Everything about Henry Cabot Lodge Jr totally explained
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (
July 5,
1902 –
February 27,
1985) was a Republican
United States Senator from
Massachusetts, a
U.S. ambassador, and a candidate for
Vice President of the United States.
Early Life and Career
Lodge was born in
Nahant, Massachusetts. He came from a prominent political and artistic 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, the great-great-great-grandson of Senator
George Cabot, and the nephew of Congressman
Augustus Peabody Gardner. 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
Lodge was elected to the U.S.
Senate as a
Republican in 1936; he was the only Republican to win a Senate election that year. He was re-elected in 1942. In 1944 he resigned from the Senate to go on active service in the army in
World War II. He was the first Senator to do so since the
Civil War.
World War II
Lodge served with distinction during the war, rising to the rank of
lieutenant colonel. He was an officer of the 1st Armored Cavalry Division, a tank unit based in North Africa. At the end of the war in 1945 he served as an interpreter to General Jacob Devers in Devers' surrender negotiations with the German forces in his sector. 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 began to court 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 locked 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. In November 1952 Lodge was narrowly defeated by Kennedy. By an interesting coincidence, in 1916
Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr. had defeated Kennedy's grandfather,
John F. Fitzgerald, for the same Senate seat. In yet another coincidence, Lodge's son,
George C. Lodge was defeated in his bid for the seat by Kennedy's brother,
Ted Kennedy in
1962.
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." 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 Khruschev on a highly-publicized tour of the United States.
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. 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 as President, Nixon would name at least one African-American to a cabinet post.
Between 1961 and 1962 he was director 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. 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'd
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 (though still serving in Vietnam) was the surprise
write-in victor of 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'd 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) didn't 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.
Personal life
Lodge married Emily Sears (born 1905) in 1926. They had two sons,
George Cabot Lodge, who was born in 1927 and Henry Sears Lodge, born in 1930.
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. died in
1985 and was interred in the
Mount Auburn Cemetery in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Famous family
Further Information
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