As Biden Drops Out, Does the ‘Stolen’ Vice Presidency of 1944 Have a Lesson for 2024?

Though history is said not to repeat itself, sometimes, it does rhyme. President Joe Biden’s move today to bow out of the 2024 presidential race echoes a moment of political disarray exactly eight decades ago. Just ahead of the 1944 election that pitted Thomas E. Dewey against incumbent Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democratic Party faced a question that now feels familiar: Whom to nominate for vice president?

Now that Biden has dropped out and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, Americans are left wondering whether there will be an open convention—for both president and vice president.

Similarly, back in 1944, with FDR’s health failing, many of his closest advisors sensed that he would not survive a fourth term. So the veepstakes were higher than ever. Henry Wallace, who had been FDR’s most recent running mate and vice president, was widely considered by Democratic Party members as a less-than-ideal pick because of his disastrous agricultural policies and Soviet sympathies.

Vice presidents had until then been chosen in smoky back rooms by party insiders, but this time, the party decided to hold an open primary, pitting Harry S. Truman, then a senator from Missouri, against Wallace.

Truman won the primary and became president after Roosevelt's death, later winning the presidential election in 1948.  Wallace’s loyalists were unhappy with the process, and asserted that the vice presidency—and ultimately, his rightful place in the Oval Office—was stolen from him.

U.S. News spoke with Benn Steil, a senior fellow and director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of “The World That Wasn’t: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century,” about what many have called the “stolen” vice presidency and the echoes of 1944 in our present moment. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

U.S. News: In your book, you mention that Democrats in the mid-20th century were “deeply concerned” by FDR’s failing physical condition. Could you speak a little more about that?

Benn Steil: Though Roosevelt was only 62 at the time, he looked far older, suffering as he was from congestive heart failure—a diagnosis not revealed to him or his advisers. Those advisers—major Cabinet and backroom party figures—could see in his gaunt, gray face that he would not survive a fourth term, and they could not abide Wallace, a man they considered a flaky radical and Communist sympathizer, ascending to the White House.

What are the parallels to concerns about President Joe Biden’s advanced age—and former President Donald Trump’s as well? Both of them are nearly two decades older than FDR was at the time.

Actuarially, Joe Biden, given his age (82 in November), has a 1 in 3 chance of not surviving a second term. This means that, were he to be elected, Kamala Harris, as vice president, would have a 1 in 3 chance of taking his place. This fact motivated calls earlier in the year, from those who believe she is not ready for prime time (myself and George Will among them), for Biden to tap another running mate—as FDR did in 1944.

Trump, at age 78, would also be the oldest man ever elected president, making his vice presidential choice—Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance—a matter of greater national concern and scrutiny than it was back in 2016 and 2020.

In the wake of Biden’s disastrous debate performance on June 27, there is now deep anxiety—and some panic—within the Democratic Party over his electability and capacity to govern, should he win. A recent poll finds that two-thirds of Democrats now want Biden to withdraw in favor of a new candidate.

A big difference between 1944 and today, however, is that there was no serious consideration 80 years ago of replacing Roosevelt at the top of the ticket. FDR was widely considered indispensable to the war effort, although it was acknowledged that he might step down once World War II was won. All of the contention, therefore, was focused around the issue of his running mate—a man who would also be his near-certain successor.

There’s some speculation that some Democrats might call for an open convention next month, especially following President Biden’s move to pull out the race. Have there been other open conventions of note in history?

In fact, FDR’s Republican opponent in 1940, Wendell Willkie, a dark horse political newcomer, was nominated in a rowdy and at times violent six-ballot open-convention vote. Those were the days before delegates were all elected directly in primary votes, making the conventions great and consequential theater in years when there was no clear front-runner. In 1944, Democratic National Committee leaders feared that the Wallace forces might somehow capture the hall, as Willkie backers had done four years earlier, and wreck their careful plans for a Truman victory.

If Biden should drop out before the Democratic convention in mid-August, an open convention is a genuine possibility—even a likelihood if he hangs on a few more weeks. The political drama would be historic.

A vice presidential open primary might strike the modern reader as strange. How did that 1944 open primary even come about?

Although party leaders were unable to convince FDR to tell Wallace to bow out, the president approved the idea of an “open convention” in which the moderate, respected Missouri Sen. Harry Truman would, with Roosevelt’s subtle support, ultimately emerge victorious.

The president assented to running either with Truman, with South Carolina’s Jimmy Byrnes or with Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. And, in his characteristically charming and chaotic style, Roosevelt endorsed all of them in separate forums—while giving Truman his private blessing with the party leaders. Unwilling to tell Wallace to his face that he was out, however, the president agreed to write him an endorsement as well—while warning him that, if he ran, he would ultimately lose. That endorsement indicated that Roosevelt liked Wallace and would vote for him if he were a delegate, but stressed that he was not one. This was in wholesale contrast to 1940, when he insisted that he would not run if Wallace were not nominated.

Party officials made clear to the convention’s state delegation chairmen that, while their members could vote their fancy in the first round, “the boss” expected them to rally around Truman in Round 2. The convention was a raucous affair, with some wild, unexpected twists and turns, but one which, in the end, went largely according to script. Wallace led Truman 429½ to 319½ after the first round, with scattered votes for others. Truman then cruised home 1,031 to 105 in the second round.

