My first real go at a wikibox.
EDIT: Shoot, I thought I'd edited the Next Senator name... whoops
Socialist Ted Kennedy? My father was right!
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Socialist Ted Kennedy? My father was right!
Bulldoggus
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Patron saint of this website.
I agree with @lord caedus on his take on why the site likes Humphrey a lot, but I disagree with his assessment of Hump's biggest personal flaws. I'd say that he had two main ones. The first was that he was, on a personal basis, a bit of a pushover. He thought Nam was a bad idea and said so, but a forceful personality like Johnson was able to easily bully him into submission (and I think Hump being soft and eager to please was a big reason why LBJ chose him over McCarthy, incidentally). The second was pure desperation. He knew a decade before his death that he had the family bladder cancer, which made him go against his gut instincts (which were usually good) in a desperate attempt to win the presidency. He publicly backed Johnson's Foreign Policy in part because Johnson was able to easily read this desperation, and thus made sure to regularly call Rocky and talk about how much he wanted him as a successor just to spook the Hump. And, of course, you talk about Johnson being "mean to him" as if it is petty, and it is certainly myopic, but keep in mind that Hube had a limited time frame to get the presidency, that he knew this, and that this was less than a decade after Ike helped fuck Nixon out of the presidency by being openly disdainful of him on live TV (and while I'm here, lemme say that Kennedy looking a little sharper on the TV debates is a highly overrated factor in that election).
@Yes Would you agree with this assessment? You're always the man to defer to on this era.
Another infobox related to this.
Elected House of Lords infoboxes
Lord Major of Huntingdon
Lord Baker of Dorking
Lord Patten of Barnes
Lord Lang of Monkton
Lord Hunt of Wirral
Elected House of Lords infoboxes
Lord Major of Huntingdon
Lord Baker of Dorking
Lord Patten of Barnes
Lord Lang of Monkton
Lord Hunt of Wirral
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President Adlai Stevenson was assassinated on January 9, 1958 in Asheville, North Carolina. At the time of Stevenson's assassination he had served just 353 days in office. Stevenson was on a tour through the southeast that had started in Charleston, South Carolina and he was planned to work his way back up to Washington. On the way he gave speeches in Charleston, Columbia, and Charlotte, toured tobacco fields in the PeeDee region, meet with various industry groups, and was in Asheville and the surrounding region to talk about poverty in Appalachia. He was scheduled to make appearances Newport News, Richmond, and Arlington in Virginia. The tour was planned to help Stevenson's suffering poll numbers.
Stevenson went to the Asheville Fire Station to deliver a speech from the second story balcony, and meet with local service workers, including firemen, police officers, and ambulance drivers. After Stevenson delivered a short speech he began to mingle with the service men, and as he made his way towards the car a local hotel clerk Jules Zeb Fahr approached President Stevenson, and Representative Wash, with Ellen Stevenson who were both facing him, and Fahr fired a shotgun once at them, he then fired a pistol 6 times aimed at Stevenson, and Mayor Aterberry who was standing behind Stevenson. The shrapnel from the shotgun and Fahr's poorly aimed pistol shooting injured several bystanders, including Stevenson's son Borden. Fahr was quickly apprehended and charged with murder.
Upon interviewing Fahr police learned that Fahr was greatly influenced by Pastor Hugh McCoughtry of the Free American Baptist Church, an independant baptist church that was located outside of Asheville. McCoughtry would frequently rail against the Laborers Party and called them "Anti-American, Radicals, Communists". He would call out Stevenson as "A Soviet Agent" and he repeatedly encouraged his congregation to take all actions necessary to prevent them from "Letting the Communists take our freedoms". Fahr also seemed very confused when questioned as he believed what he had done was right, truly believing McCoughtry's sermon. Fahr was charged with 3 counts of murder and executed by private hanging, and McCoughtry was sentanced to life in prison for being an acessory to murder.
Stevenson and Wash died on sight due to massive blood loss, Arterberry sustained partial wounds from the shotgun, and was hit twice from the pistol, once in the shoulder and once in the neck, shattering his Adam's apple. He died the following day. Borden Stevenson had part of the skin on his arm blown off and had a scar on his arm for the rest of his life. The only other major injury was to Fred Witt who lost his right middle and ring finger after his hand was struck by a bullet trying to protect Wash. Stevenson was pronounced dead at 5:05 pm after several attempts to revive him. Vice President Claude Peppers was called at 5:00 and informed of Stevenson's death at 5:10. Peppers at the time was spending Christmas with his family in Florida and he called Judge Albert Orly, who was a known Alliance supporter, and Orly administered the oath of office to Peppers at 5:35. Claude Peppers would be officially sworn in as president by Chief Justice Hugo Black on January 11, 1958
In response to the assassination, which Peppers blamed on religious extremism under the guise of anti-communism, Peppers and Congress passed a resolution changing the motto to “United with Liberty for All”. The “Under God” in the pledge remained. This proved very controversial as some viewed it as an opportunist trying to push an agenda during a national tragedy. This would foreshadow the rest of Peppers tumultuous term in office.
