Henry Agard Wallace, the 33rd Vice President of the United States, was a man of unique character and idiosyncrasies.
He was a teetotaler, abstaining from alcohol, tobacco, and profanity. Wallace was not fond of humor, fiction, or golf, preferring activities that offered opportunities for self-improvement. Despite his high intellect, he was socially awkward, a trait that author Benn Steil, in his book "The World That Wasn't: Henry Wallace and the Fate of The American Century" (Avid Reader Press), attributes to Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism spectrum disorder.
Steil posits that Wallace, who served as Vice President in 1944, the same year Austrian physician Hans Asperger first identified the syndrome, is the most intriguing "almost-president" in American history. His book explores an alternate history where Wallace, not Harry S. Truman, succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945.
Wallace was born in October 1888 near Orient, Iowa. He initially followed an agricultural path, editing the family newspaper, Wallace's Farmer, after college. He also owned a farm where he developed hybrid corn and established the successful Hi-Bred Corn Company. Politics was in his blood; his father, Henry Cantwell Wallace, served as the US Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Wallace himself held the same position under Roosevelt from 1933 to 1940, before serving as Vice President from 1941 to 1945.
Despite expectations that FDR would choose Wallace as his running mate for a third term, his left-leaning views, particularly regarding the Soviet Union, alarmed some moderates in the Democratic Party. Consequently, Roosevelt selected Truman for the 1944 elections. Truman assumed the presidency following FDR's death in April 1945, a decision with far-reaching implications for America and the world.
Steil writes, "This most unpromising of political figures [Wallace] came within a whisker of becoming FDR's successor at a critical crossroads in twentieth-century geopolitics." He suggests that a Wallace presidency would have significantly altered postwar history, with no Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO, West Germany, or policy of containment, all of which Wallace opposed.
Wallace served as Secretary of Commerce under Truman but was dismissed after advocating for more conciliatory policies towards the Soviet Union in a September 1946 speech. His appeasement of the Soviets was out of step with postwar America. Undeterred, Wallace continued to express his Soviet sympathies, writing a book praising the Bolshevik regime with the assistance of a known KGB informant. He also ran for president in 1948 under the Progressive Party, even allowing Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to edit a crucial election speech.
Wallace's opposition to the Truman Doctrine of 1947, designed to contain Soviet expansion, was another point of contention. He saw it as evidence of the president aligning with "fascists" and "reactionaries" in Congress, the military, and the State Department.
Wallace's interest in mysticism also drew criticism. Raised a Presbyterian, he found Christian orthodoxy "wishy-washy" and explored Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. Steil writes that Wallace considered himself a "practical mystic," seeking eternal truths to guide social, economic, and political change. This spiritual zeal was another reason for Truman to distance himself from Wallace, who he believed would cost him votes.
In 1964, Wallace retired from politics to focus on hybridization experiments and agricultural innovation lectures across the US and Central America. He attempted to breed more efficient chickens and started writing a book on the history of strawberries, which remained unfinished.
Wallace was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, and passed away in November 1965 at the age of 77.
Steil concludes that Wallace's political career underscores the necessity of aligning desires with realities for success in life and politics. He writes, "One can neither will corn to higher yields, nor will a dictator to compromise."
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