Earlier in the week, it had been relatively simple to get into the Hilton. Mobs of McCarthy workers and excited adolescents had jammed the stairs and the main entrance room of the lobby chanting all day, singing campaign songs, mocking every Humphrey worker they could recognize, holding station for hours in the hope, or on the rumor, that McCarthy would be passing through, and the cheers had the good nature and concerted rhythmic steam of a football rally. That had been Saturday and Sunday and Monday, but the police finally had barricaded the kids out of the lobby, and now at night covered the entrances to the Hilton, and demanded press passes, and room keys, as warrants of entry. The Hilton heaved and staggered through a variety of attacks and breakdowns. Like an old fort, like the old fort of the old Democratic Party, about to fall forever beneath the ministrations of its high shaman, its excruciated warlock, derided by the young, held in contempt by its own soldiers—the very delegates who would be loyal to Humphrey in the nomination and loyal to nothing in their heart—this spiritual fort of the Democratic Party was now housed in the literal fort of the Hilton staggering in place, all boilers working, all motors vibrating, yet seeming to come apart from the pressures on the street outside, as if the old Hilton had become artifact of the party and the nation.
Nothing worked well in the hotel, and much didn’t work at all. There was no laundry because of the bus strike, and the house phones usually did not function; the room phones were tapped so completely, and the devices so over-adjacent, that separate conversations lapped upon one another in the same earpiece, or went jolting by in all directions like three handballs at play at once in a four-wall handball court. Sometimes the phone was dead, sometimes it emitted hideous squawks, or squeals, or the harsh electronic displeasure of a steady well-pulsed static. Sometimes one got long distance by taking it through the operator, sometimes one got an outside line only by ringing the desk and demanding it, sometimes one could get the hotel operator only by dialing the outside line. All the while, a photograph of Mayor Daley the size of a postage stamp was pasted on the cradle of the phone. “Welcome to the 1968 National Democratic Convention,” it said. Often, one could not even extract a whimper from the room phone. It had succumbed. Sometimes the phone stayed dead for hours. Success in a convention is reduced to success in communications, as the reporter was yet to learn; communications in the headquarters of the largest party in the nation most renowned for the technology of its communications was breaking apart under strikes, pressure, sabotage, security, security over-check, overdevelopment and insufficient testing of advanced technical devices: at the base of the pyramid, sheer human inefficiencies before the combined onslaught of pressure and street war.
The elevators worked abominably. On certain floors the signal did not seem to ring. One could wait a half hour for an elevator to stop on the way down. After a time everybody went up to the top in order to be able to go down. Yet one could not use the stairs, for Secret Servicemen were guarding them. It could, at worst, demand an hour to go to one’s room and go down again. So it might have been better to live in a hotel across the Loop; but then there were traffic jams and police lines and demonstrators every night, demonstrators marching along with handkerchiefs to their noses.
This night with the demonstrators up and aroused in Grant Park, tear gas was blowing right into the hotel. The police had tried to gas the kids out of the park when they first arrived in numbers from Lincoln Park, but the wind blew the wrong way, blew the tears across the street into the air conditioning of the Hilton lobby, and delegates and Press and officials walked about with smarting eyes, burning throats, and the presentiment that they were going to catch a cold. The lobby stunk. Not from the tear gas, but from stink bombs, or some advanced variety of them, for the source of the odor was either mysterious, or unremovable, or had gotten into the very entrails of the air-conditioning since it got worse from day to day and drenched the coffee shop and the bars and the lobby with a stench not easily forgettable. Standing near someone, the odor of vomit always prevailed from the bombs—no, it was worse than vomit, rather like a truly atrocious body odor which spoke of the potential for sour vomit in every joint of a bad piece of psychic work. So personal relations were curious. One met attractive men or women, shook hands with them, chatted for a time, said good-bye. One’s memory of the occasion was how awful it had smelled. Delegates, powerful political figures, old friends, and strangers all smelled awful.
