LEWISTON – An expert on the U.S. vice presidency will present the lecture “Campaigning for America: Edmund S. Muskie’s 1968 Vice Presidential Campaign” at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 3, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library at Bates College, 70 Campus Ave.

Joel Goldstein’s talk comes during the 40th anniversary year of Muskie’s vice-presidential campaign and the 50th anniversary of his election to the U.S. Senate. The event is open to the public at no cost. For more information, contact 207-786-6272 or [email protected].

Goldstein, the Vincent C. Immel Professor of Law at St. Louis University, is a visiting professor at the University of Maine School of Law and the Muskie School of Public Service. He has written books, chapters and journal articles on the U.S. executive branch, constitutional law and admiralty law.

The late Muskie, a member of the Bates class of 1936, served as Maine governor, U.S. senator, vice presidential and presidential candidate, and U.S. secretary of state under President Jimmy Carter.

In 1968 Muskie ran with Democratic presidential candidate and then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey. “It is worth considering the example Muskie set when he, for the first time, campaigned throughout America and America discovered him,” says Goldstein.

“His vice-presidential campaign was unique in the annals of modern national campaigns. He spent an unusual amount of time articulating basic American values and imploring his audience to reconnect with them.”

In the Senate, he authored landmark environmental legislation including the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, regarded as two of the most important bills of the 20th century.