It is never right to compromise with dishonesty.


Henry Cabot Lodge came from a wealthy Boston family and, as many in similar situations are prone to do, involved himself in public service. He served as a senator from Massachusetts. He was President Eisenhower's United Nations Representative and was Richard Nixon's running mate in the extremely close 1960 presidential election.

John Kennedy appointed him to be the US Ambassador to Vietnam in 1963 because he was sure Lodge would accept, having been out of the political arena for several years. Lodge said he had to discuss the appointment with his wife and President Eisenhower. His wife, Emily, was enthusiastically supportive of the move while Eisenhower warned him against getting involved. He followed his wife's advice and was soon on his way to Saigon.

News accounts said this tall, handsome American speaking with a refined New England accent was a fine representative of the United States to this backward south east Asian nation. When he arrived and me with South Vietnamese President Diem, he could not speak Vietnamese and Diem could not speak English so the conversed in French.

He presented Diem with a list of reforms that would help secure his position and strengthen his nation. Diem was not interested in the advice of the American who traveled thousands of miles to help. His corruption skewed his approach to governing, believing the Americans who put him in his position were pretty much committed to keeping him there.

Lodge kept Kennedy informed about the problems in the country and the lack of interest in making any changes. The president was uncertain about making any changes and instructed Lodge to try to protect Diem and work with him.

Eventually Lodge become convinced that if anything were to be accomplished Diem had to go. He tried to organize several Vietnamese generals to remove Diem, but they were more interested in the women and liquor of Saigon than in removing a corrupt leader for the good of the country. With the help of the CIA, who were already working on this action Diem was removed from office and killed... in defiance of the orders from the President.

Camelot court historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote about this time, Lodge was "a strong man with the bit between his teeth" whom Kennedy could not manage. There was a meeting scheduled between the President and Ambassador upon his return from Dallas where Lodge was to be relieved of his duties, however that meeting never happened.

Few have ever enjoyed the degree of foreign-policy influence and versatility that Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. did—in the postwar era, perhaps only George Marshall, Henry Kissinger, and James Baker. Lodge, however, had the distinction of wielding that influence under presidents of both parties. For three decades, he was at the center of American foreign policy, serving as advisor to five presidents, from Dwight Eisenhower to Gerald Ford, and as ambassador to the United Nations, Vietnam, West Germany, and the Vatican.
 
Lodge’s political influence was immense. He was the first person, in 1943, to see Eisenhower as a potential president; he entered Eisenhower in the 1952 New Hampshire primary without the candidate’s knowledge, crafted his political positions, and managed his campaign. As UN ambassador in the 1950s, Lodge was effectively a second secretary of state. In the 1960s, he was called twice, by John F. Kennedy and by Lyndon Johnson, to serve in the toughest position in the State Department’s portfolio, as ambassador to Vietnam. In the 1970s, he paved the way for permanent American ties with the Holy See. Over his career, beginning with his arrival in the U.S. Senate at age thirty-four in 1937, when there were just seventeen Republican senators, he did more than anyone else to transform the Republican Party from a regional, isolationist party into the nation’s dominant force in foreign policy, a position it held from Eisenhower’s time until the twenty-first century.