Mike Mansfield

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Portrait of Mike Mansfield
Signature of Mike Mansfield
Mansfield (left) in conversation with his Republican counterpart as Group leader Everett Dirksen

Michael Joseph "Mike" Mansfield (born March 16, 1903 in New York , † October 5, 2001 in Washington, DC ) was an American politician . As a senator for the state of Montana , he was in office from 1953 to 1977. From 1961 Mansfield served as parliamentary group leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate; no person has held this post for a long period of time. After his Senate career, he served as the United States Ambassador to Japan for eleven years .

Life

Mansfield was born in New York in 1903, but a few years after his birth his family moved to Montana , where he grew up. From 1918 to 1922 he served in the US armed forces, and later graduated from Mansfield. Between 1933 and 1942 he taught history and political science at Montana State University . From the 1940s he developed increasing political interest, which soon made him join the Democratic Party. In 1942 he applied for a seat in the House of Representatives of the United States , which he held from January 1943 after winning the election.

After ten years of service in Congress , he successfully ran for a seat in the United States Senate, where Mansfield began his political activities in January 1953. From the end of the 1950s he rose to the position of deputy leader of the Democrats. When the previous parliamentary group leader Lyndon B. Johnson took over the office of US Vice President (from 1963 president ) in January 1961 , the Senate Democratic parliamentary group elected Mansfield to the post of majority leader in the Senate. He held this office until January 1977 and thus had the longest tenure of a parliamentary group leader of the majority party in the Senate. During the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson he proved to be a supporter of his social legislation and desegregation . However, regarding American engagement in Vietnam in the 1960s, he disagreed with President and Secretary of State Dean Rusk .

In 1976, Mansfield announced plans to retire from politics after being reelected as representative of the State of Montana in the Senate in 1958, 1964 and 1970. He resigned from Congress on January 3, 1977. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter offered him the post of US Ambassador to Japan to succeed James D. Hodgson , which Mansfield accepted. In June 1977 he was appointed by Carter; In 1988 he resigned and went into retirement. In 1989 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom , the highest civilian honor in the United States.

Mike Mansfield died of heart failure in Washington on October 5, 2001, at the age of 98 . He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery .

literature

  • Oberdorfer, Don: Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat 2003, ISBN 1-58834-166-6 ..
  • Olson, Gregory A .: Mansfield and Vietnam, a Study in Rhetorical Adaptation . Michigan State University Press, 1995 ..
  • Valeo, Francis R .: Mike Mansfield, Majority Leader: A Different Kind of Senate, 1961-1976 . ME Sharpe, New York 1999, ISBN 0765604507 ..
  • Whalen, Charles and Barbara: The Longest Debate: A Legislative History of the 1964 Civil Rights Act . Seven Locks Press, Cabin John, Maryland 1985 ..

Web links

Commons : Mike Mansfield  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tribune Staff: 125 Montana Newsmakers: Mike Mansfield . In: Great Falls Tribune . Retrieved January 14, 2012.
  2. Information about Mike Mansfield on the website of the US Senate ( Memento of the original from September 28, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / senate.gov