When the war is over do you want the New Deal repealed?” Part of FDR’s strategy was a direct appeal to the troops, and Weintraub does an excellent job of showing Roosevelt as a commander in chief, in control of the war but also not above using it for political gain. For example, Roosevelt’s support of MacArthur’s plan to recapture the Philippines was in essence a means to get MacArthur out of the way. And Roosevelt never missed an opportunity, with White House press corps in tow, to stop to gaze at troop maneuvers prior to giving a campaign speech, presenting an image of a strong commander in chief.

Issues for the Republicans, like their quest for a nominee, were more complicated. First, they tried to portray both the Democrats and FDR as “old, tired, and bureaucratic,” while they were “fresh, eager, and resourceful,” a not-so-subtle hint that FDR was not well enough to serve. Weintraub further shows the ways in which the Republican Party used the press to call attention to Roosevelt’s failing health without getting heat for personal attacks. Nevertheless, there were personal attacks, as today, and they were very personal and not above reproach. Second, the Republicans tried to “suggest that the war was just short of being won, and now a non-issue …” Thus, they warned: “Protecting the good life should be in the hands of prudent custodians who were neither radical extremists nor rash spendthrifts.”

With the campaign now in full swing, Weintraub brings to life the long-forgotten time of train campaigning. From the candidates’ railroad cars to the campaign stops, he makes the reader want to jump on the rail with the candidates and tour the country. “Looking out the window and seeing the steam rising from other trains, and the steamy breath of railway men, [Roosevelt] asked warily about the temperature. It had dipped to 14 degrees above zero, and a strong wind was blowing across the choppy surface of Lake Michigan.”

As the campaign enters its final weeks, the narrative becomes a true page-turner. Weintraub deserves praise for an enlightening section that details the role that fighting men played in the campaign. Remember, the U.S. was still at war. At the onset of the campaign, neither party knew which side the soldiers would support. Weintraub talks at length about the soldiers’ earnest desire to be involved in the voting process and the unfortunate lengths that some members of both political parties went to suppress those votes. “Enough Republicans had joined with Southern Democrats on ‘states’ rights’ grounds to defeat attempts for a uniform federal absentee ballot to enable the millions in uniform aboard to vote.” In the campaign of 1944, between FDR using the military for “photo ops” and some congressional leaders trying to suppress their vote, the military was played like a pawn.

Non-spoiler-spoiler alert: Roosevelt wins his fourth term but dies just shy of three months into it. But don’t let that knowledge deter you from reading Final Victory. Its narrative is so strong you will think you are there, the hallmark of a great history book. So mute the TV, pause the pundits and get caught up in a truly extraordinary campaign, the election of 1944.

Bradley T. Swain teaches U.S. History and Historiography at West Springfield High School, in Fairfax County, Va. In his spare time, he makes pilgrimages to presidential gravesites.