Stevenson went to the Asheville Fire Station to deliver a speech from the second story balcony, and meet with local service workers, including firemen, police officers, and ambulance drivers. After Stevenson delivered a short speech he began to mingle with the service men, and as he made his way towards the car a local hotel clerk Jules Zeb Fahr approached President Stevenson, and Representative Wash, with Ellen Stevenson who were both facing him, and Fahr fired a shotgun once at them, he then fired a pistol 6 times aimed at Stevenson, and Mayor Aterberry who was standing behind Stevenson. The shrapnel from the shotgun and Fahr's poorly aimed pistol shooting injured several bystanders, including Stevenson's son Borden. Fahr was quickly apprehended and charged with murder.
Upon interviewing Fahr police learned that Fahr was greatly influenced by Pastor Hugh McCoughtry of the Free American Baptist Church, an independant baptist church that was located outside of Asheville. McCoughtry would frequently rail against the Laborers Party and called them "Anti-American, Radicals, Communists". He would call out Stevenson as "A Soviet Agent" and he repeatedly encouraged his congregation to take all actions necessary to prevent them from "Letting the Communists take our freedoms". Fahr also seemed very confused when questioned as he believed what he had done was right, truly believing McCoughtry's sermon. Fahr was charged with 3 counts of murder and executed by private hanging, and McCoughtry was sentanced to life in prison for being an acessory to murder.
Stevenson and Wash died on sight due to massive blood loss, Arterberry sustained partial wounds from the shotgun, and was hit twice from the pistol, once in the shoulder and once in the neck, shattering his Adam's apple. He died the following day. Borden Stevenson had part of the skin on his arm blown off and had a scar on his arm for the rest of his life. The only other major injury was to Fred Witt who lost his right middle and ring finger after his hand was struck by a bullet trying to protect Wash. Stevenson was pronounced dead at 5:05 pm after several attempts to revive him. Vice President Claude Peppers was called at 5:00 and informed of Stevenson's death at 5:10. Peppers at the time was spending Christmas with his family in Florida and he called Judge Albert Orly, who was a known Alliance supporter, and Orly administered the oath of office to Peppers at 5:35. Claude Peppers would be officially sworn in as president by Chief Justice Hugo Black on January 11, 1958
In response to the assassination, which Peppers blamed on religious extremism under the guise of anti-communism, Peppers and Congress passed a resolution changing the motto to “United with Liberty for All”. The “Under God” in the pledge remained. This proved very controversial as some viewed it as an opportunist trying to push an agenda during a national tragedy. This would foreshadow the rest of Peppers tumultuous term in office.
You mean three. I did say he was excessively talkative.
I wouldn't say Humphrey was a pushover, but he wasn't ruthless or personally aggressive. Part of the reputation of his weakness comes from his time as Johnson's VP, but like I've said, almost any vice president would have stayed publicly silent under Johnson regardless of political disagreements, and, just a reminder- Johnson was an incredible bully whose first White House press secretary said, as a human being he was "a miserable person . . . a bully, sadist, lout, and egotist. His lapses from civilized conduct were deliberate and usually intended to subordinate someone else to his will", and who famously made his aides accompany him to the bathroom to continue meetings as a crude power move, among other examples.
Eh, I haven't read that as being a factor for LBJ. Humphrey was much more nationally-prominent than McCarthy, had shown he was willing to take orders Johnson had given him (including trying to defuse an issue over the seating of Mississippi delegates for the 1964 DNC), and had more support with Johnson's advisers than McCarthy. Interestingly enough, LBJ apparently briefly considered Robert McNamara to be his running mate (prior to them inventing the excuse that the cabinet members were "too busy" to run for VP, which coincidentally ruled out Bobby Kennedy for VP) until one of his advisers had to remind him the party would never go for it, considering McNamara was a Republican.
Humphrey had the first symptoms of his bladder cancer in 1967 (halfway through his vice-presidency) and was told by most of the people who looked at it at the time that it was benign. His mortality probably didn't play a factor into his political calculations until after his vice presidency.
