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AN EDITORIAL
reprinted from
POST
THE SATURDAY EVENING POST SEPTEMBER 26 • 1964 25c
HUMPHREY: AN EXCELLENT CHOICE
Of this century's 12 Presidents, four have been Vice Presidents who succeeded a President who died in office—Theodore
Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman. Lyndon Johnson. This high frequency of presidential fatalities should
make it clear that no party ought to nominate a man for Vice President who is not of sufficient caliber to serve as
President. In this vitally important duty, the Republicans have been just as remiss as they were in choosing Goldwater
himself. Rep. William E. Miller of New York is an obscure and totally undistinguished Congressman who had re-
signed himself to retirement until Goldwater pushed him forward for two discreditable reasons. The first reason was
to reward him for using the position of Republican national chairman, whose ethics required him to be impartial, as
a hidden base for Goldwater. The second reason was to use Miller's religion (Catholic) as an effort to force the
Democrats to choose Robert Kennedy and alienate the South. By contrast to Miller's glaring mediocrity, the Dem-
ocrats have chosen in Senator Hubert Humphrey a distinguished legislator who is fully worthy, on his record, to
succeed to the highest office in the land.
The word that best sums up Humphrey's 16 years in the Senate—four of them as Democratic whip—is "growth."
From the time he left the mayor's office in Minneapolis until he heard the magic words at Atlantic City, Humphrey
has never stopped growing. It is this capacity for growth which the Presidency, above all, challenges in a man, and
turns a doggedly competent President like Harry Truman into a great one. It has been doing the same with Johnson.
If the need arises, the probability is high that it could do the same with Humphrey.
Humphrey is hardly the same man at all as the glib, doctrinaire, self-righteous and indeed arrogant "liberal"
who barged into the Senate in January of 1949 (the same time as Johnson) determined to reform it overnight. He
immediately recognized a kindred spirit in Paul Douglas of Illinois, and time after time they jointly backed some
heartfelt, high-minded but hopeless crusade, and seemingly rejoiced in a kind of masochistic delight when, time after
time, they went down to crushing defeat.
Humphrey's arrogance showed itself when, as a very junior senator,.he attacked Harry Byrd, one of the Senate's
most senior leaders, and—to make it even more galling for the old economizer—for "extravagance," of all things.
Byrd answered not a word, but a dozen senators, totally ignoring Humphrey, rose in succession to pay tribute to Byrd.
Thenceforward any Humphrey measure was doubly doomed. He was worse than an upstart; he had fouled the
Senate's unwritten rules of reverence for its Wise Old Men.
Douglas went right on enjoying his defeats, but Humphrey, after all, had come to Washington to get things done.
He began cultivating the Wise Old Men, particularly Georgia's veteran Walter George. He sought George's opinions,
often took his advice. Soon George himself was telling fellow southerners that Hubert was the ablest debater the
Democrats had. Other southerners began to accept him—a fact all the more remarkable since it was Mayor Hum-
phrey's attack on the whole concept of states' rights, as opposed to human rights, that caused the southern walkout at
the 1948 Democratic Convention and the Dixiecrat rebellion.
Lyndon Johnson also had spotted Humphrey's rare abilities. Johnson, who became Democratic whip in 1951 and
majority leader two years later, found Humphrey invaluable in the cloakroom wheeling and dealing where Johnson
worked his legislative miracles. Humphrey had golden assets: an incredible memory for facts, a powerful gift of
persuasive argument, closely reasoned logic. Humphrey found himself getting things done. He had not stopped being
a "liberal," but he was no longer a mere pedagogic ideologue. He had become a pragmatist who had discovered the
hard way what Johnson knew instinctively—that all progress is compromise, that true statesmanship is not to lose
nobly but to win what can be won, at a given time, by the art of the possible. Johnson was already showing his powers
to achieve a true consensus that would stand him in good stead as President. Humphrey was his good right arm.
When seniority moved Mike Mansfield up to majority leader in 1961, Johnson saw to it that Humphrey became whip.
In that role he helped the Democratic leadership put out "liberal" fires which he would have been ardently
spreading a decade before, invoking cloture to put down the Kefauver-Gore filibuster against the Communications
Satellite Bill as a giveaway to big business. He invoked it again, against his southern friends, to get the Civil Rights
Bill through with Senator Dirksen's great assistance. Yet, curiously, his personal acceptance was now such that the
southerners did not hold this against him.
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Saturday Evening Post. Humphrey: an excellent choice, article, September 26, 1964; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth249046/m1/1/: accessed May 6, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Hoston History Research Center at Houston Public Library.