Mike Mansfield

Michael Joseph "Mike" Mansfield ( born March 16, 1903 in New York; † 5 October 2001 in Washington, DC ) was an American politician. As a senator for the state of Montana was in office from 1953 to 1977. From 1961 he also served as Leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate; no person has not exercised these items over a longer period. After his career in the Senate he was eleven years as United States Ambassador to Japan.

Life

Mansfield was born in 1903 in New York, but his family moved a few years after his birth to Montana, where he grew up. From 1918 to 1922 he served in the U.S. armed forces, and later Mansfield graduated. Between 1933 and 1942 he taught history and political science at Montana State University. From the 1940s he increasingly developed political interest, what did happen to the Democratic Party it soon. In 1942 he ran for a seat in the House of Representatives of the United States, which he held from January 1943, having won the election.

After ten years of service in Congress, he successfully ran for a seat in the Senate of the United States, where Mansfield from January 1953 began his political activity. From the late 1950s he went there on a deputy leader of the Democrats. In January 1961, the former fraction leader Lyndon B. Johnson the office of U.S. Vice President transferee ( 1963 President), chose the Democratic Senate faction Mansfield in the post of majority leader in the Senate. He held that post until January 1977, had the longest period of service of a political group leaders of the majority party in the Senate at all. During the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, he proved himself as a proponent of the social legislation and the desegregation. However, in relation to the American involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s, he did not agree with the President and Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

In 1976, Mansfield announced his intention to retire from politics after 1958, 1964 and 1970 respectively confirmed as representative of the state Montana in the Senate. He retired as scheduled on January 3, 1977 out of the Congress. 1977 President Jimmy Carter offered him the post of U.S. ambassador to Japan, succeeding James D. Hodgson at what Mansfield accepted. In June 1977, he was appointed by Carter; In 1988 he resigned from the post and said goodbye to retire. In 1989 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the USA.

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