1968

by Mark Kurlansky

  The conventions were always bad theater, full of grandiose and foolish stunts. In 1948, the first year they were televised, they became bad television. That was the year the Democrats unleashed a flock of recalcitrant pigeons who attempted to perch everywhere, including on chairman Sam Rayburn’s head while he was trying to call the meeting back to order with a gavel. He swatted it away, but the persistent bird landed in front of him on the podium. In front of a platoon of photographers with flashbulbs and television cameras, he grabbed the bird and flung it out of the way.

  In 1952 the summer event became air-conditioned, which eliminated wilted suits and hand-flapping fans and made it look less backroom. Air-conditioning also opened up new venues. There could have been no August convention in Miami before air-conditioning. In 1960 John Kennedy made conventions more interesting by inventing the tactic of monitoring every delegation and courting every delegate. He spent four years on them before the convention met and then placed spies in each delegation to detect shifts so that prevaricating delegates could be massaged. Barry Goldwater adopted the same technique in 1964, and it became the way conventions were worked, adding a note of intrigue. 1968 would be the end of the drama, the year the parties learned that if it was going to be on television, the bosses had to work out the nomination in advance and then choreograph it for the cameras like the Miss America pageant or the Oscars—no more stubborn pigeons or any other surprises.

  But in 1968 the future of the party was actually decided in front of live television over the course of a week. It was the biggest story in television—bigger than wars, famine, or invasions. Most of the network organization moved to the convention city, and the network stars were made there. Huntley, Brinkley, and Cronkite had all secured their starring roles anchoring convention coverage. When CBS pulled Daniel Schorr off the Chicago convention to cover the Soviet tanks rolling into Czechoslovakia, he complained that he was being pulled from the big story.

  Up until 1968, the differences between Republicans and Democrats were more a matter of style than ideology. The Democrats had carried out the Vietnam War, yet the most prominent antiwar candidates were Democrats. The Republicans had their own antiwar candidates, such as New York senator Jacob Javits, who kicked off his 1968 campaign for a third term by calling for an end to the war, and New York City mayor John Lindsay, a long-shot bid for the Republican presidential nomination who was also vociferously antiwar.

  The most popular Republican candidate was New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, who was not exactly antiwar—he had supported the war “to protect the rights of self-determination” of the people of South Vietnam. But in 1968 he changed his tone, calling the war effort a “commitment looking for a justification,” and called for a unilateral withdrawal of U.S. troops. He was a social liberal with notable support among black voters. As governor, he had been pushing the New York State Legislature to legalize abortion. The eighty-five-year-old state law allowed abortion only to save the mother’s life. He called for the Republican Party to become “the voice of the poor and oppressed.” He even paid homage to Eugene McCarthy for bringing youth into politics and promised to lower the voting age to eighteen.

  He was a candidate of tremendous appeal—much liked by the press, a brilliant television performer with an almost believable common touch with his gravelly-voiced “Hi ya,” despite the fact that he was obviously “rich as Rockefeller.” In August he went to the Republican convention with polls showing him as a favorite who could comfortably beat Hubert Humphrey or Eugene McCarthy, whereas the same polls showed that his rival, Richard Nixon, could beat neither. Rockefeller was well liked even by Democrats, and his only problem with Republicans was the extreme Right, which was bitter in the belief that in 1964 he had failed to help their martyred conservative, Barry Goldwater.

  But he did have a problem. Nominees were picked at conventions by delegates, and most of the delegates were lined up for Richard Nixon, whom it seemed nobody liked. Very few were there for “Rocky,” whom it seemed everyone liked. How had this happened?

  Some pivotal moments in history get forgotten. Sometimes they don’t look significant at the time. On March 22 Rockefeller had announced that he was not a candidate. The statement shocked and mystified the political world. Most concluded it was some kind of tactic. Perhaps he intended to prove his popularity with a landslide of write-in votes. A New York Times editorial openly asked him to reconsider, saying, “The Rockefeller refusal to run means the nomination of Richard M. Nixon by default.” The editorial also said, “His decision leaves moderate Republicans leaderless and impotent.” In the hindsight of history, both statements have been proven correct. Though it did turn out to be an ill-conceived strategy and Rockefeller did get back into the race—he had never really left it—the move left Nixon, far more popular in the Republican Party than in the nation, free to rack up an unbeatable lead in delegates. Rockefeller spent an unprecedented $10 million to get back in the race, but Mailer quipped that he would have done better to buy four hundred delegates at $25,000 each.

