32. Robert McCormick
Robert McCormick, who liked to style himself as Colonel McCormick or simply “the Colonel”, was an influential leader of the opposition of expanded federal power under the New Deal, a leading isolationist before the Second World War, and a leader of the America First movement of the 1930s. As the owner of the Chicago Tribune and radio station WGN (which stood for World’s Greatest Newspaper) McCormick’s influence waned after the Pearl Harbor attack and a scandal when the Tribune published a story revealing that America had cracked Japanese naval codes, but he remained a strident and influential opponent of Roosevelt and Truman until his death in 1955.
