On Sun, 12 Jan 2003, Shane Mage wrote:
> Sorry, no literary reference behind what I said. Just very vivid
> personal memory.
Well, that's already been a big help. Baby that I am, I had never registered until this very moment that the 1948 election was a four-way election besides being razor thin. I see how that could have changed everything, electorally speaking. It might have been one of the most momentous cases of an American third party effecting the course of history by changing the position of the one of the dominant parties that wouldn't have changed otherwise. A passing conjuncture whose effects we are living with still.
So Henry Wallace was for the creation of Israel where Truman was initially against it (following the judgment of George Marshall and the state department)? I never realized that before. I can easily imagine what Wallace's argument would have been to the realpolitik arguments against the establishment of Israel. But do you remember offhand what his response was to objections on the basis of injustice? The anti-colonial, democratic, humanitarian, etc. objections on behalf of the Arabs?
Or for that matter, why he preferred it to allowing greater immigration of Jewish refugees into the US? (If he did. Maybe he was for both?)
Michael