  His mishandling of the 1968 campaign when he had everything in his favor meant the undoing of Rockefeller’s career, which in turn meant the orphaning of the liberal wing of the Republican Party. With the exception of one desperate hour when Rockefeller himself served as unelected president Gerald Ford’s vice president after Nixon resigned in disgrace, the Republican Party has never again turned to a politician from its moderate wing for president or vice president. 1968 was the year in which the Republican Party became a far more ideological party—a conservative party in which promising moderates have been marginalized.

  The only other Republican candidate was Ronald Reagan, the new governor of California in his second year, who had distinguished himself for unleashing police brutality on the California State campuses and for cutting spending for education, heath, and other social programs. This had impressed any number of conservatives. But Reagan appeared so unelectable, was the butt of so many jokes, that he made Nixon, a favorite comic subject in his own right, look like a serious contender. At least Nixon seemed smart, even if his intelligence was used to seamlessly shift positions with dizzying frequency.

  Later during his own presidency, Reagan’s apparent confusion was often blamed on his age. But even in 1968, only fifty-seven, Reagan often seemed lost. On May 21 he appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press and was asked to explain how he differed from Barry Goldwater. “There are a lot of specific issues, I was trying to recall,” he said. “Frankly, my memory is failing me. Just a short time ago I found he had made a statement. I was asked it and I disagreed on that particular statement.” By June a petition drive to put a referendum on the state ballot about Reagan’s competence had five hundred thousand signatures. California polls showed only 30 percent of the population believing he was doing a “good job.” Comedians always loved to do Nixon jokes, but Reagan jokes were increasingly coming into their own. Comedian Dick Gregory, who was running for president on his own party ticket as a write-in candidate, said, “Reagan is nigger spelled backwards. Imagine, we got a backwards nigger running California.”

  And there was Eisenhower, a ghost from the 1950s, who had consistently insisted that U.S. strategy in Vietnam was working and should be continued to protect the world from communist domination. Typical of Eisenhower’s fascinating contradictions, as president he had spoken grandly about the people’s demand for peace, but in the sixties, when they finally were demanding it, he accused the antiwar movement of “rebellion” and “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.” Like de Gaulle, he frequently referred to his World War II experiences. Yes, he admitted, we appeared to be losing in Vietnam, but he recalled reading the newspapers after the Battle of the Bulge and feeling the same way. After yet another heart attack he appeared on the front pages from his bed at Walter Reed Hospital in pajamas and a bathrobe that said on it “Feeling Great Again.” He warned of the communists, and, live from his bed, he was broadcasting to Miami to endorse his former vice president, Ni
xon. It was as though the 1950s would not go away. Ten hours later Eisenhower had a sixth heart attack, which he also survived.

  Conventions chose candidates by a series of ballots—delegate counts, state by state. These ballots would go into the night, ignoring the broadcast needs of prime-time television, until a single candidate had an absolute majority of delegates. Usually the more ballots that took place, the more the front-runner’s support would erode. Rockefeller imagined the delegates turning to him after a few rounds. Reagan fantasized that Rockfeller and Nixon would be deadlocked ballot after ballot until the delegates finally turned to him as a way out. Lindsay, though no one believed it, harbored a similar fantasy about himself.

  Nixon won on the first ballot.

  The only drama was Nixon’s struggle with Nixon. His political career had been considered over in 1948, when he attacked former State Department official Alger Hiss. It was supposed to be over again in 1952, when he was caught in a fund-raising scandal. And in 1962, when he was defeated for governor of California only two years after losing the presidency to Kennedy, he gave his own farewell to politics. Now he was back. “The greatest comeback since Lazarus,” wrote James Reston in The New York Times.