Although you're definitely right that Johnson knew Humphrey needed his support and constantly dangled withdrawing it over Humphrey's head to exert power over his VP.
Surely Charlie Baker and Joe Manchin would be the patron saint of AH election maps?
Also, I hope you're prepared for the brigade of angry socdems who will be outraged that [INSERT FAMOUS SOCIAL DEMOCRAT HERE] is snubbed in lieu of The Hump.
You mean three. I did say he was excessively talkative.
Surely Charlie Baker and Joe Manchin would be the patron saint of AH election maps?
Those are like the Yin and the Yang, constantly dueling but never defeating the other.
All this Humphrey love and I'm over hearing doing my history report of the wonderful vulgar(and southern) Johnson; one of my favorite quotes from him I've found;
“The resolution was ‘like Grandma's nightshirt,’ Johnson said of the resolution, ‘it covers everything.’”
“The resolution was ‘like Grandma's nightshirt,’ Johnson said of the resolution, ‘it covers everything.’”
I wouldn't say "obsessed" (except for @Hubert Humphrey Fan 1968
There are several reasons for that, I believe:
- Humphrey was an unabashed New Deal liberal whose politics mesh well with those of the site's user base, especially considering his views verged on social democracy.
- Humphrey was nationally prominent for almost 30 years, so it's not a stretch to make him president even before 1968.
- The 1968 election is probably one of the more important elections of the 20th century, since butterflying away Nixon and Watergate would likely keep Americans' faith in government (somewhat) intact and would allow whoever won to nominate 4 Supreme Court justices in that one term. As such, Humphrey (or a similar figure) winning it is usually desirable for people on this site.
- He was a prominent civil rights advocate for his entire career, and doesn't have LBJ or Nixon's personal racism, or JFK's reluctance to do more than speak favorably of civil rights, to diminish his record on that front.
- He is much more palatable to consumers of AH than many contemporaries on a personal level: he was a genuinely middle-class politician who nearly won the presidency and whose biggest personal fault was that he was too talkative. He wasn't a raging egomaniac like LBJ or Eugene McCarthy, a ruthless and paranoid criminal like Nixon, or a charismatic but deeply flawed scion of wealth like the Kennedys or Nelson Rockefeller.
I would strike "verged" and otherwise everything here is correct. I tend to have a less-entirely-critical view of Lyndon than @lord caedus does, what makes him interesting is that there was a streak of decency, and of self-doubt, in there amid the ego on which the sun could never set and all the jagged broken pieces. He was certainly our most effective social-democratic President, and one of only two (with Harry Truman) who I would go so far as to call genuine social democrats all the way down (FDR's Four Freedoms-era near-deathbed conversion notwithstanding.) But Humphrey could have been too. He had something else in his favor also, to elaborate on the "nationally prominent" qualifier -- unlike my beloved literary friend George McGovern (the real one, too, not the caricatures created both by the Right, Democratic Leadership Committee very much included, and by the New Left) Humphrey had a base of real size in the party. He had both ideological left-liberals and social democrats, and organized labor (even that mighty gargoyle George Meany) behind him. All the way to '76 that made him a durable option for the party, which proved to be his tragic undoing.
I will try to deal in generalities here since it could be called contemporary politics, but that's part of the problem with the whole "contemporary politics" rule -- past 1950 it's hard not to run up into at least the very recent past even if you avoid commentary on the immediate political moment. From a website-constitutional-law point of view, it's unconstitutionally vague. So I'll try to play the ball here as everyone's favorite Californian moderator says so often.
Looked at in demographic terms, it depends very much on who your "average individual" is. I will take a guess based on the general constructions of American political language that "average individual" translates to "white and lower-middle-class." The answer to that is still It Depends: are they female? If so, even among white folks they will tend more often than males towards both social and economic liberalism sometimes even what the rest of the world would call "the left." It's a bit like the line that "the Democrats aren't the party of the working-class anymore." They very much are: they are the party of the quite large non-white working class, and of the more politicized unions (your International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, your AFSCME, etc.) among blue-collar white people. Things also vary very much by region, even by intra-state region, as we engage in this long and increasingly worrying demographic self-sorting into ideological tribes that have taken on a geography as well as an outlook.
