A strong supporter of Lyndon Johnson’s war to contain Communism in Vietnam, Jackson became a highly effective critic of détente with the Soviet Union, which he felt sold out human rights and compromised the security of the free world. He was later marginalised as the party moved to the left after 1968, especially on foreign policy. By contrast, in the 1950s he was a critic of the red-baiter Senator McCarthy and his methods, which he felt gave the noble cause of anti-Communism a bad name.Īt first, Jackson was very much within the mainstream of the Cold War liberal Democratic Party. During the war he was an enthusiastic supporter – along with many other liberals, such as the later Chief Justice Warren – of the internment of the Japanese this was perhaps his greatest misjudgement. Very soon, however, the course of events caused him to change his mind and Jackson remained a protagonist of US international engagement and the application of US power until the end of his life. Jackson started out during the Second World War as something of an isolationist and voted against initial plans to help Great Britain through the Lend-Lease programme. He was the scourge of corporate interests, particularly power and oil companies, who objected to his enthusiasm for nationalisation and price controls. He was centrally involved in such measures as the Land and Conservation Act, the Wilderness Act, the National Seashore Bills and much else. He was an ardent New Dealer, trade unionist, supporter of the early civil rights movement and environmentalist.
Jackson (1912-1983) came from a working class Scandinavian background and was elected to the House of Representatives for his native Washington State in 1940. Ognibene, Scoop: The Life and Politics of Henry Jackson, 1975.US Senator for Washington State, 1953-1983 He only reluctantly voted against President Gerald Ford's 1975 request for aid to South Vietnam, claiming the United States had been correct in entering the Vietnam War.Ī ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee when he died, Jackson was known as a centrist Democrat, a lifetime liberal in civil rights and organized labor, a strong backer of Israel and Jewish immigration from the USSR, and a major supporter of the Boeing Aircraft Corporation, one of the largest employers in his state. military involvement in Southeast Asia, beginning with Laos in 1962, and more particularly in Vietnam. Later, he opposed the Anti‐Ballistic Missile Treaty, and he extracted major concessions from the Nixon administration on the SALT arms control agreement. Kennedy's creation of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and voting reluctantly for the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963. Deeply suspicious of the Soviets, Jackson opposed arms limitations, arguing against President John F. In the late 1950s, he criticized the Eisenhower administration for neglecting defense and supported controversial claims of a “missile gap” with the Soviet Union. As a young boy he sold newspapers, the source of his lifelong nickname, “Scoop.” After becoming a lawyer and county prosecutor, Jackson won election to the House of Representatives in 1940 as a Democrat, serving six terms before winning a Senate seat in 1952.īetween 1952 and his death of a heart attack in 1983, Jackson became one of the Senate's major champions of a strong military defense. senator.Born in Everett, Washington, Jackson was the son of working‐class Norwegian immigrants.
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