The Vice-Presidency: The Bright Spirit

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Vice President Hubert Horatio Hum phrey had never before been known to lapse for long into total silence. Yet throughout 1965 he was unwontedly and unhappily subdued in the shadow of a center-stage President. Not until January did Humphrey finally find an effectual and demanding outlet for his energies. It was then, at Lyndon Johnson’s behest, that the Vice President publicly helped shoulder the increasing burdens of the war in Viet Nam.

Since then, Humphrey has become the Administration’s most articulate and indefatigable exponent of U.S. Asian policy. From New Delhi to New Zealand to New York, before sexagenarian Senators and teen-age Thais, the pink-cheeked, peripatetic Vice President has rehearsed America’s aims and achievements in Viet Nam with all the evangelical fervor he once brought to such causes as civil rights and dis armament.

Seldom have man and mission been better mated. Humphrey may not, as the President once boasted, be the world’s “greatest coordinator of mind and tongue.” He is nonetheless a man of artesian eloquence and visceral conviction, of bright spirit—which his first name literally means. For the President’s purposes, moreover, Humphrey’s fame as a liberal crusader has assured him a respectful hearing from foreign governments and segments of American society that had discredited the Administration’s motives in Viet Nam. As for Humphrey, he has risen to the challenge with all the old gusto and with new-found gravity and grace.

Asian Sputnik. “Communism in Asia,” he told a union convention in Washington last week, “is not a subject of academic discussion. It is a matter of survival. Viet Nam today is as close to the U.S. as London was in 1940.” At Georgetown University next day, he said: “Our problem today in Asia is that we are abysmally ignorant of that part of the world. Out of the tragedy of war comes an impetus and incentive for knowledge.” On a flying trip to Manhattan, he alighted in the penthouse of the Carlyle Hotel and, pounding the arms of John F. Kennedy’s old rocking chair, mused aloud: “The war is doing for us what the Sputnik did in the space field. It’s forcing us to come to grips with Asia.”

For an audience of high school and college editors in New York, the Vice President answered the rote objection that the Saigon government is unstable, undemocratic and unpopular. “For many centuries,” explained Old Teacher Humphrey, “the Vietnamese people lived under mandarin rule. Then came generations of colonial domination followed by 25 years of almost constant warfare. This is stony soil for democracy to grow in.” He noted by contrast that there had been little protest from liberals over U.S. support for Greece during its struggle against Communist insurgency in the late 1940s. Yet, he pointed out, Athens’ governmental gyrations in that time exceeded even Saigon’s changes of regime.

Whites Only? When Senator Robert Kennedy suggested in February that the Viet Cong’s political arm, the National Liberation Front, should be included in a postwar government of South Viet Nam, it was Humphrey who retorted that any such concession would only dignify “banditry and murder.” On the same issue, Humphrey argued last week: “The National Liberation Front is not national, and it liberates no one. The only honest word is that it’s a front. It is a front for the

Communist Party out of Hanoi, backed by the Peking Communist Party.”

On a two-day trip home to Minneapolis, Humphrey told a Jefferson-Jackson Day audience of 3,000: “There are people who talk about Asians as if they lived on some other planet. We even hear that only Asians should concern themselves with Asia. If we heeded such counsel 25 years ago, where would we—and the Asians—be now?” He continued: “Are we to be put in the position of saying that we are able to keep our commitments to white people, not to brown people and yellow people?” Next day, Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party’s state central committee unanimously passed a resolution supporting the Administration’s war policies.

“New Society.” Nonetheless, it is the “other war,” as he calls it—the struggle for social and economic progress in South Viet Nam—that has most deeply stirred the Vice President’s imagination and energies. Kneading the air with freckled hands, arching his circumflex eyebrows and managing to speak about twice as fast as any Teletype can relay his words, he declares: “There is a new spirit there, because we have not only said that we wish to defeat aggression, but we wish to defeat social misery, and here is where we all come in. We are seeking to help build with the South Vietnamese a whole new society.”

For South Viet Nam’s long-term future, in Humphrey’s view, recent inspection tours by HEW’s John Gardner and Agriculture’s Orville Freeman—”with 14 of the outstanding agriculturalists of America”—promise even more potential benefit than any victory of arms. He chafes because congressional committees have a “thousand questions” for military commanders but have yet to call in Freeman or Gardner. In all fairness, reasons Humphrey, Congress should accord equal time to the field marshals of the other war. “Let’s learn something,” he says.

Leader. One of Humphrey’s greatest satisfactions is the increase in the number of nations that are giving South Viet Nam nonmilitary aid—and his own role in that increase as a roving envoy in Asia. Since his last trip, the number of cooperating countries has risen from 32 to 39, with contributions ranging from a West German hospital ship to Israeli agricultural and medical teams.

On the wing and in full, rasping voice, Humphrey maintains that he is crusading for the same causes that he has always championed. In early youth, he revered Woodrow Wilson’s concept of collective security (“the right of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life”). He fought isolationism in his native Midwest in the ’30s. From the first, he supported the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and NATO. To him, history is of one piece. “You can’t be a world leader,” he reasons, “and want to lead only in Western Europe and Latin America.” That distinction is particularly relevant to the U.N., which for the sake of its own credibility must eventually demonstrate that it is as much concerned about Asia as it is about Africa or Europe.

It was not until World War II that a President actively enlisted the No. 2 man’s talents. Yet, though Henry Wallace performed many chores for Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman during his 82 days as Vice President rarely saw F.D.R. and was not even informed of the atomic bomb’s development.

Dwight Eisenhower’s distaste for political maneuver brought Richard Nixon to the front as the top party campaigner. Eisenhower included Nixon in Cabinet meetings, and when the President was absent, Nixon presided over both Cabinet and National Security Council. John Kennedy brought Lyndon Johnson closer to security affairs, sent him on a series of good-will missions abroad. But there was no closeness between the two men. “What ever became of Lyndon?” was by summer 1963 a real, rather than a funny, question. Nonetheless, by Humphrey’s time the vice-presidency, as Historian James MacGregor Burns has written, had been largely “integrated into the structure of presidential power and decision-making.”

Prairie Populists. The biggest factor in Humphrey’s re-emergence is his unusually close personal rapport with L.B.J. Humphrey, 54, and Johnson, 57, are a pair of old prairie Populists with a common rural background, the instincts of teachers and a shared, lifelong devotion to the New Deal. When they arrived in the Senate on the same day in 1949, Humphrey was generally regarded as a brash young radical, a “black knight,” as he puts it, intent on tilting against the senatorial establishment ruled by Democrat Richard Russell and Republican Robert Taft.

He owed his national reputation to his fire-and-brimstone speech on behalf of a plank at the 1948 convention, which separated the Democrats from the Dixiecrats in short order. Senator Humphrey established himself as one of Washington’s most voluble men—Johnson was later to say that “the time it takes Humphrey to prepare a speech is the time it takes to draw a deep breath”—and he offended many of his seniors, including those who controlled committee assignments and the fate of the bills he introduced in profusion (the first was for a medicare program).

Cooler, shrewder and no great civil rights advocate at the time, Johnson was soon admitted to the Senate establishment. Despite early differences, the two men became close. “Johnson was the first Southern Senator I could talk to,” Humphrey said later. With Johnson as mentor—a facet of their relationship that has held constant—Humphrey learned to make his peace with his elders, to accept compromise and delay as the price of worthwhile legislation. Humphrey’s contribution to the partnership was to be Johnson’s link to the liberal wing in his drive for a commanding position in the Senate.

Even Humphrey’s initial opposition to Johnson’s successful bid for the Democratic Senate leadership in 1953 failed to disrupt their association. Johnson helped Humphrey onto the Foreign Relations Committee that same year. By 1964, Johnson was confident that his protege was the man “best qualified to assume the office of President, should that day come.” Nor was there any doubt in Humphrey’s mind that he wanted the vice-presidential nomination.

In on Everything. After a rip-roaring campaign, Humphrey soon learned that filling the vice-presidency could be less exhilarating than running for it. He was depressed by the President’s mordant musings over his mortality. “You be good to your Vice President,” Johnson said to one reporter. “He could be your President tomorrow morning.” After he had been in office a few days, Humphrey received a 2 a.m. call from the Secret Service informing him that Johnson had been taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital. Only an hour or so later did he learn that Johnson’s trouble was merely a bad cold.

A more chronic concern for Humphrey was just what his role in the Administration would be. Johnson gave his Vice President more responsibilities than he himself was given by Kennedy: chairmanship of the Cabinet task force on youth, honorary chairmanship of the advisory council to the Office of Economic Opportunity, responsibility for coordinating civil rights affairs. In addition, Humphrey inherited the chairmanship of the Space and Peace Corps councils and membership on the National Security Council. “If Hubert had to take over the Government to night,” says a White House hand, “there would not be one slip because of lack of information on Humphrey’s part. He is in on literally everything.”

