The EU has not been an unmixed blessing, suffering as it does from idealism. The holy goal of supranational unity and the extension of its benefits to other lands have led the Community to do things in haste and to ignore negative regional economic and social effects; but the 1961 Bonn Declaration made clear that it had also taken on a geopolitical role and political philosophy in which the United States was explicitly involved. The game of thrones had become a game of empires.
Practically, Jean Monnet’s project to make a firm
partnership between France and Germany, those mighty historic rivals, has been
achieved long since and is a monument to Monnet’s heroic tenacity and flexible
diplomacy in the pursuit of lasting peace. Yet its precondition was the USA’s
Marshall Plan and earlier aid immediately following the Second World War,
without which Western Europe faced collapse and revolution.
The path to American involvement was not smooth, because
their way is not entirely like ours; and there remains a cultural tension
between transatlantic economic liberalism and European statist impulses. It was
a tension also at work within the United States itself during Roosevelt’s terms
of Presidency, and resulted in a sea-change marked by the new Truman
administration, with implications not only for his country but for Europe and
the world.
FDR rescued the system with his package of measures
including the Banking Acts of 1933 that supported banks but also restrained
them; the job creation schemes under the National Industrial Recovery Act of
the same year; and the Social Security Act of 1935, helping the needy, the
unemployed and pensioners. It seems unlikely that he actually saved the nation
from Depression-era communist takeover – that tends to come in the wake of total
economic chaos or military defeat; but the fundamentalists of the CPUSA opposed
the New Deal and only abandoned their position in 1935 in order to unite
against fascism (similarly, pure-Marxist China was later to condemn the
‘revisionist traitors’ of the USSR under Khrushchev’s 1956 destalinisation
program.)
From the later 1930s, Roosevelt was also resisted from the
Right, by the ‘Conservative coalition’ in Congress, an alliance of Republicans
and Southern Democrats, who saw the New Deal as not in the American tradition
of personal freedom and self-reliance. Even the Cleveland ‘Plain-Dealer’, loyal
to the Democrats since the mid-nineteenth century, switched to endorsing FDR’s
rivals in the Presidential election campaigns of 1940 and 1944. https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/mccrayjh/id/15177.
in the latter, given how the Electoral College works, the Republicans’ Thomas
Dewey could have won, with only half a million more votes in the right areas (p.
2 here https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1065&context=fac_dis
.)
Roosevelt’s failing health, disguised from the public, was
becoming obvious to insiders - his doctor had been warned https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/books/review/franklin-roosevelt-his-final-battle-josephy-lelyveld.html that if FDR ran for a fourth term in office,
he would probably not live to complete it, though it is not clear who if anyone
in the Party knew of this - and made
crucial the choice of running mate in 1944.
Henry Wallace had been FDR’s Vice-President during the
latter’s third term. He was an anti-segregationist, which would not have played
well in the Southern Democrat states mired in the largely British colonial
legacy of the slave trade. He was also an advocate of what he called ‘economic
democracy,’ anathema to fiscal Conservatives increasingly fretting about public
debt and taxation. What with his progressive views and his flaky interest in
numerology and Navajo magic, today he might be called a New Ager https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1948/08/henry-wallace-a-divided-mind/306029/
At any rate, he was potentially a vote-loser in the changing political climate,
and too erratic to be an emergency substitute for the Chief Executive. https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/election/article88007192.html
Yet Wallace was popular with the rank-and-file. At the 1944 Democratic Party Convention he seemed set to secure renomination but while the crowd was chanting for him the chairman adjourned the Convention for the day and the Party leadership worked hard overnight to secure support for Truman. The next day, Wallace scored more votes than Truman in the first ballot but not enough to win outright; Truman then picked up enough second choices in the next ballot to secure victory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_A._Wallace#Election_of_1944 The ticket was set for another successful Presidential election campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1944_United_States_presidential_election; but within three months of FDR’s inauguration Truman was suddenly called on to take over, inexperienced though learning fast; and ready to steer a more conservative course.
In a later piece, I plan to show how the changing tide
worked out for the USA, Europe and Russia.
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