In addition to his legislative prowess, Humphrey in many ways personified the Cold War consensus. He burst onto the national political scene as a fire-breathing liberal zealot, “the aboriginal New Dealer,” whose impassioned speech electrified the 1948 Democratic convention and persuaded the delegates to adopt a tough civil rights platform without regard for the Dixiecrat political secessionists.[3] He was a founder of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), served as its chairman in 1949, and was a perennial vice chairman until 1964.[4] Throughout his years in the Senate, he focused on issues of social welfare, fair employment, and civil rights and displayed an idealism that earned him a devoted following among those on the left. To be sure, Humphrey was a political animal, a partisan Democrat who loved a good fight. After the 1956 election, for example, he declared that Democrats would be “digging their own graves” if they did not adopt a militantly liberal position—this despite his willingness to work closely with the Southern leadership of Lyndon Johnson in the Senate to work out a “middle way.” That approach had cost him at least some of his progressive following, which complained that Humphrey was “induced into compromises regarded as treasonable by strong left-wingers.”[5] Yet he gained widespread respect on both sides of the aisle for his forceful advocacy for the issues he embraced, his integrity, and his (often-long-winded, rapid-fire) eloquence. His consistently cheerful demeanor garnered him the nickname “The Happy Warrior.”[6]
Humphrey’s loquaciousness was legendary. In a single week in February 1958, for example, he spoke on the Senate floor on (among other topics) disarmament and the recession (repeatedly), dairy supports, disaster loans, trade development, antitrust laws, British and French politics, international civil aviation, Lithuanian independence, North African policy, regulatory agencies, unemployment, Adlai Stevenson, Soviet-American cultural exchanges, space exploration, and the federal reserve system. One newspaper account of his extensive remarks that month noted that he spent more time speaking in the Senate than most of his Democratic colleagues combined—an astonishing statistic. His rhetorical excesses also led to many good-
natured jokes. Henry Kissinger, for example, would often describe how when Humphrey began speaking at the dedication of a grove of trees named in his honor in Israel, the trees were only knee-high. By the time he finished, however, he was speaking in the shade.[7]
At the same time, Humphrey's ardent anticommunism rivaled that of anyone on the right. In fact, opposition to communism would become one of Humphrey’s defining political positions throughout his career and would actually cause problems for him with some of his supporters on the left. As mayor of Minneapolis from 1945 to 1948, he led the successful fight to drive communists out of the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party that had elected him. Like several other liberal internationalist senators in the Democratic Party, Humphrey occasionally went “overboard in trumpeting [his] strong opposition to communism.” His sponsorship of the Communist Control Act in August 1954 is a prime example. Humphrey supported an amendment to the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950 to outlaw the Communist Party in the United States as the agent of a hostile foreign power. His position on the bill dismayed many of his liberal friends, who characterized the legislation as a “low grade partisan maneuver” that would “widen the witch hunt.” The senator’s goal was “to thwart the Republican attempt to seize the high political ground on anti-Communism” since he was “tired of reading headlines about being ‘soft’ toward communism.”[8] Humphrey most assuredly was not. Rather, the Minnesotan was “as immersed in the politics and ideology of the Cold War as any Democrat,” a committed cold warrior who hounded communists at home and abroad.[9]
Given Humphrey's unyielding opposition to both domestic and international communism, it is not surprising that Vietnam was far from the first foreign policy issue on which he had an interest and influence. Even before he won election to public office, Humphrey displayed a keen interest in international affairs. As he rose to prominence in Minnesota, he spoke to a wide variety of audiences about the importance of the League of Nations, collective security, and taking a strong stand for democracy against fascism.[10] He overcame an initial reluctance to go overseas—rooted in his concern for his political reputation in Minnesota—and traveled extensively in the search for solutions to U.S. foreign policy dilemmas, turning himself into a nationally and internationally recognized figure. During the early Cold War, he became perhaps the leading Democratic spokesperson in the Senate on a wide range of international issues during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations.
As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC), Humphrey not only employed his expertise in international affairs but also served as his party’s primary counterpoint to the incendiary rhetoric and brinksmanship of Republican Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.[11] In an interview in 1971, Humphrey recalled that Lyndon Johnson had asked him to serve on the SFRC after the 1952 election. According to Humphrey, LBJ “said the reason he wanted us over there—he was going to put Mansfield and myself—he said he wanted some new young blood on the committee. Secondly, he said that he was worried about John Foster Dulles becoming Secretary of State, and he wanted to have some good scrappers, battlers, over on that committee.”[12] The senator challenged Dulles consistently throughout the 1950s, which only enhanced Humphrey’s national profile on foreign policy issues. Humphrey’s prodigious intellect and interests led him to engage with a wide range of policies, such as arguing for Ukrainian independence, pushing for a foreign aid agreement with Sri Lanka, and championing self-determination for the nations behind the Iron Curtain.
Humphrey also seized on opportunities to engage world leaders, utilizing his experience, position, and personality to further U.S. policy goals and his own political fortunes. An incident in 1958 is both instructive and indicative of Humphrey’s international acumen. A “torrential talker,” he spent over eight hours in an interview with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in December 1958 that “left interpreters reeling.”[13] In the meeting, Humphrey sparred with the Soviet leader on a variety of topics related to Soviet-American relations and the Cold War. At one point, the Soviet leader asked Humphrey where his hometown was. When Humphrey replied Minneapolis, Khrushchev drew a thick blue circle around the city on a map and said, “I will have to remember to have that city spared when the missiles start flying.” The senator reciprocated, asking Khrushchev where he was from. When the premier answered Moscow, Humphrey quickly retorted, “Sorry, Mr. Khrushchev, but I can’t do the same for you. We can’t spare Moscow.” Both laughed loudly.[14] The next day, Humphrey dictated a long memorandum for the Department of State; upon his return to Washington, D.C., he briefed Undersecretary of State Christian Herter, CIA Director Allen Dulles, and other officials on Khrushchev’s comments and desire for a summit meeting with Eisenhower.[15] The publicity and notoriety that Humphrey gained from this conversation with the Soviet leader helped pave the way for his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960.
Humphrey’s steadfast anticommunism, uncommon even among the most ardent cold warriors in the Democratic Party, informed his approach to international issues. Yet if one looks beneath the surface, it is easy to discern a duality in Humphrey’s approach to foreign affairs. While he supported the Truman and Eisenhower Doctrines and the Marshall Plan as part of U.S. containment strategy, he believed strongly in peace and the brotherhood of man. He supported Truman’s decision to fight in Korea but did so primarily because the president chose to act through the auspices of