Truman(21)

Additionally, however, he fully apprehended the probability of Roosevelt dying without four years, and liked that prospect no more. ‘1600 Pennsylvania is a nice address,’ he wrote to his daughter twelve days before he was nominated, ‘but I’d rather not move in through the back door—or any other door at sixty.’2 He also answered a St Louis Post-Dispatch reporter: ‘Do you remember your American history well enough to recall what happened to most vice-presidents who succeeded to the presidency? Usually they were ridiculed in office, had their hearts broken, lost any vestige of respect they had had before. I don’t want that to happen to me.’3

The hand that Roosevelt played in the approach to the choice was enigmatic at the time, remains puzzling, and now seems unlikely ever to become clear. The earlier statements about his health should not be taken as meaning that a persistent pall of indifference had settled over him. He was convinced that it was his duty to run, and that being so, he was determined to win. This was not something which could be taken for granted. Dewey, Governor of New York and the youngest presidential candidate of this century (a year younger than John F. Kennedy) had been smoothly nominated on the first ballot at the Republican Convention in mid-June. In retrospect the ‘little man on the wedding cake’ looks an easy candidate to beat. But this was not obvious at the time. Indeed Dewey’s reputation as a loser only came four years later with his amazing defeat by Truman. In early July 1944 the main poll showed Roosevelt leading him by a margin of only 51 to 49. And the actual outcome in November was not very different. Roosevelt secured a strong electoral college result—432 to 99—but this was due to the luck of all the big states except Ohio just slipping his way. His lead in votes cast was only 531/2% to 461/2%, the narrowest popular majority since Wilson’s second election in 1916.

It was not magnificent for the leader of the free world against a man who two years before had been only a District Attorney, although a very successful one. What is significant however is that Roosevelt could not afford to think that he could stroll to victory. Nor did he attempt to do so. He made very few speeches—in effect only five—and for the rest of the time sheltered behind an Olympian commander-in-chief role. But this was probably sound tactics as well as a necessary conservation of energy. Of these five speeches at least three showed most of his old campaigning verve. His ‘my little dog Fala’ speech in Washington in September contained some of the most daring and brilliant political raillery in which he had ever indulged, and the orations at Soldiers’ Field, Chicago (before 100,000) and in the Boston Bowl were both memorable. In New York he subjected himself to the ordeal of a 50-mile 4-hour waving drive in pouring rain and an open motorcar, and did a near repeat in Philadelphia. He was of course battling against the rumours of his ill-health as much or more than against Dewey, but the fact that he felt he had to fight so hard against either meant that he could not be indifferent to the identity of his running-mate. Nor was he beyond making shrewd political judgments about this identity.

There is a widespread view that he was persuaded by the spring that Wallace, with whom he would have been personally happy to continue and who was strongly backed by many Democratic enthusiasts, including Eleanor Roosevelt, would not do, both because Wallace would alienate votes across the nation and because he would be ineffective in the new term at delivering two-thirds of the Senate for the peace treaties and American adherence to the United Nations, and that of the other possibilities the President wanted Truman for the converse of these two reasons. If Roosevelt was as clear as this his convolutions ran great risks of frustrating his purposes.

It is understandable that he did not wish to impose a candidate on the Convention. He was vulnerable to the charge of being monarchical. And he had to give the assembled delegates something to do. He was not going to attend himself, even though he passed through Chicago while they were assembling. All he gave them by way of an acceptance speech was a somewhat flat radio link-up from San Diego before he embarked on a Pacific bases trip. If he was going to show them any respect it had to be over the vice-presidential choice.

There was also his endemic dislike of telling people to their faces that they were not his choice. This was fortified by a more rational political desire not to make unnecessary enemies, and embellished by a slightly sadistic enjoyment of a teasing, ambivalent approach to appointments. In mid-May he sent Wallace off on a seven-week trip to China, from where he re-emerged only on July 9th. That cut him off from canvassing his support and did him no good for publicity as the journey had to be secret. When he returned he was told by intermediaries that he was to be dropped. He insisted on seeing Roosevelt and stressed his strength in the polls and with delegates. Roosevelt, we are told, appeared ‘surprised and impressed’. He concluded the interview by saying: ‘I hope it’s the same team again, Henry.’4 This is necessarily hearsay. What is documented is the letter of exquisitely qualified endorsement which he wrote for Wallace. It was addressed to the probable Permanent Chairman of the Convention and signed at Hyde Park on Friday, July 14th: