Politics & Power Quote by Henry A. Wallace

A lot is doing double duty here: praising “common men” while quietly trying to rewire what American power should look like. Henry A. Wallace, speaking as a New Deal vice president with one eye on wartime unity and the other on the postwar settlement, frames democracy not as a settled inheritance but as an unfinished construction project. The key word is “practical.” He’s not selling democracy as a creed; he’s selling it as a delivery system.

The line borrows Lincoln’s “malice toward none” to claim moral continuity with the most sanctified moment in U.S. political memory. That’s not ornament. It’s a shield. Wallace is essentially arguing for expansive economic and social reform - the kind that elites often brand as radical or divisive - while insisting it can be pursued without vengeance or class warfare. The rhetorical trick is to make structural change sound like civic decency.

“Trust in the common sense of common men” is both populist and tactical. It flatters the many, but it also delegitimizes the gatekeepers who treat expertise as a veto. Wallace’s subtext: if democracy is to survive the stresses of depression, war, and industrial modernity, it must extend beyond the ballot box into material life - wages, opportunity, security, dignity.

The closing confidence (“we shall not fail”) reads like reassurance, but it’s really a wager. Wallace is betting that mass participation can outlast fear politics and concentrated wealth. Calling it a “great adventure” is the giveaway: this is not managerial liberalism. It’s a push to make the American promise measurable, and therefore contestable.