The Republicans entered election year with enormous optimism for the November election.
The Democrat President had famously broken his main election promise within 5 weeks of his Inauguration which greatly disappointed his supporters, and spent much of his 8 years in office making childish speeches in Europe and elsewhere pretending to be a great Statesman.
All they need is a candidate and victory for Republicans in November seems a formality.
It was by far the most crowded Republican field ever with political pundits generally surprised nobody had dropped out of the race.
Apart from the sheer number of candidates, the Republican race had been notable in that its front runner was not a politician but a man who had been prominent in his chosen profession, often attracting enormous publicity for his various exploits.
This front runner based his campaign on taking a very strong line against fanatics he believed were not only an enemy within, but an enormous threat to the World at large.
Numerous bombing campaigns and dead bodies inside America, together with a 'revolution' in far away foreign lands, was proof of their danger, their fanaticism, their deafness to reason, and their determination to succeed at all costs.
As the Republican front runner assured his supporters: these people were playing for keeps and needed to be stopped.
After sweeping the New Hampshire Primary the front runner addressed huge audiences across the country warning of an enemy within, warning of the danger to the World, and warning that within a few years they would be locked in a battle for civilisation itself.
Predictably the liberal media, Ivy League academics, and his other Republican candidates, ridiculed his warnings, ridiculed his speeches, implied his supporters were stupid, ignorant hayseeds who didn't know what they were talking about who should leave the business of government to the experts (themselves, for instance).
Bombs, shootings and dead bodies were passed off as the work of individuals and hardly evidence of any conspiracy or "they are all in it together" as was claimed.
The closer to the Republican National Convention the more shrill and nasty the attacks on the front runner became until public opinion was divided to an extent not seen since the Civil War.
Was the front runner a racist, xenophobic bigot stirring the pot against an imaginary enemy?
Was the front runner prescient in his warnings?
Were bombings, and murders merely the work of individuals?
Did the 'international' nature of the organisation these fanatics belonged to mean anything, or was it all just hogwash?
Public opinion was divided, genuinely unable to decide.
In his final speech to a rally of supporters shortly before the Republican National Convention began, the front runner promised that if elected President he would - "Kill it as you would a rattlesnake and smash those who follow it, speak for it, or support it” - and by doing so their future grandchildren would thank him and rest easy in their beds.
The Republican front runner also implored Americans not to leave the matter to their future grandchildren to deal with.
I am, of course, referring to Leonard Wood in 1920 and his hardline Presidential campaign against Communism.