ABSTRACT
The nation’s attention focused on San Francisco airport for the arrival of the Bataan, the plane carrying General Douglas MacArthur home from Korea on April 18, 1951, while across the country in his hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan, Arthur Hendrick Vandenberg lay dying of cancer. The following day, while the obituary pages paid tribute to the Michigan senator, that “old soldier” did not fade away but mesmerized the country in a nationally televised address to a joint meeting of Congress. The death of Senator Vandenberg coincided with President Harry Truman’s firing of MacArthur as commander of U.N. forces and the firestorm of criticism that followed. With three out of four Americans opposing the president’s action, the Republican senator’s death appeared to symbolize the end of the bipartisan foreign policy he had championed. Both parties had begun to compete with each other in the rush to the patriotic Right. 1