Uriah Heep. Despite the ego-building assignments, there were inevitably frustrations and uncertainties. For the first session of the 89th Congress—the better part of 1965—Johnson wanted Humphrey to spend much of his time at the Capitol doing convoy duty on the passage of Great Society legislation. He had vast knowledge of the Senate and the issues, and excellent relations with many members of Congress. Yet Humphrey found, as Johnson had as Vice President, that his influence had largely evaporated. “I am in the club,” as he put it, “but no longer a member.” He had little to offer in ex change for votes. He could serve Johnson well as an intelligence officer in Congress but not as a field commander.

His Capitol Hill assignment, followed by Johnson’s gall-bladder operation and protracted convalescence, prevented Humphrey from doing much longdistance traveling during his first year. The press made a great show of counting how many trips he was not taking, starting with Winston Churchill’s funeral. Many Washingtonians had the impression that Johnson simply wanted Humphrey held on a short leash. One newspaper reported that some of Humphrey’s friends considered Johnson “the great emasculator,” and Humphrey himself added to his image of a White House Uriah Keep with occasional spasms of turgid praise for the boss.

Johnson, never exactly celebrated as an easy employer, periodically vented his spleen on the Vice President. As a function of his office, Humphrey maintained a busy speaking schedule, but Johnson was nettled by the newspaper space that Humphrey garnered as a result. “When I was Vice President,” Johnson said ominously, “I never held a press conference, and I don’t think the Vice President should.” Johnson grumbled that Humphrey’s staff was too large (it numbers 45) and too publicity-conscious. For his part, Humphrey pulled a few notable gaffes, such as his assurance before a labor group last year that the Administration was going to ask for an increase in the minimum wage. “I see by the papers,” rasped Johnson, who had no such intention at the time, “that I have a minimum-wage program.”

“Constituency of One.” Despite such minor strains, the Johnson-Humphrey relationship on the whole has been intimate, harmonious and creative. The Vice President has had to swallow his pride and deprecate his contributions to their partnership. “I am Vice President because he made me Vice President,” Humphrey has remarked. “There are no Humphrey policies, there are no Humphrey programs.” Humphrey usually imparts his ideas during his frequent private talks with Johnson over dinner or drinks rather than at formal meetings of the Cabinet or NSC. Johnson, comprising what Humphrey calls his “constituency of one,” listens earnestly to Humphrey’s expositions on Viet Nam, Latin America, farm programs, space exploration or any of a dozen other subjects. “He knows more about more things than any man up at the Capitol,” Johnson has said proudly.

Though the Admirable Crichton role is certainly what the contract calls for —plus an average 14-hour workday—Humphrey was unprepared for the public reaction to his first year’s performance. A Gallup poll in December reported that 58% of those interviewed said they did not want him as President. In a February survey matching him in a presidential race against Richard Nixon, Humphrey came out only two points ahead, 47% to 45%, with 8% undecided, whereas in March, Robert Kennedy led Nixon 54% to 41%. A slightly more encouraging Louis Harris poll last week concluded that most Americans (54% to 46%) have a “positive” opinion of Humphrey.

Hard Talk, Hard Looking. When the first Gallup poll was published, Johnson was completing his convalescence and the congressional session was already over, leaving Humphrey free for a foray abroad. His first swing around the Philippines, Formosa, South Korea and Japan was a rapid, if not vapid, display of “good will.” The real turning point for Humphrey came last January, when Johnson sent him to India for Lai Bahadur Shastri’s funeral. There he conferred privately with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin, and on his return gave the President a shrewd analysis of the Russian leader, whom he regards as strictly a team man. The two Asian jaunts stimulated speculation that the Administration was simply trying to boost Humphrey’s box-office ratings. “Operation Help Hubert,” sniffed Barry Goldwater, “the most valiant rescue effort since the evacuation of Dunkirk.”

Humphrey himself silenced the critics in February, when he took on his most challenging assignment to date. Dispatched by the President to confer with officials of nine Far Eastern countries as a follow-up on the Honolulu conference, he managed to combine a minimum of Hubertian high jinks with a maximum of hard talk and hard looking. On his return, Johnson saw a singular opportunity to deploy Humphrey’s talents in the increasingly confused domestic debate over Viet Nam.

