Hubert H. Humphrey

Vice president of the United States (1965-1969)

• Born: May 27, 1911
• Birthplace: Wallace, South Dakota
• Died: January 13, 1978
• Place of death: Waverly, Minnesota

In the tradition of philosophical pragmatism and New Deal liberalism in the twentieth century, Humphrey became one of the most innovative and effective legislators in United States history.

Early Life

Hubert H. Humphrey was born of Yankee pioneer and Norwegian immigrant stock. He was the second of four children. His autobiography reveals that his life on the northern plains was difficult. During the 1920’s, his family lived on the edge of poverty, buffeted by agricultural hard times after World War I, grasshopper infestations, drought, and the national economic collapse of 1929-1939. His father, a pharmacist and liberal Democrat, exerted the greatest impact on his life. Young Hubert absorbed his father’s midwestern populism and Wilsonian moralism.

In spite of economic hardship, Humphrey’s home life was serene and loving. He debated political issues with his father, sold newspapers, played football and basketball in high school, participated in drama and debates, and maintained a high scholastic average. The Humphreys lived with the threat of bankruptcy throughout this period and had to sell their home in Doland, South Dakota, to pay their bills.

Even so, Hubert entered the University of Minnesota in 1928, but, lacking funds, he was compelled to leave the university and enroll in Capital College of Pharmacy in Denver. By 1933, he had received his pharmacist’s diploma and was working in his father’s drugstore in Doland. He became active in politics and joined the Young Democrats. He was an ardent New Dealer who believed that strong government was a positive force in society. He argued that government had a responsibility to protect the weak and allow for the fullest expression and development of the individual.

In 1936, he married Muriel Buck, daughter of an agricultural wholesaler; they would have four children. In 1937, he resumed his studies at the University of Minnesota, joined the debating team and Phi Beta Kappa, and was graduated magna cum laude. In 1939-1940, Humphrey received his master’s degree in political science at Louisiana State University. While living in Baton Rouge, he was profoundly shocked by the state’s segregationist system.

Life’s Work

During the summer of 1940, Humphrey returned to Minnesota to earn his doctorate. He also found a position with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in Duluth and then headed the WPA Workers Education Program in Minneapolis. These positions introduced Humphrey to influential labor, civic, and political leaders of the city and state. After World War II began, Humphrey liquidated the WPA state apparatus. In 1943, he campaigned for mayor of Minneapolis against a corruption-tainted incumbent. Although he lost by five thousand votes, Humphrey learned valuable campaign lessons that he used successfully in his mayoralty bids of 1945 and 1947. Critical to his success, however, was his role in negotiating the fusion of the Democratic and Farm Labor parties in 1944. The Democratic-Farm Labor Alliance (DFL) has been a dominant force in Minnesota politics ever since.

Humphrey’s two terms as mayor of Minneapolis were reformist and liberal in character. He promoted a housing program for returning veterans and the disadvantaged; he hired a tough, no-nonsense police chief to root out gamblers and racketeers; he fostered closer religious and racial relations through a Human Relations Board; and he obtained a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission to end job discrimination. Meanwhile, he led the fight to expel communists from DFL leadership, and in 1947, he helped organize the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) to unite anticommunist liberals on domestic and foreign affairs issues. In 1949, he chaired the ADA.

In 1948, Humphrey declared his candidacy for the United States Senate. Perhaps the highlight of his career occurred in the 1948 Democratic National Convention when he successfully pushed through a strong civil rights plank in the platform. That stand led Southern Democrats to bolt the party and unite under the banner of the States Rights Party. Along with the left-wing Progressive Party of America, this defection promised to make 1948 a banner Republican year. Ironically, Humphrey’s civil rights plank proved to be a major Democratic issue and contributed significantly to President Harry S. Truman’s upset victory.

Humphrey’s senatorial victory in 1948 made him one of many freshman liberal faces in national affairs. His early years in the Senate were frustrating. Southern Democrats nursed a grudge for his role in the nominating convention, and his long-winded oratory did not endear him to his colleagues. Instead of maintaining a low profile as a freshman senator, he introduced bill after bill on a wide range of issues that reflected the liberal agenda for the 1950’s and 1960’s, but little action was taken on them. The nadir of his senatorial career came when he violated Senate protocol by attacking Harry F. Byrd of Virginia while the latter visited his ailing mother. Byrd’s response was crushing, and Humphrey regretted the incident for the remainder of his life.