For younger folk, and here the evidence is pretty good that outside some specific regions of the country (the specific former-industrial centers in the Rust Belt, the Deep South, and the Great Plains plus Utah) that "younger" goes all the way up to about my age (which is forty-five since I was unwise enough to bring it up
) you have a lot of people who have been through a very long string of economic bad times and in many cases (people about 25-45) not been able to fully recover from the worst ones or (30 and under) never had the chance to see any particularly good times yet. That has been linked to a period of greatly increased inequality between top and bottom income levels, and to a period where all at the same time very real expansions of civil rights and human dignity (not just LGBT issues although those are big, but racially-varied and economic dignity too) seemed possible and also major rollbacks of such rights were on the table. The last time all those variables were in play to the same extent was the Thirties, which produced among its politicians Hubert Humphrey himself by the time the war was over in the Forties. No we haven't suffered through a second Depression, although the bottom fifty percent of the country has arguably dealt with a low-key version, a 1939 or 1940 rather than a 1931, but though history does not repeat itself it does sometimes rhyme. Both social democratic ideas (progressive taxation, anyone? Or Medicare For All?) and people who've represented them in the past sound more appealing to many people in the present set of circumstances.You mean three. I did say he was excessively talkative.
I wouldn't say Humphrey was a pushover, but he wasn't ruthless or personally aggressive. Part of the reputation of his weakness comes from his time as Johnson's VP, but like I've said, almost any vice president would have stayed publicly silent under Johnson regardless of political disagreements, and, just a reminder- Johnson was an incredible bully whose first White House press secretary said, as a human being he was "a miserable person . . . a bully, sadist, lout, and egotist. His lapses from civilized conduct were deliberate and usually intended to subordinate someone else to his will", and who famously made his aides accompany him to the bathroom to continue meetings as a crude power move, among other examples.
Eh, I haven't read that as being a factor for LBJ. Humphrey was much more nationally-prominent than McCarthy, had shown he was willing to take orders Johnson had given him (including trying to defuse an issue over the seating of Mississippi delegates for the 1964 DNC), and had more support with Johnson's advisers than McCarthy. Interestingly enough, LBJ apparently briefly considered Robert McNamara to be his running mate (prior to them inventing the excuse that the cabinet members were "too busy" to run for VP, which coincidentally ruled out Bobby Kennedy for VP) until one of his advisers had to remind him the party would never go for it, considering McNamara was a Republican.
Humphrey had the first symptoms of his bladder cancer in 1967 (halfway through his vice-presidency) and was told by most of the people who looked at it at the time that it was benign. His mortality probably didn't play a factor into his political calculations until after his vice presidency.
Although you're definitely right that Johnson knew Humphrey needed his support and constantly dangled withdrawing it over Humphrey's head to exert power over his VP.
Surely Charlie Baker and Joe Manchin would be the patron saint of AH election maps?
Also, I hope you're prepared for the brigade of angry socdems who will be outraged that [INSERT FAMOUS SOCIAL DEMOCRAT HERE] is snubbed in lieu of The Hump.
I have a mother who can attest to the talkative part. In 1970-71 my dad was a Congressional Fellow, a poli sci grad student who got a stipend to live in DC and work for the congressman from his home district (which was useful for Dad since that was Charlie Bennett of FL-3, a powerful guy, an ethical boy scout -- so much so that Tip O'Neill used to say they held two sets of meetings, one where Charlie was there and one where he wasn't so they didn't have to break his heart -- a big wheel on House Armed Services, and though an "evolver" on civil rights an early and vocal environmentalist.) As another note this was interesting since Mom was further along in the PhD program than he was and went on to be the academic hire of the family as dad became a university bureaucrat. At a party for the Fellows, held at Averell Harriman's "townhouse" (it was two large Federal in-town mansions on opposite sides of a city block linked by a long garden behind each of them including a vast pavillion in the middle of that garden) and hosted by Harriman's legendary socialite wife Pamela Digby Churchill Harriman, Mom got to see HHH, who was one of her heroes, in action. She said there was no one of either party in Washington who, post-LBJ, could dominate a room by sheer force of personality like Humphrey. And talk, good Lord....
