Читать книгу The Price of Loyalty - Andrew L. Johns - Страница 3

“The Graveyard of Presidential Ambitions”

It’s like being naked in the middle of a blizzard with no one to even offer you a match to keep you warm: that’s the vice presidency.

—Hubert Humphrey

He who blinded by ambition raises himself to a position whence he cannot mount higher must thereafter fall with the greatest loss.

—Niccolò Machiavelli

The delegates assembled in the Miami Beach Convention Center cheered wildly as the newly crowned Democratic nominee raised his hands in triumph on stage. Standing next to Lyndon Johnson—who would serve longer in the White House (over nine years) than anyone except Franklin Delano Roosevelt and who had just finished introducing his presumptive successor as president—the former U.S. senator from Minnesota basked in the rapturous adulation of the crowd, equally exhausted by the long week of political maneuvering at the convention and energized by the prospect of running for president against Ronald Reagan in a battle of contrasting ideological prescriptions for the country’s future. The conservative governor of California, who had narrowly lost his party’s nomination four years earlier to Richard Nixon, had prevailed in the hard-fought GOP primaries against House minority leader Gerald Ford (R-MI), Governor Nelson Rockefeller (R-NY), and Governor George Romney (R-MI). Reagan’s coronation as the Republican presidential candidate would take place four weeks later in the same building in which the vice president now stood on stage.

It had been a long and winding road to Miami for the Democratic standard-bearer. Over the past eight years, the Johnson administration had faced complex challenges both at home and abroad: social upheaval, racial strife, congressional battles over domestic reforms, and the omnipresent Cold War, just to name a few. But the president’s decision in February 1965 to disengage from Vietnam and allow the United Nations to oversee elections based on the 1954 Geneva Accords had not only prevented a potentially long and costly war but also made Johnson realize just how valuable the vice president’s domestic political acumen and foreign policy experience could be. Their partnership since that decision, based on mutual respect and loyalty, defined the administration’s legacy and contributed significantly to the success of Johnson’s presidency. Now, at long last, the vice president’s unwavering allegiance to LBJ had been rewarded with the president’s full support in the primaries. Now his political dreams and ambitions had been realized, and he had unbridled optimism for the future of the United States. Now he would build on the domestic achievements of the Great Society and lead the country and the world into a new era of peace, prosperity, and justice, all shaped by his deeply held liberal principles. As Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. approached the podium to formally accept the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination, he was the personification of the politics of joy.

* * * * *

In reality, of course, history did not play out that way. Instead of following Hubert Humphrey’s perspicacious advice in February 1965, Lyndon Johnson chose war in Vietnam and escalated the U.S. presence in Southeast Asia exponentially. That decision would lead not only to a disastrous conflict that wasted billions of dollars and resulted in millions of U.S. and Vietnamese lives lost but also to deep and lasting divisions in U.S. society. The Vietnam conflict would cripple the once-dominant U.S. economy, weaken the nation’s diplomatic and moral influence, fundamentally alter the social and cultural fabric of the country, and cause permanent damage to U.S. political institutions. Moreover, it would cost LBJ and Richard Nixon their presidencies and would so undermine the public’s faith in its government that it would never recover. The war in Vietnam also become the decisive factor in Humphrey’s loss to Nixon in the 1968 presidential election, with Johnson’s lack of support for his vice president playing a crucial role. In fact, the president repaid Humphrey’s steadfast personal and political loyalty—which dated to their time in the Senate in the 1950s—with dismissal, disdain, and disrespect despite the vice president’s outspoken defense of U.S. Vietnam policy in 1966 and 1967. Humphrey’s inability to break with the Johnson administration acted as an albatross to his campaign and contributed significantly to the fractures that plagued the Democratic Party through most of 1968 and into the new decade. By the time the Minnesotan decided to return to and embrace his long-held principles and announce his opposition to the conflict, it was too late to save his candidacy. For Humphrey, and for so many other politicians who sought the White House, Vietnam was truly “the graveyard of presidential ambitions.”^[1]

