In 1944, Vice President Henry A. Wallace was perceived by many-perhaps most-highly placed Democrats to be a genuine threat to the reelection of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
He was cordially detested by the Republicans-and many conservative Southern Democrats-both for his lib-eral domestic policies and his unabashed admiration of the Soviet Union.
Perhaps equally important, the poor-and declining-health of President Roosevelt, while carefully concealed from the American public, was no secret to many Republi-cans, including their probable candidate for the presi-dency, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York.
There was a real threat that Dewey might make it an is-sue in the campaign:
“Roosevelt, if reelected, probably won’t live through his term. Do you want Henry Wallace in the Oval Office? Or me?”
Wallace, it was decided, had to go.
For his running mate, Roosevelt picked Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri, who, while an important senator, was not part of the President’s inner circle.
It was a brilliant political choice. Truman had earned nationwide recognition for his chairmanship of a Senate committee investigating fraud and waste by suppliers of war materials. “The Truman Committee” was a near-weekly feature on the newsreels at the nation’s movie palaces, showing a nice-looking man visibly furious at contractors caught cheating the government and the mili-tary officers who’d let them get away with it.
