President Henry Wallace

[Michael Z]

Here's a scenario for you. Instead of choosing Harry Truman as his running mate, FDR sticks with Communist sympathiser Henry Wallace for the 1944 election.

A year later FDR passes on, making Henry Wallace President of the United States... what happens next?

[zachman]

Wallace is forced to fight through the remainder of the war. He builds an alliance with the USSR, for better or for worse. The big question is how he would end the war in Japan. I'd say he'd give them the old Japanese Islands and the Phillipines.

[dunn]

True
and he wouldn't nuke Japan. the war ends in 1946, but maybe there would not be a war in Korea or a cold war/ Just a possibility

[PBrunsel]

Henry Wallace was not a communist. In 1948 he ahd an idea of a Welfare Ammendment, and it did not go over well. He wamnted not only food stamps but toothpaste stamps, milk stamps, etc. Wallace was tagged as a Communist when ther CPUSA backed him in October 1948.

[Kodratos]

Henry Wallace was not a communist. In 1948 he ahd an idea of a Welfare Ammendment, and it did not go over well. He wamnted not only food stamps but toothpaste stamps, milk stamps, etc. Wallace was tagged as a Communist when ther CPUSA backed him in October 1948.

Here are some excerpts from a NR story:

Henry Wallace had been Franklin Roosevelt's vice president, until Roosevelt decided to replace him with Harry Truman in 1944. Wallace had admired the USSR since the 1920s; a visit to Russia in 1941, including a tour of the notorious gulag camp at Magadan, only confirmed his enthusiasm. At the end of World War II, as historian Allen Weinstein has revealed, Wallace even arranged a secret meeting with the NKVD's Washington station chief, offering him access to American scientists working on the atomic bomb.

In 1946, Wallace publicly broke with President Truman over the issue of opposing Stalin's bid for domination of Europe. Two years later Wallace ran as the liberals' antiwar candidate. He opposed the Berlin airlift and blamed the fall of Czechoslovakia to the Communists on the United States. His campaign attracted many academics and intellectuals who saw him, not Truman, as the true champion of New Deal liberalism.

When Hubert Humphrey complained about the prominent role Communists were playing in the election, Wallace blithely told him to go talk to the Russian embassy — it had more influence over his campaign officials than he did.

[PBrunsel]

I read, "Hnery Wallace: American Dreamer", and it stated that in 1960 henry Wallace supoorted Richard M. Nixon! Wallace thought Kennedy was a playboy and too unprepared for the presidency.  

[Kodratos]

I read, "Hnery Wallace: American Dreamer", and it stated that in 1960 henry Wallace supoorted Richard M. Nixon! Wallace thought Kennedy was a playboy and too unprepared for the presidency.  

You just blew my mind

[JohnFKennedy]

Wallace ran as the liberals' antiwar candidate.

He ran in '48 as a progressive.

[Kodratos]

Wallace ran as the liberals' antiwar candidate.

He ran in '48 as a progressive.

Yeah, it says that in the article I gathered it from. Here's the link, it's a strange article:

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-herman121802.asp

[dunn]

Born in 1888 in Iowa, Henry Wallace would first achieve success as an editor. Wallace was educated at Iowa State College and took over his father's position as editor of Wallaces' Farmer when his father became secretary of agriculture in 1921. After becoming disillusioned with Republican farm policies and helping swing Iowa to the Democrats in the election of 1932, Wallace was appointed secretary of agriculture in his own right by FDR in 1933. Wallace gained national attention as head of the Agriculture Department, spearheading the administration of the Agricultural Adjustment Agency so successfully that FDR wanted Wallace for his running mate in 1940. As the most liberal member of the president's cabinet, seeking Wallace's nomination had the potential of dividing the party at the Democratic National Convention. However, when Democratic delegates seemed on the verge of disorder FDR dispatched ER (a staunch Wallace supporter) to calm them and lobby on Wallace's behalf. The speech that she delivered the next day was so well received that Wallace received the nomination on the first ballot, deepening a politically complex relationship with the first lady that would continue to evolve and change over time.

Wallace distinguished himself as a loyal, hard-working wartime vice-president over the next four years, but still failed to recapture the nomination in 1944 when he was dumped by an increasingly conservative Democratic party. His 1943 speech in which he repudiated Henry Luce's vision of an "American Century" in favor of a "Century of the Common Man" had endeared him to left-liberals, but alienated him from rank-and-file Democrats at the convention. FDR wanted him to remain in the cabinet, however, and Wallace accepted FDR's appointment as secretary of commerce in 1945. He remained at the Commerce Department until September 1946 when he was forced to resign for having publicly criticized President Truman's foreign policy in a speech at Madison Square Garden. The left-leaning secretary had been troubled by Truman's rightward drift in foreign affairs throughout much of that year, regarding the president's militarism as a precursor to another world war. After leaving the Commerce Department, Wallace returned to editing, but this time at the New Republic, a liberal publication that he used as a platform for the Democratic party's left wing. At the end of 1946, Wallace went even further in his pursuit to advance progressive politics when he helped found the Progressive Citizens of America.

Wallace's outspoken support of progressive causes made him perhaps the victim of more redbaiting than any other 1940s politician. Maligned as a communist sympathizer at a time when the American public was intolerant to socialism, Wallace's criticisms of administration foreign policy were increasingly out of step with mainstream public opinion. Recognizing that his chances at capturing the Democratic presidential nomination in 1948 were marginal at best, Wallace instead ran as the candidate of the Progressive party against President Truman, Thomas Dewey, and Strom Thurmond, but failed to capture any electoral votes. Wallace's break from the party also signaled the final break with Eleanor Roosevelt, his old political champion, who had originally wanted him to succeed FDR but increasingly felt uncomfortable with his "political naivete" and his desire to deepen relations with the Soviet Union. Wallace would ultimately reach a rapprochement with the Truman administration's foreign policy when he endorsed its firm stance in Korea, but shortly thereafter Wallace retired from political life and the Progressive party when it rebuked him for having voiced assent to the war. Wallace would continue to write about politics and agriculture throughout his retirement and until his death in 1965.
 

