Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Cabot_Lodge,_Jr.

Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (July 5, 1902 – February 27, 1985) was a 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.

Early life and career

Lodge was born in Nahant, Massachusetts. He came from the prominent political and artistic Lodge family in Massachusetts. He was the son of the poet George Cabot Lodge and Mathilda Elizabeth Frelinghuysen (Davis) Lodge. He was the grandson of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and when his father died in 1909, the senator would play an important role in raising him. He was also the great-great-great-grandson of Senator George Cabot, and the nephew of Congressman Augustus Peabody Gardner. He attended Middlesex School and graduated from St. Albans School. He then attended Harvard University, graduating cum laude in 1924, worked in the newspaper business, and was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1931.

Senator

Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. was elected to the United States Senate as a Republican in November 1936. He defeated Governor James Michael Curley in an open Senate contest.

World War II

Lodge served with distinction during the war, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. During the war he saw two tours of duty: The first in 1942, while also serving as a U.S. Senator, and the second in 1944-45 after resigning from the Senate.

The first period was a continuation of Lodge's longtime service as an Army Reserve Officer. Lodge was a major in the 1st Armored Division, a tank unit based in North Africa that was fighting with British tank troops in Egypt and Libya. In that position Lodge observed the first U.S. armed forces that made actual contact with the Germans on land. That tour ended in July 1942, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered congressmen serving in the military to resign one of the two positions, and Lodge, who chose to remain in the Senate, was ordered by Secretary of War Henry Stimson to return to Washington.

After returning to Washington and winning re-election in November 1942, Lodge served the first year of his new Senate term, but then resigned his Senate seat on February 3, 1944 in order to return to active duty, the first U.S. Senator to do so since the Civil War. He saw action in Italy and France. Promoted to a lieutenant colonel, in the fall of 1944 Lodge single-handedly captured a four-man German patrol. By March 1945 he was decorated with the French Legion of Honor and Croix de Guerre with palm. At the end of the war in 1945 he served as a liaison and interpreter to U.S. Sixth Army commander General Jacob Devers in Devers' surrender negotiations with the German forces in western Austria.

After the war Lodge returned to Massachusetts and resumed his political career.

Return to the Senate and the drafting of Eisenhower

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.[8] 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.

Ambassador to the United Nations

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." 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.

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 Nixon. The duo lost the election to Lodge's old foe, Kennedy, in a razor-thin vote. Nixon chose Lodge as his running mate in the hope that Lodge's presence on the ticket would force Kennedy to divert time and resources to securing his Massachusetts base, but Kennedy won his home state handily. Nixon also felt that the name Lodge had made for himself in the United Nations as a foreign-policy expert would prove useful against the relatively inexperienced Kennedy. The choice of Lodge proved to be controversial, as some conservative Republicans charged that Lodge had cost the ticket votes, particularly in the South, by his pledge (made without Nixon's approval) that if elected, Nixon would name at least one African-American to a cabinet post. Between 1961 and 1962 he was the first director-general of the Atlantic Institute.

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.

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, while still Ambassador to South Vietnam, was the surprise write-in victor in the Republican New Hampshire primary, defeating declared presidential 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 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 delegation at the Paris peace negotiations, and he served occasionally as envoy to the Holy See from 1970 to 1977.

Personal life

On July 1, 1926, Lodge married Emily Esther Sears (born July 15, 1905 and died on June 6, 1992 as the remarried Emily Clark), daughter of Dr. Henry Francis Sears (1862–1942), also a Harvard alum, and Jean Struthers. They had two sons, George Cabot Lodge, who was born in 1927, and Henry Sears Lodge, born in 1930. He was also a member of the Grand Lodge of A.F. and A. M. of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Lodge died in 1985 and was interred in the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts 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