From that "brigade of angry socdems" I happen to be the precinct captain for the McGovern delegation so I'll just leave my business card here
(of course one of the most fascinating things about ol' George Stanley was that he was one part socdem, particularly on taxing-and-spending issues and very much I suspect through his close friendship with John Kenneth Galbraith, and one part unreconstructed interwar Progressive, rather than a labor-machine New Dealer. Which gets into a whole separate set of circus monkeys.)The place where I would lean towards @Bulldoggus rather than @lord caedus here is on the cancer. When you live with a "family curse" in the darker, deeper waters of the gene pool, any sign that your number might be up, even if it looks on its face like things will be OK and Humphrey was certainly a champion of positive self-talk, that sign will haunt you. It grew over time as well -- it dominated his 1972 run which came as close to tarnishing his reputation as anything did, particularly his sheer desperate willingness to throw any number of very different people and things under the bus in order to get the nomination (like the '64 MS delegates flap writ large on a Cinemascope canvas) and dabbling in some of that funny dairy money, all with that hellhound of time on his trail. I will say that @lord caedus' hypothesis that we should follow the money on '68 is a good one. That was always an issue for Humphrey before he became so tight with the AFL-CIO as he did during the '68 campaign when they and his own charisma nearly saved his bacon after Labor Day. I do think the combination of Humphrey's driving desire to hold the Ring of Power they keep at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., combined with his mortal terror that either poverty (in terms of campaign funds) or death would rob him of his goal, drove his downfall.
At the same time, I would argue that in 1976 he pulled off some of the wisest and craftiest political maneuvers of his career, and if they hadn't benefited a man torn as least as much as the Hump between his virtues and his vices -- Jimmy Carter -- they might have saved the whole party's fortunes. I think he toyed with the Pennsylvania primary specifically in order to sandbag Scoop Jackson; if Jackson fell by the wayside than either a virtuous liberal would emerge and outflank Carter, or Carter would have to make the liberals a good deal in order to get their support in the fall. At that point of course Humphrey, with a plea made of both charm and towering emotion (both typical of the Hump), talked his own protege Fritz Mondale into making a play for the two-spot, and Mondale got it. (Carter and his Georgia mafia thought Ed Muskie was "too senatorial" and that John Glenn lacked experience and had to account for his wife's dodgy finances. Mondale was the baby-bear's-porridge of putative VPs, just right.) The interesting thing of course is that in '76 Humphrey was probably in the best health of the last five years of his life and looked like a man who could be President. In an April 1976 conversation about other issues (Kissinger's disastrous desire to "punish" Cuba after Ford won reelection) Gerry Ford, who was not a shabby observer of Washington politics, thought he would face the Hump as nominee and Carter as running mate that November.
Also the toxic VP dynamic that had existed through most of the republic's history dogged Humphrey very, very much. More so since, like a line of presidents going back to FDR at least, Johnson went out of his way deliberately to make it a dysfunctional relationship, as @lord caedus pointed out with all the relevant details. It was downright cruel to Hubert and it brought out the worst in him: the shilling, the cavilling, the thinly-veiled desperate urge to be President, the deeper desire to be loved that caused many not-at-all-lefty types in the deeply judgmental courtier media (Tim Crouse's Boys on the Bus) to view the Hump as a shallow attention whore and a ready creature of more powerful men, Lyndon Johnson to start with and George Meany later. All that underestimated Humphrey, he was extraordinary also and truly cared about important things that mattered to ordinary Americans (and to Americans who weren't even allowed to be ordinary, what HHH himself memorably called "the people in the shadows.") But it did highlight the contingent issues that IOTL robbed him of the presidency that seems, for a "national (i.e. integrationist)" Democrat of his era, almost naturally to be his in the same way that every Modern TL outside our own should have cheap, efficient airship transit.
Really when it comes to it there was a single moment when Hubert Humphrey's life changed forever and from which it never really recovered: the moment he said yes to Johnson about the vice presidency, after Lyndon had already made him grovel for it. Now that's not because Lyndon was only an unalloyed villain. But it is because it created the worst possible set of circumstances for Humphrey. For HHH that's the definitive POD. Even though you don't guarantee a presidency for him after that, he still has the same structural issues (money, money, money) and the same personal flaws that could scupper him, you improve his chances enormously simply by decoupling him from The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson.
Presented without comment
I have brought many fatted goats with me, where may I sacrifice them?
Also, only twenty-four days to Humphrey Day! (Nice and utterly unsurprising to see he's a fellow Gemini.) Let there be Hot Dish and federally-funded entitlement programs for all!!
Did you ever hear The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson? I thought not. It's not a story the Republicans would tell you. It's a Democratic legend. Lyndon Johnson was a President of the USA, so powerful and so wise he could use misinformation to influence Congress to declare war... He had such a knowledge of the political scene that he could even keep the ones he cared about in positions of power. The Democratic side of the Two-Party System is a pathway to many benefits some consider to be unnatural. He became so powerful... the only thing he was afraid of was losing his power, which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, his foolhardy actions caused division within his party, ending his bid for a second term. Ironic, he could keep others in positions of power, but not himself.
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Yes, but it will lead you to great ruin. Or even worse... a Europe-style welfare state.
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