Nation: The Man Who Quit Kicking the Wall

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Humphrey also sanded down the sharp, brassy edges of his personality that so often rankled his colleagues. In the process, he became one of the Senate's most persuasive cloakroom negotiators, worked as one of Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson's most trusted lieutenants, and was named majority whip in 1961 when Lyndon left the Senate and Mike Mansfield moved up to become majority leader. Nowhere was Humphrey's negotiating skill better demonstrated than during passage of this year's civil rights bill.

In the end, it was Minority Leader Everett Dirksen who, with Democratic cooperation, practically wrote the civil rights bill. But as floor manager for the bill, Humphrey took on the thankless task of recruiting Republican support with judicious compromise, fending off hot-eyed civil-rightsers who might have upset the cart by demanding all or nothing, and at the same time keeping an uneasy peace with Southern Democrats even while leading the fight to invoke cloture against their filibuster. Like a man with four hands, Humphrey did it all, smoothly avoided antagonism, and in the process added new inches to his stature among his colleagues.

Onward & Downward. But mere Senate stature has never been enough for Hubert Humphrey. The druggist's son has always wanted to be President, or, failing that, at least Vice President of the U.S. In 1956 he thought he had been promised the vice-presidential nomination by Adlai Stevenson. Instead, Adlai declared that nomination wide open, told the delegates in Chicago to make up their own minds. Caught unprepared, Humphrey got lost in the sudden struggle between Estes Kefauver and John F. Kennedy. But he kept up his own forlorn fight, buttonholing whoever would listen, shaking hands until the last of the delegates streamed by him to take their seats and nominate Kefauver. Thereupon Hubert Humphrey burst into tears.

Not long afterward, Humphrey vowed he would never again seek the vice presidency, proclaimed that his Senate seat was far too rewarding to leave for a job "in which you would stand around waiting for someone else to catch cold." Instead, he decided, it would be far better if someone else did the standing around. In 1960 he became the first major Democratic candidate to announce for the presidency, but disappointment still dogged Humphrey. He lost the primary in his neighboring state of Wisconsin to Kennedy, was trounced again in West Virginia. In a sorrowful scene in Charleston, Humphrey stepped before television cameras to announce that "I am no longer a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination." Folk Singer Jimmy Wofford twanged at his guitar, struck up a final woebegone chorus of "Vote for Hubert Humphrey, he's your man and mine . . ." Once more, tears came to Humphrey's eyes. Next morning the Senator emerged from the Ruffner Hotel to take his leave of West Virginia. On his campaign bus there was a parking ticket.