What makes the vice presidential race between Wallace and Truman so special?

A legend developed rapidly around claims that delegation chairmen had been bribed—with postmasterships, ambassadorships and the like—to deliver their states for Truman, even though a majority of the convention had wanted Wallace. This legend was fanned, with some success, by the polemical filmmaker Oliver Stone in his 2012 “documentary” titled “The Untold History of the United States.” Like many legends, though, this one is wholly unsubstantiated, and derives largely from oral claims made by a labor official who became Wallace’s presidential campaign manager in 1948.

Here are the actual facts: The post office had, by 1944, been part of the civil service for six decades, and its jobs were not available for patronage. I spent two months investigating the votes and careers of all the 1,176 delegates, and not one of them became a postmaster under FDR or Truman. Furthermore, all of the delegates who subsequently became ambassadors under FDR or Truman voted against Truman—with the possible exception of New York’s Richard Patterson, whose vote is unrecorded. No bribery took place.

As for Stone’s account of the “rebellion” in the Chicago convention hall on the night of July 20, 1944, with cries of “WE WANT WALLACE” echoing from the rafters, he fails to note that these cries emanated not from the majority of delegates, but from observers in the peanut gallery—most of whom should never have been there. Some 35,000 people had jammed the hall, nearly twice the building’s legal capacity. Wallace supporters without entry tickets for that evening’s session had stormed the convention, invading the floor and pushing delegates from their seats. What may have looked like a spontaneous outburst from the delegates was not.

The Roosevelt-Truman ticket, of course, went on to win in November. And when Roosevelt died in April of 1945, Truman—and not Wallace—became president.

You’ve said that “claims of stolen U.S. elections go back well beyond Biden-Trump in 2020.” Can you share some other examples beyond 1944? How did they play out or resolve?

Oh, sure. The elections of 1800, 1824, 1876, 1912 and 2000 all involved angry and enduring claims of foul play.

The election of 1800 was settled in the House of Representatives, where Federalist Alexander Hamilton helped Republican Thomas Jefferson beat out Aaron Burr. Four years later, Burr killed Hamilton in a duel.

The election of 1824 was also decided in the House. Democrat Andrew Jackson won both the popular and the electoral votes, but failed to get a majority. In the end, John Quincy Adams prevailed, with the aid of House Speaker Henry Clay. Jackson railed against the “corrupt bargain” that delivered the result.

The election of 1876, in which Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won out over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden (despite losing the popular vote) was decided by a special congressional commission. Arguably the most chaotic election in American history, it was badly marred by violence and allegations of fraud.

In 1912, President Theodore Roosevelt accused fellow Republican William Howard Taft of “stealing” the nomination from him.

And all of us over the age of 40 remember vividly the 2000 election, with its iconic images of Florida poll workers poring over “hanging chads.” George W. Bush, of course, prevailed over Al Gore by dint of a hugely controversial 5-4 vote in the Supreme Court.

A big difference between Trump in 2020 and Wallace in 1944 is that Wallace never made claims of vote fraud. He argued only that Roosevelt had been “lied to” by advisers who insisted that his renomination as vice president would sunder the party.

Many readers know that Truman became president shortly after FDR was reelected in 1944 and died in 1945. What do you think might have happened if that had been Wallace who took over as commander in chief? What are a few examples of what you describe as “the world that wasn’t”? 

If Wallace had become president in 1945, we know that there would have been no Truman Doctrine (to defend countries against Communist aggression), no Marshall Plan, no NATO, no West Germany, no western European integration and no policy of containment toward the Soviet Union. All of these initiatives, foundational to what has been called “the American Century,” Wallace denounced as imperialistic and unjustifiably hostile to the Soviet Union.

However, Wallace himself didn’t believe he could ever have swung Congress or public opinion in his favor. “It is a very grave question whether I would have been [elected] with the tactics that I would have used in order to preserve the peace,” he reflected in retirement. Most likely, he concluded, “I was done a very great favor when I was not named in ’44.”

In any case, a delayed Cold War would have come at great cost to U.S. security and economic interests. A failure to resist and deter Soviet leader Josef Stalin would likely have meant Soviet domination of northern Iran, eastern Turkey, the Turkish straits, Hokkaido (the Japanese island), the Korean Peninsula, Greece and all of Germany. Stalin, contrary to Wallace’s professions of belief, coveted these territories, and he never valued peace for its own sake. He valued the occasion that a passive United States would have afforded him to expand his empire.

What lessons can we take from 1944 for 2024? Why should Americans learn or relearn this particular chapter of history?

We Americans, and our early postwar allies in Western Europe, the anglophone world, South Korea, and Japan, are extremely fortunate to live today in a world that was shaped by the policies and leadership of Harry Truman, and not Henry Wallace.

The space between history and fiction, between what was and what wasn’t, can be so small, yet loom so large. The choices we and our political leaders make today, right now, will affect the world for generations to come, for good or for ill. People matter. Their decisions matter. We are not flotsam on the seas of historical forces, but lead actors in a democratic drama that will determine our future. We should look back on 1944 with a great sense of awe and responsibility.