So nothing worked well in the hotel, and everything stank, and crowds—those who could get in—milled about, and police guarded the entrance, and across the street as the reporter moved through the tight press of children sitting packed together on the grass, cheering the speakers, chanting “Join us! Join us!” and “Dump the Hump” the smell of the stink bombs was still present, but different now, equally evil and vomitous but from a faded odor of Mace. The nation divided was going to war with stinks; each side would inflict a stink upon the other. The years of sabotage were ahead—a fearful perspective: they would be giving engineering students tests in loyalty before they were done; the F.B.I. would come to question whoever took a mail order course in radio. It was possible that one was at the edge of that watershed year from which the country might never function well again, and service in American hotels would yet be reminiscent of service in Mexican motels. Whatever! the children were alive with revolutionary fire on this fine Tuesday night, this early Wednesday morning, and the National Guard policing them was wideawake as well. Incidents occurred. Flare-ups. A small Negro soldier started pushing a demonstrator with his rifle, pushing him in sudden fury as at the wild kickoff of a wild street fight; the demonstrator—who looked to be a kindly divinity student—aghast at what he had set off; he had not comprehended the Negro wished no special conversation from him. And a National Guard officer came running up to pull the Negro back. (On the next night, there would be no Negroes in the line of National Guards.)
The kids were singing. There were two old standards which were sung all the time. An hour could not go by without both songs. So they sang “We Shall Overcome” and they sang “This Land Is Your Land,” and a speaker cried up to the twenty-five stories of the Hilton, “We have the votes, you have the guns,” a reference to the polls which had shown McCarthy to be more popular than Hubert Humphrey (yes, if only Rockefeller had run for the Democrats and McCarthy for the Republicans this would have been an ideal contest between a spender and a conservative) and then another speaker, referring to the projected march on the Amphitheatre next day, shouted, “We’re going to march without a permit—the Russians demand a permit to have a meeting in Prague,” and the crowd cheered this. They cheered with wild enthusiasm when one speaker, a delegate, had the inspiration to call out to the delegates and workers listening in the hundreds of rooms at the Hilton with a view of the park, “Turn on your lights, and blink them if you are with us. If you are with us, if you are sympathetic to us, blink your lights, blink your lights.” And to the delight of the crowd, lights began to blink in the Hilton, ten, then twenty, perhaps so many as fifty lights were blinking at once, and a whole bank of lights on the fifteenth floor and the twenty-third floor went off and on at once, off and on at once. The McCarthy headquarters on the fifteenth and the twenty-third were blinking, and the crowd cheered. Now they had become an audience to watch the actors in the hotel. So two audiences regarded each other, like ships signalling across a gulf of water in the night, and delegates came down from the hotel; a mood of new beauty was in the air, there present through all the dirty bandaged kids, the sour vomit odor of the Mace, the sighing and whining of the army trucks moving in and out all the time, the adenoids, larynxes, wheezes and growls of the speakers, the blinking of lights in the Hilton, yes, there was the breath of this incredible crusade where fear was in every breath you took, and so breath was tender, it came into the lungs as a manifest of value, as a gift, and the children’s faces were shining in the glow of the headlights of the National Guard trucks and the searchlights of the police in front of the
Hilton across Michigan Avenue. And the Hilton, sinking in its foundations, twinkled like a birthday cake. Horrors were coming tomorrow. No, it is today. It is Wednesday already.
15
If Wednesday was nominating day, it was also the afternoon when the debate on the Vietnam peace plank took place. Indeed, it was also the evening when the Massacre of Michigan Avenue occurred, an extraordinary event: a massacre, equal on balance to some of the old Indian raids, yet no one was killed. Of course, a great many people were hurt. And several hundred delegates started to march back from the stockyards, early Thursday morning after the nomination, carrying lit candles in protest. It was obviously one of the more active days in the history of any convention.