Hubert Humphrey occupies an interesting place in the nation’s historical memory. Many historians and pundits view him as a character from a Shakespearian tragedy, the protagonist who makes a difficult or impossible choice that then leads to problems from which he can never recover. Others consider him the lost progressive hope for America, the “conscience of the country,” as his most recent biographer described him, who could have spared the United States the agony of the Nixon years, shortened the Vietnam War, avoided Watergate, and helped to achieve long-held liberal aspirations for the United States.^[2] A few contrarians see him as an opportunist, a political vagabond whose views shifted according to the predilections of the moment and his own ambitions, a chameleon who does not deserve the approbation of history.^[3] Yet most scholars see the former vice president in a generally positive light. For example, forty-five years after Humphrey lost the presidential election, political scientist Norman Ornstein recalled that the former vice president was a “force of nature, with the intellect, personal integrity, and personal force that transcended policy differences” in a way that moved colleagues and outsiders alike. He was “a remarkable and unique human being; he would have made a marvelous president.”^[4]

While opinions vary, two things are quite clear. First, the former Minnesota senator’s long and largely distinguished political career had a profound influence on the trajectory of U.S. history for over four decades. Second, Humphrey is an absolutely essential figure for historians to understand and assess in order to achieve a panoptic view of the trajectory and historical implications of the U.S. experience in Vietnam, particularly in the crucial period after 1964. Why? Because the war had such devastating consequences for the former vice president’s political fortunes. If Hubert Humphrey had a political Achilles’ heel, it was his inability to grapple successfully with the Vietnam conflict from 1964 to 1968. That failure not only cost him the White House but also damaged his historical reputation. For Humphrey, that was a reality that was at once tragic and ironic given his political beliefs and his aspirations for his country. The mayor who fought discrimination and championed civil rights, the senator who sought peace and disarmament, and the vice president who preached social justice at home and abroad would see his legacy permanently tarnished by his association with the debacle in Southeast Asia. As David Halberstam, the journalist whose reporting on the then-emerging conflict in Southeast Asia won a Pulitzer Prize, wrote in the wake of the 1968 election, if “one wanted to do a study of what the war in Vietnam had done to a generation of older American liberals, Humphrey would have been exhibit A.”^[5]

Yet Humphrey’s difficulties with the war predated the 1968 presidential campaign. From the moment he accepted LBJ’s offer in the summer of 1964 to serve as vice president, the Vietnam conflict evolved from being simply another skirmish in Humphrey’s long crusade against communism into the defining and ultimately destructive issue of his otherwise impressive political career. Edgar Berman, Humphrey’s personal physician and confidant, wrote in 1979 that “Vietnam was the cause of the most harrowing and unproductive years of Humphrey’s life: it ruined his relationship with the president, engendered accusations of warmongering by his best friends and beloved public, and eventually cost him the presidency itself.” Part of the reason for this, Berman suggested, was that Humphrey’s “true antiwar feelings were never made known to the public during his vice presidency.” As a result, “It was especially agonizing for him that the public, which knew him from the very beginning as a man of peace . . . should turn him into a man of war. Even more disconcerting was that they would think his beliefs, always so consistent, could change so easily.”^[6] While Berman’s apology for Humphrey’s ambivalence on the war during his tenure as vice president may be overstated, it does encapsulate the fatal harm the conflict did to Humphrey’s reputation—especially among his political allies on the left and in the antiwar movement—and to his presidential ambitions.

