WI: President Henry A. Wallace

Roosevelt dies sometime in '41, after being sworn in, but before the Pearl Harbor attack (optimally would be with FDR actually dying at Pearl Harbor, maybe he's on a visit or something, so Wallace has his proverbial 'bloody shirt' to wave around). Wallace gets to make his "A day that will live in infamy" speech, and it will be on his watch that the Nazi and Japanese militaries are defeated.

He will likely run in '44, as the Democratic party can hardly drop its sitting POTUS from the ticket, and I don't see how he could lose, since even doing an across-the-board 5% worse than FDR still earns him a 297-234 victory.

With the New Deal coalition still strong enough to give Truman a victory in '48 despite a massive 3-way split within it, I can easily see Wallace running for re-election and winning.

What does he try, what does he accomplish and what will he fail?
 
Wallace would do a far worse job in World War II. Specifically, he'd trust the USSR far more than FDR did and give them a lot more territory. At the very worst, the USSR would reach the Seine. A more likely one is them reaching the Rhine.

He will likely run in '44, as the Democratic party can hardly drop its sitting POTUS from the ticket, and I don't see how he could lose, since even doing an across-the-board 5% worse than FDR still earns him a 297-234 victory.

That is a quite close election. But yeah. The US won't leave Wallace behind in favour of a hyped-up crime-fighting governor.
 
Well I think some people would tend to think "See what God does to those who go for a third term, trying to defy the will of George Washington!"

As to Wallace He is the President, not the American dictator, he can't just drive the nation off a cliff, even if he wanted to.

When given the information of what is happening in the USSR and being shown what are the Potemkin Villages he will act accordingly.

I do think he may use the war as a way to push forward social programs but most of them will be undone in 1948 by Dewey.

Unless his VP pulls off a 'Truman'.

Who becomes Wallace's VP in '41?
 

bguy

Donor
I read that. I don't think Wallace would push a Second New Deal and civil rights in the middle of a war.

Probaby not but even without Wallace tilting at legislative windmills there are a lot of ways his presidency could be a disaster. In particular OTL Roosevelt made a lot of accomodations towards the business community in World War 2 to help guarantee maximum U.S. war production. (Bringing in the dollar a year men into the government, allowing cost plus contracting, allowing big business to get the lion's share of war contracts, imposing wage controls, ending anti-trust prosecutions for the duration of the war, and above all allowing private industry to manage its own operations.) I kind of doubt Wallace would be pragmatic enough to make those kind of accomodations, so the Wallace Administration will likely have a much more contentious relationship with the U.S. business community. (Which is bound to hamper war production.)

Wallace was also deeply concerned with how the military procurement program would cut into civilian standards of living and doubted that the public would be willing to make the necessary sacrifices, so President Wallace will probably insist on making more consumer goods available to help maintain civilian morale even if doing so ends up hurting military production.

As such between Wallace taking a harder line on U.S. business and his insisting on making more consumer goods available for the civilian population, U.S. war production will probably be considerably less under President Wallace than it was OTL under President Roosevelt (and there will also be much more labor strife as Wallace probably won't put nearly as much pressure on unions not to strike.) That will mean a slower U.S. military buildup (and also less Lend Lease for the Allies.)

I also think For All Time was probably correct in that Wallace would order a 1943 cross-channel invasion in liu of Operation Torch and a Mediterranean Campaign. That's what General Marshall wanted to do anyway, and Wallace will likely be more susceptible to Soviet cries for an immediate cross-channel invasion than FDR was. (There's a good chance that Soviet agent Harry Dexter White is Secretary of the Treasury in a Wallace Administration, which will put a powerful voice for Stalin right next to Wallace.) And while there have been pretty compelling arguments made on this forum that a 1943 invasion could have succeeded, those arguments all assume OTL U.S. mobilization and production levels. If U.S. war production is less than OTL then the Allied invasion force will presumably be weaker than it could have been OTL, which means a 1943 invasion under President Wallace is even riskier than it would have been OTL. Maybe the invasion can still succeed, but if it does fail then it is very likely U.S. forces won't return to France until 1945 (which is probably enough to guarantee a Wallace defeat in the '44 election.)
 
One thing to remember about Wallace: He was not essentially radical, nor was he *always* a favorite of the Communist Party. On domestic policy, during the 1930s he tried to steer a middle course between the conservatives in the Agriculture Department (who thought the Department's task was to shore up farm prices, period) and the radicals interested in social change (who included Communists like Lee Pressman but also anti-Communists like Jerome Frank). Eventually he acquiesced in the firing of the radicals.

On foreign policy, he opposed recognition of the USSR in 1933. And note the testimony of longtime liberal attorney Gardner ("Pat") Jackson in an article critical of Wallace in the August 1948 *Atlantic*:

"In several of his speeches [in 1948] he has played upon the evil of the Franco dictatorship in Spain and what he says is this country's encouragement of it through trade and diplomatic relations. During the Spanish civil War, as I came to know well while trying to help Loyalist Ambassador de los Rios, Wallace was the least responsive of the cabinet members who were approached to exercise influence on specific problems in behalf of the Loyalist government, such as arranging the servicing of that government's funds in New York City and the campaign to have the arms embargo lifted. His attitude was in sharp contrast to that of Secretary Morgenthau and Secretary Ickes. Wallace apparently did not then see Franco as the menace he now considers him." http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1948/08/henry-wallace-a-divided-mind/306029/

Also, from late 1939 to June 22, 1941, Wallace as much as FDR was attacked by the Communists as a "warmonger."

After June 22, 1941, of course, Wallace became more friendly to the USSR. Yet this was hardly unusual, and if Wallace was slower than others to discard illusions about the USSR, I wonder how much of this was because after 1944 Wallace resented having been pushed aside in favor of Truman and therefore convinced himself that Truman's increasingly antagonistic position toward the USSR was a betrayal of FDR's policies. In short, I'm not sure if Wallace's views in, say, the 1948 campaign (when he was dependent on the Communists and their allies for manpower, etc.) would necessarily indicate how he would act toward the USSR in the war and postwar period in the event that he became president after an early death of FDR.
 
Didn't work like that back then. He'd have to pick somebody in '44.

So by the time the choice comes around, barring butterflies, Truman is a likely choice.

Although unlikely, couldn't Wallace run again in '48?

Does Truman in this TL do better or worse than in OTL?
 
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Well, there is the precedent set by Teddy Roosevelt, also by then the country may be just tired of the Democrats.
 
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