WI: Humphrey were not Vice President

Hubert Humphrey accepted the second slot to Lyndon Johnson, but it proved more a benefit for Johnson than for Humphrey. Johnson won over liberals, who were otherwise uncertain or displeased about the Southerner who gutted the 1957 Civil Rights Act and felt too close to Southern segregationist Democrats. For his part, Humphrey found himself at the whims of a president who was easy to offend and liked to bully. Humphrey was vindictively frozen out or sidelined for any criticisms of the unraveling Vietnam War, and he found himself as miserable in the Vice Presidency as Johnson perhaps was under Kennedy. He was not permitted to speak in opposition to Johnson's policies, whether within the administration and to the president, or to the press and public. As a result, he gained the reputation of believing the same policies Johnson did in regards to the war, and being a puppet for the president and a 'yes man'. This was devastating as he attempted to seek the 1968 Democratic nomination, and it took his rejecting the administration's then present prosecution of the war to change things.

Upon losing the election of 1968, Humphrey found himself in the wilderness and without a political seat. He won McCarthy's Senate seat in 1971, starting out from the bottom without seniority or committee assignments, without tenure, and without his former contacts. He failed to win the presidential nomination in 1972 and 1976, with his vice presidency serving as an albatross and a point of revulsion against him among many on the left.

On the whole, Humphrey's vice presidency was an opportunity that had potential, but proved to be a set back. It helped Johnson, but it did little for Humphrey, who would have been better served and happier continuing in the Senate. It would also have opened up the possibility of Humphrey running for the presidency on his terms, and not in the light of the Johnson administration and it's war in Southeast Asia, and that entire social context for Americans. Therefore, what if Hubert Humphrey had not been Vice President?
 
Humphrey was privately quite opposed to Vietnam IOTL. So, perhaps he could run an anti-war campaign in 1968 which inadvertently gains the support of the New Left. He would have support by a fair many unions, so it would have been pretty interesting. For added irony, Eugene McCarthy could be Johnson's VP and run a pro-war campaign while being anti-war privately. So, we could see a very different Humphrey vs. McCarthy race.
 
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I don't know about Shriver, but I know Bobby wouldn't have him since he wasn't a "real Kennedy," and LBJ and RFK had a legendary hatred of one another, so there is that. Mansfield would be interesting, certainly, and I don't think I've ever seen a President Eugene McCarthy TL. That would be really cool.
 
Hubert may have supported the war until quite late anyway . . .

because people in general tend to support whatever the current war is.

"I know you're not in favor of it, but if we speak with a unified voice we have a better chance of success . . . "---and that argument seems to win over a lot of elected officials. And it has some truth to it. Hard to see what the better alternative is.
 
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Maybe Senator Humphrey could tour Vietnam in '66 and '67 working the economic development side of the equation.

And maybe candidly talk with President Johnson and tell him, Thieu has lost the confidence of his people especially in the countryside. Need to do what he says on land reform and see that it's for real.

And he does have political prisoners and that shit needs to stop.

But . . . if Johnson doesn't do a damn thing, Humphrey largely faces the same dilemma. When to go public and how.
 
To recycle an old post of mine:

"Albert Eisele and others have contended that had their positions been reversed in 1964, Hubert Humphrey and Gene McCarthy would have found themselves in similarly reversed positions in 1968. McCarthy was one of the most likely choices for Lyndon Johnson's running mate in 1964. He was a personal favorite of the Johnson's and a northern liberal, which provided a good balance to Johnson's more conservative Southern appeal, just as Humphrey did. He was articulate and had a genuine flair. Even more important, though, he was a Catholic, and was so at a time when LBJ was under considerable pressure to justify his *not* choosing Bobby Kennedy as his running mate. Nevertheless, as the convention neared it became clear that McCarthy was no longer being seriously considered by Johnson. When he felt that he was simply being manipulated by the Johnson machine, McCarthy broke with it. Many have, consequently, seen McCarthy's run for the presidency in 1968 as nothing more than a grudge match in response to this. If McCarthy *had* been chosen as Johnson's running mate, Humphrey would have remained in the Senate as the leading figure that he was. He thus would not have been forced by both personal and professional constriants into a position that many regard as his downfall, namely, of becoming the administration's leading spokesman for its involvement in Vietnam. Humphrey, as the theory continues,would have been free to be critical of the administration's policy in Vietnam, and McCarthy instead would have been faced with the extremely difficult position with which Humphrey actually ended up having to contend." Charles Lloyd Garrettson, *Hubert H. Humphrey: The Politics of Joy* http://books.google.com/books?id=YRTeKY1xcVUC&pg=PA157

