Nixon was now in an excellent position to carry the South against a northern liberal Democrat, but not against George Wallace. From his obscure base in Montgomery and with his reputation as the nation’s most prominent racist, Wallace lusted after the presidency. “George’s great weakness,” his friend Hamp Graves said, “is running. He’s a compulsive runner. We all are in Barbour County.” In 1964 he had entered several Democratic primaries and had done very well—Wisconsin 34 percent, Indiana 38, Maryland 43. He could reach into a deep pocket of racism in the white North.
But the Alabama law forbade the governor to succeed himself and his term had expired in 1966. He tried to persuade the legislature to change the law, but failed. He then did the next best thing: He ran his wife, Lurleen. She won and promptly came down with terminal cancer. After several operations she died on May 9, 1968.
Since Wallace nominated himself and his American Independent Party was a paper fiction, he did not need to enter primaries or cultivate delegations. But he had to qualify his name on the ballot in all 50 states, a formidable operation. California alone required 66,000 signatures. He also selected General Curtis LeMay, former head of the Air Force and the nation’s leading advocate of the use of nuclear weapons, to run with him. Wallace got on all the ballots and soon was drawing big and enthusiastic crowds to his campaign rallies. Chester, Hodgson, and Page wrote,
By the eve of the conventions, George Wallace had established certain facts: He would be a national candidate. He would have serious support in the North. “Law ’n’ order” was supplanting Vietnam as the prime issue of the campaign. And none of the candidates in the two major parties could any longer afford to ignore the existence of the man from Alabama.9
When Johnson renounced the presidency, Hubert Humphrey was stunned because he realized that the goal he had so long yearned for might now be within his grasp. When Kennedy was shot, Humphrey was convinced that he would win the nomination. But his wife restored reality. “Daddy,” Muriel said, “the shot that: killed Bobby has wounded you, maybe very seriously.” “Why,” he asked, “do you say that?” “Because people are going to be so sick of politics, so sick of Democrats, that it’s just going to be impossible to do anything.”
When Humphrey returned from Mexico City, he met with his closest advisers. They assured him that Kennedy would not stampede the Democratic party and that only Humphrey commanded its decisive center. They urged him to announce. He then called all 24 Democratic governors, prominent mayors like Daley of Chicago, James Tate of Philadelphia, and Joseph Alioto of San Francisco, along with George Meany of the AFL-CIO and I. W. Abel of the Steelworkers. Most were very encouraging. At a meeting in New York of wealthy businessmen he won financial support. But in a visit to the White House Johnson told him that he would remain neutral in order to concentrate on ending the war. Humphrey, Albert Eisele wrote, “was not happy at the lack of private encouragement from the man he had served so faithfully.”
On April 27 Humphrey shouted to a roaring crowd of 2000 at Washington’s Shoreham Hotel that he was their man. His speech was a proper plea for unity, restraint, and civility. But in his bubbly enthusiasm he ad libbed that he also advocated “the politics of joy.” In catastrophic 1968 this sounded absurd and he paid for it. His team was quickly out in the field collecting delegates and within a week reported that 1200 of the 1,312 needed to nominate were either in the bag or leaning toward it. An early Harris poll showed Humphrey with 38 percent, Kennedy 27, and McCarthy 25.
Humphrey brought Larry O’Brien on board as both campaign manager and chairman of the Democratic National Committee. While O’Brien recognized that the odds were against them, he thought they had a long shot.
O’Brien was deeply troubled about two problems. The first was that the convention, aside from serving as a showcase for dissent, was convening much too late, the end of August. It had been scheduled a year in advance for LBJ in order to “shorten the period your opposition can achieve center stage. … It turned out to be a disaster [for Humphrey] in terms of conducting a campaign.” He was also eager to start at once on critically important and expensive TV spots and was constricted by a severe shortage of funds induced by Humphrey’s poor showing in the polls following the convention. “You can’t avoid the reality,” O’Brien noted, “that a down side in the polls has a tremendous effect on your ability to finance a campaign. Political realists have a tendency not to reach into their pocket quickly when it’s not a good bet.”
