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All three of those cases involved covering up the details from an unknowing public. (Although in Reagan's case there wasn't too much to cover up.) FDR was widely-recognized as being too old to run in 1944, but a great deal of self-willed delusion about how old he really was kept people from thinking about it too hard. (There was also a fairly open process for choosing a new VP that gave a lot of people confidence, Truman had a small national profile but was popular in 1944 for investigating army contractor waste.)
That self-willed delusion about Biden's age just crumbled and could possibly never be restored.
I've always considered the MI-complex's fraud and corruption one of the things they are really careful to skip over in public school. America's wars are always cleanly fought with the best in equipment, and nobody makes a killing through back alley deals!
While reading about the small arms of WWII I was reminded that all these things cost money, and there were opportunities for grift in hundreds of different ways, even in our most "Righteous" war. Most people are totally ignorant about how much money was corruptly set on fire in WWI and the civil war.
Anyway, thanks for reminding me. I found this link to read about Truman's efforts, but am wondering if you have more?
I mean, my WWII lessons were ‘Germany did the Holocaust and that’s bad, ‘mericuh, fuck yeah!’ And my civil war lessons were ‘the civil war was inevitable, but Lincoln’s election was the trigger for, umm, well let’s not talk about it, and the confederacy had better generals and troops but they were outnumbered so they won the first three years until grant just took the casualties to win’. There was, quite literally, not much about industry or military supply at all- we learned about drafting Irishmen to provide canon fodder in the civil war and lend lease, but the narrative was more ‘Lee was the better general so that was necessary to win’ and ‘the Germans couldn’t bomb us like they did Britain’.
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The best account of Truman in the run-up to the 1944 convention, and the convention itself, is McCullough's biograohy of Truman. The relevant section here is about 30 pages and is extremely well-written. The gist of it is that Truman ended up in charge of a Senate committee to investigate wasteful spending by military contractors. (This was part maneuvering by Roosevelt, who wanted to avoid the House appointing its own committee which promised to be much more critical of the administration; Truman had politely floated the idea to Roosevelt previously.) The "Truman Commission" proved enormously popular so that, when negotiations began to replace FDR's VP on the 1944 ticket (Henry Wallace, whose radical left proclivities were spooking some), Truman was an acceptable dark horse compromise. It probably helped that Truman was connected to deep political bosses and the Missouri machine in a way that has never been satisfactorily elaborated.
Democratic politicians in 1944 knew what they were doing, and that FDR might not make it. But nobody really considered the gravity of what that meant, or it probably would not have gone to Truman. McCullough's section ends with the great anecdote of reoorters talking to Truman's mother on the news of his nomination, as she predicts that it's all a lot of hogwash and FDR will easily serve out his term.
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As opposed to the fraud and corruption in other parts of government drilled into every schoolchild?
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We also just have more video and it just lives for longer. Anyone can find it.
If anything it's a wonder it's gone on this long
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