A dervish of energy and ambition, Humphrey led a remarkable American life. Remarkably, given all he achieved, there have been few full-scale biographies of Humphrey, who died of cancer at 66 in 1978. The new Hubert Humphrey: The Conscience of the Country by Arnold A. Offner, an emeritus professor of history at Lafayette College, is a painstaking and, as the subtitle suggests, a generally admiring portrait of a more complex and compelling political figure than the caricature his detractors draw of a gabby bleeding heart ... Mr. Offner perhaps overrates his subject as 'the most successful legislator' in American history. His just-the-facts approach can be tedious, and few passages are worth quoting. But there are some surprising nuggets
The author, whose previous books concerned diplomatic history, supplies all the evidence one could want to prove that Humphrey played a major role in leading his party—and, to a degree, his country—to reject Jim Crow and embrace a number of social-democratic policies. Yet Humphrey’s decision to become the most prominent Democratic cheerleader for the US atrocity in Indochina also turned his life of liberal achievement into a tragedy ... Offner’s lengthy account of his subject’s years as vice president will make many readers cringe.
Reading Arnold Offner’s thorough and sharply balanced account of Humphrey’s life, one is left with the overriding impression that all would have been as merry and bright with Humphrey’s long-term reputation as it was with his personal demeanor if he hadn’t wanted so badly to be president ... Probing for answers [to Humphrey's behavior] deeper than those implied in Offner’s narrative is for novelists and other imaginative artists. And, mostly to the book’s credit, historical detail is more important than psychology...
