Robert Cunningham Humphreys
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Robert Cunninghan Humphreys (July 30, 1905 - October 15, 1965) was born in
Greenville, Ohio Greenville is a city in and the county seat of Darke County, Ohio, United States, located near the western edge of Ohio about 33 miles northwest of Dayton. The population was 13,227 at the 2010 census. History Historic Native American tribes in ...
. He was a student at
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
from 1926 to 1927. In 1926, Humphreys was appointed deputy attorney general for the state of New York during the 1926 election when voting machines were used for the first time Humphreys' early political experience came as publicity director for the Indiana Republican State Committee in the elections of 1932 and 1934. In 1933 Humphreys joined the staff of
International News Service The International News Service (INS) was a U.S.-based news agency (newswire) founded by newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst in 1909.
(INS) as a political writer, eventually becoming the bureau manager of the Kansas City office. For the 1936 election year, he was assigned by INS to
Topeka, Kansas Topeka ( ; Kansa: ; iow, Dópikˀe, script=Latn or ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the seat of Shawnee County. It is along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, in northeast Kansas, in the Central U ...
and the
Alf Landon Alfred Mossman Landon (September 9, 1887October 12, 1987) was an American oilman and politician who served as the 26th governor of Kansas from 1933 to 1937. A member of the Republican Party, he was the party's nominee in the 1936 presidential el ...
presidential campaign. During the time that Humphreys traveled with Landon's campaign train the two men developed a close relationship which was to last until the time of Humphreys' death.


INS Chief

For the years 1937 through 1944, Humphreys transferred to the INS
Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
branch, becoming chief of the INS congressional staff and the Washington News editor. During this time, while writing a daily column called "Washington-Up-To-The-Minute," Humphreys established close contacts with many members of Congress. He left INS and Washington in 1944 to become the national affairs editor of ''
Newsweek Magazine ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widel ...
''. However, following the 1948 campaign and the resulting election of Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, Humphreys was asked by Speaker of the House Joe Martin to return to Washington to establish and direct a public relations office for the Republican Congressional Committee.Louis Galambo et al. ''The Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower: NATO and the Campaign of 1952: Vol. XIII''. Baltimore. Johns Hopkins University Press. 1989. p. 1297. From this office, Humphreys introduced a variety of visual aid techniques, including television "spots" and 16mm films, in and effort to publicize individual GOP congressmen and to attempt to rid the Republican party of "the depressive atmospheric condition" in America linking Republicans "with the vested interest" and disassociating them "from the ordinary human beings." In July 1952, Republican National Chairman Arthur Summerfield arranged for the "loan" of Humphreys to the RNC to serve as publicity director for the duration of the 1952 campaign. For this campaign Humphreys designed a blueprint, known as "Document X," which "marked the first time a presidential campaign was planned and put on paper to the last detail." The campaign plan, which covered the who, when, where, and what to do/say for the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket, was, according to Humphreys, followed throughout the campaign "with only a few adjustments to meet political circumstances as they arose." In addition to being prominent in the initial campaign strategy, Humphreys was also instrumental, along with Summerfield, in keeping Nixon on the Republican ticket following the "expense Fund" affair.


RNC Campaign Director

Following the Republican victories, Humphreys did not return to the Congressional Committee, but stayed with RNC to become campaign director, a position he held from 1954 until 1960. These years involved the organization of the Republican party nationally, regional planning conferences, strategy development, RNC meetings, analyses of elections and polls, campaign tours, two RNC campaign schools (1955 and 1958), speeches, appearances, and another
Dwight D. Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...
-
Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
campaign. For the 1956 election Humphreys devised a second original campaign plan, and was also involved in halting the "dump Nixon" movement before the RNC convention.


Always Attack

Throughout the Eisenhower years in the
White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in ...
, Humphreys strived to improve the public relations of the president and his administration. It was his belief that the basic strategy in politics should always be to attack. In a 1953 memo to Leonard Hall, Humphreys stated that "it would be a political mistake for this administration to rely solely on its achievements"; instead "political warfare must be waged by selling our philosophy, our achievements, our kind of government against the alternative." At the close of the administration, in 1960, President Eisenhower appointed Humphreys to head the staff of the newly formed National Cultural Center project. Humphreys had a lifelong interest in the performing arts, especially classical music. At one period in his career, while working for INS, he wrote a column which reviewed the latest classical albums and he personally owned all the technically advanced equipment in sound recording. Humphreys remained with the ambitious Cultural Center project for a single year until the fund-raising machinery bogged down and came to a complete standstill.


The Republican Coordinating Committee

In 1961 Humphreys turned once again to politics and the Republican party, this time to serve as staff director and consultant for the Joint Senate and House Republican Leadership. From this position Humphreys continued his efforts to improve the public relations of Republican members of Congress. He arranged to make wide political use of the popular Republican ex-president by holding highly publicized meetings at Gettysburg with Eisenhower and such GOP stalwarts as
Everett Dirksen Everett McKinley Dirksen (January 4, 1896 – September 7, 1969) was an American politician. A Republican, he represented Illinois in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. As Senate Minority Leader from 1959 u ...
and Charles Halleck. Another innovation was what came to be called "The Ev and Charlie Show" in which the two Republican congressional leaders appeared weekly on television to advertise the Republican stand on national issues and to discredit the Kennedy administration. Humphreys was involved in writing the scripts for these press conferences. One of Humphreys' last contributions was the creation of the Republican Coordinating Committee which was designed to broaden the advisory base on national party policy, to establish task forces to deal with national problems, and to stimulate communication and a common approach among party members. The Committee was formed in March 1965, just a few months before Humphreys' death. Throughout his years with various news organizations and with the RNC, Humphreys produced a number of published articles on a wide variety of politically related topics and personalities. He also contributed chapters to two books on politics, wrote numerous unpublished reports and studies for the Republicans, created scripts for various political slide and movie productions, and occasionally drafted speeches for such high-ranking political figures as
James Farley James Aloysius Farley (May 30, 1888 – June 9, 1976) was an American politician and Knight of Malta who simultaneously served as chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and Postmaste ...
, Alf Landon, Leonard W. Hall,
Arthur Summerfield Arthur Ellsworth Summerfield (March 17, 1899 – April 26, 1972) was a U.S. political figure who served as the 54th Postmaster General of the United States from 1953 to 1961. As Postmaster General, he was an ardent opponent of obscenity. Early ...
, and Dwight D. Eisenhower.


See also

*
Politics of the United States The politics of the United States function within a framework of a constitutional federal republic and presidential system, with three distinct branches that share powers. These are: the U.S. Congress which forms the legislative branch, a b ...


References


External links


Papers of Robert Humphreys, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Humphreys, Robert Cunningham 1905 births 1965 deaths Columbia University alumni Ohio Republicans People from Greenville, Ohio