Worn out by his portentous Southern sense of things to come, Lester Maddox, the fourth candidate, Governor of Georgia, even resigned his candidacy Wednesday morning. We quote from Walter Rugaber of the New York Times:
His wife, Virginia, sat beside him weeping softly as Mr. Maddox ended his 11-day fling with a last news conference in the brightly lit Grand Ballroom of the Conrad Hilton Hotel.
He talked about misinformed socialist and power-mad politicians. He assailed the Democrats as the party of “looting, burning, killing and draft-card burning. What’s more,” he said, “I denounce them all.”
Then he caught a plane back to Atlanta. Who would declare that the chanting in Grant Park through the long hours of Tuesday night and the semi-obscene shouts— Dump the Hump!—had done nothing to accelerate his decision?
Originally, the debate on the Vietnam plank had been scheduled for Tuesday night, but the convention went on past midnight, so the hawks attempted to have it early in the morning. It was their hope to begin at 1 A.M. New York time, and thus obtain the pleasure of denying the doves a large television audience. But the doves raised a post-midnight demonstration on the floor which became progressively more obstreperous until Mayor Daley made the mistake of rising to remonstrate with the gallery, warning that they would be cleared out of their seats if they did not quiet down. “Let’s act like ladies and gentlemen, and let people be heard,” said Daley to the convention and to millions on television, looking for all the world like the best b.o. ever to come out of Guys and Dolls. But it was obvious the greater share of the noise came from behind Daley on the floor, from the rear where McCarthy and McGovern delegates from New York, California, South Dakota, Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Oregon were placed far from the podium. At any rate, the Administration forces lost their play. It was one thing for them to cut off a discussion—that was simply accomplished. One had only to give a signal, then make a quick motion which could as quickly be recognized by the Chairman who would whip in a lightning move for a voice-vote. “The ayes ... the nays ... The ayes have it,” he would say, and rap his gavel, walk off the podium, close the session. But here, after midnight, the hawks were not trying to cut off a discussion, rather they wished to begin one; the doves had nothing to lose by a noisy non-stop protest. Moves for silence, whacks of the gavel by Carl Albert looking poisonous for being ignored, loud music of the band to drown out the rear delegation. Nothing worked. The television cameras were focussed on the doves who were protesting the lateness of the hour. The hawks could insist on their move, but they would look like the worst of the cattle gang on television. So a signal was passed to Daley by an Administration spokesman who drew his finger across his throat, an unmistakable sign to cut off conversation for the night. Daley, looking like he had just been stuffed with a catfish, stood up, got the floor, made a move to adjourn. Immediately recognized by Carl Albert. The little Chairman was now sufficiently excited to start to say Mayor Daley of the Great State of Chicago. He recovered quickly, however, quick enough to rap his gavel, and declare that the Chair accepted the motion, snapping it through with a slick haste, as if it had been his idea all along! The debate was postponed until Wednesday afternoon.
The debate, however, proved anti-climactic. There had been hopes that McCarthy would speak, idle dreams he might make a great speech; but it was rumored that the Senator, weighing the imponderable protocol of these profoundly established convention manners, had decided he would not enter debate unless Lyndon Johnson came to the Amphitheatre for his birthday party. Johnson, however, was not in the hall; he was still in Texas where he would remain (on the advice of his best wise men since they could not guarantee the character of his reception in the Amphitheatre, nor the nature of the stimulation it might give the streets). Therefore, McCarthy, respecting the balance, was not present either.
The hawks had first proposed fifteen minutes for the debate, than thirty. An hour was the maximum obtainable by the doves. On the greatest national issue any convention had faced since the second world war, debate would provide an hour of speech for each side. Moreover, the sides would make alternate speeches. Thus, no massive presentation of argument nor avalanche of emotion would ever result.
These restrictions having limited the outcome before they began, Rep. Philip Burton of California spoke first for the minority, then Senator Muskie of Maine for the majority. Burton asked that we “heed the voices of men and women of good will who across the land call for peace,” Muskie went through the differences in the majority and minority planks, and the similarities, and then concluded that the majority protected our soldiers, whereas the minority was too quick to desire peace at any price.