In his memoirs, the former vice president seemed to still be in denial about U.S. involvement in Vietnam, his role in the war’s evolution, and the conflict’s destructive impact on his political career. He recalled, “Though we involved ourselves in Indochina almost immediately after World War II, we never really had a Vietnam policy. . . . We edged up to it and finally slid in. Policy was never formalized, except in the most general terms. Our predecessors and we never resolved adequate, realistic short- or long-range objectives. Until early 1968,” he observed, “with the ‘A to Z’ review, there never appeared to be any real measurement of the ultimate costs, what our presence entailed, what actual benefits could be expected.”^[7] The problems the Minnesotan identified were real; indeed, his perceptive February 1965 memorandum to LBJ, which advocated for disengagement from Vietnam based on domestic political calculations, highlighted many of them. Why, then, did Humphrey—renowned for his political instincts, foreign policy expertise, and intelligence—fail to recognize the danger inherent in linking himself inextricably to the administration’s Vietnam policy after Johnson rejected his advice? The answer can be explained in three words that make up the primary themes in this book: loyalty, principle, and politics.

During a debate in the House of Commons in June 1976, British Labor leader Neil Kinnock said, “Loyalty is a fine quality, but in excess it fills political graveyards.”^[8] That sentiment neatly summarizes the effect that Humphrey’s loyalty to Lyndon Johnson had on Humphrey’s political destiny. The friendship between the two men dated back to their time in the U.S. Senate, where Humphrey proved to be crucial to LBJ realizing his ambition to become Senate majority leader. As a leading northern liberal, Humphrey possessed political bona fides and could rally support from the left that Johnson desperately needed in order to achieve his goals.

The same scenario played out in the summer of 1964 during both the administration’s efforts to pass the Civil Rights Act and the vice presidential selection process. LBJ needed Humphrey; the relationship was primarily (although not exclusively) transactional for Johnson. Nevertheless, Humphrey understood clearly what accepting the vice presidency meant, later saying, “Anyone who thinks that the vice president can take a position independent of his administration simply has no knowledge of politics or government. You are his choice in a political marriage, and he expects your absolute loyalty . . . could you imagine what would happen to a Vice President who publicly repudiated his Administration? Man, that’s political suicide.”^[9]

But as laudable and understandable as Humphrey’s allegiance to LBJ might have been in 1964, it ended up causing him insurmountable problems, both as vice president and presidential candidate, over the four years that followed. Why? Because that loyalty was never reciprocated by Johnson. Humphrey maintained his allegiance to LBJ long after it became clear that the relationship was essentially a one-way street. By doing so, the vice president allowed himself to be manipulated, used, and ultimately discarded. It forced him to advocate vociferously for a war about which he harbored serious doubts. It led him to waver endlessly about the conflict despite consistent and escalating pressure from his friends, advisers, and political allies. And it limited his ability to unite the polarized Democratic Party in 1968, which crippled his presidential campaign and contributed to his defeat. Loyalty may have defined Humphrey’s political career, but it also irreparably damaged it.

While loyal to LBJ to a fault, Humphrey demonstrated less fealty to the principles and ideas that launched his political career. To be sure, Humphrey’s support of the Great Society programs, civil rights, and other domestic initiatives animated his decisions on Vietnam and reflected the liberal beliefs that had brought him to national prominence as the firebrand progressive mayor of Minneapolis, as did his advocacy of the nonproliferation treaty and international development programs. As one of the founding members of Americans for Democratic Action and a political tsunami who boldly excoriated the 1948 Democratic convention for its failure to act on civil rights, Humphrey’s liberal credentials could not be questioned. To be fair, Humphrey’s fierce advocacy for the Great Society—both at home and abroad—harkened back to his reputation as a radical progressive. Yet when it came to the Vietnam conflict, Humphrey abandoned or ignored his principles out of a combination of political expediency, ambition, and allegiance to the president. Even as he faced cascading criticism from his liberal allies in 1966 and 1967, Humphrey privileged other considerations above his principles, leaving himself vulnerable to attacks from across the political spectrum on the issue of the war during the presidential campaign in 1968.

