Capehart's career in the music industry made him wealthy and provided a path to the national political stage. Capehart was first elected to the U.S. Senate in
1944, narrowly defeating
Henry Schricker, going on to win subsequent victories in
1950 against
Alexander M. Campbell and in
1956 against
Claude R. Wickard. When first elected to the Senate at the height of
World War II, Capehart supported efforts to compromise with the
Japanese on terms of surrender in the summer of 1945 when
minority leader Wallace H. White, Jr. stated that the war might end sooner if
President Truman would state specifically in the upper chamber just what unconditional surrender meant for the Japanese. After 1945, Capehart was critical of the Truman administration and the military for their postwar policies in
Germany, accusing Truman and General
Dwight D. Eisenhower of a conspiracy to starve the remains of the German nation. Throughout the 1950s, Capehart was constantly at odds with his Senate colleague
William E. Jenner, a staunch isolationist Republican who consistently opposed President Eisenhower's "modern-Republicanism." Capehart, although an isolationist himself during his first term in the Senate, became increasingly more internationalist during his later years in the Senate and this eventually led to the split with Jenner. By 1959, Jenner had retired and Democrat
Vance Hartke had taken his place. Capehart was extremely critical of President
Kennedy and his
New Frontier programs, such as
Medicare and the
Peace Corps. In 1962, Capehart attained his greatest popularity and what would ultimately become his lasting legacy as one of the key figures in the
Cuban Missile Crisis by calling for a "crack-down on Cuba" and warning of a missile build-up on the island. Kennedy, before receiving the famous spy-plane photos, thought Capehart was "inventing an issue." This was not the case and Capehart, although not appreciated at the time, has come to be seen in a more positive light because of his early and aggressive stances on Cuba. Capehart also backed, with Senator
Kenneth Wherry of
Nebraska, legislation for building military family housing in the post-World War II era, when there were critical shortages of such housing. His support of public housing for veterans was part of his support of a strong defense, which he considered a legitimate use of public money. However, he opposed social welfare programs to give away houses to the poor at public expense as unconstitutional. In 1955, the U.S. Senate initiated a groundbreaking bill which authorized the construction of 540,000 public housing units over four years. Capehart, believing the bill was socialistic in nature, and lacking enough support to kill it, introduced an amendment which would have reduced the authorization to 35,000 units. Although Capehart thought he had enough votes to pass his amendment (even going so far as to tell majority leader
Lyndon Johnson on the morning of the vote, "this time I'm going to rub your nose in shit"), his amendment was defeated by last-minute maneuvering engineered by Johnson. Capehart voted in favor of the Senate amendment to the
Civil Rights Act of 1957 on August 7, 1957, but did not vote on the House amendment to the bill on August 29, 1957. Capehart voted in favor of the
Civil Rights Act of 1960, but did not vote on the
24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Capehart was also an advocate of
clean air legislation, and briefly served on the
United States Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management with Kennedy,
Barry Goldwater, and
Karl Mundt. ==Later life==