In 1940 FDR’s
decision to break historical precedent and run for a third term disturbed many
Americans – not all of them Republicans. Announcing his campaign for reelection
to the Senate in Missouri, Harry Truman made it clear that he thought this was
a violation of the Constitution.
But with the
crisis in Europe worsening by the day and it looking increasingly like America
would be drawn into conflict, FDR decided and the Democratic Party reluctantly
agreed that he would run for a third term. After he was nominated practically
by acclimation, however, circumstances almost caused him to withdraw – and it
had to do with his choice for Vice President.
Henry Wallace had
been named FDR’s Secretary of Agriculture upon his election to the White House.
Wallace had been tireless in implementing the New Deal policies for agriculture
as well as one of FDR’s biggest advocates for those policies. Because of his
loyalty to FDR, Roosevelt returned it. Which was good for Wallace because he
was, to put it mildly, eccentric. He spent much of his time attending seances
where ‘spirits’ would tell him what kind of agricultural policies to follow. He
believed in the practice of eugenics. And he was increasingly susceptible to
flattery from the wrong people.
However Wallace
was the first man to endorse FDR’s run for a third term. And FDR wanted him to
run as his vice president for that third term. This enraged the party elders.
One governor said Wallace was his second choice for VP. Asked for his first
choice “anyone -red, white, black or yellow – who can get the nomination. The
convention nearly revolted and FDR grew unpleasant saying that if they didn’t
take Wallace he wouldn’t run. Only an unprecedented speech by his wife Eleanor
calmed the crowd – and even then, Wallace only managed to win by a hair about
Speaker of the House Dan Bankhead.
FDR easily won a
third term, but Wendell Willkie his Republican opponent carried Iowa - Wallace’s home state – by a significant
margin. Wallace became Vice President and had a more significant role in FDR’s
administration than any previous Vice President, often going on significant
foreign missions. However, this power led him to increasingly become influences
by the Soviet Union speaking that a war arise ‘if we double cross Russia.” In a
world where many Americans had long thought the Communists were a worst threat
to Americans than the Nazis – and continued to think this even long after America
entered the war, Wallace’s words made many uneasy.
By May of 1944,
Wallace was sent on a ‘fact-finding mission’ to Siberia. Witnessing a Soviet
concentration camp, Wallace gushed about paintings done by the prisoners, and
talked about becoming fond of the leader of the Soviet secret police.
By the spring of
1944, a group of party bosses were’ conspiring’ to remove Wallace from the
ticket in the election that was quickly approaching. Part of it had to do with
the fact that some of them thought Wallace’s views were going to cost the party
in November. Unspoken among them was something that everyone in Washington knew
but no one was telling the public.
FDR’s health was
beginning to noticeably deteriorate. At one point his private physician told him
that, if he took care of himself, he might live another year. The possibility of
a man like Wallace becoming President terrified, with good reason, many
Democrats and they began to seek an alternative.
They did so, it is
worth noting, without the input of the man who really should have been
concerned. FDR spent the entire spring and summer basically toying with every
single prospective candidate or anyone who might advise him as to who he should
choose. He did so, it’s worth noting, with Wallace himself, who knew the vultures
were circling and even showed a poll showing that more than 60 percent of all
Democrats wanted him to remain on the ticket. FDR told him: “I hope it will be
the same old team” and then went to discuss the possibility of Jimmy Byrnes,
his head of War Mobilization who was considered the ‘assistant President’ by
many as the best man for the job if he died. FDR could have resolved the issue
with a single word but he never did. Whether it was because of his focus on the
war or because of his genuine indifference will never be known.
At a certain
point the Democrats decided they wanted Harry Truman to be Vice President. Truman,
its worth noting, did not. While he might have harbored Presidential ambitions
himself the idea of being Vice President was something that he didn’t want
something he told everybody who asked him. At the Democratic Convention when
Byrnes called him, so the story goes, he agreed to nominate him for Vice
President.
By that point
the party had managed to convince – no one knows how – FDR that Truman had to
be on the ticket. This decision was not entirely in his hands. At the
convention in Chicago Wallace gave the greatest speech of his political career,
a yelling for all of the liberal causes that the Democrats must follow in the
new term. This led to a demonstration so loud with the delegates shouting: “We
want Wallace” that lasted for an hour. Claude Pepper, the manager of the team
for Wallace, knew that this momentum could carry over to get his candidate
nominated by acclimation and tried to get to the lectern. But the Mayor of Chicago
adjourned the session. When the balloting finally began the next day Wallace
took an early lead over Truman on the first ballot and held it well into the
second, but clever maneuvering got Truman in the lead and eventually got him
the nomination for Vice President.
Even then, many
wondered if it would make a difference. In Truman’s one meeting with FDR before
the fall campaign, Truman was so shocked by the President’s poor health – his hands
were shaking so badly he could not stir his coffee – that he knew that he would
soon be President. One of his Secret Service men actually thought FDR wouldn’t
even make it to November and Henry Wallace would become President after all.
FDR’s opponent
Governor Dewey considered making FDR’s health an issue of the campaign, but
afraid it would backfire, never put it front and center. FDR’s entrance into
the campaign starting in late September, showed a master campaigner who seemed
more active than possible. FDR won reelection with 432 electoral votes to Dewey’s
99.
He did so, it is
worth noting, with the full support of Wallace who even after being discarded
campaigned sixteen hours a day through
the summer and fall. After helping swear in Truman in January, as a balm, FDR
offered Wallace any government position he wanted save Secretary of State.
Wallace chose to be Secretary of Commerce. It was clear that he was not wanted
in the administration but part out of duty, and part out of spite, he stayed.
Three months
later, FDR died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Warm Springs and Truman became
President. His first act, in keeping with every Vice President who had ascended
to the Presidency since Andrew Johnson, was to retain every member of FDR’s
cabinet. In the case of Wallace that would soon come to be a major mistake.
As World War II
came to an end, Truman was immensely popular with most Americans. But as the
Cold War began and the reality of economics in a post-war world began to hit
America, Truman’s popularity plummeted. He made many blunders, in part because
of some of his initial appointments to many cabinet posts. Wallace, however,
put a very big knife in Truman’s back.
On September 12,
1946, Wallace addressed a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden. By now
Wallace was firmly pro-Soviet Union and the crowd was majorly on that side.
Truman okayed Wallace’s speech but the program’s organizer insisted he excise
the parts that were against the Soviet Union. Wallace agreed to this and in a
speech clearly anti the administration’s policy he concluded it in such a way
that the Washington Post reported:
“Mr. Wallace put
it this way. On our part, we should recognize that we have no more business in
the political affairs of Eastern Europe that Russia has in the affairs of
Western Europe, Latin America and the United States.”
That paragraph caused
Truman to see Eastern European voters across the Midwest fleeing the Democratic
column in 1948. Truman himself compounded the error in a press conference less
than four hours after the speech when he claimed they were in line with his administration
even though they were a direct violation of the policy his own secretary of
state Jimmy Byrnes had been working with him on.
Hearing this
Byrnes threatened to resign. “You and I spent fifteen months building a
bipartisan foreign policy,” he told Truman. “Wallace destroyed it in a day.”
Truman seethed in private: “Wallace is a pacifist,” he wrote. “He wants to disband
our armed forces, give Russia our atomic secrets and trust a bunch of adventurers
in the Kremlin. I do not understand a ‘dreamer’ like that.” Not long after
Wallace leaked a letter he wrote to Truman in which he criticized the
administration’s plan on atomic energy and justified a Soviet dominated
security zone in Eastern Europe. Truman demanded Wallace’s resignation, which
he did.
The midterms, as
I reported in an earlier article on Thomas Dewey were a disaster for Truman, as
the Republicans won sweeping majorities in the House and Senate for the first
time in fifteen years. Truman increasingly looked almost certain to lose
reelection in 1948.
In 1947 Truman
addressed Congress about the threat of Communism. In a policy that would become
known as The Truman Doctrine, he founded what would become known as the policy
of containment. This decision was perfectly logical politically. By October of
that year, a poll indicated that 62 percent of Americans thought the nation ‘too
soft’ on Communism”: a phrase that would haunt politicians of both parties for
the next forty years. Only 6 percent thought Truman’s policy were too tough.
Among those six percent was Wallace.
When Wallace
left Commerce, he accepted an offer to edit the then leftish journal The New
Republic. The offer came from a former FDR speechwriter – who was also a
covert Soviet agent. It would be the first of a long line of Communist
influencers who would become part of the Wallace cadre. In the journal, he
argued for reconciliation with Moscow, opposed aid to Greece and Turkey and
would turn against the Marshall plan once Moscow turned against it. Wallace
went on a European tour and began to have conversations with communist agents in
France. When he left for Europe, 125 supporters signed a petition of support,
including former Mayor La Guardia, six U.S Senators and two prominent
Congressmen, Helen Keller, Elliott Roosevelt – and quite a significant number
of prominent celebrities, including composer Aaron Copland, actor Gene Kelly,
and playwrights Lillian Hellman and Arthur Miller.
Returning
stateside he was greeted by huge crowds in Middle America, including Chicago,
Detroit and more than twenty thousand in Los Angeles. In May of 1947 Wallaceite
Charles Savage defeated a Truman Democrat in a House primary in Washington. IN November
a Wallace candidate in Chicago polled forty percent of the vote.
On December 29,
1947 Wallace flew to New York for a private address of a thousand supporters.
He announced that he would be running for President on what would be known as
the Progressive ticket. Over nationwide radio, he attacked the Democratic party
as made of ‘lukewarm liberals’, attacked the draft and corporate profits. He
concluded:
“We have
assembled a Gideon’s Army, small in number, powerful in conviction, ready for action.
We have said with Gideon: ”Let those who are fearful and trembling depart… A
just cause is worth 100 armies…We owe no allegiance to any group which doesn’t
serve the common man.”
In D.C. California
Congresswoman Helen Gaghan Douglas, an early supporter of Wallace heard the
news and despaired for her friend. She had been told of this in private and her
friends had “said good night politely and piled out the door as if fleeing a
bad odor.” She stayed but warned him that what little support he would enjoy
from his friends – even her. Wallace only looked hurt.
Later she encountered
a fellow Congressman Lyndon Johnson of
Texas, who was ebullient. He told her Truman’s forces would rip Wallace apart
by painting him as a Communist sympathizer – something that he was looking
forward too and that Wallace would spend the next year doing everything in his
power to make a reality.
In the next article
in this series I will deal with Wallace’s campaign for the Presidency, how it
quickly deteriorated and increasingly became a cult of personality, which in
the midst of 1948 increasingly made Wallace look more and more foolish –
something he did everything in his own power to help himself do.
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