That truth is even more surprising given that Humphrey’s long career in politics honed his political instincts to a razor-sharp edge. During his vice presidency (at least after February 1965) and presidential candidacy, however, those same instincts seemed to vanish or were pointedly ignored as Humphrey placed LBJ’s political interests ahead of his own. Even when the obvious political calculation was to reject the administration’s stance on the conflict, Humphrey hesitated. More generally, nothing could be more obvious than the fact that Vietnam was a political war, which makes Humphrey’s choices even more perplexing. The U.S. decisions to support the Saigon regime from 1954 onward reflected the demands of anticommunism and the domestic political realities of U.S. presidential elections, the relationship between the conflict and the demands of the Great Society, and the personal political interests of John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon, among others. One cannot fully understand U.S. involvement in Vietnam without appreciating the degree to which decisions were made, delayed, or avoided due to domestic political considerations. That fact underscores the power that the nexus of domestic politics and foreign policy has had in the U.S. political context. That relationship, which played such a pivotal role during the entire U.S. involvement in Vietnam and would certainly have ramifications for Humphrey, represents a central theme in this book.^[10]

* * * * *

While Humphrey looms large in U.S. political history due to his five terms in the Senate (1949–1964 and 1971–1978), his four years as vice president (1965–1969), and his 1968 presidential campaign against Richard Nixon, the scholarly literature on his life and career has been relatively sporadic for someone so influential in the events that played out during the Cold War. The three most detailed examinations of Humphrey’s life are biographies by Dan Cohen, Carl Solberg, and Arnold Offner.^[11] The vice president’s memoirs, The Education of a Public Man, provide a retrospective of his career that is balanced, not overly self-congratulatory (unlike so many examples in the genre), and supported by historical documentation.^[12] Additional personal and political details about Humphrey are recounted in memoirs by his friend and physician, Edgar Berman, and his adviser-cum-speechwriter, Ted Van Dyk.^[13] Specific aspects of Humphrey’s political career and his involvement with issues such as civil rights have been explored by Timothy Thurber and Robert Mann, among others.^[14] His rise in politics in Minnesota and his initial tenure in the U.S. Senate, which are discussed briefly in chapter 1, have received a modest amount of attention, particularly in terms of his staunch anticommunism.^[15] The 1968 presidential election, however, boasts its own cottage industry of analysis, with scores of titles examining the close Humphrey–Nixon–George Wallace race and the issues that defined the election, including Vietnam.^[16]

As far as Humphrey’s engagement with the Vietnam War, the historiography is even less complete. The Solberg and Offner biographies cover Humphrey and the war as a discrete part of the broader narrative of the vice president’s life, with Offner’s account being the more detailed and enlightening. The February 1965 memorandum Humphrey sent to Lyndon Johnson, which will be discussed in chapter 2, is referenced and assessed in numerous studies.^[17] Humphrey’s exile and redemption from 1965 to 1967, the subject of chapters 2 and 3, make cameo appearances in a number of histories of that period, but most of the attention paid to his struggle with the Vietnam conflict is devoted to his efforts to grapple with the issue during the 1968 presidential campaign, which will be assessed in chapters 4 and 5. But no academic study has attempted to examine Humphrey’s positions on the war, his role in the Johnson administration, his Faustian relationship with LBJ, and his influence on the trajectory of U.S. policy over the course of the long U.S. involvement in Indochina in a comprehensive or holistic way until this book.

Of course, as significant as the Vietnam conflict was to Humphrey’s career, his legacy goes far beyond the war. His involvement with a myriad of crucial issues during the Cold War—nuclear nonproliferation, civil rights, education, and domestic and international anticommunism, just to name a few—makes him one of the most prominent U.S. senators of the twentieth century. It is ironic, then, that the man who pushed so relentlessly for disarmament and fought so valiantly for liberal causes would become the prototypical apologist for U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War by 1966. How did that happen? What changed? This book explores how and why Vietnam loomed so large for Humphrey as vice president from 1964 through the 1968 election campaign against Richard Nixon. It assesses the price of Humphrey’s loyalty to Lyndon Johnson, who emerges as the villain of the story in many ways, and how that allegiance would negatively affect Humphrey's political ambitions. And it engages the disconnect between Humphrey’s principles and the intricate politics of his convoluted relationship with the president and his unsuccessful presidential campaign. It is a complex and frustrating narrative, the results of which would be tragic, not only for Humphrey’s presidential aspirations but also for the war in Southeast Asia and the future of the United States.