The speakers came on. They seemed careful to abstain from rich, extravagant, or passionate language. No one got up to say that one million men on our side could not dominate a quarter million men on the other, for that would have been unpatriotic (which for a politician is sacrilege equal to burning money or flooding property) no, the best of the majority roamed mean and keen over the legalities, the technicalities of commitment, the safety of American soldiers, the tempo for establishing representative government; they spoke in styles sometimes reminiscent of the eminent sanity of Dean Rusk; he was always a model of sanity on every detail but one: he had a delusion that the war was not bottomless in its lunacy. Of course, words like lunacy were not for the floor of the convention. Muskie; Sen. McGee of Wyoming; Governor Hearnes of Missouri; Mrs. Geri Joseph of Minnesota; David Pryor of Arkansas; Rep. Ed Edmondson of Oklahoma; Mayor Wilson Wyatt of Louisville; Rep Zablocki of Wisconsin, and Rep. Hale Boggs of Louisiana, Chairman of the Platform Committee, spoke for the majority long enough to put in nitpicking points and intone against Communism. The whine in one American’s nasal passages obviously stimulated something in the inner canal of other American ears when Communism was given its licks. The hawks then extolled the dove-like nature of the majority plank. The doves, however, came back by way of Senator Morse to reply that the “majority report stripped of its semantics is nothing but a naked proposal to continue the failures of our policy in Vietnam.” Also speaking for the doves: Paul O’Dwyer of New York; Ken O’Donnell of Massachusetts; John Gilligan of Ohio; Senator Gore of Tennessee; Ted Sorensen of New York, and Pierre Salinger of California.
For those who are curious let us give excerpts of a few speeches.
Senator Edmund Muskie: “The choice is this: A negotiated settlement with, or a negotiated settlement without safeguards to protect free elections.... A bombing halt with, or a bombing halt without consideration of the air protection for our troops against military risks arising north of the demilitarized zone.... Mr. Chairman, I urge the adoption of the majority plank.” (Muskie was obviously a contented rooster.)
Theodore Sorensen: “We call for an end to the bombing now—they call for an end if and when and maybe.
“Second, we call for a mutual withdrawal of all U.S. and North Vietnamese troops now.... The majority plank says maybe, sometime, if all Vietcong hostilities can somehow cease first.
“Third, we call, as Ted Kennedy called, for letting the South Vietnamese decide for themselves the shape of their own future. They call for the United States to stay and conform the Vietnamese to our political and economic standards.
“Fourth, we call for
a reduction of American troops now.... They call for a reduction in troops only when the South Vietnamese Army can take over....”
Governor Warren Hearnes: “... many of the decisions that are being made here in this convention hall by we politicians have been dictated by the prospects of victory or defeat. Victory or defeat in November.
“... For God’s sake, if you adopt the minority report, you are going to jeopardize the lives of the servicemen in Vietnam.”
Kenneth O’Donnell: “... we were forced to watch a Congress of the United States ... cut the budget $6-billion in the last Congress, and they cut it out of all the programs affecting the lives of every single American, out of the programs of health, in education and the problems that face our children ... we will not have the money unless we are able in some fashion to disengage ourselves from the expeditures not only of our best treasure, the young men, but the fact that we are spending $30-billion a year in a foreign adventure in South Vietnam. It must end.”
Representative Hale Boggs: “Can General Abrams supply an answer to me on this question, and I pose the question:
“Is there any possibility of your providing even an approximate estimate of the additional casualties we would take if we stopped the bombing of North Vietnam unilaterally and unconditionally?
“And the answer came back and here I read it to you—these are not my words, these are the words of General Abrams: ‘If the bombing in North Vietnam now authorized were to be suspended unilaterally, the enemy in ten days to two weeks could develop a capability in the DMZ area in terms of scale, intensity, and duration of combat on the order of five times what he now has.’
Miami and the Siege of Chicago Page 18
