Defender of the old guard

This first biography of one of the leading conservative figures of the twentieth century traces the roots of John Bricker's ideology in his formative years as a boy growing up on an Ohio farm and examines his political career as governor, vice presidential candidate, and senator. Bricker was exceptionally popular with Ohio voters, winning the governorship three consecutive times by increasingly larger majorities. After his 1944 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination fell short, he accepted the vice presidential slot on the ticket with Thomas E. Dewey. During two subsequent Senate terms, Bricker continued to develop his reputation as a national leader of the Republican Old Guard. His politics were so staunchly conservative that he was considered one of the nation's most consistent and dedicated opponents of the liberalism of the New Deal and Fair Deal administrations. In the early 1950s, Bricker proposed a controversial amendment to the U.S. Constitution that addressed many conservative grievances against Roosevelt's and Truman's foreign policies. The long and acrimonious battle over the Bricker amendment, which was eventually defeated, split the Republican party and contributed to the end of Bricker's political career. Based on Bricker's papers and several other manuscript collections, Davies's lively biography offers an insightful portrait of a politician who embodied conservative reaction to the sweeping changes of his time.