By The Missoulian, Editor’s note: Several years ago, when Mike Mansfield was about to retire as ambassador to Japan, the Missoulian launched a series of articles about his career. The series resulted from studying his private papers in University of Montana archives, and from Missoulian interviews and correspondence with former presidents, former presidential candidates and many others. This summarized version of that series was published in the early 1990s, as Mansfield planned to return to Missoula to deliver a speech. It was his last public appearance in Missoula. It was a little before noon when Mike Mansfield got the call from president-elect John F. Kennedy. “Sen. Kennedy called me and told me that he wanted me to take the majority leadership. I told him I didn’t want to take it,” Mansfield wrote in notes that now are stored among his private papers in University of Montana archives. “He insisted that I take it,” Mansfield’s notes continue, describing the conversation that helped launch his long career as Senate majority leader. “He had talked it over with Johnson and others, and he wanted me to do it. I told him that because of his recently acquired position as president-elect, he has put me into a very delicate situation — that I didn’t want the job but I would consider it and let him know.” It came as no surprise that Kennedy wanted Mansfield as the Senate majority leader. Indeed, that was one reason Lyndon Johnson had been chosen as Kennedy’s running mate. Johnson was the Democratic leader in the Senate, and Mansfield was next in line. Kennedy wanted Mansfield in the key leadership post, according to Kenneth O’Donnell, a top presidential aide under both Kennedy and Johnson. In memoirs published after Johnson retired, O’Donnell said he had been shocked by Kennedy’s choice of Johnson as the vice presidential candidate. “I’m thinking of something else — the leadership of the Senate,” Kennedy told O’Donnell during a huddle at the 1960 Democratic convention. “If we win, it will be by a small margin, and I won’t be able to live with Lyndon Johnson as the leader of a small Senate majority. Did it occur to you that if Lyndon becomes vice president, I’ll have Mike Mansfield as the Senate leader — somebody I can depend on?” And depend on Mansfield he did. So did many others during Mansfield’s career as Senate majority leader throughout the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford administrations, and during his subsequent career as U.S. ambassador to Japan under the Carter and Reagan presidencies. “Mansfield would have been a strong and effective president, but he never had any interest in it,” said former Sen. George McGovern. “I tried to get him to be my vice-presidential running mate and he wouldn’t hear of it. “He was a person who saw himself as a Montana senator, rather than a national figure. … By and large, he was just a first-class gentleman, a man of unusual integrity and intelligence. Certainly, one of the best in the Senate in the years I was there,” McGovern said. Jack Valenti, one of President Johnson’s closest aides, said Mansfield was “the single most prescient man” on the Vietnam issue. He described Mansfield as “a very shy and modest man” who would “move into the background.” “He wasn’t pushing for the spotlight. He simply did his work every day, in the most flawlessly competent manner one could imagine,” Valenti said. Former Sen. Barry Goldwater called Mansfield “one of the finest people I’ve ever known.” Henry Kissinger, in writing his memoirs, said Mansfield was “one of that small band of patriots who have made our maddeningly delicate system of checks and balances actually work.” “He was just Mike,” said Joe Dugal, who worked for 30 years at the Oxford, a Missoula bar and gambling spot where the Senate majority leader sometimes stopped for a quiet meal at the lunch counter. “All the regulars knew him,” Dugal said. “People just had a feeling about him that you can’t explain. He was just the kind of person that you were glad was your friend.” Mansfield was born in New York in 1903. His mother died while he was a child, and he was sent to Montana, where relatives owned a Great Falls grocery store. He grew up tough, dropping out of school in the eighth grade and eventually lying about his age so he could join the Navy when he was 14 years old. He went from one branch of service to another, serving stints in the Navy, Army and Marines by the time he was 20. While in the Marines, he was briefly in China as part of a contingent sent to help protect American and British interests and settlements that were thought to be endangered by civil war. He was fascinated by what he saw there, and it gave rise to a lifelong interest in the Far East. When Mansfield left the Marines, he moved to Butte and found work in copper mines. He met a school teacher, Maureen Hayes, whom he later married. She urged him to get out of the mines by completing his education. She got him to take a high-school equivalency test, and after they were married she cashed in some life insurance to help send him to school. He studied at the Montana School of Mines in Butte, then later at the University of Montana in Missoula, where he got a master’s degree and was hired by the university to teach the history of the Far East and Latin America. His political aspirations began to surface throughout the last half of the 1930s, again encouraged by his wife. He became an activist in the university teachers’ union, and toward the end of the decade he was lining up public-speaking engagements with an eye on the 1940 congressional election. Mansfield came in third in the Democratic primary of 1940, and his party’s nominee lost to Jeannette Rankin, already well-known as the first woman to serve in Congress. Rankin had been elected to the House in 1916 and cast an unpopular vote against entering World War I. It cost her a Senate nomination at the end of her first term. In 1940, she again ran as an isolationist, and became the only member of Congress to vote against declaring war after the Pearl Harbor attack. The anti-war stance again cost her a congressional career. She didn’t seek re-election in 1942, creating an opening that helped Mansfield wedge himself into Congress as war blazed in a part of the world that Mansfield had made an academic speciality. Mansfield spent a decade in the House, then was elected to the Senate in 1952. Four years later, he became the Democratic whip; he initially turned down the job, but eventually accepted it at the insistence of Lyndon Johnson, the Senate majority leader. When Johnson became vice president, Mansfield became the majority leader. As Senate majority leader, Mansfield had a style much different from Johnson’s. Johnson sought power, then used it. He kept the Senate under