Given Harry's belligerent reticence to share his alleged education, I
thought it might be appropriate to do a little digging about Harry S
Truman and his VP nomination. It didn't take long to pull up a few
credible snippets like this one fom the US Senate historical web site:

http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/VP_Harry_Truman.htm

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While it later seemed inevitable, there was nothing predictable about
Truman's selection for vice president in 1944. Vice President Henry
Wallace's unpopularity among party leaders had set off a monumental
contest for the second spot at the Chicago convention. Senator Alben
Barkley wanted the job, but his hot-tempered resignation and swift
reelection as majority leader in protest over President Roosevelt's
veto of a revenue bill in February 1944 eliminated him as an
acceptable choice to the president. Barkley and "Assistant President"
James Byrnes—a former senator and former Supreme Court Justice—each
asked Truman to nominate him at the convention. Byrnes asked first,
and Truman readily agreed. Senator Truman consistently told
everyone—even his daughter Margaret—that he was not a candidate
himself. The only race in his mind was for his reelection to the
Senate in 1946.

The pivotal person at the convention was Bob Hannegan, a St. Louis
political leader serving as commissioner of internal revenue and
tapped as the next Democratic National Committee chairman. During the
heated Senate campaign of 1940, Hannegan had switched his support from
Governor Stark to Truman as the better man, and he delivered enough
St. Louis votes to help Truman win. Hannegan, Bronx boss Ed Flynn,
Chicago mayor Ed Kelly, key labor leaders, and other party movers and
shakers viewed Wallace as a liability for his leftist leanings. Byrnes
was equally vulnerable for his segregationist record and his
conversion from Catholicism. When these party leaders expressed their
opposition to Wallace and Byrnes, Roosevelt suggested Supreme Court
Justice William O. Douglas. The group then countered with Harry
Truman, whom Roosevelt agreed had been loyal and "wise to the ways of
politics." After much discussion, Roosevelt turned to Hannegan and
conceded, "Bob, I think you and everyone else here want Truman."

Hating to disappoint and alienate any of the potential candidates,
Roosevelt kept them all guessing. At lunch with Vice President
Wallace, Roosevelt informed him that the professional politicians
preferred Truman as "the only one who had no enemies and might add a
little independent strength to the ticket." Roosevelt promised Wallace
that he would not endorse another candidate, but would notify the
convention that if he were a delegate he would vote for Wallace. At
the same time, the president held out hope to Byrnes that he was "the
best qualified man in the whole outfit," and urged him to stay in the
race. "After all, Jimmy," you're close to me personally," Roosevelt
said. "I hardly know Truman." (Roosevelt, whose own health was growing
precarious, did not even know Truman's age—which was sixty. Despite
encouraging Wallace and Byrnes, the president had written a letter for
Hannegan to carry to the convention:

Dear Bob: You have written me about Harry Truman and Bill Douglas.
I should, of course, be very glad to run with either of them and
believe that either one of them would bring real strength to the
ticket.

Meanwhile, Senator Truman continued to deny any interest in the
vice-presidency. In an off-the-record interview, he explained to a
reporter that if he ran for vice president the Republicans would raise
charges of bossism against him. He did not want to subject his family
to the attacks and negative publicity of a national campaign. Bess
Truman was against it, and so was Truman's ninety-one-year-old mother,
who told him to stay in the Senate. "The Vice President simply
presides over the Senate and sits around hoping for a funeral," Truman
protested. "It is a very high office which consists entirely of honor
and I don't have any ambition to hold an office like that." His secret
ambition, admitted on a visit to the Senate chamber twenty years
later, was to occupy the front row seat of the majority leader.

In an overheated hotel room, the politicians leaned heavily on Truman
to run. They placed a call to Roosevelt, and as Truman sat nearby,
Hannegan held the phone so that he could hear. "Bob, have you got that
fellow lined up yet?" Roosevelt asked. "No. He is the contrariest
Missouri mule I've ever dealt with," Hannegan replied. "Well, you tell
him that if he wants to break up the Democratic party in the middle of
the war, that's his responsibility," Roosevelt declared and hung up
the phone. Stunned, Truman agreed to run, but added: "why the hell
didn't he tell me in the first place?"

Henry Wallace appeared personally at the convention to seek
renomination, stimulating an enthusiastic reception from the
galleries. On the first ballot, Wallace led Truman 429 to 319. But the
party's leaders swung their delegations and put Truman over the top on
the second ballot. In a speech that lasted less than a minute, Truman
accepted the nomination. Democratic liberals bemoaned the choice,
while Republicans mocked the "little man from Missouri." Newspapers
charged him with being a member of the Ku Klux Klan, when in fact he
had vigorously fought the Klan in Jackson County. Critics also noted
that Truman had placed his wife on his Senate payroll, but Truman
rejoined that hiring her had been legal and that she had earned every
penny. (Truman's sister Mary Jane had also been on his Senate payroll
since 1943.) None of these controversies mattered much. On election
day, a majority of voters did not want to change leaders in wartime
and cast their ballots for Roosevelt regardless of who ran with him.
Eleanor Roosevelt, who had preferred Wallace and distrusted Byrnes,
reflected the prevailing sentiment that the vice-presidential
candidate had been a safe choice. She wrote that while she did not
know Truman, "from all I hear, he is a good man."
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It appers that Truman's nomination was due in large part to the
unpopularity of then Vice President, Henry Wallace. Digging a little
deeper into the reasons, I unearthed the following from the senate web
site:


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As an active secretary of agriculture and a committed New Dealer,
Henry Wallace seemed the ideal person for the job. But Wallace's
visionary social liberalism, his mysticism, his curiously shy and
introspective personal demeanor, and his political insensitivity, all
prevented him from gathering the support from congressional leaders
that would have enabled him to sustain a successful political career
in Washington. Because few senators came to know Wallace personally,
they often judged his character on the basis of his poorly delivered
speeches and unusual appearance. Journalist Allen Drury, who observed
the vice president often from the Senate press gallery, described
Wallace as follows: "A shock of silver-graying hair sweeps over to the
right of his head in a great shaggy arc. He looks like a hayseed,
talks like a prophet, and acts like an embarassed schoolboy." Drury
recorded sympathetically in his diary that he found it difficult to
"put into exact words the combination of feelings he arouses. The
man's integrity and his idealism and his sainted other-worldliness are
never in question; it's just the problem of translating them into
everyday language and making them jibe with his shy, embarrassed,
uncomfortable good-fellowship that is so difficult." Drury considered
Henry Wallace doomed by fate. "No matter what he does, it is always
going to seem faintly ridiculous, and no matter how he acts, it is
always going to seem faintly pathetic—at least to the cold-eyed
judgments of the Hill."
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