‘I want you to know that if it will serve the United States, I am expendable. Just don’t do it for unimportant reasons.” This was former senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.’s response to President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 request that he, a lifelong Republican, return to public life as ambassador to South Vietnam and serve in a Democratic administration. The Vietnam post was only one milestone in Lodge’s cursus honorum—besides serving as a senator and ambassador he was also, at different times, a state legislator, a military officer, a vice-presidential nominee and a possible presidential candidate. For almost five decades, Lodge was at the center of American public life.
Luke A. Nichter’s comprehensive biography sets Lodge’s story amid the twilight of the WASP elite—the “Brahmins,” meaning primarily that set of interrelated families in and around Boston—and of an America it’s almost impossible to believe existed, where yacht clubs and boarding schools led naturally to public service. The Vietnam episode helped bring about the dissolution of their political class.
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