Editor’s Note: The Democratic Convention, which is scheduled for next week in Chicago, will feature discussions on the economy, a controversial war, violent protestors, Russia’s invasion of another country, a president who decided not to run for re-election and his vice president who is running. Sounds familiar? It has eerie parallels to the 1968 convention, which was also held in the Windy City. Chapman professor Luke A. Nichter is being sought as a commentator by the national media because of his recently published book, “The Making of the President, 1968; Johnson, Humphrey, Nixon, Wallace and the Election that Changed America.” The following excerpts are with permission of Yale University Press.
Wild rumors circulated about planned disruptions to the convention: radicals were going to add LSD to the city water supply, people impersonating chefs would drug delegates’ food, fake taxis would take delegates to Wisconsin, and Hubert Humphrey’s pants would be pulled down while he was speaking at the convention podium. Abbie Hoffman threatened to send 230 “sexy” members of the Youth International Party to Chicago to seduce
delegates’ wives, daughters and girlfriends.
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In 1967, when President Lyndon Johnson chose Chicago as the convention site, he still thought he would be the nominee… he thought he would coast to another easy reelection.
Humphrey worked up the courage to confront Johnson about a Vietnam policy alternative. He presented the fifth draft of a working paper that had been developed over two months by a task force of staffers and academics to help Humphrey establish an independent position on the war without crossing Johnson.
Humphrey thought his team’s work had been undercut by Johnson’s speech that reaffirmed a hard line in Vietnam just as Humphrey was looking for ways to soften the American position. “He pulled the rug right out from under me,” Humphrey told a journalist. “It gave me an awful wallop.”
The main feature Humphrey hoped to include in a major Vietnam campaign speech was a proposal for a virtually unconditional bombing halt, to show that the United States was serious about jumpstarting the peace. Humphrey had known he would pay a heavy price if he announced a different policy without first clearing it with Johnson; but he also paid a price for sharing it with him.
Johnson said the statement would endanger peace prospects and the lives of his two sons-in-law serving in Vietnam. If Humphrey put it into a speech, he would have “blood on his hands,” and Johnson would “destroy” his presidential chances.
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Johnson had been strong enough to restrain the party’s liberal wing, he said, but Humphrey could not. Liberals had persuaded a majority of the country to turn against the war, but Americans resisted accusations that their nation was immoral or imperialistic.
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On Aug. 20, Johnson received another great setback when he learned the USSR had invaded Czechoslovakia…. The invasion also complicated the Paris peace talks because many Democrats had endorsed the Soviet proposal for an unconditional bombing halt. But after Czechoslovakia, no one wanted to appear too close to the Soviets…
When Johnson announced that the plan for a summit with the Soviets was canceled, an aide said, “The saddest person in a sad room was Vice President Humphrey.”
Instead of proceeding triumphantly to Chicago, Humphrey would represent an administration with few foreign policy achievements that he could continue into his presidency. His advisors said the stage was set for him to win the Democratic nomination but lose in the fall.
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Appearing on Meet the Press on the eve of the convention, Humphrey sounded more like a man who had conceded defeat than like one near the pinnacle of his political career. He arrived in Chicago under cover of darkness, with no crowd to welcome him and no cameras, only a bagpipe band.
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Near the International Amphitheater, protesters set up tents, walked around naked, smoked pot and urinated and defecated where they chose. “We were a public display of filth and shabbiness, living-in-the-flesh rejects of middle-class standards,” Jerry Rubin wrote in his memoirs.
The protesters in Chicago were not the poor or downtrodden but white radicals, many from middle- and upper-middle-class backgrounds.
“I supported the Vietcong and selective violence here at home,” Rubin wrote. “Though I am a white middle-class American, who enjoys a good meal and the luxury of comfort, I nevertheless share the feelings of extremist revolutionaries.”
The press coverage encouraged them. The attention glamorized the mob. Even though only 10,000 protesters showed up—far below the original estimate of 50,000—millions of Americans got their image of a typical protester from the coverage of the Chicago convention, and they did not like what they saw. The protest leaders were brilliant at turning a political demonstration into theater designed for television.
Humphrey “never understood why so many mature minds, especially the press, failed to see the protesting for what it was: a mass childish tantrum.”
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John Connally threatened to start a “draft Johnson” movement… “I have not the slightest doubt,” Johnson recalled, “that if I’d wanted to, I could have been reelected.”
The president had his speech ready, and a Jetstar presidential aircraft fueled and waiting on the runway at the LBJ Ranch, ready to take him to Chicago. One factor in Johnson’s turnaround was the release of a Harris poll on Aug. 26 that tested Nixon against Johnson, Humphrey and McCarthy. It showed all three running behind Nixon by about six points. Harris, who had typically been closer to Democrats than Gallup, advised Johnson that if he tried to speak at the convention, he might be booed.
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“I am appalled at the calamity to our country if Richard Nixon should be elected,” Averell Harriman, the prominent rich businessman and diplomat, wrote to Humphrey. “Aside from the setback to our country of his reactionary policies and those of the Republican Right wing he represents, unfortunately around the world he has aroused a personal distrust.”
Attorney General Ramsey Clark had no interest in pursuing any of the protesters and instead wanted to prosecute the police for using excessive force against the protesters.
Five thousand people marched across Michigan Avenue in the warm night air to their confrontation with Chicago police. Images of blue-helmeted police chasing, pushing and beating protesters were seen by millions of Americans on television. Yet the majority sided with the police, a sign of how exhausted the nation was from the experiences of the 1960s.
In his speech accepting the nomination, Humphrey did his best to calm the chaos both inside and outside the hall. But it was not the radical, gauntlet-hurling speech that many wanted him to make. It was an elegant address, a classic Humphrey speech that had something for everyone.
Reaching a crescendo, Humphrey said, “I say to America: Put aside recrimination and dissension. Turn away from violence and hatred. Believe in what America can do and believe in what America can be . . . and . . . with the help of this vast, unfrightened, dedicated, faithful majority of Americans, I say to this great convention tonight and to the great nation of ours: I am ready to lead our country!”
Humphrey used the convention period to plan and retool a campaign that badly needed it. He had no money and no campaign materials and was about to face a 15-point deficit in the polls.
