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INDIVIDUALISTS OF THE WORLD, UNITE! 57
she refl ected later. 47 Toward the end of the campaign Willkie did turn
in a markedly isolationist direction, telling his audiences he would not
become involved in a war and eliciting a similar pledge from Roosevelt.
By then Rand’s enthusiasm for Willkie had nearly ebbed away. More than
his duplicity about the war she was bothered by his stance on capitalism.
He had begun as a stalwart defender of free enterprise, but then shied away
from using the term in his speeches. Instead “he talked about his childhood
in Indiana—to show that he’s a small town American, in effect—instead of
talking about the issues.” 48 What she wanted, more than anything else, was
someone who would stand up and argue for the traditional American way
of life as she understood it: individualism. She wanted the Republicans to
attack Roosevelt’s expansion of the federal government and to explain why
it set such a dangerous precedent. The ideas and principles that Roosevelt
invoked, she believed, were the very ones that had destroyed Russia.
Few Americans shared her views. Indeed voters were satisfi ed enough
with Roosevelt that they elected him to an unprecedented third term. But
it was not quite the coronation it seemed. For all its activity, the New Deal
had not defeated the scourge of depression, and unemployment remained
near 15 percent. Roosevelt had alienated powerful fi gures in both parties
and his reform efforts had been thwarted in the past few years. But the
increasing instability in Europe made voters skittish. Hitler had plowed
over France, and his U-boats sniped at American ships in international
waters. As the old adage went, it was unwise to switch horses midstream.
In the wake of Willkie’s defeat new avenues opened before Rand. The
campaign had profoundly redirected her intellectual energies. Rather
than resume work on her novel full time, in the months following her
volunteer work she poured forth a number of nonfi ction pieces and
began to see herself as an activist, not just a writer. With some of her
Willkie contacts she planned a political organization, a group of intellectuals
and educators who would pick up where the Republican candidate
had left off.
Rand forged her own path into politics, eschewing established groups
such as America First, which had picked up the mantle of organized
opposition to Roosevelt. Founded in Chicago in the fall of 1940, America
First was the institutional embodiment of midwestern isolationism. The
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