1.

Andrew L. Johns, Vietnam’s Second Front: Domestic Politics, the Republican Party, and the War (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010), 334. The list of prominent U.S. politicians whose career trajectories fell short of the White House or prematurely ended their tenure in the Oval Office owing to issues related to the Vietnam conflict includes Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson, George Romney, Eugene McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller, George McGovern, Gerald Ford, Pete McCloskey, Barry Goldwater, John Kennedy (if one believes the conspiracy theorists who argue that his Vietnam policies led to his assassination), Jimmy Carter, and John Kerry.

2.

Arnold A. Offner, Hubert Humphrey: The Conscience of the Country (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018).

3.

See especially Robert Sherrill and Harry W. Ernst, The Drugstore Liberal (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1968). For example, Sherrill and Ernst refer to Humphrey’s wavering on civil rights and shifting his position on labor as “his ambitions mounted. Nothing has made his beliefs so casual as the vice presidency.” They also criticize him on Vietnam, opining that with Humphrey and the war issue, “fickleness comes first.” See pages 12 and 174. Sherrill made similar comments about Lyndon Johnson, describing him as lacking any moral values whatsoever and characterizing him as “treacherous, dishonest, manic-aggressive, petty, spoiled.” See Robert Sherrill, The Accidental President (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1967), 4.

4.

Norman Ornstein, “Welcome to Another Golden Era of Liberal Senators,” The New Republic, January 8, 2013, www.tnr.com/print/blog/plank/111731/liberal-wave-senate-produces-third-golden-era-our-lifetime, accessed January 9, 2013.

5.

David Halberstam, The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy (New York: Random House, 1969), 165.

6.

Edgar Berman, Hubert: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Humphrey I Knew (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979), 101.

7.

Hubert H. Humphrey, Education of a Public Man: My Life and Politics (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), 234.

8.

Quoted in William E. Schmickle, Preservation Politics: Keeping Historic Districts Vital (Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2012), 93.

9.

Quoted in “The President Giveth and Taketh,” Time, November 14, 1969.

10.

On the importance of domestic politics as a methodological approach in the history of U.S. foreign relations, see, for example, Ralph B. Levering, “Is Domestic Politics Being Slighted as an Interpretive Framework?” SHAFR Newsletter 25, no. 1 (March 1994): 17–35; Jussi M. Hanhimäki, “Global Visions and Parochial Politics: The Persistent Dilemma of the ‘American Century,’” Diplomatic History 27, no. 4 (September 2003): 423–47; Fredrik Logevall, “Domestic Politics,” in Frank Costigliola and Michael J. Hogan, eds., Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, 3rd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 151–67; Jason Parker, “On Such a Full Sea Are We Now Afloat: Politics and U.S. Foreign Relations across the Water’s Edge,” Perspectives, May 2011, https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/may-2011/political-history-today/on-such-a-full-sea-are-we-now-afloat; Thomas A. Schwartz, “‘Henry, . . . Winning an Election Is Terribly Important’: Partisan Politics in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations,” Diplomatic History 33, no. 2 (April 2009): 173–90. Representative scholarship includes Melvin Small, Democracy and Diplomacy: The Impact of Domestic Politics on U.S. Foreign Policy, 1789–1994 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Robert David Johnson, Congress and the Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Andrew L. Johns and Mitchell B. Lerner, eds., The Cold War at Home and Abroad: Domestic Politics and U.S. Foreign Policy since 1945 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2018); Julian E. Zelizer, Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security—From World War II to the War on Terrorism (New York: Basic Books, 2010); Johns, Vietnam’s Second Front; Andrew Johnstone and Andrew Priest, eds., U.S. Presidential Elections and Foreign Policy: Candidates, Campaigns, and Global Politics from FDR to Bill Clinton (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2017).