He overcame that debacle largely because of the rehabilitative efforts of Lyndon B. Johnson, an ambitious Texan and perhaps the greatest Senate majority leader in history. Humphrey gave Johnson access to liberals, civil rights groups, and labor; Johnson gave Humphrey respectability and brought him within the folds of the Senate establishment. Consequently, Humphrey acquired the knowledge and skills to become one of the most successful legislators in history. Among his accomplishments were the National Defense Education Act, Food for Peace, Job Corps, Peace Corps, Vista, food stamps, the Nuclear Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty of 1963, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Another Humphrey achievement was the Medicare Bill of 1965, which he had promoted since his arrival in the Senate.

Humphrey had long been interested in the presidency. His membership on the prestigious Foreign Relations Committee enabled him to establish credentials in foreign affairs. In 1958, for example, he held meetings with world leaders, including the celebrated eight-hour meeting with Soviet premier Nikita S. Khrushchev. In 1956, Humphrey supported Adlai Stevenson’s nomination for president and believed that he had the latter’s commitment for the vice presidency. As it turned out, Stevenson allowed the convention delegates to select his running mate, who was Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. In 1960, he made an ill-fated bid for the presidency, only to be crushed by the Kennedy juggernaut in the Wisconsin and West Virginia primaries.

As Senate majority whip during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations (1961-1965), Humphrey became the central player in the legislative enactment of their programs. In 1964, Johnson, who had become president following Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, sought election in his own right. To create some interest in the nominating convention, he dangled the vice presidency before Humphrey and his Minnesota colleague, Eugene McCarthy. Both endured this humiliating manipulation in the months before the convention as Johnson pushed one, then the other, to the forefront. He ultimately selected Humphrey with the expectation that Humphrey would be completely loyal to his program.

As vice president (1965-1969), Humphrey’s loyalty to the administration was unquestioned in spite of the increasing unpopularity of United States adventures in South Vietnam. This loyalty earned for Humphrey the disgust and contempt of many antiwar liberals. One of these liberals was Senator McCarthy, who challenged Johnson’s bid for renomination in 1968. McCarthy’s surprising strength in the New Hampshire primary forced Johnson to withdraw from the campaign.

The removal of Johnson from the presidential contest gave Humphrey his best opportunity to capture the White House. While his opponents, McCarthy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, bloodied each other in primary contests, Humphrey began to pull away in delegate strength by relying on the support of the traditional New Deal coalition. His theme was the “politics of joy,” a phrase turned against him by the Tet offensive in South Vietnam, political assassinations, race riots, and violent antiwar protests in the streets. It appeared to many Americans that their country was coming apart. Although Humphrey won the presidential nomination in Chicago, the political cost was high, and his image was tarnished further in the public mind by televised scenes of Chicago police beating youthful protestors during his acceptance speech.

From that moment, Humphrey’s campaign had nowhere to go but up. His opponents were Richard M. Nixon for the Republican Party and Alabama Governor George C. Wallace for the American Independent Party. Nixon had resurrected himself from political oblivion following successive defeats for president in 1960 and for California governor in 1962. Far ahead in the polls, he waged a careful and controlled media campaign based on law and order and honorably terminating American involvement in South Vietnam. Wallace’s appeal was racist, antibureaucracy, and anticommunist, and he sought to win the southern states and the northern blue-collar vote. For his part, Humphrey entered the campaign late, with a bitterly divided party behind him, a weak national campaign organization, no money, and plagued by a public perception of him as a Johnson clone. Protestors also made it difficult for him to present his ideas coherently to the voters.

On September 30, 1968, Humphrey’s fortunes reversed when he pledged to halt the bombing of North Vietnam before receiving conciliatory gestures from the enemy. This subtle breach with Johnson quieted the antiwar movement, which slowly and grudgingly returned to the Democratic fold a return symbolized by McCarthy’s tepid endorsement late in the campaign. Simultaneously, the traditional blue-collar voter also returned to the Democratic Party, and public opinion polls reflected a dramatic surge in Humphrey’s popular support. By election day, 1968, polls indicated that the race had concluded in a virtual dead heat. Although momentum was clearly with him, Humphrey narrowly lost the election by approximately 500,000 votes. In the electoral college, Nixon won with 301 votes to Humphrey’s 191 and Wallace’s 46.

