Hubert Humphrey

I saw a retrospective on the "Happy Warrior" tonight. It brought back a very tumultuous time in our history, particularly when it turned to the events of the (Lyndon) Johnson Administration. Humphrey had been the liberal hero for his entire career, and Johnson's point man in the Senate, without whom the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would never have been passed.

But Johnson's overweening ego, and Humphrey's loyalty to a president whose policy on Viet Nam he could not support but, as Vice-President, could not publicly oppose, doomed Humphrey's candidacy in 1968. I was left, after viewing the carnage of that Chicago summer, and then the fact of Nixon's win, with the thought that Humphrey had adhered to his principles right up to the point where his ambition to be president became powerful enough to silence him, and so in the end, ironically, cost him the presidency.

I switched off the set. "Poor Hubert," I thought. And then, "Poor us."