July 5, 1902: Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.'s Birthday

Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., grandson of the famed Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge who was President Wilson's nemesis on the League of Nations, is himself a presidential history footnote. For one thing, in 1952 he was Dwight Eisenhower's campaign manager. At the same time, he was running for re-election to the US Senate from Massachusetts, but lost that contest to John F. Kennedy.

His services to Eisenhower did not go unrewarded, however, and the new president made Lodge ambassador to the United Nations. He clearly didn't share his grandfather's disdain for international organizations.

Lodge never ran for president himself, but in 1960 he was Richard Nixon's running mate, and lost the vice presidency by the same paper-thin margin that put Kennedy and Johnson into office that year. Later, on March 10, 1964, in something of a surprise, he won the New Hampshire Republican primary, capturing a little more than 33,000 votes, or 35.5 percent of the votes cast, as a write-in candidate. He had had a small, but dedicated band of supporters in that state, it seems.

Lodge's surprise in New Hampshire didn't give him any momentum in the rest of the contest for the nomination. The party's ultimate nominee, Barry Goldwater, was second in the New Hampshire primary that year, just ahead of Nelson Rockefeller. Richard Nixon, another write-in, was fourth, and poor old Harold Stassen was sixth -- behind Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, the first woman to be elected in her own right to both the US House and Senate.