Bess Truman by Margaret Truman

Author:Margaret Truman [Margaret Truman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography/Women
ISBN: 9781612308104
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2014-09-26T04:00:00+00:00

Senator Guffey was not the only Democrat who was troubled about Vice President Henry Wallace. He represented the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party in all its high-minded craziness. He was an example of FDR’s tendency to place ideology above competence in many of his appointments. As a vice president, Wallace had been a disaster. That is no mean trick, to gum up that job. All a veep has to do is preside over the Senate and ingratiate himself and the administration with its leaders. Henry Wallace did the precise opposite, ruffling feathers, rarely appearing to preside.

Even worse was his performance as Chairman of the Board of Economic Warfare. It was probably an impossible job, but he proceeded to get into a public shouting match with Jesse Jones, head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and idol of the Senate conservatives. FDR had to publicly rebuke both of them.

Another worry that emerged in whispers among Democratic Party leaders as 1944 began was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s health. His body already crippled by polio, he was showing signs of the strain of running a global war. In 1943, exhausting trips to international conferences in Casablanca, Quebec, and Cairo had added to the stress. The toll on his health became more and more visible. For a while, some people wondered if he would run for a fourth term, especially as the momentum of the war shifted in favor of the Allies.

But most people believed FDR’s leadership would be needed to carry the war to a successful conclusion and to construct a lasting peace. One of the first politicians to make this point was Harry Truman, in a Jackson Day Dinner speech in Florida, early in 1944. He made the same speech three or four more times in the next few months. Simultaneously he began pushing other candidates for vice president.

Almost all these candidates were critical - or at least independent - of Roosevelt. As he did on most issues, Dad was reflecting the mainstream of the Democratic Party. The politicians sensed that roughly half the Democrats now disliked or distrusted Franklin D. Roosevelt. The president’s zigs and zags on countless issues, his habit of dumping or humiliating loyal supporters, had accumulated a host of disillusioned enemies within his party. Time magazine quoted a prominent Washington Democrat as declaring: “I haven’t an ounce of confidence in anything Roosevelt does. I wouldn’t believe anything he said.” Southern Democrats were especially restive. They threatened to organize a new party that might back a Republican for president and deny Roosevelt reelection in 1944.

The president’s attempts to outmaneuver his enemies only added to the disenchantment. As 1944 began, he announced that the New Deal was dead. It was no longer needed to doctor America’s ills. “Dr. Win-the-War” was now in charge. Two weeks later, in his economic message to Congress, he made some of the most radical proposals of his career, calling for an “economic bill of rights” that would guarantee jobs, housing, medical care, and education to every American.

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