Dark Horse (PB)Wendell Willkie never held a public office, yet he nearly became president of the United States. A registered Democrat until the fall of 1939, he captured the Republican party's nomination less than a year later. It was, by all accounts, a meteoric rise to win the nomination Willkie defeated such party stalwarts as Thomas Dewey, Robert Taft, and Arthur Vandenberg. These Republican front runners had been insisting that the war in Europe wasn't a