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American politician and diplomat

Michael Joseph Mansfield (March 16, 1903 – October 5, 2001) was an American Democratic Party politician and diplomat who represented Montana in the United States House of Representatives from 1943 to 1953 and United States Senate from 1953 to 1977. As the leader of the Senate Democratic Caucus from 1961 to 1977, Mansfield shepherded Great Society programs through the Senate; his tenure of exactly sixteen years was the longest of any party leader in Senate history, until the record was broken by Mitch McConnell in 2023. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Mansfield grew up in Great Falls, Montana. He lied about his age to serve in the United States Navy during World War I. After the war, he became a professor of history and political science at the University of Montana. He won election to the House of Representatives and served on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs during World War II. In 1952, he defeated incumbent Republican Senator Zales Ecton to take a seat in the Senate. Mansfield served as Senate Majority Whip from 1957 to 1961. Mansfield ascended to Senate Majority Leader after Lyndon B. Johnson resigned from the Senate to become vice president. In the later years of the Vietnam War, he opposed escalation of American involvement and supported President Richard Nixon's plans for Vietnamization. After retiring from the Senate, Mansfield served as United States Ambassador to Japan from 1977 to 1988. Mansfield is the longest serving American ambassador to Japan in history. Upon his retirement, he was awarded the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Mansfield later served for a time as a senior adviser on East Asian affairs to Goldman Sachs.

Mansfield was born on March 16, 1903, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. He was the son of Irish immigrants Patrick J. Mansfield and Josephine (née O'Brien) Mansfield. His father struggled to support the family, having to work several different jobs, ranging from a construction worker, hotel porter, and maintenance man. After Mansfield's mother died of nephritis in 1910, his father sent Mansfield and his two sisters to live with his great aunt and uncle in Great Falls, Montana. He attended local public schools, and worked in his relatives' grocery store.

Two controversial amendments by Mansfield limiting military funding of research were passed by Congress. The Mansfield Amendment of 1969, passed as part of the fiscal year 1970 Military Authorization Act (Public Law 91 121), prohibited military funding of research that lacked a direct or apparent relationship to specific military function. Through subsequent modification the Mansfield amendment moved the Department of Defense toward the support of more short term applied research in universities. The amendment affected the military, such as research funding by the Office of Naval Research (ONR). The Mansfield Amendment of 1973 expressly limited appropriations for defense research through the Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is largely independent of the military, to projects with direct military application. This controversial amendment greatly reduced ARPA funding for many university based computer projects, thereby forcing many American computer science experts to move to private sector research facilities such as Xerox PARC. However, for that very reason, the amendment is also credited with giving birth to the contemporary computer technology industry. An earlier Mansfield Amendment, offered in 1971, called for the number of US troops stationed in Europe to be halved. On May 19, 1971, however, the Senate defeated the resolution 61–36.

Mansfield retired from the Senate in 1976 and was appointed ambassador to Japan in April 1977 by Jimmy Carter, a role that he retained during the Reagan administration until 1988. While serving in Japan, Mansfield was highly respected and was particularly renowned for describing the US Japan relationship as the "most important bilateral relationship in the world, bar none." Mansfield's successor in Japan, Michael Armacost, noted in his memoirs that for Mansfield, the phrase was a "mantra." While in office, Mansfield also fostered relations between his home state of Montana and Japan. The state capital of Helena is the sister city to Kumamoto, on the island of Kyushu.

The Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library at the University of Montana, Missoula, is named after him and his wife Maureen, as was his request when informed of the honor. The library also contains the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center, which is dedicated to Asian studies, and, like the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, "advancing understanding and co operation in US Asia relations." The Mike Mansfield Federal Building and United States Courthouse in Butte was renamed in his honor in 2002. The Montana Democratic Party holds an annual Mansfield Metcalf Dinner named partially in his honor. In 1977, Mansfield received the US Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards. In 1977, he was awarded the Laetare Medal by the University of Notre Dame, the oldest and most prestigious award for American Catholics. On January 19, 1989, Mansfield and Secretary of State George P. Shultz were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan. In his speech, Reagan recognized Mansfield as someone who has "distinguished himself as a dedicated public servant and loyal American." In 1990, he was given both the United States Military Academy, Sylvanus Thayer Award and Japan's Order of the Rising Sun with Paulownia Flowers, Grand Cordon. This is Japan's highest honor for someone who is not a head of state. In 1999, Missoula's daily newspaper, the Missoulian, chose Mansfield as The Most Influential Montanan of the 20th Century.

Through his last years, Mansfield lived in Washington, D. C., where he remained active; he performed speaking engagements well into his nineties, and worked from his office at Goldman Sachs until the week before he died. Mansfield's wife, Maureen, died on September 20, 2000. He died from heart failure at Walter Reed Army Medical Center just over one year later, on October 5, 2001, at the age of 98. He was survived by his daughter, Anne Fairclough Mansfield (1939–2013), and one granddaughter. The burial plot of Pvt. and Mrs. Mansfield can be found in section 2, marker 49 69F of Arlington National Cemetery.