[MplsSteve]

Over the years, I’ve read a lot about Henry A Wallace.

Though I do not like his politics, I found him to be an extremely deep and intellectual person. In short, I find him fascinating.

But like many intellectuals of his type, he displayed an incredibly naivete not only towards the Soviets but also to Democrat politics. His inability to win the 1944 nomination for VP was in part due to his lack of political skills.

Getting back to the Soviets, he was in many ways an apologist for them. His 1948 campaign (for President) reflected that.

In 1950, he broke with the Progressive Party over his support for US intervention in Korea. In 1952, he wrote an article for Look magazine called “Where I Was Wrong”. He admitted that he was duped and uninformed about Stalin’s excesses. He later considered himself to be an anti-Communist.

[Verginius Rufus]

From what I've read, FDR forced Wallace on the convention in 1940 over a lot of opposition. In 1944 a lot of the big shots in the party were afraid that FDR would not live out another term so they were determined not to allow Wallace to remain on the ticket. So Wallace's being dropped had less to do with any political skills than with being seen as unsuitable by powerful figures in the party.

Of course his father, Henry C. Wallace, had been Secretary of Agriculture for a Republican President (Harding--continued for a while under Coolidge).