What a Difference an Election Makes
Most histories are written about events that have actually transpired, unless they are fanciful “alternative histories.” Benn Steil’s political biography of the fascinating but ultimately tragic Henry A. Wallace, however, is largely written about what could have happened but did not, a slant reflected in the title. In Steil’s dramatic opening narrative, Henry Wallace came within seconds of receiving the nomination for Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Vice President at the Democratic Convention in 1944, a position in which he served in Roosevelt’s previous term. If he had been nominated, within ten months he, instead of Harry Truman, would have assumed the U.S. presidency upon FDR’s death. Although Steil does not draw the reader’s conclusions, it is not hard to conclude that a Wallace presidency may well have been disastrous for the remaining turbulent half of the 20th century and beyond. Steil’s political biography of Wallace is comprehensive, detailed, and smoothly written. It is a veritable “page-turner,” especially for such a lengthy undertaking.
Wallace served under Roosevelt and the two enjoyed a casual friendship, even if Roosevelt was aware of Wallace’s quirks and limitations. Wallace was both Roosevelt’s Secretary of Agriculture and Secretary of Commerce; he retained the latter post in the Truman administration. As the Progressive Party’s nominee in 1948, he unsuccessfully challenged Truman for the presidency, winning less than 3% of the popular vote. Despite his talent, charisma, and many administrative positions, Wallace’s professional style was impressively maladroit. Steil explains, “He made no effort to adapt to Washington or its ways. . . . He looked not to befriend nor to flatter. He sought no favors and offered none. He spoke truth as God and nature revealed it, and listeners either understood or remained benighted.” To make matters worse, he was a “potentially dangerous loose cannon;” and frequently, a poor judge of character. Steil reports that Wallace carried little for euphemisms: Harry Truman—that “son-of-a-bitch”—became his nemesis in cold war policy.
Wallace’s real bent was toward international relations and foreign policy; yet, he was dangerously deluded about communism in general, and the Soviet Union in particular. He blamed the United States and Harry Truman for the Cold War and even colluded with Stalin to redirect the foreign policy of his own country, the United States. Soviet Ambassador Andrei Gromyko was his occasional confidant. In May of 1944, he made a visit to Siberia. Initially, he had wanted to travel to Moscow and meet with Stalin, but, in the interest of damage control, Roosevelt wisely steered him to Russia’s vast frozen region. It was a simple task for the Soviets to orchestrate a “Potemkin Village” visit that left Wallace enamored of Soviet agricultural and political “progress.”
As a protection for individual religious belief, Article VI of the Constitution prohibits any “religious test” to qualify for federal and state office. If ever the “No Religious Test” clause might have proven a bad idea, it could have been with Henry Wallace. Though raised a Presbyterian, Wallace was drawn to the transcendentalism writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. If he had stopped there, things should have been okay; but, he moved on, succumbing to the allure of the occult. Even worse, Wallace did not know how, or did not care, to draw the proper line between religious influence and public duties as he sought inspiration and guidance from Russian mystic Nicholas Roerich, whom Wallace called his “Guru.” Wallace “came to mock what he considered ‘the wishy-washy goody-goodiness and the infantile irrelevancy” of Christian orthodoxy’” (p. 13). Though also drawn early to William James’ pragmatic assessment of religion, Steil notes that he never heeded James’ warning that though “ ‘we have the right to believe’ without evidence, we do so ‘at our own risk.’ ”
Like many of the Progressives of his day, for example, Herbert David Croly, Frank Johnson Goodnow, John Dewey, and Woodrow Wilson—Wallace thought the political thought and constitutionalism of the Founding Generation was, at best, outdated. Founding wisdom, though, might have tempered his views: In Federalist Paper #51, Madison, writing as Publius, famously explains that among leaders, the nature of power is such that “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” In the same essay, Madison rhetorically asks, “What is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature.” For the Founders, that view of human nature was, while hopeful, nonetheless guarded, even at times suspicious.
Given that Wallace clung fiercely to his belief that the greatest preparation for peace was uncritical amity and concession rather than deterrence, he would have profited as well by the less celebrated, but no less relevant Federalist Essay # 4, in which John Jay enumerates the irrational and unjust pretexts by which nations pursue war, rather than peace:
It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it . . . [and] will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans.Such wars, Jay adds, “are not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests” of the “people.”
Most of the political class of the day were relieved that Truman became president rather than Wallace. Although Wallace came to regret some of his statements, positions, and activity, after reading Steil, it is not clear that Wallace had sufficient self-knowledge to understand why he had been wrong. Walter Lippman may have said it best when he observed that “‘Wallace . . . is an exceptionally fine human being.’ But ‘his goodness is unworldly,’ and ‘his heart is so detached from the realities that he has never learned to measure, as a statesman must, the relation of good and evil in current affairs.’”
May the United States continue to avoid the Henry Wallace’s of our day.
Benn Steil, The World That Wasn’t: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century. New York: Avid Reader Press, 2024. 687 pp. $21.32.