Humphrey returned to Minnesota, to teach and to write his memoirs, but, in 1970, he was elected to the Senate when McCarthy declined to seek reelection. Two years later, he made another determined bid for the presidential nomination, but he could not overcome his association with Johnson and Vietnam. His campaign ended in California, where he was defeated by Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. In 1974, he found that he had cancer, which became a factor in his decision not to make another presidential effort. On January 13, 1978, Humphrey died in his Waverly, Minnesota, home, and he was replaced in the United States Senate by his wife, Muriel.

Significance

Humphrey’s life reflected the Horatio Alger myth. Born in humble circumstances, he worked hard all of his life and came agonizingly close to achieving the highest office in the land. In spite of all of his efforts, however, he failed to achieve that prize. Those who knew him well do not doubt that he would have made an excellent president, and one must wonder how the history of the United States would have been altered if he had emerged triumphant in 1968. His was an ebullient personality, the “happy warrior” who sought to heal the divisiveness and wounds of the body politic.

Still, there was something in Humphrey’s makeup that denied him his greatest hopes. Some believed that he lacked the instinct for the political kill, that he was not ruthless enough, that he was too emotional, too talkative, and that he was simply too nice a human being to become president. There may be some truth to this theory. Humphrey was an eternal optimist; he believed in the idea of progress, that man was reasonable and good, and he lived his life public and private in harmony with these attitudes. His failure lay in his overwhelming need to be liked; he could never say no. Thus, he allowed himself to be so dominated by Johnson that he lost his public persona, and he was not to regain his separate identity until late in his career.

Humphrey was a New Deal liberal, and he believed in the social welfare state. The Great Depression of the 1930’s taught him that “rugged individualism” was anachronistic in twentieth century economic and political life. Alone, the citizen was defenseless against concentrated sources of private and public power. Government, he believed, was not an enemy to be despised, but a friend to protect one from disasters beyond one’s control and to allow one to live freely. Humphrey was a pragmatist and a believer in New Deal experimentation. As much as any man of his time, he fulfilled the promise inherent in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s program during the New Frontier and Great Society days of the 1960’s.

Bibliography

Berman, Edgar M. D. Hubert: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Humphrey I Knew. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979. A memoir by a Humphrey confidant who emphasizes the latter’s pragmatic, liberal philosophy. Explores Humphrey’s vice presidency and blames Johnson for Humphrey’s 1968 defeat.

Cohen, Dan. Undefeated: The Life of Hubert H. Humphrey. Minneapolis, Minn.: Lerner, 1978. A useful biography by a political veteran in Minnesota. Emphasizes Humphrey’s early life and career, particularly Minnesota politics during the 1930’s and 1940’s. Full illustrations, background material, and anecdotes, reflecting Humphrey’s character and personality.

Eisele, Albert. Almost to the Presidency: A Biography of Two American Politicians. Blue Earth, Minn.: Piper, 1972. Written by a newspaperman and close observer of the careers of Humphrey and McCarthy. A study of contrasts: Humphrey representing the politics of consensus and McCarthy symbolizing the politics of change.

Griffith, Winthrop. Humphrey: A Candid Biography. New York: William Morrow, 1965. Written by a Humphrey aide. Focuses on Humphrey’s political philosophy, character, personality, and Senate career.

Humphrey, Hubert H. The Civil Rights Rhetoric of Hubert H. Humphrey, 1948-1964. Edited by Paula Wilson. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1996. Humphrey reflects on his work on the question of civil rights during the postwar period.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Education of a Public Man: My Life and Politics. Edited by Norman Sherman. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976. A superior political autobiography. Candid but remarkably free from bitterness. A very revealing look into Humphrey’s character and personality, particularly his relationship with Johnson.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Political Philosophy of the New Deal. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970. Published version of Humphrey’s master’s thesis. Written from a partisan perspective. Defends the New Deal as an attempt to establish economic democracy and as being part of a democratic trend in American politics that dates back to Thomas Jefferson.

Ryskind, Allan H. Hubert: An Unauthorized Biography of the Vice President. New York: Arlington House, 1968. A critical biography of Humphrey. Denounces virtually all aspects of his public life, presenting him as a hypocritical pleader for the social welfare state.

Solbert, Carl. Hubert Humphrey: A Biography. New York: William Morrow, 1984. The most complete and objective study of this Minnesota liberal. Places Humphrey in the tradition of William Jennings Bryan, George W. Norris, and Robert M. La Follette. An often absorbing analysis of Humphrey’s life and career.

Thurber, Timothy N. The Politics of Equality: Hubert H. Humphrey and the African American Struggle. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Describes how Humphrey strove throughout his political career to attain racial justice through political reform.