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ALMOST PRESIDENT: HUBERT HORATIO HUMPHREY, PART III

© John S. Cooper

After Hubert Humphrey’s disastrous start in the Senate, he found himself isolated and ostracized by the senior senators. In typical Humphrey fashion, he began learning the ways of the Senate and earning his way into the good graces of those he had offended. Hubert Humphrey genuinely liked people, which made them like him. He also formed a political alliance with an unlikely friend.

Humphrey’s integrity, intelligence and skill brought him to the attention of the Senate Democratic leader, Lyndon Johnson. John was as about the opposite of Humphrey as a man could be. He was a conservative and somewhat crude while Humphrey was a more polished liberal. Johnson had presidential ambitions, but the liberal wing of the party would not support him. Humphrey was one of the national leaders of the liberal wing of the party, with strong ties to labor and civil rights groups, whose support Johnson needed.

Although Humphrey did not support Johnson when he ran for Majority Leader of the Senate in 1953, he soon came to be a Johnson supporter. As he became more aware of how to get things done in the Senate, he found Johnson’s help and guidance invaluable. While many liberals did not like Johnson, Humphrey worked well with him, and became a link between Johnson and the liberal wing of the party.

Humphrey also began to forge personal and political relationships with other senators. The negative first impression they had of him faded and he became one of the inner circle of the Senate leadership. All the while, he continued to be one of the leading advocates of liberal causes. Naturally, as a leader of the liberal wing, he was often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate. This was fine with Humphrey, since he had harbored presidential ambitions ever since his days as mayor of Minneapolis.

In 1956, Adlai Stevenson won the Democratic nomination for President. Humphrey had tried to become the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1952. In 1956, Stevenson declined to choose a running mate and threw open the nomination, allowing the convention to choose the Vice Presidential nominee. Humphrey lost the race, but returned to the Senate with even more prestige and continued his advocacy role on behalf of the liberal agenda. With the liberal wing growing and more liberal Senators, Humphrey’s political clout increased.

In 1958, Humphrey traveled to Europe as part of a fact-finding mission. He engaged Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in an informal discussion on disarmament that lasted almost eight and one-half hours. This event put him in the national spotlight, and put him at the front of the pack of Presidential candidates for 1960. Although a long-time proponent of disarmament, he criticized Republican President Dwight Eisenhower for allowing a “missile gap” to develop.

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