The Kennedy assassination undermined McCarthy because much of Kennedy’s support shifted to Humphrey and he soon swept beyond the 1,312 needed. McCarthy, uncertain of his desire to be President, became depressed. Humphrey was also discouraged because, as Muriel had predicted, the killing soured the public and particularly his party on the political process.
Wherever he turned Humphrey confronted this fundamental question: Are you your own man on Vietnam or are you speaking for Lyndon Johnson? He tried stonewalling, but that failed. McCarthy, despite his uncertainties, drew large crowds and gained in the polls. The good ship Humphrey was stalled in the water and had started to leak. He desperately needed a declaration of independence from LBJ on Vietnam.
On July 25 Humphrey gathered a task force headed by Professor Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard to work out a statement on the war. They agreed that the cornerstone should be an immediate halt in the bombing of North Vietnam. It was worked into a 13-page document called “Vietnam: Toward a Political Settlement and Peace in Vietnam,” which Humphrey approved. He was eager to have the President accept it. Johnson had told him to clear policy statements on Vietnam with Rusk. But Humphrey considered this too important and went straight to the Oval Office. Humphrey later recalled,
The president was very much opposed to it. I … went all over it with him. His reaction was, in substance, “Hubert, if you do this, I’ll just have to be opposed to it, and say so. Secondly, Hubert, you ought not to do this because we have some things under way [in Paris] now that can lead to very important developments. Thirdly, Hubert, I have two sons-in-law over there, and I consider this proposal to be a direct slap at their safety and at what they are trying to do.”
Humphrey, crestfallen, returned to his staff and instructed them to redraft the statement, which proved extremely difficult, really impossible.
Draft No. 11 contained two key changes: Humphrey promised that he would “not do or say anything that might jeopardize the Paris peace talks.” Also, while he still called for stopping the bombing, he now added, “when reciprocity is obtained from North Vietnam.” He presented these revisions to Johnson at his ranch on August 9, who rejected them out of hand. The President, according to Hymphrey, said,
You can get a headline from this, Hubert, and it will please you and some of your friends. But if you just let me work for peace, you’ll have a better chance for election than by any speech you are going to make. I think I can pull it off. I think I possibly can get negotiations going, and possibly get the beginnings of peace. If I do, that would be the greatest thing that ever happened to this country, and it would be the greatest thing that ever happened to you.
Humphrey read this as a “hint of an imminent breakthrough in the peace negotiations.” He did not challenge the President by demanding specific evidence. In fact, on August 9 there were no negotiations. As Johnson would write in his memoirs, “the Paris talks dragged on through the summer. The formal sessions were sterile propaganda exercises. Informal talks during tea breaks and elsewhere were of little more value.” In fact, on August 19, with peace nowhere in his mind, the President delivered a very hard-line speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Detroit.
Humphrey came away from the meeting with Johnson with another concern: He was convinced that the President was reconsidering his promise not to run for another term. LBJ was eagerly trying to arrange a summit meeting with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin and had invited Nixon and Agnew to the ranch on August 10, the day after Humphrey’s visit. The President had insiste
d that Humphrey come in secret, but the Republicans came with a large press contingent that gave the friendly meeting wide coverage. Humphrey complained, “That bothered me.” If Johnson, in fact, intended to run, his hopes were crushed by a Harris poll as the convention opened that showed all three—Humphrey, McCarthy, and Johnson—tied six points behind Nixon.
Vietnam, of course, was the issue that could split the convention and destroy Humphrey. He did everything he could to bridge the gap between the President and the peace candidates. A week before the convention began, the platform committee met in Washington. Hale Boggs, the House whip, was chairman and a strong Johnson supporter. A hefty majority of its 110 members leaned the same way. While the McCarthy, Kennedy, and McGovern people (Senator George McGovern became a last-minute candidate) had differences, all agreed that the platform plank must call for a halt in the bombing. A score of wordsmiths worked to paper over the differences between the peace candidates, which, more or less, succeeded and then to bridge the gap between them and Johnson, which failed.
