With Due Regard to Mr. Reagan's Fabulists, The Transformative American Leader Born a Century Ago Was

[deminks]

Hubert Humphrey

http://www.thenation.com/blog/158328/due-regard-mr-reagans-fabulists-transformative-american-leader-born-century-ago-was-hube

Two thousand eleven marks the hundredth anniversary of the birth of a great American political leader who rose from humble beginnings to contend for the presidency of the United States. He was a man who knew electoral disappointment and triumph, but more meaningful than even the greatest of his victories is his association with an ideal that transformed first a political party and then a nation.

He was flawed, of course. He made mistakes and many of us disagreed with him. Some even mocked him as the optimistic and energetic campaigner, who had such a way with words, grew unsteady and weak.

Yet, for those who recalled and understood his remarkable accomplishments, he continues to inspire a warm affection that extends across lines of partisanship and ideology. And history has been steadily more generous to him, as the sifting and winnowing of time helps us all to recognize the importance—and the superiority—of those leaders who provided a boldness of language and action when it was most necessary for the nation.

I write, of course, of Hubert Humphrey, born May 27, 1911.

[ashling]

1. Here, here!

[madrchsod]

2. and who endorsed hubert in 1948?.........ronald reagan

he was a great, dare i say it?,progressive democrat

[hfojvt]

3. the happy warrior!!

I don't know how transformative he was, but he did fight for civil rights, a fight that eventually was won.

[Jim Lane]

6. He was definitely transformative. He put the Democratic Party on the side of civil rights.

From the Civil War through and including the New Deal, the Democratic Party was allied with the segregationists. The Faustian bargain was that the national Democrats would let them alone to do whatever they wanted to the blacks, as long as the "Solid South" delivered its votes for Democratic candidates.

Not surprisingly, many blacks supported the Republicans.

Humphrey was the key person in changing that. His famous speech at the 1948 Democratic Convention called upon the party "to get out of the shadow of states' rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights." With this impetus, the plank supporting civil rights was narrowly adopted. As a result, the Dixiecrats walked out of the Convention and ran Strom Thurmond for President. The transformation was complete by 1964 -- Humphrey, by then the Majority Whip in the U.S. Senate, rounded up the votes to break the Southern filibuster and pass the Civil Rights Act, leading to Thurmond's formal departure from the party.

Just think, if not for Hubert Humphrey, the Republicans might still be considered the party of civil rights. Jim DeMint and his ilk would all be Democrats today -- and if that doesn't make you revere Hubert Humphrey, then nothing will.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

4. I still have my Humphrey-Muskie buttons.

Am I old or what?

[hfojvt]

5. and indecisive too

they were not on the same ticket, were they?

okay, maybe they were. I was thinking of the McGovern-Muskie primary contest