Arthur H. Vandenberg

Arthur H. Vandenberg

Arthur Hendrick Vandenberg (born March 22, 1884 in Grand Rapids , Michigan , † April 18, 1951 ) was an American politician . As a member of the Republican Party , he represented the state of Michigan in the US Senate from 1928 until his death in 1951 . From 1947 to 1949 he also served as President pro tempore of the Senate.

Life

Previous career

Vandenberg came from the city of Grand Rapids in the state of Michigan, where he grew up in relatively simple circumstances. After attending public schools, he studied law at the University of Michigan . He graduated in 1901. After graduation, he lived in New York City until 1906 , where he worked for Collier’s magazine . Even after his return to Michigan, Vandenberg stayed in the newspaper business. Among other things, he worked for the daily newspaper Grand Rapids Herald , where he met former US Senator William Alden Smith . Smith promoted Vandenberg's beginning political career, which has since joined the Republican Party .

US Senate career

Oil painting by Arthur Vandenberg

In March 1928, Senator Woodbridge Nathan Ferris died in office. For the remainder of the term, Vandenberg was named a new Senator by Governor Fred W. Green . He was sworn in on March 31, 1928 in this office. In November 1928, he easily won the first regular Michigan Senatorial election. Re-elections to Congress followed in 1934, 1940 and 1946 . After taking up his first full term of six years in March 1929, he initially supported the policies of Republican President Herbert Hoover , and later criticized his crisis management after the start of the Great Depression . After Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in 1933, he also initially supported some of the New Deal's measures . From around 1935, however, Vandenberg was one of the greatest critics of the reform program initiated by Roosevelt. However, since the Democrats had clear majorities in Congress, the president did not need the approval of the Republicans.

In the Senate, Vandenberg was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee . Was a strong proponent of neutral US foreign policy in the 1930s . With the beginning of the Second World War he gave up his isolationist attitude and supported the policies of the Roosevelt administration. In his most important speech in the Senate, which he delivered on January 10, 1945, Vandenberg explicitly acknowledged the internationalism of American foreign policy . After the beginning of the Cold War , he took over the chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs Committee. In this role he worked closely with the government of President Harry S. Truman ( Truman's cabinet ), although domestically he was critical of the progressive agenda of the White House . Vandenberg agreed to the Marshall Plan and saw himself as a proponent of the Truman Doctrine . When, as a result of the 1946 congressional elections, the Republicans regained a majority in both chambers of the US Congress for the first time since the early 1930s , Vandenberg, now the longest serving senator in his party, was elected Senate President pro tempore . He took up this office when the 80th Congress met in January 1947. In the successor to the President, he found himself in second place after the Speaker of the House of Representatives due to a vacancy in the office of Vice President . However, after the Democrats again won a congressional majority in the course of the 1948 elections, he had to give up the office of Senate President again to his predecessor Kenneth McKellar in January 1949 .

Ambitions on the presidency

Senator Vandenberg (right) greets the newly elected Congressman and later US President Gerald Ford in 1949

Vandenberg was first traded as a potential candidate for his party in the 1940 presidential election . In his home state of Michigan, in particular, many were positive about running for the White House. At first it all seemed to boil down to a match between Vandenberg, Liberal District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey, and Conservative Senator Robert A. Taft . But in the end, the liberal and charismatic perceived lawyer Wendell Willkie was able to prevail, who then had to admit defeat to the incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt in the actual election. Vandenberg had withdrawn his application at the Republican nomination convention after the fifth of a total of seven ballots. Four years later, in the 1944 election , Vandenberg's candidacy was not up for discussion.

In the 1948 presidential election he was again the preferred candidate ("Favorite Son") of the party congress delegation from Michigan, even if, unlike in 1940, he did not actively apply for the highest office in the state. The governor of New York Thomas E. Dewey was then nominated as the top Republican candidate, who was defeated by President Truman in the subsequent election. In 1948, Vandenberg was also the most prominent campaigner of the later US President Gerald Ford , who won his seat in the House of Representatives for the first time in this election and thus began his political career. Ford, like Vandenberg, came from Grand Rapids.

death

Vandenberg died on 18 April 1951 at the age of 67 years to cancer ; almost two years before the end of his term of office. Blair Moody ended the legislature after Governor G. Mennen Williams named him the new Senator. The former senator finds his final resting place in Oak Hill Cemetery in Grand Rapids.

Private

Vandenberg married his childhood sweetheart Elizabeth Watson in 1906, with whom he had three children. After his wife's surprisingly early death in 1917, he remarried in 1918. The marriage to his second wife Hazel Whitaker remained childless. Vandenberg was also an active Freemason .

literature

• C. David Thompkins: Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg: The Evolution of a Modern Republican, 1884-1945. Michigan State University Press, 1970
• Arthur H. Vandenberg Jr., Joe Alex: The Private Papers of Senator Vandenberg. Westport, Conn .: Greenwood Press 1952 (reprinted 1974)

Web links

Commons : Arthur H. Vandenberg  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Arthur H. Vandenberg in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Newspaper article about Arthur H. Vandenberg in the press kit of the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Biography of the Encyclopedia Britannica (English)
2. ^ Wayne S. Cole: And Then There Were None! . In Thomas J. McCormick, Walter LaFeber (eds.): Behind the Throne: Servants of Power to Imperial Presidents, 1898-1968 . Univ. of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1993, ISBN 978-0-2991-3740-3 , pp. 247, 248
3. ↑ Full text of the speech and text on the context of the speech on www.senate.gov