“Jelly Bellies.” Inevitably, some liberals trumpeted forthwith that Humphrey had “sold out” his principles. The Progressive, a Wisconsin monthly founded by Robert La Follette in 1909, mourned the transformation of its old friend Humphrey into a “hatchet man,” arguing that he had “become more royalist than the crown” on the subject of Viet Nam. (Brandeis Professor John Roche, who, like Humphrey, is a charter member and sometime national chairman of Americans for Democratic Action and a supporter of the U.S. commitment to Viet Nam, compares such critics to John Birchers.) By contrast, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman William Fulbright, a perennial civil rights opponent, is now a darling of the liberals because of his unyielding criticism of Viet Nam policy.

Humphrey accepts abuse from old friends as part of the game, though not without private barbs at “nitpickers and jelly bellies.” Says he: “I’m not quite manageable on the Viet Nam issue, and a lot of my liberal friends resent it. But I don’t think a liberal proves he’s a liberal by sitting around and blinking his eyes at acts of terror. It just proves you’re a little blind.” (On the same point, Secretary of State Dean Rusk says: “Don’t ask me to call a man a liberal who wants to turn over to a totalitarian regime more than 14 million South Vietnamese.”) Humphrey knows, too, that if the war in Viet Nam drags on indefinitely, it could stir a reaction against the Administration and doom his own ambitions. “That,” says he, “is the price of responsibility.” While losing some liberal friends, Humphrey inevitably picks up supporters elsewhere in the political spectrum. There was more truth than comedy in a New Yorker cartoon last week that depicted two crusty country-club types at golf. Said one with obvious approval: “As Hubert Humphrey so aptly put it. . .”

Far from reflecting political expediency, Humphrey’s views on Viet Nam are a distillation of his oldest and most deeply held convictions. He learned to be an internationalist and social reformer from his father, a small-town South Dakota pharmacist who was bankrupted by the Depression. Young Hubert’s education in political science at the University of Minnesota was interrupted by financial troubles for six years. Before he finally received his degree magna cum laude, he had worked as a druggist, soda jerk, janitor and hog inoculator. After marrying a home-town girl, Muriel Buck, and fathering the first of their four children, Humphrey went to graduate school and wrote his master’s thesis on the New Deal. Settling in Minneapolis, where his first teaching job was for the WPA, he inevitably became involved in local politics.

Manon Springs. After running second in a mayoral election, Humphrey brought about a lasting merger of the rival Democratic and Minnesota Farm er-Labor parties. He won the mayoralty in his second try at age 34. A Minneapolis newspaper reported at the time: “He seems to be a wonderful and meteoric young man, bouncy and gay, built on springs, with a fierce face and pleasant young grin. He puts firecrackers under everything.” After two explosively successful terms as a reform mayor, Humphrey became the first Democrat ever popularly elected to the U.S. Senate from Minnesota.

On Capitol Hill, he promoted bills on every subject from water pollution to soybean research. “I like all subjects,” he said. “I can’t help it. It’s glands.” Though few got anywhere at first, many of Humphrey’s proposals later became law, usually under other men’s names. Besides urging a medicare program he fought for federal aid to education, proposed the Peace Corps four years before the Kennedy Administration embraced the idea, and recommended a youth conservation corps along the lines of the poverty program’s Job Corps. Humphrey’s successful appeals to send U.S. farm surpluses to India and Pakistan were the precursors of the Food-for-Peace program, which now represents 45% of all U.S. nonmilitary foreign aid.

Humphrey’s involvement in world affairs led to his appointment by Eisenhower as a delegate to the U.N., the World Health Organization and UNESCO. He traveled extensively, attended the Geneva disarmament talks, had his celebrated 81-hour Kremlin exchange with Nikita Khrushchev in 1958 and became chairman of the Sen ate disarmament subcommittee, whose recommendations helped pave the way for the 1963 nuclear test ban treaty. Appointed majority whip in 1961,

Humphrey finally had the power to influence landmark legislation, notably in civil rights, for which he had been working throughout most of his career.

No Letup. He became preoccupied with Viet Nam in early 1964. He conducted a private correspondence with Henry Cabot Lodge, an old friend from U.N. days, who was then in his first tour as Ambassador to Saigon. Humphrey picked the brains of Pentagon and State Department experts—he has little time for reading—and became an apostle of Edward Lansdale, a retired Air Force major general and counterguerrilla expert whose controversial theories on pacification are now being tested in Viet Nam.