On August 20 Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia and overthrew the Dubček government. This, of course, strengthened the hard-liners. Johnson sternly ordered Humphrey not to coddle the doves and Boggs gained firmer control over his committee.
By the Friday before the convention opened the peace groups had agreed on their plank. It was read to Humphrey and he accepted it. He read it to Rusk and Rostow and neither saw any problem. That night Johnson showed Boggs a cable from General Abrams saying that a halt in the bombing would have a dire impact upon American troops. The whip’s ramrod spine hardly needed further stiffening. Johnson had already decided that he would unalterably oppose the doves’ plank. On Monday morning, as the convention was about to open, Marvin Watson came to Humphrey’s suite at the Conrad Hilton to inform him that it was unacceptable. Humphrey was astounded, pointing out that it had been cleared with Rusk and Rostow. But, as Johnson said coldly, “It hasn’t been cleared with me.” The platform committee endorsed Johnson’s Vietnam policy by a vote of 65 to 35.
Connally, who headed the Texas delegation, was Johnson’s point man to assure that the convention adopted the committee’s plank. No one ever accused John Connally of delicacy or even of civility. Further, he would soon desert the Democratic party. He was merciless with Humphrey. He was, O’Brien said, “arrogant” and “abrupt.” O’Brien continued, “Any departure from the Johnson Vietnam policy would be considered by him and southerners he claimed he was speaking for as totally unacceptable, and would bring about disruptions in the convention up to and including Connally putting Johnson’s name in nomination.” O’Brien did not believe the threat.
In Chicago the Democratic convention drama played itself out on two stages—the Chicago Amphitheatre on the South Side where the delegates gathered and on the streets and parks downtown where those who opposed the war battled Mayor Daley’s cops. The peace groups differed in viewpoint and style and several had long planned an attack on the convention.
The National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam was a loose organization which sought to speak for many groups which agreed only on opposition to Lyndon Johnson and his war. During the preceding winter David Dellinger, who headed the Mobe, and several others, particularly Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden, both much to the left of Dellinger, discussed a massive demonstration at the Democratic convention in August. Davis was named coordinator and opened an office in Chicago. But many of the Mobe’s constituents, fearing violence, refused to participate and efforts to win support from militant black organizations were fruitless. The organizers assumed that hundreds of thousands would march. In fact, no more than 5000 came to Chicago from other towns.
Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, prominent hippies, launched a parallel demonstration. They had founded the Yippies, the Youth International Party, which would stage a Festival of Life (Hoffman: “There we were stoned, rolling around the floor. … yippie! … Somebody says oink and that’s it, pig. They would nominate a live pig named Pigasus for President.”) They called this the politics of absurdity, which attracted Allen Ginsberg, the poet of the absurd. If Pigasus was elected, they would demand important changes in American society, like the abolition of pay toilets.
In Daley’s Chicago any use of public facilities required a permit. Mobe and the Yippies did not hesitate to ask for the moon. Both wanted Soldier Field for the whole convention week, August 23–28, but it was already taken for President Johnson’s birthday (born on the 27th, LBJ never showed up). Mobe also wanted two very busy thoroughfares for marches of 150,000 and 200,000 people, along with ten parks for rallies and six for sleeping. The Yippies asked for Grant Park day and night. The city granted none of these requests.
The week before the convention the Yippies gathered in Lincoln Park on the near North Side, where they had to observe an 11 p.m. curfew. The crowds were small. They listened to rock music, heard tributes to the qualifications of Pigasus, and sat on the ground in the lotus position with Ginsberg. He had taken a fling at Eastern mysticism and argued that, if one sounded “om” in this position, tension would go away. If a group “omed,” the police would be immobilized. This could come in handy in Chicago. For some reason Ginsberg’s theory did not work. There were several mild encounters with the cops, none very serious, which the Yippies invariably lost. Several of them even wound up in jail.