11.

Dan Cohen, Undefeated: The Life of Hubert H. Humphrey (Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications, 1978); Carl Solberg, Hubert Humphrey: A Biography (New York: Norton, 1984); Offner, Hubert Humphrey. See also Sheldon Engelmayer, Hubert Humphrey: The Man and His Dream (London: Routledge, 1978); Paul Westman, Hubert Humphrey: The Politics of Joy (Minneapolis, MN: Dillon Press, 1978); Charles Lloyd Garrettson, Hubert H. Humphrey: The Politics of Joy (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1993).

12.

Humphrey, The Education of a Public Man. On Humphrey’s vision for the country as a U.S. senator, see Hubert H. Humphrey, The Cause Is Mankind: A Liberal Program for Modern America (New York: Praeger, 1964). For a compilation of Humphrey’s public comments, see, for example, Jane C. Thompson, ed., Wit & Wisdom of Hubert H. Humphrey (Minneapolis, MN: Partners Press, Ltd., 1984). Most of the textual versions of Humphrey’s public speeches (1941–1978) have been digitized by the Minnesota Historical Society and are available at http://www2.mnhs.org/library/findaids/00442.xml (accessed October 25, 2019). It should be noted, however, that Humphrey frequently went “off script” and spoke extemporaneously. In addition, many of his speeches on the Senate floor are not included in this digital collection.

13.

Berman, Hubert; Ted Van Dyk, Heroes, Hacks, and Fools: Memoirs from the Political Inside (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007).

14.

Timothy N. Thurber, The Politics of Equality: Hubert H. Humphrey and the African American Freedom Struggle (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); Robert Mann, The Walls of Jericho: Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell, and the Struggle for Civil Rights (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1996). See also Paula Wilson, ed., The Civil Rights Rhetoric of Hubert H. Humphrey: 1948–1964 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1996); Jennifer A. Delton, Making Minnesota Liberal: Civil Rights and the Transformation of the Democratic Party (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).

15.

See, for example, Clinton Anderson, Outsider in the Senate (New York: World Publishing Company, 1970); Michael Amrine, This Is Humphrey: The Story of the Senator (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1960); Richard P. Jennett, The Man from Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN: Joyce Society, 1965); Winthrop Griffith, Humphrey: A Candid Biography (New York: Morrow, 1965); Gladys Zehnpfenning, Hubert H. Humphrey: Champion of Human Rights (Minneapolis, MN: T. S. Denison and Company, Inc., 1966).

16.

The massive historiography on the 1968 presidential election includes Michael A. Cohen, American Maelstrom: The 1968 Election and Politics of Division (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Theodore White, The Making of the President, 1968 (New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1969); Michael Nelson, Resilient America: Electing Nixon in 1968, Channeling Dissent, and Dividing Government (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2014); Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995); Lawrence O’Donnell, Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics (New York: Penguin, 2017); Michael Schumacher, The Contest: The 1968 Election and the War for America’s Soul (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018); Lewis Chester, Godfrey Hodgson, and Bruce Page, An American Melodrama: The Presidential Campaign of 1968 (New York: Viking Press, 1969); Lewis L. Gould, 1968: The Election That Changed America (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1993); Kyle Longley, LBJ’s 1968: Power, Politics, and the Presidency in America’s Year of Upheaval (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Kent G. Sieg, “The 1968 Presidential Election and Peace in Vietnam,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 16, no. 4 (Fall 1996): 1062–80; Walter LaFeber, The Deadly Bet: LBJ, Vietnam, and the 1968 Election (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); Aram Goudsouzian, The Men and the Moment: The Election of 1968 and the Rise of Partisan Politics in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019).

17.

See, for example, Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 346–47; Humphrey, The Education of a Public Man, 236–42; Robert Mann, A Grand Delusion: America’s Descent into Vietnam (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 401–8.