Джон Шерман Купер: Американ саяхатшысы, заңгер және дипломаты

American politician, jurist, and diplomat (1901–1991)

John Sherman Cooper (August 23, 1901 – February 21, 1991) was an American politician, jurist, and diplomat from the United States. He served three non consecutive, partial terms in the United States Senate before being elected to two full terms in 1960 and 1966, representing Kentucky. He also served as U. S. Ambassador to India from 1955 to 1956 and U. S. Ambassador to East Germany from 1974 to 1976. He was the first Republican to be popularly elected to more than one term as a senator from Kentucky and, in both 1960 and 1966, he set records for the largest victory margin for a Kentucky senatorial candidate from either party. Cooper's first political service was as a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives from 1928 to 1930. In 1929, he was elected county judge of Pulaski County. After a failed gubernatorial bid in 1939, he joined the U. S. Army in 1942. During World War II, he earned the Bronze Star Medal for reorganizing the Bavarian judicial system after the allied victory in Europe. While still in Germany, he was elected circuit judge for Kentucky's 28th circuit. He returned home to accept the judgeship, which he held for less than a year before resigning to seek election to A. B. "Happy" Chandler's vacated seat in the U. S. Senate. He won the seat by 41,823 votes, the largest victory margin by any Republican for any office in Kentucky up to that time. During his first term in the Senate, Cooper voted with the majority of his party just 51% of the time. He was defeated in his re election bid in 1948, after which he accepted an appointment by President Harry S. Truman as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly and served as a special assistant to Secretary of State Dean Acheson during the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Cooper was again elected to a partial term in the Senate in 1952. The popular Cooper appeared likely to be re elected in 1954 until the Democrats nominated former Vice President Alben W. Barkley. Cooper lost the general election and was appointed Ambassador to India by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1955. Cooper gained the confidence of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and dramatically improved relations between the U. S. and the recently independent state of India, helping rebuff Soviet hopes of expanding communism in Asia. Barkley died in 1956, and Eisenhower requested that Cooper seek Barkley's open seat. Cooper reluctantly acquiesced and was elected to serve the rest of Barkley's term. In 1960, Cooper was re elected, securing his first full, six year term in the Senate. Newly elected President John F. Kennedy – Cooper's former Senate colleague – chose Cooper to conduct a secret fact finding mission to Moscow and New Delhi. Following Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Cooper to the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination. Cooper soon became an outspoken opponent of Johnson's decision to escalate U. S. military involvement in the Vietnam War, consistently advocating negotiation with the North Vietnamese instead. After Cooper's re election in 1966, he worked with Idaho Democrat Frank Church on a series of amendments designed to de fund further U. S. military operations in the region. These amendments were hailed as the first serious attempt by Congress to curb presidential authority over military operations during an ongoing war. Aging and increasingly deaf, Cooper did not seek re election in 1972. His last acts of public service were as Ambassador to East Germany from 1974 to 1976 and as an alternate delegate to the United Nations in 1981. He died in a Washington, D. C., retirement home on February 21, 1991, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

John Sherman Cooper was born August 23, 1901, in Somerset, Kentucky. He was the second child and first son of seven children born to John Sherman and Helen Gertrude (Tartar) Cooper. The Cooper family had been prominent in the Somerset area since brothers Malachi and Edward Cooper migrated from South Carolina along the Wilderness Trail and through the Cumberland Gap around 1790, shortly after Daniel Boone. His father's parents – staunch Baptists – were active in the anti slavery movement in the nineteenth century, and the elder John Sherman Cooper (called "Sherman") was named after the Apostle John and William Tecumseh Sherman, a hero of the Union in the Civil War. The family was very active in local politics; six of Cooper's ancestors, including his father, were elected county judges in Pulaski County, and two had been circuit judges. Sherman Cooper engaged in numerous successful business ventures and was known as the wealthiest man in Somerset. At the time of John Sherman Cooper's birth, his father was serving as collector of internal revenue in Kentucky's 8th congressional district, a position to which he had been appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt. During his youth, Cooper worked delivering newspapers, in railroad yards, and in his father's coal mines in Harlan County. Despite having formerly served as county school superintendent, Cooper's father had a low opinion of the public schools, and until he was in the fifth grade, Cooper was privately tutored by a neighbor. While his father was away on business in Texas, his mother sent him to sixth grade at the public school, which he attended thereafter. Two of the school's instructors organized the boys into two companies, but Cooper, who was given the rank of captain, later recalled that "they taught us how to march and that's about all." While at Centre, Cooper was accepted into the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. He also played defensive end on the Praying Colonels' football team. Cooper was a letterman on the team, playing alongside football notables Bo McMillin, Red Roberts, Matty Bell, and Red Weaver. At Yale, he was a classmate of his future U. S. Senate colleague, Stuart Symington. A member of the Undergraduate Athletic Association, he played football and basketball, becoming the first person in Yale history to be named captain of the basketball team in his junior and senior years. Cooper returned to Harvard after his father's death, but soon discovered that he could not simultaneously pursue a law degree and manage his family's affairs. Cooper supported the governor's plan to provide free textbooks for the state's school children and sponsored legislation to prohibit judges from issuing injunctions to end labor strikes, although the latter bill did not pass. His opponent, the incumbent, was the president of Somerset Bank and the former law partner of Cooper's father. After basic training, he enrolled in Officer Candidate School at the Fort Custer Training Center in Michigan. In 1943, he was commissioned a second lieutenant and assigned to the XV Corps of General George Patton's Third Army as a courier in the military police. Cooper served in France, Luxembourg, and Germany. Following the cessation of hostilities, Cooper served as a legal advisor for the 300,000 displaced persons in his unit's occupation zone seeking repatriation after being brought to Germany as slaves by the Nazis. Cooper also oversaw the reorganization of the 239 courts in the German state of Bavaria in an attempt to replace all the Nazi officials, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal. In 1943 or 1944, while he was still in the Army, Cooper married a nurse named Evelyn Pfaff. Cooper resigned his judgeship in November 1946 to seek the U. S. Senate seat vacated when A. B. "Happy" Chandler resigned to accept the position of Commissioner of Baseball. In 1947, he filed for divorce, charging abandonment. Cooper responded, "If you'll pardon me, I was sent here to represent my constituents, and I intend to vote as I think best." He also co sponsored a bill to create the Medicare system, although it was defeated at the time. He supported Arthur Vandenberg for president, but Thomas E. Dewey ultimately received the party's nomination. Cooper was opposed in his re election bid by Democratic Congressman Virgil M. Chapman, an ally of Earle C. Clements, who had been elected governor in 1947. As one of only a few Democrats who had voted in favor of the Taft–Hartley Act, Chapman had lost the support of organized labor, a key constituency for the Democrats. Both Barkley and Clements stressed party unity during the campaign, and although Cooper polled much better than the Republican presidential ticket, he ultimately lost to Chapman in the general election by 24,480 votes. Following his defeat, Cooper resumed the practice of law in the Washington, D. C. firm of Gardner, Morison and Rogers. Political historian Glenn Finch observed that, while Cooper was well qualified for his duties at the U. N. and NATO, his presence abroad also made him less available to campaign for the Senate seat vacated by Barkley's elevation to the vice presidency. Speculation was raised that Clements, who won Barkley's old seat in a special election in 1950, may have influenced Truman and Acheson to make the appointments. Both the Louisville Times and the Louisville Courier Journal recanted their statements in 1950 for Cooper to seek election to the Senate in 1954. They now feared that the election of a Republican would allow that party to organize the Senate, giving key committee chairmanships to isolationists opposed to continued US involvement in the Korean War. Nevertheless, Cooper defeated Underwood by 29,000 votes in the election and served out the remainder of Chapman's term. His victory marked the first time in Kentucky's history that a Republican had been elected to the Senate more than once. Cooper was named to the Senate Committee on Labor, Education and Public Welfare and chaired its education and labor subcommittees. He supported a comprehensive program benefiting the coal industry and cosponsored a bill to extending public library services to rural areas. Nevertheless, he refused to strip Joseph McCarthy, the leading figure in the Red Scare, of his major Senate committee chairmanships, cautioning that "many of those who bitterly oppose Senator McCarthy call for the same tactics that they charge him with." He was the only Republican to oppose the Bricker Amendment, which would have limited the president's treaty making power. He concluded that the issues addressed by the amendment were not sufficient to warrant a change to the Constitution. He also opposed the Submerged Lands Act and the Mexican Farm Labor bill, both of which were supported by the Eisenhower administration. He denounced Eisenhower's appointment of Albert M. Cole, an open opponent of public housing, as Federal Housing Administrator and opposed many of the agricultural reforms proposed by Eisenhower's Agriculture Secretary, Ezra Taft Benson. Instead, party leaders convinced former Vice President Barkley, now 77 years old, to run for the seat in order to ensure party unity. During the campaign, Cooper was featured on the cover of Time on July 5, 1954. He also claimed that he would be a less partisan senator than Barkley. Barkley's personal popularity carried him to a 71,000 vote victory, however. The Indians