On the Life and Values of Hubert H. Humphrey

This year is the centennial of Hubert Humphrey's birth. Not many Americans under 40, or even 50, remember him. He died of cancer in 1978, while still a senator, with characteristic joyful aplomb, and with the world sympathetically watching. Like Adlai Stevenson, or William Jennings Bryan, he was a liberal hero, a frequent presidential candidate, an orator and idealist admired by millions but whom destiny and tragedy blocked from higher office.

Humphrey shared his birth year with another idealistic, small town Midwesterner similarly renowned for charm and optimism, whose star was providentially rising, even in old age, just as Humphrey's was setting. Ronald Reagan and Humphrey were in fact good friends of many decades, starting in the 1940s, when both were active in Americans for Democratic Action and other liberal (and anti-communist) causes. Revealingly for both of them, they remained friends even after Reagan turned right starting in the 1950s. Humphrey even visited Reagan while he was governor. They almost could have run against each other, had Reagan snatched the Republican nomination from Richard Nixon in 1968, or if both had grabbed their respective parties' nominations in 1976. In both cases, the eventual presidential winners were less winsome personalities.