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Lodge's attitude, like the nation's, was a casualty of World War II. He saw action in North Africa and Italy as an Armored Force officer, wound up the war as a combat liaison officer (lieutenant colonel) between U.S. and French forces in Germany. He came back with six battle stars, the Legion of Merit, a Bronze Star for performance under enemy fire in Italy, and a permanently changed mind about the U.S.'s role in the world. Back in the Senate after the war, he supported reciprocal trade, foreign aid, the U.N., was one of NATO's staunchest friends.
Worse than Defeat. On maneuvers in Louisiana in 1941, Reserve Captain Lodge had heard a lot about up-and-coming Colonel Dwight David Eisenhower, was impressed to hear Major General George Patton offer a $50 reward to anybody who took prisoner "a certain s.o.b. named Eisenhower." (Colonel Eisenhower was chief of staff of General Walter Krueger's Third Army; Patton was a division commander in the rival Second Army.) Lodge met Eisenhower, was an admirer from then on; he started publicly plugging Ike for President as far back as 1950. In November 1951, before General Eisenhower agreed to run, the three-D Ikemen (New York's Governor Tom Dewey, Pennsylvania's Governor Jim Duff, Kansas' ex-Senator Harry Darby) tabbed Lodge to manage the Ike campaign for the nomination.
Lodge worked so hard to get Dwight Eisenhower nominated and elected that he neglected the defense of his own Senate seat against the Democratic assault of Massachusetts' moneyed, boyish John Fitzgerald Kennedy. With angry and vengeful Taftmen sitting on their hands in Massachusetts, Lodge could see, as November neared, that he was in trouble. He was. And so a Republican who spectacularly won a place in the Senate in the Democratic landslide of 1936 lost it in the Republican landslide of 1952.
Into the Cabinet. President-elect Eisenhower, bent on upgrading the U.N. in U.S. foreign policy and strengthening the U.S. voice in the U.N., looked around for an international-minded Republican who could do what a U.S. chief delegate to the U.N. has to do: think fast, speak fluently, argue persuasively, and be charming. Cabot Lodge seemed just the man. To (give Lodge extra prestige and a voice in the policymaking, Ike made him a "personal member" of his Cabinet (Lodge's predecessor, Vermont's ex-Senator Warren Austin, had no Cabinet status). As a favor to Lodge, Ike let him name the deputy U.N. delegate. Lodge unhesitatingly picked shrewd, amiable James J. Wadsworth, then acting Civil Defense administrator. A boyhood friend of Cabot Lodge, Wadsworth, 53, is still his deputy, has proved to be a first-rate U.N. diplomat.
Whether measured by rewards, difficulty or importance to the nation, the post of chief U.N. delegate is one of the top jobs in the Federal Government. Pay and perquisites: $27,500 a year salary; an eight-room, $30,000-a-year apartment on the top floor of Park Avenue's Waldorf Towers; a chauffeured Cadillac; up to $17,000 a year for entertainment expenses; and the title of ambassador.