Personally, the sense I always got with Hall was that he was a decent guy who was nice to people, but who also was a bootlicking slave to Moscow. I think his ideology would be more independent than OTL, but I think he could be reasonably blessed in the sense that he has decent-ish ideas, but I really don't see him as a successful leader.
If I were writing TNO, I'd probably write Hall as being effectively a well-meaning layman unable to manage a structure far more complex than the CPUSA, which could lead to a lot of trouble and mistakes.
I feel like he sees himself as a new Lenin but he's more of a dangerously incompetent buffoon.