McCarthy was definitely a hawk on Vietnam in 1964. To quote Dominic Sandbrook in *Eugene McCarthy: The Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism*, pp. 126-27:

"McCarthy himself, his mind on the vice presidency, had no doubt that the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was justified and necessary. 'The strength of America,' he wrote to his constituents, 'is not just the strength of its military power but also the strength of its reputation, honoring its word and keeping its commitment. All of these things were involved in the President's action, which has been sustained by the Congress.' On the television show *Face the Nation*, he said, 'It was a matter of responding to a direct attack on our ships. The escalation came from the enemy.' Johnson, McCarthy thought, must have no doubts about his vice president's commitment to the existing policy in Vietnam, His Minnesota friend Gerald Heaney recalled, 'He made it clear that he felt we were committed in Vietnam and we'd have to see it through to the end.' McCarthy added that his rival for the vice presidency, Hubert Humphrey, was more likely to abandon that commitment, telling Heaney, 'He might be inclined to tell the editor of the *New York Times* that he goes along with it because he has to but that we ought to be doing something different.' McCarthy even asked Heaney to point this out to Johnson himself...

"Even after his vice presidential hopes had been dashed, McCarthy's fidelity to the administration never wavered. 'I do not think we can simply withdraw our forces and abandon the people of South Viet Nam,' he wrote, dismissing the idea of neutralization. 'Our experience with a supposedly neutral Laos has been none too encouraging.' In a debate with his Republican opponent in Minnesota, he even refused to rule out an invasion of North Vietnam. At the end of the year he explained to a Minnesota clergyman that Johnson's policy was the best way of reconciling the twin goals of peace and containment: 'I supported the actions of the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations in this area, and beleive that the policy of the Johnson Administration in limiting the action to South Vietnam and keeping the use of force to a minimum is at least the best immediate policy.' In short, at the end of 1964 there was no reason to imagine that McCarthy would remain anything other than a wholehearted supporter of the American involvement in Southeast Asia." http://books.google.com/books?id=wMqSzTPXl7QC&pg=PA126

It is of course true that most of the members of Congress who voted for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and supported LBJ's Vietnam policy in 1964 had no idea that within a few years that would be half a million American soldiers in Vietnam. So it is certainly possible that McCarthy would "evolve" toward an increasingly anti-war position as vice president the way he did as senator. Yet I wouldn't count on it. Besides the expectations that a vice president be "loyal" to the president, there is also the fact that (as Sandbrook notes) in OTL McCarthy was undoubtedly influenced by the fact that in 1965 he joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and was exposed to the views of Senator Fulbright and the committee's dovish staff:

"It is quite probable that the very fact of being on the Foreign Relations Committee and exposed to the ideas of Fulbright and his staff was a crucial fact in the evolution of McCarthy's thinking, *without which he might have remained relatively quiet on Vietnam* [my emphasis--DT] From 1965 onward, in fact, the committee became the single most important forum in Congress for criticism of the Vietnam imbroglio, not least because it was the only committee in either house with a chairman who opposed the war..." http://books.google.com/books?id=wMqSzTPXl7QC&pg=PA129

