The greatest convention: in 1940, the contest was never closer, the stakes never higher.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: Political conventions

Political conventions have not always been so devoid of excitement that television networks cover them only grudgingly. Nominees have not always been determined months in advance of the proceedings whose original purpose was to choose them. But it has been a long time since. The last closely contested Republican convention was between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan in 1976. The Democrats have to look back another 20 years to find their last real nailbiter.

That was when Estes Kefauver barely defeated John Kennedy for the vice presidential nomination in 1956. The Republicans also saw a reasonably close fight between Dwight Eisenhower and Robert Taft in 1952, and the Democrats had another for the vice presidency between Henry Wallace and Harry Truman in 1944.

That brings us back to 1940, and the convention that had it all the five days in Philadelphia during which the Republicans took six ballots to select a candidate. Not only was the convention exciting, but the stakes were also high: Would this country keep its head in the sands of isolationism, or would it face the menace of Adolf Hitler?

The 1940 race began with Tom Dewey, who had gained national attention as a crusading district attorney, comfortably in the lead for the Republican nomination, with over 50 percent in the Gallup poll, followed by Ohio senator Robert Taft and Michigan senator Arthur Vandenberg. Although Dewey and Vandenberg would later become internationalists--and Dewey may have been a closet one even then--all three men were campaigning as isolationists, determined to keep this country, out of World War II, which had started the previous September. In this regard, they probably reflected the attitudes of most Americans and certainly those of the great majority of Republicans. The Nazi conquest of Poland had settled into "the phony war," with neither side doing much of anything. Most Americans disliked Hitler, but they felt little danger from him because the mighty British fleet appeared to control the seas, and on land, behind the supposedly impregnable Maginot Line, there was the French army, widely considered to be the best in the world, standing ready to repel the Nazis.

One potential Republican presidential candidate was clearly more concerned about Hitler than the others. This was Wendell Willkie, the president of Commonwealth and Southern, a utility holding company in New York. Willkie had become a public figure because of his spirited defense of the private...