President Hubert Humphrey's Agenda

Hey all,

HHH nearly won the 1968 Election, and yet when I did a search through the Boards I only found a few discussions about what HHH winning would mean for the nation, and fewer still contained well-researched contributions, and even fewer still focused on the policy HHH would push for as president.

I would expect Vietnam to be his number one priority, and I think it is likely you'd see HHH get the troops home BEFORE the 1972 U.S. Presidential Election. How would he go about this?

I'd also expect some kind of "Full Employment" measure, but I don't know if it could get through the Congress (I assume it would...) and how effective it would be?

Do you think HHH would try for health care reform? Energy reform?

Any thoughts/contributions are welcomed! I'm hoping for a more substantive discussion that my previous searches unearthed.

Thanks guys,
Nick

HHH would likely pass some form of Healthcare reform, and I could very well see it being of the Kennedy variety.

Humphrey would probably make large investments in Urban America, schools transit and most likely Amtrak would receive a more effective level of support. I could see Humphrey attempting full employment in the early 1970s. This will probably create issues come 1973 due to the energy crises and a likely GOP wave in 1974.

Ted Kennedy was talking to Nixon about Universal Health-Care, or a slimed down version.

Nixon offered something almost like it, but Ted Kennedy rejected it because he thought he could get full Universal Health Care a few years later. He later said this was his biggest regret.

I think HHH would give Ted Kennedy the full Universal HealthCare. I also think he would expand the Great Socitiy.

U.S David said:

Ted Kennedy was talking to Nixon about Universal Health-Care, or a slimed down version.

Nixon offered something almost like it, but Ted Kennedy rejected it because he thought he could get full Universal Health Care a few years later. He later said this was his biggest regret.

I think HHH would give Ted Kennedy the full Universal HealthCare. I also think he would expand the Great Socitiy.

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Could such a plan get through the Congress?

NickCT said:

Could such a plan get through the Congress?

Click to expand...

Probably? Depends on how *1968 went down for the Democrats in the House and Senate.

As noted by others, an HHH agenda might not differ all that much from Richard Nixon's (some sort of universal healhcare plan, expansion of Great Society benefits, as well as the whole raft of environmental leglslation signed by Nixon). Also as noted, opposition to any sort of "socialized medicine" by the AMA would probably kill universal healthcare, whoever proposed it.

In foreign policy, HHH might be less flexible than Nixon. As LBJ's VP and throughout the campaign he maintained strong vocal support for LBJ's Vietnam policy and might find it very difficult to "change his mind" on such a contentious issue. Also, as a "liberal Democrat", HHH might have been far less free than the supposedly anti-communist Nixon to open relationships with the PRC and promte detente with the USSR. Finally, a President HHH might have had a hard time getting Democrats behind him. The large RFK/McGovern and Eugene McCarthy blocks in the Democratic Party may have still considered him something of a traitor to the left/liberal wing, and there were still lots of Dixiecrats in the party who didn't like him.

The main advantage of an HHH adminstration would be...No Watergate and the decade long reaction to presidential power and decisiveness it caused. Probably no President Jimmy Carter and then no President Ronald Reagan as a reaction to Carter's weakness and indeciveness. Possibly a President Henry Jackson following him, and who knows after that.

Yes, good point, President Humphrey may not have been able to go to China, because he hadn't spent a whole career building cold war credentials.

And if he's far seeing, he may realize the only way we can have affirmative action or any other inclusion of former excluded persons is if we have a growing economy as a whole.

In the whole theory of nuclear deterence, I did not really understand till my mid 20s that submarines with nuclear weapons are a relative stabilizing influence since they are much less vulnerable to a first strike. And we in the United States had our 'triad' of land-based missiles, B-1 bombers, and subs. Whereas the Soviet Union did not. They pretty much had all their eggs in the one basket of land-based missiles, i.e. vulnerable to a first strike. This was one more asymmetry added to an already asymmetrical situation if which the Warsaw Pact had more conventional forces than NATO, the Soviets had foresworn a first strike, but we had not. Because we felt we needed this threat to potentially deter a conventional attack in Europe.

President Nixon was able to get a SALT I treaty with Brezhnev and the Soviet leadership. Would a President Humphrey had been able to, or perhaps even further progress?