The
Humphrey Cabinet was notable in many ways. First, there was the fact that Humphrey retained quite a few members of the Johnson cabinet. Most of the Johnson holdovers, including Interior Secretary Stewart Udall and Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman (both of whom were originally appointed by President Kennedy) stayed at their positions, while some, including Secretary of State Clark Clifford, were shuffled from their posts that they had been appointed to under Johnson. Second, there was the beginning of a permanent shift in the demographics of presidential cabinet selection. Humphrey would be the first president whose cabinet contained more than one racial minority, selecting former Ambassador to Luxembourg Patricia Roberts Harris to the post of Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (making her the first female African-American secretary as well as only the third woman named to the Cabinet) and Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes to the position of Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Humphrey's selection of Jean Westwood as his third Secretary of Commerce would also make his the first cabinet with more than one woman serving as a cabinet secretary.
Former Peace Corps director and ambassador Sargent Shriver also became the first Secretary of the Department of Consumer Protection in 1973, the first of three new cabinet departments created in the 1970s (although that decade would also see the most recent demotion from cabinet rank—the office of Postmaster General—during the Bush administration). Finally, Humphrey's promotion of Defense Secretary Cyrus Vance to replace Clifford in his second term was one of the most recent instances of cabinet secretaries being "reshuffled" from within the cabinet itself, as subsequent presidents for the most part have only "reshuffled" cabinet-level appointees into the cabinet itself instead of moving secretaries around to lead different departments, as is the norm in parliamentary systems.
The Humphrey Cabinet was also the first in American history to seriously consider invoking the 25th Amendment, with members deliberating among themselves during the final days of President Humphrey's life as the president's health deteriorated rapidly. It was only Vice President Muskie's reticence and that Humphrey remained lucid, if extremely weak, for most of the period, that prevented enough cabinet secretaries to sign on to declare Humphrey unable to fulfill his presidential duties. For the most part, the membership of the Muskie Cabinet was the same as the membership of the final Humphrey cabinet, although Muskie would get to replace Westwood (with Larry O’Brien), Carl Stokes (with J. Palmer Gaillard, Jr.), and Raymond Shafer (with Daniel Friedman).
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