had been impressed with Cooper and the Indian government had expressed their desire that Cooper serve as their ambassador from the U. S. Twice divorced, Shevlin was the daughter of Robert A. Rowan (a wealthy California real estate developer whose projects included the Hotel Alexandria and the Security Building), step daughter of Vatican official Prince Domenico Orsini, and a well known socialite. (While in Washington, the unmarried Cooper permanently resided in the Dodge House Hotel.) The move to India removed this barrier, and Secretary Dulles encouraged Cooper to marry her before leaving so that the embassy in New Delhi might have a proper hostess. On April 4, 1955, the couple stopped in England on their way to India to visit with Louis Mountbatten, the last Governor General of India. Their discussions about the situation of the Indian situation were part of the scant preparation Cooper received before arriving there. Nehru's respect and admiration for Cooper soon became widely known. Cooper labored to help officials in Washington, D. C. understand that India's reluctance to align with either the West or the Communists in China and the Soviet Union was their way of exercising their newly won independence. At the same time, he defended the U. S. military buildup after World War II, its involvement in the Korean War, and its membership in mutual security pacts like NATO and SEATO as self defense measures, not aggressive actions by the U. S. government, as the Indians widely perceived them. Cooper condemned the Eisenhower administration's decision to sell weapons to Pakistan, which was resented by the Indians, but also felt that the Indian government took some political positions without regard to their moral implications. In a joint communique dated December 2, 1955, U. S. Secretary of State Dulles and Portuguese Foreign Minister Paulo Cunha condemned statements made by Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin and Soviet Party First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev during an eighteen day tour of India. This phrase referred to Goa, a Portuguese colony in western India. The joint communiqué seemed to indicate U. S. recognition of Portuguese sovereignty in Goa, which undercut Cooper's assurances to the Indians of U. S. neutrality in the matter. Prime Minister Nehru announced his intent to file a formal protest with the United States over the communique and to address the Indian Parliament about the matter. In the interim, Cooper secured a meeting with Nehru and forestalled both actions. Cooper became even more upset with Dulles when Dulles authorized withholding $10 million of a $50 million aid package to India; Cooper protested the withholding, and Dulles decided to pay the full amount. Throughout the early part of 1956, Cooper strongly advocated that the U. S. respect Indian nonalignment and increase economic aid to the country. In August 1956, Congress approved a financial aid package for India that included the largest sale up to that point of surplus agricultural products by the United States to any country. Cooper's persistence in requesting such aid was critical in getting the package approved, as it was opposed by many administration officials, including Under Secretary of State Herbert Hoover Jr., Treasury Secretary George M. Humphrey, and International Cooperation Administration Director John B. Hollister. Republican leaders encouraged Cooper to return from India and seek the seat, but Cooper was reluctant to give up his ambassadorship. This, combined with Cooper's personal popularity, led to his victory over Wetherby by 65,000 votes. In 1959, he challenged Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen to become the Republican floor leader in the Senate, but lost by four votes. He was a vigorous opponent of measures designed to weaken the Tennessee Valley Authority. Cooper ultimately defeated Johnson by 199,257 votes, a record victory margin for a Kentucky senatorial candidate. Shortly after his election as president in 1960, Kennedy chose Cooper to conduct a then secret mission to Moscow and New Delhi to assess the attitudes of the Soviet government for the new administration. Kennedy and Cooper had served together on the Senate Labor Committee and maintained a social friendship. On the mission, Cooper discovered that the Soviets disliked Kennedy and Nixon equally. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Cooper to the Warren Commission, which was charged with investigating Kennedy's assassination in 1963. Cooper publicly criticized the report's conclusions as "premature and inconclusive", and informed Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Senator Ted Kennedy that he strongly felt Lee Harvey Oswald had not acted alone. When Cooper expressed his same thoughts to Jacqueline Kennedy, he reportedly stated that "it's important for this nation that we bring the true murderers to justice." As one of three Republicans on the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, Cooper was involved with the investigation of Johnson aide Bobby Baker in 1964, which he decried as "a whitewash" after the committee blocked further investigation. 1960, 1964, and 1968, as well as the 24th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the U. S. Supreme Court. Cooper was one of thirteen Republican senators to vote in favor of Medicare. In August 1970, Cooper sponsored the Health Security Act alongside fellow Senators Ted Kennedy (D MA), William B. Saxbe (R OH) and Ralph Yarborough (D TX), a bill in support of the creation of a health insurance system that would have provided health care coverage to every American.