rein, and decided which legislation would be allowed to advance. Mansfield thought the Senate should have no boss. He thought it was the majority leader’s duty to help each member get as much as possible out of a Senate term. “Lyndon Johnson’s objective was to dominate the Senate. Mike’s was to lead a Senate of equals,” said former Sen. Edmund Muskie. “You couldn’ t get two guys with more contrasting styles than they had. Johnson, in his leadership of the Senate, used a heavy hand; Mike used a light touch. And they were both effective, for different reasons.” McGovern said Mansfield rarely asked senators for their votes on issues, because “he felt that each senator was a power unto himself, representing his state, and he was very hesitant to intrude on that. “Johnson had the view that you were a member of the team. He didn’t hesitate one minute to put the arm on you,” McGovern said. “Mansfield thought, ‘Now wait a minute. He’s the senator from Oklahoma, he ’s got his own problems, I shouldn’t tell him how to vote.’ ” Mansfield wasn’t as anxious as Johnson to talk to reporters or promote himself. His style as majority leader drew lots of praise: He made useful changes in Senate procedures; he urged newer senators to speak out, then praised their efforts; he was considerate to other senators; and he was direct and honest. “You just never expected any retribution, retaliation, dirty tricks,” said former Sen. Charles Percy. “He worked in a quiet way, and he gained his points more often than if he would have been bellicose.” Critics said Mansfield should have been more assertive as majority leader. They claimed that his style left the Senate without any real leadership and weakened the Democratic Party. They also suggested that Johnson wielded enormous influence over the Senate even after leaving, especially when he became president. Mansfield’ s style also was blamed for his lack of effectiveness on the Vietnam War issue. He was a long and persistent opponent of the war, but his opposition seemed to have little effect, even though he was the Senate leader. When his advice to Johnson consistently was rejected, his dissent remained muted by his style and his respect for the presidency. The forceful use of his Senate power, in the pushy manner of a Lyndon Johnson, didn’t match Mansfield’ s manner or his leadership style. This became a sore point with some anti-war activists. Yet the Vietnam War loomed large in Mansfield’s career. In speeches, reports, confidential memos to the White House and private meetings with top officials, he persisted for two decades in arguing against U.S. policy. His private papers, now at the University of Montana, help retrace the evolution of his arguments; his analyses were articulate, carefully reasoned and prescient. On an afternoon in 1974, three men met privately on Capitol Hill for a somber discussion. In attendance were Mike Mansfield, Vice President Gerald Ford and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott. Their topic: The seemingly imminent impeachment of President Richard Nixon. “We sat there puffing on our pipes, each of us conscious of the agony the country was going through, each of us aware of the responsibilities we would have to bear,” Ford recalled in his memoirs. The stormy end of the Nixon years capped a period in which Mansfield had become known as a more assertive leader. With a Republican in the White House, Mansfield acted “as if he was liberated when Johnson returned to Texas,” wrote Washingtonian magazine in 1970. Mansfield had “emerged as an adroit politician and a surprisingly effective legislative tactician,” it said. During this period, Mansfield helped spearhead efforts to lower the voting age to 18. He continued arguing against the war in Vietnam, in an increasingly biting manner. He pressed for closer scrutiny of the Central Intelligence Agency. And as Nixon planned to open the door to China, Mansfield was consulted, and eventually was asked to travel there and report personally to the president upon returning. The Watergate scandal stunned Mansfield. His first reaction was that the president could not have been involved, and his expressions of confidence in Nixon dismayed some fellow Democrats, notably the presidential candidate, McGovern. Even after Nixon resigned, Mansfield described the former president as “a man who was taken in by his subordinates and didn’t have the will to overcome them.” Yet, it was under Mansfield’s Senate leadership that a select committee chaired by Sen. Sam Ervin began the televised Watergate hearings. “All the facts will have to be laid out,” Mansfield said of the hearings. “ And out of this, let us hope that all of us will learn a lesson as to how government should be operated — in the open.” As Jimmy Carter was campaigning for the presidency, Mansfield, then 73 years old, was preparing to leave the Senate. Carter was anxious to see Mansfield remain in public service, and once elected president, Carter made indirect inquiries to see what would interest Mansfield. The new president suggested making Mansfield the ambassador to Mexico. Mansfield sent word that he didn’t want the assignment. Next came Japan. Carter discussed the job with Mansfield, explaining that Mansfield would be expected to work closely with other U.S. representatives in the Pacific region, and that Carter planned to move toward normalized relations with China. Mansfield brought more than his Far East interest to the job. His personal style served him well in the ambassadorship. “I do not hold to the old adage that an ambassador is a person sent abroad to lie for his country,” Mansfield told Time magazine. His work as ambassador drew praise, and when the Republicans won the White House, President-elect Ronald Reagan telephoned Mansfield to ask if he would continue as ambassador. Mansfield accepted immediately. He kept the post throughout the Reagan years. Then, at age 85, he announced his retirement less than a week after George Bush was elected president. At a news conference in Japan, Mansfield told reporters that he and his wife Maureen “can leave with our heads high and our arms swinging.” For most of his life, Mansfield had pointed to the importance of the Far East. He was fascinated with it as a young man, studied it when developing an academic career, and focused on it while in Congress. The Japanese ambassadorship dovetailed with his philosophy, and gave him the perfect vehicle for promoting his view. “Our future is in the Pacific,” he told a reporter during a 1978 interview that was similar to hundreds of others. “You’ve got the people, you’ve got the resources, you’ve got the markets. You have governments that are very friendly toward us. The opportunities are here, the potential is here, if our people would only see it.”