Where it got interesting is when you read of his disciple-like status with a very strange Nicholas Roerich; Wallace's apparent love of Communism in the late 1940s; and his bid for election with the Progressive Party in 1948. According to Wikipedia, his platform advocated an end to segregation, full voting rights for blacks, and universal government health insurance. Imagine what things he might have tried if he had been VP when Roosevelt died in 1945!
One of the most amazing things about Henry Wallace was that he apparently admitted that he had made mistakes! In the September 2, 1952 issue of This Week Magazine of the New York Herald-Tribune, he wrote an article titled Where I was Wrong. That must be an almost unique occurrence in the history of American politicians and I will try and find down a copy.
I was partly intrigued since last year I read an interesting book titled Journey to the Far Pacific by Thomas E Dewey. It is a less than perfect but reasonably perceptive analysis of Dewey's visit to East Asia in 1952. Until I read the book the only thing I knew about Dewey was the famous headlines when Truman beat him in the November 1949 presidential election.
The book showed a progressive thinker who also just happened to be -- like Henry Wallace -- an upstate New York Republican farmer.
This all brought to my mind how some of history's losers had the possibility of greatness within. (Of course these same people also had the possibility of being complete raving loonies!) It shows how even the American Republican party has occasionally put forth leaders with a potential for greatness. (So why have they gone so wrong lately?)