On Monday afternoon, August 26, the scene shifted to Grant Park. Several hundred demonstrators “seized” the huge equestrian statue of Civil War General Jonathan Logan and climbed all over it, draping it with Vietcong and Communist flags. One youth made it to the top of the general’s head and sat there. The police attacked, breaking his arm as they dragged him down. Ginsberg was “oming” nearby. Tuesday was quiet as the demonstrators held an “unbirthday” party for the President. Wednesday was climactic both at the Amphitheatre and at Grant Park.
The convention, as David Broder described it, proceeded under wretched conditions:
The mood of the dissident delegates had been growing increasingly bitter with each passing day. To the inevitable aggravations caused by the overcrowded conditions on the convention floor—movement down the aisles was almost impossible without being bumped, shoved, and pummelled—were added the tightest security regulations ever imposed on a national convention. Delegates had to present special passes for electronic surveillance on entering the Amphitheatre and again when going onto the floor. Packages and purses were opened and searched. Newspapers, in many instances, were confiscated—ostensibly because of fear of fire. Private police employed to keep interlopers off the floor and in the vain effort to unsnarl the aisles often used more force in their work than some delegates thought justified, and there were frequent scuffles. Finally, there were persistent complaints that the dissident-controlled delegations like California and Wisconsin were not being recognized by the pro-Humphrey, pro-Administration convention chairman, House Majority Leader Carl Albert of Oklahoma.
Under these circumstances and with massive police violence taking place in Grant Park, Vietnam came up for debate on Wednesday afternoon. The platform committee language on bombing was as follows: “Stop all bombing of North Vietnam when this action would not endanger the lives of our troops in the field; this action should take into account the response from Hanoi.” Since Johnson insisted that the present bombing protected U.S. troops and there was no possibility of a Hanoi response until the stalled Paris negotiations began, there could be no halt to the bombing until some remote and indefinite date in the future. The peace candidates found this totally unacceptable. They insisted on an immediate and unconditional cessation of bombing. The difference was sharp and left Humphrey no room for maneuver. In fact, he had always opposed bombing and in his heart fully agreed with the minority position. But the President demanded that he support the majority and Humphrey caved in.
“For almost three hours,” Broder wrote, “many of the party’s most distinguished leaders went to the microphone—alternating bet
ween advocates of the minority and majority plank, in a debate of rare cogency and emotional power.” In the roll call at the end Johnson won 1,567 3/4 to 1,041 V4. The losers then donned black arm bands and sang the civil rights anthem, “We Shall Overcome.” The nominations for President would take place that night.
Meantime, Grant Park and the Democratic headquarters hotel across Michigan Avenue, the Conrad Hilton, had erupted. The Mobe had finally received a permit for a rally at the bandshell between 1 and 4 p.m. McCarthy, concerned about the safety of his followers, urged them not to participate. By mid-afternoon a crowd estimated at 10,000, many from Chicago, had gathered. The police set up lines on three sides and infiltrated the rally with plainclothes officers. The Chicago police had a long and dishonorable history of violence and brutality and their behavior that day was in their classic tradition.
About 3:30 or 4:00 a youth shimmied up the flagpole and lowered the American flag. The cops grabbed him, beat him, and arrested him. The crowd screamed, “Pigs!” They then threw concrete, bricks, sticks, cans, and stones at the attackers. A police line advanced on the crowd, bashing people with their batons. After 20 minutes they fell back. Dellinger then announced that there would be a nonviolent march to the Amphitheatre. As they gathered, the police told them they had no permit and the National Guard blocked the way.
Meantime, about 2000 crowded at the Hilton and screamed obscenities at the cops. There was trouble keeping order and the police feared that Dellinger would move his frustrated marchers to the hotel, which, in fact, was announced shortly after 6:00. The Guard blocked the bridges over the railroad tracks. The crowd attacked and troops responded with tear gas, which the breeze from the lake swept onto Michigan Avenue. When one bridge was left open, the crowd surged across to the Hilton.
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