America's Forgotten Liberal - HHH

[groovedaddy]

(Back in my old Socialist days, I attended a labor march & rally in D.C. The rally was held in RFK stadium. Humphrey was one of the speakers. An audience member ran onto the grass, which was roped off. 2 security guards quickly tackled the guy but then one of the guards drew his pistol. There was a very loun "NO!" from the crowd and immediately, thousands rushed the field (I was among them).
We continued the rush up to the speakers platform. All of the speakers huddled at the back of the speaking platform. I'll never forget the look of terror on Humphrey's face! No one was hurt. - gd)

JANUARY was the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth, and the planet nearly stopped turning on its axis to recognize the occasion. Today is the 100th anniversary of Hubert H. Humphrey’s birth, and no one besides me seems to have noticed.

That such a central figure in American history is largely ignored today is sad. But his diminution is also, more importantly, an impediment to understanding our current malaise as a nation, and how much better things might have been had today’s America turned out less Reaganite and more Humphreyish.

Our forgotten man was born in eastern South Dakota to a pharmacist, a trade the son took over after the family moved to Minnesota. That biographical fact was the source for the derisive title of a 1968 biography, “The Drugstore Liberal” — that is to say, like a “drugstore cowboy,” a small-timer, not really a liberal at all, at a time, quite unlike our own, when a liberal reputation was a prerequisite for the Democratic presidential nomination. The unfairness was evident only in retrospect.

Humphrey made his national political debut in 1948 when, as mayor of Minneapolis and a candidate for Senate, he headed the Minnesota delegation to the Democratic National Convention. There he led a faction insisting the platform include a federal fair employment commission, a controversial goal of the civil rights movement.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/opinion/27Perlstein.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

[leveymg]

1. He and Johnson did themselves in by their resolute commitment to the Vietnam War

The anti-communist crusade had many victims, on all sides. But, Humphrey earned his stripes in the Battle Against the Red Menace as the leader of the faction of the Democratic machine that purged the real socialists from Wisconsin politics and unions during the 1946 elections and thereafter.

He became known as "The Happy Warrior", which had several meanings for him over time.

He was a Liberal Democrat, not a Progressive. That distinction remains to this day.

[Martin Eden]

2. The Happy Warrior was a casualty of the Vietnam War

Being LBJ's VP he was tied to that administration's war policy -- the opposition to which was violently on display in the streets of Chicago at the 1968 Democratic convention.

HHH was a good man caught up in our nation's worst tragedy since the Civil War. The promise of the 1960's was sacrificed on the altar of the Domino Theory and the Military Industrial Complex, and Republicans held the White House for 5 of the next 6 terms.

All that followed and that which we suffer today is a consequence of what we wasted and squandered and destroyed in that tragic military misadventure in Southeast Asia.

And our new longest war is still underway in south central Asia.

Collectively, we have learned nothing.

[Stuart G]

3. I read he would have pulled us out of Viet Nam if elected.

He was a far better person than his opponent. Nixon.

I worked for him in 1968. Given a week or two more, they say he would have won. History would have been far differnt,and I believe far better, if he had.

[Jim Lane]

4. Even during the campaign, he said he'd stop the bombing of the North.

The linked article is a valuable reminder of his many contributions.