Red Veep
Arthur Herman reviews The World That Wasn’t: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century by Benn Steil
Until recently, one advantage of America’s two-party political system was that it protected—critics would say insulated—voters from radical policy swings. Democrat or Republican, a presidential candidate had to move toward the political center to win, with a more-or-less uncontroversial party platform to match. Candidates demanding disruptive, radical changes got pushed to the electoral margin as third-party also-rans.
Consider the classic case of the 1948 presidential election. Harry Truman and Thomas Dewey fought over the political center on key issues, both foreign and domestic, while voters sent an overwhelming no to Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats on one side of the political spectrum, and to former vice president Henry Wallace and the Progressive Party on the other.
Benn Steil, director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of two very fine books, on the Marshall Plan and on the Bretton Woods Conference, calls his new biography of Wallace The World That Wasn’t. It’s a title that bears two different but complementary meanings. The first refers to Wallace’s almost extraterrestrial progressive vision of the world, a vision that was completely impervious to empirical reality, even in the tensest moments of the Cold War. The second refers to the world that would have existed if Wallace had somehow won election in 1948, or, even more crucially, if Wallace had still been vice president when Franklin Roosevelt died in office on April 12, 1945.
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