  Then something weird happened: Nixon, in his acceptance speech, started talking like Martin Luther King. Mailer was the first to notice it, but this was not just one of his famously eccentric imaginings. Nixon, who also adopted the SDS’s two-fingered peace salute, never put limits on what he could co-opt. Martin Luther King in the four months since his death had journeyed from rebel agitator to the heart of the American establishment. His organization was picketing outside the convention hall. Six miles away, Miami was having its first race riot. The governor of Florida was talking about responding with necessary force, and black men were being shot. Richard Nixon was delivering a speech.

  “I see a day,” he repeated nine different times in the unmistakably familiar cadence of “I have a dream.” Then, further on in the speech, seemingly enraptured with his own or whomever’s rhetoric, he declared, “To the top of the mountain so that we may see the glory of a new day for America. . . .”

  The Republican convention in Miami the second week of August 1968 was a bore that according to pollsters alienated youth, alienated blacks, and excited almost no one. Even the one possibility for drama—the complaints of black groups that black representation was unfairly excluded from the delegations of Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee failed to produce drama because it was quickly glossed over. Norman Mailer wrote, “The complaints were unanimous that this was the dullest convention anyone could remember.” One television critic said the coverage was so long and dull that it constituted “cruel and unusual punishment.” But the boredom helped the Republicans. It kept people from paying attention and consequently kept them from noticing the rioting in the street. A poll taken in segregated white Florida public schools in 1968 had found 59 percent of white students were either elated or indifferent to the news of Martin Luther King’s assassination. While Nixon was being crowned in Miami Beach, Ralph Abernathy, head of the late Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was leading daily black demonstrations outside, and across the bay in the black ghetto called Liberty City, a violent confrontation erupted between police and blacks, with cars overturned and set on fire. National Guard troops were called in. While Nixon was selecting his running mate, three blacks were killed in the Liberty City riot.

  There was only the question of vice president left, and logic seemed to dictate a liberal who could pick up the Rockefeller votes—either Rockefeller himself or New York City mayor John Lindsay, who was campaigning hard for the nomination, or Illinois senator Charles Percy. Rockefeller, who had declined to be Nixon’s running mate in 1960, seemed unlikely to accept now.

  In the end Nixon surprised everyone—at last a surprise—and picked the governor of Maryland, Spiro T. Agnew. He said he did this to unify the party, but the party could not conceal its unhappiness. The entire moderate half of the party had been ignored. The Republican Party had a ticket that would greatly appeal to white southerners who felt embattled by years of civil rights and to some northern reactionary “law and order” voters who had been angered by the rioting and disorder of the past two years, but to no one else. The Republicans were leaving most of the country to the Democrats. Alabama renegade Democrat George Wallace, an old-time segregationist running on his own ticket, could not only siphon off Democrats, he could also deny the Republicans enough votes to cost them southern states and their whole southern strategy. There was a move to try to force Nixon to pick someone else that was stopped only because Mayor Lindsay, the leading liberal candidate for the job, performed Nixon the service of seconding the Agnew nomination.

  Nixon defensively said that Agnew was “one of the most underrated political men in America.” The following day, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP, one of the most moderate black groups, denounced the ticket, which they termed “white backlash candidates.” Was that bad news for Nixon? Was that even news? Richard Nixon, with few people noticing, had reshaped the Republican Party.

  Then on to Chicago—for a convention that would not be boring.

  CHAPTER 16

  PHANTOM FUZZ DOWN

  BY THE STOCKYARDS

  Jean Genet, who has considerable police experience, says he never saw such expressions before on allegedly human faces. And what is the phantom fuzz screaming from Chicago to Berlin, from Mexico City to Paris? “We are REAL REAL REAL!!! as this NIGHTSTICK!” As they feel, in their dim animal way, that reality is slipping away from them.

