Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.

Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. served as a United States Senator from Massachusetts, the Ambasasor to the United Nations, and the United States Ambassador to South Vietnam during a long and varied political career that included a run for the office of Vice president of the United States. Lodge was born one day after Independence Day 1902 into one of the most prestigious families in America, a High WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) patrician papoose with the proverbial silver spoon clenched in his mouth. His grandfather, the first Henry Cabot Lodge, was a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts from 1887 to 1893, when he was elevated by the General Court (Legislature) to serve as one of Massachusetts' federal senators. (Senators became elected by popular suffrage in 1912). Henry Cabot Lodge served in the Senate from 1893 to 1924. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.'s great-great-great grandfather also was a federal Senator from Massachusetts: George Cabot served as a Pro-Administration Federalistr from March 4, 1791 to June 9, 1796, when he resigned. Finally, Cabot Lodge, Jr.'s great-great grandfather John Davis was a two-term Governor of Massachusetts (1834-1835, 1841-1843), as a Whig. (His younger brother John Lodge, after giving up the vagabond life of an actor, was a US Congressman from Connecticut from 1947-1950, the Governor of Connecticut from 1951-55, and the U.S. Ambassador to Argentina, Spain and Switzerland, as well as a delegate to the United Nations.) Whiggery gave way to the Republican Party of former Whig Congressman Abraham Lincoln, and both Henry Cabot Lodges served in the U.S. Senate as Republicans, the Party of the WASP elite and Eastern Establishment. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1936 and reelected in 1942. He served in the U.S. Senate until 1944, when he resigned to go on active duty with the U.S. Army during World War II, becoming the first senator to do so since the 1861-65 War of the Rebellion (now know as the U.S. Civil War but contemporaneously derided as "Mr. Lincoln's War"). He served with distinction, and obtained the rank of lieutenant colonel before being demobilized. After returning to civil life, he was elected to Massachusetts' other seat in the U.S. Senate in 1946. He served until January 1953, having been beaten in his bid for a fourth term by Congressman John F. Kennedy, a victory relished by the Irish-American Kennedy, whose father Joseph P. Kennedy had been shunned by the Boston Establishment that Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. epitomized. Incoming Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower''s appointed Lodge, Jr. Ambassador to the United Nations, where he served until 1960, resigning to serve as Richard Nixon's running mate in the 1960 Presidential sweepstakes (counter-balancing a ticket headed by a West Coast Californian with a scion of the Establishment East). He lost again to J.F.K. and his running mate Lyndon B. Johnson, but J.F.K. appointed Lodge to the difficult job of Ambassador to South Vietnam in 1963, in which post he served when ARVN (Army of Vietnam) overthrew and assassinated South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem on November 2nd of that year. In the Cold War period, foreign policy generally was a bi-partisan affair. In early 1964, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. surprised the Reublican party when, as a write-in candidate, he won the G.O.P. primary in the neighboring state of New Hampshire. He defeated future Republican nominee Barry Goldwater, widely viewed as a reactionary who represented the anti-civil rights, anti-Big Government conservatives of the Sun Belt states. the Goldwater faction were deeply resentful of the moderate Eastern Establishment represented by Lodge and Nelson Rockefeller, the other declared candidate Lodge defeated in the New Hampshire primary, an Establishment that eventually be would be repudiated by Ronald Reagan's 1980 Presidential victory and the realignment of the Republican Party towards the once-solidly Democratic South. President Johnson re-appointed Lodge as ambassador to South Vietnam in 1965, and subsequently Lodge served L.B.J. as Ambassador-at-Large from 1967-68 and as Ambassador to West Germany from 1968-69. After his old running mate Richard Nixon was finally elected president, he appointed Lodge in 1969 to serve as head of the American negotiating team at the Paris peace talks. Later, he served Nixon and President Gerald Ford as Special Envoy to the Vatican from 1970 to 1977. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. died on February 27, 1985 and was buried at the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.