Senators, Ambassadors, Governors, Republican Nominee for Vice President (1950s Interviews)

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• published: 07 Oct 2012
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Interviewees: A. S. Mike Monroney, Democratic Party politician from Oklahoma Estes Kefauver, American politician from Tennessee Everett Dirksen, American politician of the Republican Party Fred Andrew Seaton, United States Secretary of the Interior during Dwight Eisenhower's administration Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., Republican United States Senator from Massachusetts and a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, South Vietnam, West Germany, and the Holy See (as Representative). He was the Republican nominee for Vice President in the 1960 Presidential election. Herbert H. Lehman, Democratic Party politician from New York. He was the 45th Governor of New York from 1933 to 1942, and represented New York in the United States Senate from 1950 to 1957. Everett McKinley Dirksen (January 4, 1896 -- September 7, 1969) was an American politician of the Republican Party. He represented Illinois in the U.S. House of Representatives (1933--1949) and U.S. Senate (1951--1969). As Senate Minority Leader for over a decade, he played a highly visible and key role in the politics of the 1960s, including helping to write and pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Open Housing Act of 1968, both landmarks of civil rights legislation. He was also one of the Senate's strongest supporters of the Vietnam War and was known as "The Wizard of Ooze" for his oratorical style. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_Dirksen In 1946 Lodge defeated Democratic Senator David I. Walsh and returned to the U.S. Senate. He soon emerged as a spokesman for the moderate, internationalist wing of the Republican Party. In late 1951, Lodge helped persuade General Dwight D. Eisenhower to run for the Republican presidential nomination. When Eisenhower finally consented, Lodge served as his campaign manager and played a key role in helping Eisenhower to win the nomination over Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, the candidate of the party's conservative faction. In the fall of 1952 Lodge found himself fighting in a tight race for re-election with John F. Kennedy, then a Congressman from Massachusetts. Due to his efforts in helping Eisenhower, Lodge had neglected his own Senate campaign. In addition, some of Taft's supporters in Massachusetts were angered when Lodge supported Eisenhower, and they defected to Kennedy's campaign.[10] In November 1952 Lodge was narrowly defeated by Kennedy; Lodge received 48.5% of the vote to Kennedy's 51.5%. This was neither the first nor last time a Lodge faced a Kennedy in a Massachusetts election: In 1916 Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr. had defeated Kennedy's grandfather John F. Fitzgerald for the same Senate seat, and Lodge's son, George C. Lodge, was defeated in his bid for the seat by Kennedy's brother Ted in the 1962 election for John F. Kennedy's unexpired term. In February 1953, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. 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."[11] Since that time, no one has even approached his record of seven years as ambassador to the UN. During his time as UN Ambassador, Lodge supported the Cold War policies of the Eisenhower Administration, and often engaged in debates with the UN representatives of the Soviet Union. In 1959 he escorted Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev on a highly-publicized tour of the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Cabot_Lodge,_Jr.