Soon after the 1940 convention , Roosevelt described Willkie 's nomination as a " Godsend to our country " , because it ensured that the presidential race would not turn on the issue of aid to Britain . Walter Lippmann believed Willkie 's nomination to have been crucial to Britain 's survival , " second only to the Battle of Britain , the sudden rise and nomination of Willkie was the decisive event , perhaps providential , which made it possible to rally the free world when Britain was almost conquered . Under any other leadership but his the Republican party in 1940 would have turned its back on Great Britain , causing all who resisted Hitler to feel abandoned " . Charles Peters wrote that " it is arguable that Willkie 's impact on the United States and the world was greater than that of most men who actually held the office of president . At a crucial moment in history , he stood for the right things at the right time . " When Georgia Senator Zell Miller , a Democrat , gave the keynote address at the 2004 Republican National Convention , he urged unity instead of partisan strife in the War on Terror , and recalled Willkie 's actions , " He gave Roosevelt the critical support he needed for a peacetime draft , an unpopular idea at the time . And he made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue . " Historian Hugh Ross argued that in gaining the nomination , Willkie " gave exceptional promise of being a winner . There were ample precedents from American political history in which a minority party , queasy over prospects for survival , bypassed professional leadership in order to entrust its political fortunes to a man without political experience . In most of the previous instances , the nomination had gone to a military man . In 1940 , it went to a businessman . " Richard Moe , in his book on the 1940 election , suggested that the nomination of Willkie left long-lasting scars on the Republican Party , with conservatives angered by the success of its Eastern Establishment wing ; " whatever else it did , Philadelphia gave birth to the bitter proprietary division within the Republican Party , one accentuated by ideology and geography , that would define the party for decades to come . " Among those converted from isolationism by Willkie 's oratory , and who worked intensely on the Willkie campaign in Michigan , was Gerald R. Ford , who wrote many years later in his memoirs , " I now realize that my participation did not make much difference at all to the political fate of Wendell Willkie . But it made a lot of difference to me . " Correspondent and author Warren Moscow wrote that after 1940 , Willkie helped Roosevelt , who was always careful not to go too far in front of public opinion , " as a pace-setter with the President 's blessing " . Willkie 's global trip and the publication of '' One World '' increased public support for the idea that the United States should remain active internationally once the war was won , and should not withdraw into a new isolationism . Indiana University president Herman B Wells noted that '' One World '' " has had such a profound influence on the thinking of Americans " . Historian Samuel Zipp noted , " He launched the most successful and unprecedented challenge to conventional nationalism in modern American history ... He urged Americans to imagine and feel a new form of reciprocity with the world , one that millions of Americans responded to with unprecedented urgency . " His advocacy came at a cost to his standing in the Republican Party . According to Moscow , " his appeal for the party to be the party of the Loyal Opposition , supporting the President , was treason to the diehards ; his trip around the world marked him as a Presidential agent seeking to infiltrate the Republican Party " . This decline was accelerated as it became apparent that Willkie was a liberal , standing to the left of Roosevelt and proposing even higher taxes than the president was willing to stomach
2004 Republican National Convention
2004 Republican National Convention
Wendell Willkie