Though it is his role as foreign-policy exponent that propels Humphrey into the headlines and TV screens these days, he has not let up on the myriad other duties of his office. On a typical day last week, he attended a White House meeting on agricultural policy, met individually with four Congressmen, presided over the Senate during the crucial vote on Viet Nam appropriations, conferred with Ceylon’s Prime Minister Senanayake, taped a television program, flew to New York for a two-hour private session with some magazine editors, then attended a dinner given by Eugenie Anderson, a fellow Minnesotan who is a member of the U.N. delegation. He was not in bed until 1:30 a.m., slept his normal six hours and by 9:15 a.m. had boarded his Air Force jet for the trip back to Washington. After shedding 15 Ibs. in two months of dieting, he appears to be in excellent trim (170 Ibs.).

Veepee Tepee. Humphrey divides his time in the capital between Lyndon Johnson’s old office off the Senate floor and an eight-room suite in the Executive Office Building downtown, a short walk from the White House. What remains of his private life he divides between two homes. He still lives in the suburban Washington house he bought for $28,000 in 1949. It is too small for official entertaining, and the Secret Service has taken over the basement.

Though successive administrations have discussed giving the Vice President an official residence, Humphrey’s quandary prompted Congress last week to authorize $750,000 for a mansion on the Naval Observatory grounds. Despite Republican gibes at the prospect of “a tepee for the veepee,” the bill passed the House, 197 votes to 184, and won unanimous approval in the Senate.

Unforgettable Experience. The other Humphrey house is on Minnesota’s Lake Waverly, where he horses around with his pet jackass Pietro, pots at clay pigeons with proficiency or, depending on the season, fishes for bluegill, picnics in the woods, sails, water-skis or plays classical recordings. He also has a reconditioned model A Ford like the one in which he and Muriel set off from Huron, S. Dak., 30 years ago on their honeymoon—and promptly ran down a cow. It is in Waverly that Humphrey is at his earthiest. Though he maintains earnestly that a “politician must never forget he’s just one of the folks,” his gregariousness reflects a human need rather than a political ploy. “He craves people around him,” says an acquaintance, “the way an alcoholic needs the bottle.”

His compulsive capers, the irrepressible ebullience, the inexhaustible stream of verbiage, have created for Humphrey what might be called a mystique gap. The Kennedys, by contrast, can seem downright frivolous on occasion—yet curiously enough, the Kennedy brothers have always managed to project a reserved and serious private persona. This may prove a sizable asset to Robert Kennedy if and when the time ever comes to challenge Humphrey directly for the presidential nomination.

As of now, the Senator from New York is treading warily, embellishing his national identity and reportedly building strength in local Democratic organizations across the U.S. He received unsolicited help last week from Senator Wayne Morse, who said that he would support Bobby for the presidency in 1968 provided he continued his criticism of the Administration on Viet Nam. The endorsement will not be fatal.

No one who was mowed down by the Irish mafia as Humphrey was in 1960 could forget the experience. Last week, after hearing rumors that Kennedy had contributed handsomely to several key gubernatorial campaigns, a Humphrey aide groaned: “Bolt the door, boys! Here they come again!”

In fact, the issues, circumstances and personalities could all change beyond recognition by 1972. It is even conceivable that by then both factions may decide that a Humphrey-Kennedy ticket is preferable to another Humphrey-Kennedy duel. And if Humphrey should succeed to the White House between elections, as eight Vice Presidents have done before him, the presidential-succession amendment (already ratified by 28 states) would empower him to appoint his own Vice President. His choice might well be a Kennedy.

Total Immersion. No introvert, Humphrey wastes little time brooding on this or any other problem that is patently beyond his control. He sees the road ahead as two parallel lines. First, in full awareness that his prospects for the foreseeable future rest almost entirely in Lyndon Johnson’s hands, he intends to discharge his vice-presidential duties precisely as the President prescribes. Second, Humphrey aims to maintain his own political links around the country, has already stumped enthusiastically on behalf of Democratic candidates and the party coffers, and will doubtless intensify his campaign efforts as the November elections—and future Novembers—near.

After the uncertainties and disappointments of last year, Humphrey is now surer than ever of himself and of Lyndon Johnson’s confidence. He is totally and contentedly immersed in his job. He is unalterably committed to being himself. And if his advisers complain that this course can only damage his standing in public-opinion surveys, he has an answer: “Harry Truman was a great President, but I never noted his mystique. I did observe he had a lot of character. What is important are your convictions, character and commitments.” Already, in the hyperactive second phase of his vice-presidency, Hubert Humphrey has clearly shown his own credentials.