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Washington Examiner

Henry Wallace: The Man Who Was Almost (an Awful) President

A review of The World That Wasnt: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century by Benn Steil.

Managing Editor
Henry A. Wallace speaking at a meeting of the Political Action Committee at Madison Square Garden on September 11, 1947. (Photo by NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)
Caption
Henry A. Wallace speaking at a meeting of the Political Action Committee at Madison Square Garden on September 11, 1947. (Photo by NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)

After the Vietnam War, disgruntled lefties increasingly reconsidered American history to discover how the country could have chosen peace instead of a confrontation with the Soviet Union. One pivotal moment was the 1944 Democratic National Convention, when the party replaced Vice President Henry A. Wallace with Harry Truman. According to , who helped popularize this revisionist history, “there would not have been this cold war” if Wallace was still vice president when Franklin D. Roosevelt died in April 1945. This view has percolated among the American left ever since. Benn Steil’s new book demonstrates that Wallace would not have saved the United States from a rivalry with the Soviet Union. At most, he would have merely postponed the start of the Cold War for a couple of years, at which point Moscow would have gained a substantial advantage.