Although Cooper voted in favor of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, he opposed escalating U. S. involvement in the Vietnam War. As early as April 1964, Cooper was urging President Johnson to negotiate a peaceful settlement to the tensions in Southeast Asia. He questioned Southeast Asia's strategic importance to the U. S. and expressed concerns about the feasibility of deploying the U. S. military on a global scale. On March 25, 1965, he joined New York Senator Jacob Javits in a call for President Johnson to begin negotiations for a settlement between North Vietnam and South Vietnam without imposing preconditions on the negotiations. Later in the day, he introduced resolutions calling for Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to brief the full Senate on recent developments in Vietnam. In January 1966, Cooper accompanied Secretary of State Rusk and Ambassador W. Averell Harriman on an official visit to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos as part of a widely publicized "peace drive". In a meeting with President Johnson on January 26, 1966, he again urged the president to forgo his announced intentions to resume bombing missions in North Vietnam and negotiate a settlement instead. Cooper advocated a three to five year cease fire, enforced by the United Nations, followed by national elections as prescribed by the 1954 Geneva Convention. In 1966, Cooper again won re election over John Y. Brown Sr., by 217,000 votes, breaking his own record of largest victory margin for a Kentucky senatorial candidate, and carrying the vote of 110 of Kentucky's 120 counties. In the lead up to the 1968 Republican presidential primary, he endorsed New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, saying that Americans would only support a candidate who took a clear position on Vietnam. Rockefeller had laid out a plan for reversing the Americanization of the war, while other Republican candidates tried to remain non specific about how they would handle it. As Rockefeller's candidacy faded, Cooper encouraged his colleague, Kentucky Senator Thruston B. Morton, to seek the presidency, but Morton declined. The Republican nomination – and the presidency – went to Richard Nixon. He also supported Montana Senator Mike Mansfield's proposal to bring the matter of the Vietnam War before the United Nations. Cooper served as an advisor to President Nixon during the events leading up to the talks. Congressional approval of one of these amendments on December 15, 1969, de funded the use of U. S. troops in Laos and Thailand. Cooper had wanted to include a restriction on forces entering Cambodia as well, but Mike Mansfield, who helped Cooper write the amendment, feared that Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who was officially neutral in the conflict, might be offended. The House of Representatives later stripped the amendment from the legislation to which it was attached, and it did not go into effect. The amendment was nevertheless hailed by The Washington Post as "the first time in our history that Congress has attempted to limit the deployment of American troops in the course of an ongoing war." having served longer in that body than any other Kentuckian except Alben Barkley. Without advance notice, Cooper addressed a nearly empty Senate chamber on July 27, 1972, proposing an amendment to a military assistance bill that would unconditionally end funding for all U. S. military operations in Indochina in four months. Disappointed, Cooper nevertheless proclaimed, "I feel purged inside. I've felt strongly about this for a long time. Now it's in the hands of the President. He's the only person who can do anything about ending the war now." After the expiration of his term, Cooper took over the "Dean Acheson chair" at the prestigious Washington law firm of Covington & Burling. In 1972, he was chosen as the commencement speaker at Centre College, where he had served as a trustee since 1961. His successor, Gerald Ford, officially appointed Cooper to the ambassadorship, and Cooper took leave from Covington & Burling to accept it. After returning to the US, he resumed his work at Covington & Burling. As a senator, Cooper had been instrumental in securing congressional approval for the creation of Big South Fork. He was named a Distinguished Alumnus of Centre College in 1987. A life sized bronze bust of Cooper sculpted by John Tuska was installed at the Kentucky State Capitol in 1987. Cooper was buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. In 2000, Eastern Kentucky University's Center for Kentucky History and Politics established the annual John Sherman Cooper Award for Outstanding Public Service in Kentucky. Despite his patrician background, Cooper was known for being "affable, frequently self deprecating and approachable."