  —WILLIAM BURROUGHS, “The Coming of the Purple Better One,” Esquire, November 1968

  There’s nothing unreal about Chicago. It’s quite real. The mayor who runs the city is a real person. He’s an old time hack. I might chastise the Eastern establishment for romanticizing him. The whole “Last Hurrah” aspect. He’s a hack. A neighborhood bully. You have to see him to believe him.

  —STUDS TERKEL, interviewed by The New York Times, August 18, 1968

  People coming to Chicago should begin preparations for five days of energy-exchange.

  —ABBIE HOFFMAN, Revolution for the Hell of It, 1968

  EVERYTHING SEEMED inauspicious for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago at the end of August. The convention center had burned down, the most exciting candidate had been murdered, leaving mostly a void filled with anger, and the mayor had become notorious for his use of police violence.

  Chicago’s McCormick Place Convention Center was what Studs Terkel might have a called “a real Chicago story.” It had been built a few years earlier at a cost of $35 million and named after the notorious right-wing publisher of the Chicago Tribune, one of the few backers of the project besides Mayor Daley. Environmentalists fought it as a degradation of the lakefront, and most Chicagoans regarded it as abysmally ugly. Then, mysteriously or, according to some, miraculously, it burned down in 1967, leaving the Democrats without a location and Chicagoans wondering exactly how the $35 million had been spent.

  Mayor Richard Daley, who in his 1967 reelection faced what was close to a serious challenge because of the McCormick Place scandal, was not going to let fire or scandal rob his city of a major convention. By the old Union Stockyards, the beef center of America until it was closed down in 1957, stood the Amphitheatre. Miles from downtown, since the closing of the stockyards this had become an out-of-the-way part of Chicago where such events as wrestling and the occasional car or boat show took place. The convention could take place in the Chicago Amphitheatre once Daley had it wrapped in barbed wire and surrounded by armed guards. The delegates could stay, as planned, in the Conrad Hilton Hotel, about six miles away, by the handsomely landscaped downtown Grant Park.

  For almost a year, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, and other New Left leaders had been planning to bring people to Chicago to protest. In March they had met in secret in a wooded campground
outside Chicago near the Wisconsin border. About two hundred invited activists attended the meeting sponsored by Hayden—among them Davis, David Dellinger, and the Reverend Daniel Berrigan, Catholic chaplain at Cornell. Unfortunately, the “secret meeting” was written about in major newspapers. Davis and others had talked about “closing down the city,” but Mayor Richard J. Daley dismissed such comments as boastfulness. Now they were coming to Chicago: Hayden and Davis and the SDS, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin and the Yippies. David Dellinger and the Mobe vowed to bring in hundreds of thousands of antiwar protesters. The Black Panthers were to have a contingent, too. Dellinger had been born in 1915, and the World War I armistice was one of his earliest memories. Jailed for refusing the draft in World War II, he had almost thirty years of experience demonstrating against wars and was the oldest leader in Chicago. Everyone was going to Chicago, which may have been why Mayor Daley had made such a show of brutality in the riots after King’s shooting in April.

  Silk-screen poster protesting the attempt by federal prosecutors to prosecute the leaders of the Chicago convention protesters

  (Center for the Study of Political Graphics)

  1968 was a hard year to keep up with. Originally the movements were going to Chicago to protest the coronation of incumbent president Lyndon Johnson. McCarthy and whatever delegates he had would protest inside the convention, and the demonstrators would be outside, before the television cameras, reminding America that there were a lot of people who were not supporting Johnson and his war. But with Johnson not running, they were coming to Chicago to support McCarthy and the antiwar plank. Then Bobby Kennedy was running, and when for a moment it looked as though he might be winning, some, including Hayden, began to wonder if they would be protesting at all in Chicago. But while Kennedy and McCarthy had been fighting it out in the primaries, Hubert Humphrey—without McCarthy and Kennedy’s armies of devoted volunteers, but with a skilled professional organization—was picking up delegates at the caucuses and meetings of nonprimary states. Once Kennedy was killed, plans turned to bitterness and fatalism. Go to Chicago to stop Humphrey from stealing the convention, to make sure the Democratic platform was antiwar, or . . . go to Chicago because there was nothing else that could be done.