HENRY CABOT LODGE, JR.

'Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.' (July 5, 1902 – February 27, 1985) was a United States Senator from Massachusetts, a U.S. ambassador, and a candidate for Vice President of the United States.

Contents

Career

Senator

World War II

Return to the Senate and the Drafting of Eisenhower

Ambassador to the UN

The 1960 Vice Presidential campaign

Ambassador to South Vietnam

"Walking for President"

Later career

Death and burial

Famous family

See also

References

External links

Career

Lodge was born in Nahant, Massachusetts, the son of George Cabot Lodge and Mathilda Elizabeth Frelinghuysen (Davis) Lodge. He was the grandson of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the great-great-great-grandson of George Cabot, and the nephew of Augustus Peabody Gardner.The Political Graveyard accessed 2007-07-06 After graduating from Harvard University cum laude in 1924, and working in the newspaper business, he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1931.

Senator

Elected to the Senate as a Republican in 1936, he served until 1944, when he resigned to go on active service in the army in World War II, the first senator to do so since the Civil War.

World War II

He served with distinction, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and was elected once again to the Senate in 1946, as the Republicans captured both houses of the Congress.

Return to the Senate and the Drafting of Eisenhower

In late 1951, Lodge began to court General Dwight D. Eisenhower to run for the Republican presidential nomination. When Eisenhower finally consented, Lodge served as his campaign manager, even though this meant that Lodge had little time to campaign for his own reelection to the Senate that November against an ambitious young Congressman, John F. Kennedy. That fall, he was defeated in his bid for reelection by Kennedy.

Ambassador to the UN

In 1953, he was named U.S. ambassador to the United Nations by President Eisenhower, with his office elevated to Cabinet level rank. In contrast to his grandfather (who had been a principal opponent of the UN's predecessor, the League of Nations), Lodge was supportive of the UN as an institution for promoting peace. As he famously said about it, "This organization is created to prevent you from going to hell. It isn't created to take you to heaven."^[1] Since that time, no one has even approached his record of seven years as ambassador to the UN.

The 1960 Vice Presidential campaign

Lodge left the ambassadorship during the election of 1960 to run for Vice President on the Republican ticket headed by Richard M. Nixon. The duo lost the election to Lodge's old foe, Kennedy, in a razor-thin vote. Some conservative Republicans charged that Lodge had cost the ticket votes, particularly in the South, by his pledge (made without Nixon's approval) that the Nixon cabinet would name at least one African-American to a secretary's post.

Ambassador to South Vietnam

Kennedy appointed Lodge to the position of Ambassador to South Vietnam, which he held from 1963 to 1964. The new ambassador quickly determined that Ngo Dinh Diem, President of the Republic of Vietnam, was both inept and corrupt, and that South Vietnam was headed for disaster unless Diem either reformed his administration or was replaced. During that time, Lodge quietly spearheaded a coup by South Vietnamese military officers to overthrow Diem, in a scheme code-named Operation Bravo Two. Yet, at the same time, Lodge offered the Vietnamese President and his brother asylum in the United States in fear of their lives. But Diem was assassinated by conspirators before he could accept Lodge's offer. By most accounts, Lodge was unaware in advance that the coup leaders intended to murder Diem, believing instead that they would exile him.
But while the coup toppled the Diem regime, it sparked a rapid succession of leaders in Vietnam, each unable to rally and unify their people, and each in turn overthrown by someone new. As the situation in the region deteriorated, Lodge suggested to the State Department that South Vietnam be made to relinquish its independence, and it be made a protectorate of the United States so as to bring governmental stability. The alternatives, he warned, were either increased military involvement by the U.S., or else total abandonment of South Vietnam by America.

"Walking for President"

In 1964, Lodge was the surprise write-in victor of the Republican New Hampshire primary, defeating declared candidates Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller. His entire campaign was organized by a small band of political amateurs working independently of the ambassador, and Lodge, believing they had little hope of winning him any delegates, did nothing to aid their efforts. But when they scored the New Hampshire upset, Lodge, along with the press and Republican Party leaders, suddenly began to seriously consider his candidacy. Many observers remarked on the situation's similarity to 1952, when Eisenhower had unexpectedly defeated the late Senator Robert A. Taft, then leader of the Republican Party's conservative faction. However, Lodge (who refused to become an open candidate) did not fare as well in later primaries, and Goldwater ultimately won the nomination.

Later career

He was re-appointed ambassador to South Vietnam by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, and served thereafter as Ambassador at Large (1967-1968) and Ambassador to West Germany (1968-1969). In 1969, he was appointed by President Richard Nixon to serve as head of the American team at the Paris peace negotiations, and he served as Special Envoy to the Vatican from 1970 to 1977.

Death and burial

On his passing in 1985, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. was interred in the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Famous family

★ Henry Cabot Lodge was his grandfather

★ George Cabot was a great-great-great grandfather

★ John Davis was a great-great grandfather

★ Elijah Hunt Mills was a great-great grandfather

★ John Davis Lodge was a brother

★ Augustus P. Gardner was an uncle

See also

★ William Lederer who co-authored ''The Ugly American''

★ Henry Cabot Lodge, his grandfather

★ List of U.S. political appointments that crossed party lines

References

1. Bartleby, Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations, compiled by James B. Simpson. 1988, news summaries January 28, 1954

External links

★ Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress