South Carolina's Jimmy Byrnes, the almost president
I didn't know James F. (Jimmy) Byrnes as anything other than a name on a high school in South Carolina. I guess a guy needs to do something of interest to have a school named after him. I didn't realize the impact of the man until I started reading David McCullough's brilliant biography Truman , about the man thrust into the presidency when Franklin D. Roosevelt died in 1945. By all rights, the man to take FDR's place should have been Jimmy Byrnes. The Democrats faced a huge decision in 1944 as FDR was readying his bid for a fourth term as president. The current vice president, Henry Wallace, was viewed as the wrong man to remain in the job. The party wanted a man with the right qualifications, someone with experience in working with Congress and who had a strong record in foreign relations. Jimmy Byrnes was that man. FDR said as much, and the Democrats entered the 1944 convention in Chicago with Byrnes the clear frontrunner to get the nod. The problem was that Byrn