A moment in ecumenical history

Great U.S. presidents who never were

The seemingly endless campaign is over and historians will issue the final verdict as to whether the best candidate won. But how would history have been different if the results had gone the other way?

Looking back on ecumenical history, that kind of speculation is intriguing.

In the last 100 years, scores of ecumenists in the Federal and National Councils of Churches have been active in electoral politics, many with notable success.*

Two in particular were so well regarded by contemporaries as potential U.S. presidents that it's tempting to wonder what life would be like today if they had made it.

J. Irwin Miller, a Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) layman who was NCC President from 1960 to 1963, was touted by Esquire magazine in 1968 as the man who ought to be president. "Is it too late for a man of honesty, high purpose and intelligence to be elected president of the United States in 1968?" the magazine asked.

And in early 1948, Harold E. Stassen, an American Baptist layman, president of the International Sunday School Convention and founding parent of both the NCC and the World Council of Churches, was the front-runner for the Republican nomination to run against a politically weak Harry Truman.

What if lightning had struck and they had made it?

Miller had his hands full as chairman of the board of Cummins Engine Co., Inc., a maker of diesel engines, but he was a reliable and tireless fixture in his congregation and in the National Council of Churches. The austere face he usually wore for photographers masked a friendly warmth and a sharp wit. In 1968, when Lyndon Johnson was deeply unpopular and Richard Nixon was the likely GOP nominee, both parties looked for alternatives.

At the time, Miller was not well known to the electorate but he was admired by leaders of both parties. "Wouldn't Irwin Miller be great?" New York Mayor John V. Lindsay exclaimed in an interview with Esquire's Steven V. Roberts. "He's one of the great people of this world. He's got insight, humor, wisdom, saltiness. How could we get him to run?"

A nominal Republican, Miller considered Barry Goldwater too far to the right and LBJ didn't hesitate to name the Hoosier chair of a commission studying the liberalization of East-West trade. And Miller made no secret of his love of politics -- including church politics -- but he quietly declined Esquire's nomination. "I'm not a candidate," he said. "I have great admiration for (those) who have the capacity to go through the electoral process and I know myself well enough to know I'm not that kind of guy." Even so, Miller's interest in righteous political causes never waned, and he soon became one of the founders of the Citizen's lobby, Common Cause. But the tantalizing question remains: would this man of "honesty, high purpose and intelligence" have made a better president than Richard Nixon, who won in 1968?

Harold Stassen, who said he had "an abiding faith in Jesus Christ as a personal savior," was 31 when he was elected governor of Minnesota and helped Wendell Willkie win the 1940 Republican presidential nomination. As governor, Stassen declared his support for civil rights and ordered the integration of the Minnesota National Guard, eight years before President Truman extended the order to the Department of Defense. Reelected twice, Stassen resigned in 1943 to join the staff of Admiral William "Bull" Halsey. President Roosevelt named Stassen to the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Conference, where he helped write the UN Charter.

Although Stassen eventually gained a reputation as a "perennial presidential candidate" (he was an international lawyer and it was probably good for business that his clients thought of him as a potential president), he almost made it in 1948. He won a series of primaries and polls showed him to be a likely nominee -- and likely victor over President Truman -- until New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey bested him for the nomination. (Dewey lost to Truman.)  Stassen was subsequently named president of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and he served as "Secretary of Peace" in President Eisenhower's cabinet.

In later years, Stassen maintained a law office in Philadelphia and lived across the street from the American Baptist Churches mission center in Valley Forge. He would be spotted pushing his own cart at the Acme Market, and often telephoned American Baptist staff to arrange meetings, beginning conversations with a booming, "This is Harold Stassen." Administrative staff had to be cautioned that when these calls came in, it was probably really Harold Stassen.

Would history have been different if Stassen had been elected president in 1948? It's impossible to know. But it's worth keeping in mind, this month and after every election: sometimes the best people win. And sometimes they don't.

*To name just a few: Charles Taft, son of the president, was an active supporter of the Federal and World Councils of Churches and the Republican mayor of Cincinnati. Charles Evans Hughes, the first president of the Northern Baptist Convention, was Republican governor of New York, Secretary of State and Chief Justice of the U.S. John Foster Dulles was a Presbyterian activist and Republican Secretary of State. NCC President Arthur Flemming was the Republican Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare during the Eisenhower years. NCC President Cynthia Wedel, though she never sought elective office, was a Kennedy commission appointee. More recently, the Rev. Andrew Young, a United Church of Christ minister and NCC President, aide to Martin Luther King, was a Democratic congressman, mayor of Atlanta and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. The Rev. Bob Edgar, former NCC general secretary, was a 6-term Democratic congressman who narrowly lost an election to the U.S. Senate.