[dunn]

[Kodratos]

He looks decent enough. Too bad he was a pinko

[dunn]

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote a great essay on Wallace

http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/schlesinger_wallace_bio.html

[dunn]

BTW
George McGovern and his wife supported Wallace's progressive bid in 1948 and served as delegates to his convention in Philadelphia.

[dunn]

[zachman]

Why do you need to choose delegates for a third party convention? Did he rent out a stadium?

[dunn]

Why do you need to choose delegates for a third party convention? Did he rent out a stadium?

It's a party not an independent
small but still a party

[zachman]

Was his Progressive Party the rejuvenated version of LaFollette's Party?

[dunn]

Was his Progressive Party the rejuvenated version of LaFollette's Party?

kind of , yeah

[dunn]

His programme included new civil rights legislation, repeal of the Taft-Hartley Bill and increased spending on welfare, education, and public works. Wallace's foreign policy program was based on opposition to the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan.

[Ben.]

The sad fact is that Wallace had a very naïve attitude to Communism, he himself was a decent and moderate kind of person (he came from a progressive republican background)… after being dumped by FDR in 1944 in favour of Harry Truman his beliefs varied wildly over the next decade or so and in 1948 he ran as the “progressive party” candidate for president which amounted to him being the “wild-eyed idealist” candidate …. By the 1950’s he had largely reverted to his moderate origins, he backed the US in the Korean War (breaking with the increasingly radically leftwing progressive party), after his 1948 run Wallace denounced the Progressive Party and urged his supporters to back Truman and the democrats, he said "the Progressive Party has lined up unashamedly with the forces of Soviet totalitarianism." During the 1950’s he was largely a supporter of Eisenhower’s administration and was initially sceptical of Kennedy candidacy however after being invited to the 1960 inauguration ceremony and luncheon by Kennedy he wrote to the new president elect saying “At no time in our history, have so many tens of millions of people been so completely enthusiastic about an Inaugural Address as about yours." …

… IMHO, it was the dumping of Wallace as VP that precipitated his radical move to the left and eventually left him largely discredited… had he been VP in 1944 I doubt that he would have turned to the left, as President the soviet threat would have been obvious to him… I think that he would have been forced to bomb Japan simply to bring the war to a conclusion, save US troops life’s and prevent a Soviet invasion of the islands… IMHO he would still have been slower than Truman to react to Soviet expansion in Europe, it is very possible that he would have allowed the “Popular Front” (a coalition of communists and socialists) to win the Italian election and then he would have woken up to the threat… In China he might also initially have been weaker in supporting the Nationalists than Truman was however in the mid-1940’s the nationalist where still firmly in control of most of China and less US aid might have convinced the nationalist leadership to marshal their resources better and simply concede the new communist bases in (Soviet occupied) Manchuria and simply cement control over the rest of the country, in effect allowing Manchuria to become a Chinese East Germany… On social and economic issues Wallace would have been far more competent than on foreign matters he would have been quick to scale back the new deal and allow the post war boom to continue to grow and generate jobs, he may very well have even cut taxes to boost consumer spending but with a largely Keynesian Congress this could have been difficult, On civil rights I doubt that he would ever have had the confidence and toughness to take the measures which Truman did and as a result I think it is very likely that there would have been no Dixicrat ticket in 1948. However the Republicans could well have times nominated a foreign policy hawk, who was moderate on economic issues so three California Governor Earl Warren would probably have been nominated by the GOP and would very probably have beaten Wallace thanks to his perceived weakness on foreign policy and popular concerns in that area despite what would probably have been a booming economy…  

So with Earl Warren winning in 1948, Republicans would probably have moved towards civil rights first (Warren of course would latter lead the supreme court through the 1950’s and the early 1960’s and was a determined advocate of civil rights), in doing this the Black vote (that is when it could actually vote, had moved under FDR towards the Democrats) would become more evenly divided and not be a monolithically democratic voting bloc… on foreign policy he would have pursued a policy not dissimilar to that embarked upon by Ike and Truman… he would have prosecuted the Korean war and would also have dealt with the “Berlin airlifts” in a very similar way to Truman, the continuing Korean war could have been a drag on his re-election in 1952 however despite Warren probably facing the thoughtful and moderate Adlai Stevenson with a booming economy  and general support for his polices amongst the republican base and moderates and independent voters he would have probably won in convincing fashion over Stevenson… even further down the road you could have see the Republicans following on in a Libertarian direction (Similar to the likes of Goldwater on the right and moderates such as Henry Cabot Lodge, Roomey, Ford, Bush (41), and then on to the likes of Spectre and George Voinovich) while the Democrats would most probably have continued along a more populist course (on the right John Kennedy, “Scoop” Jackson, Al Gore senior, Ed Muskie, John Glenn, Lloyd Bentsen, Jo Lieberman and on the left LBJ, Robert Byrd, Hubert Humphries and then on right on to the present with Dick Gephardt and Tom Harkin on the left of the party)…                                                      

[Gustaf]

My family knows a relative to Henry Wallace, who has never like Truman b/c of the old family animosity.

But a hard-line against Communism was too imortant at that time to be messed around with. That's why we were immensely lucky to have FDR dead and Wallace off the ticket by the end of WWII.