As for Humphrey, some support for the idea that if not for loyalty to LBJ, he might have been a dove on Vietnam can be found in his memorandum of February 15, 1965, where among other things he noted that "It is always hard to cut losses. But the Johnson administration is in a stronger position to do so now than any administration in this century. 1965 is the year of minimum political risk for the Johnson administration. Indeed, it is the first year when we can face the Vietnam problem without being preoccupied with the political repercussions from the Republican right. As indicated earlier, our political problems are likely to come from new and different sources (Democratic liberals, independents, labor) if we pursue an enlarged military policy very long." For the full text of this memorandum--which was quite prescient in several respects--see http://books.google.com/books?id=YRTeKY1xcVUC&pg=PA323 (Of course to say that a Humphrey who stayed in the Senate might have been a dove does not necessarily mean he would challenge LBJ in 1968. Challenging an incumbent president in the primaries is a long-shot gamble and Humphrey may just not have had the temperament for it. Still, Humphrey was capable of taking risks--a lot of people thought he was running risks by trying to get a strong civil rights plank into the 1948 Democratic platform in the teeth of opposition from the party's leaders.)

So *if* LBJ had chosen McCarthy instrad of Humphrey as his running mate in 1964, the idea that 1968 might see a dovish Humphrey running against a hawkish McCarthy is not totally implausible. The question is whether it is really plausible that LBJ *would* have chosen McCarthy instead of Humphrey in 1964. LBJ toyed with the idea, but I don't think it's too likely he would have done so. For one thing, Robert Kennedy and his circle were dead set against the idea. If LBJ wasn't going to choose RFK, McCarthy as a Catholic "substitute" would be an insult. Kennedy's supporters much preferred Humphrey. (McCarthy made things worse by criticizing RFK's decision to run for the Senate from New York.) Also, of course, the unions preferred Humphrey, and he seemed more likely to help the party in the Midwest. McCarthy had southern support because he was less identified with civil rights than Humphrey--even James Eastland urged LBJ to pick McCarthy!--but LBJ was writing off the South or at least the Deep South, anyway. Also, Humphrey was really more LBJ's type as a politician than the poetry-writing, Aquinas-expounding McCarthy. Finally, the only member of LBJ's inner circle who really favored McCarthy was Walter Jenkins. So all in all, I don't think McCarthy had too much of a chance. But if he had been chosen, I don't see it implausible for him to end up much more hawkish than Humphrey.


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. Nevertheless, as the convention neared it became clear that McCarthy was no longer being seriously considered by Johnson. When he felt that he was simply being manipulated by the Johnson machine, McCarthy broke with it. Many have, consequently, seen McCarthy's run for the presidency in 1968 as nothing more than a grudge match in response to this.

https://books.google.com/books?id=YRTeKY1xcVUC&pg=PA157&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false
At times it's hard for me to wrap my mind around how much of politics is about personality, about embarrassment, about respect or the lack thereof. But a considerable amount!

Along a similar line, I've read that President Ford DID NOT make a courtesy call to Governor Reagan that he was going with Rockefeller for Vice President. Instead, Ron and Nancy found out in a semi-public way which risked their embarrassment.
 
In terms of the vice presidency, Johnson does come off as manic depressive from some of the sources I've read, where he would have ups and downs. And there are people close to him that say they think he was bipolar. He almost dropped out of the 1964 race, said that he was going to drop out to advisers, and they thought he was nuts because he was going to win so handily. Then the next week he was totally fine as if he had never said anything. So you could argue a random emotion or thought could hit Lyndon that would mean no Humphrey and someone else like McCarthy.
 
In terms of the vice presidency, Johnson does come off as manic depressive from some of the sources I've read, where he would have ups and downs. And there are people close to him that say they think he was bipolar. He almost dropped out of the 1964 race, said that he was going to drop out to advisers, and they thought he was nuts because he was going to win so handily. Then the next week he was totally fine as if he had never said anything. So you could argue a random emotion or thought could hit Lyndon that would mean no Humphrey and someone else like McCarthy.
Hm, I wonder what would have happened had Johnson dropped out. Kennedy gets nominated instead? If so, wonder how he would handle Vietnam.
 
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