Heroes, Hacks, and Fools: Memoirs from the Political Inside

8. A Near Miss

8 A NEAR MISS The Humphrey-Muskie campaign spent the first part of September 1968 pulling the Democratic Party together.On the campaign trail,almost as much time was spent in private meetings with party leaders as in public outreach. An Associated Press story, written from Houston, stated that “Vice President Humphrey spent an active day here in rooms and suites at the Rice Hotel.” Humphrey got a badly needed emotional lift during this period from a national black ministers’meeting convened at Cobo Hall in Detroit,arranged by staff member Ofield Dukes. All Protestant denominations were represented . Wherever we went, the Vietnam issue was a presence. Not on this day at Cobo, however. One speaker after another pledged to work intensely until election day on Humphrey’s behalf. Humphrey said he would work twenty-four hours a day in the presidency for the social-justice agenda so close to his heart. At the end, everyone gathered on the stage with joined arms, swaying together and singing,“Like a tree that stands in the water, we shall not be moved!” As we left Cobo in Humphrey’s car, he said: “If I win the election, I’ll never forget this day. I’ll be the best president black Americans ever had.”Both of us were still wiping our eyes.The 1965 Voting Rights Act had empowered black voters, and they turned out in record numbers in November 1968, almost all for Humphrey. It became clear,however,that unity would be impossible until Humphrey gave the party’s peace wing reason to return to the fold. George McGovern and most former Robert Kennedy supporters had rallied immediately to Humphrey. But in the wake of the Chicago chaos, Eugene McCarthy and many of his supporters held back their support. In the meantime, we were surprised by the strength being shown by George Wallace’s third-party campaign , not only in the South but also among traditionally Democratic bluecollar voters in northern industrial states.Wallace’s“law-and-order”platform had unspoken subthemes of racism. Nixon,nominated by Republicans earlier in August in Miami to be their candidate, was critical of the Johnson administration’s conduct of the war, 84 but failed to oªer specifics of his own. He later was quoted as saying he had “a secret plan to end the war.” He never used those words directly but that, indeed, made up the substance of his Vietnam position. He may well have been thinking of General Dwight Eisenhower’s 1952 campaign pledge that “I will go to Korea” to end the unpopular war there. Humphrey, as he campaigned, gradually began edging toward the independent stance he originally had planned to take prior to the Chicago convention . Standing behind podiums bearing the vice presidential seal, he took to declaring:“Put the presidential seal in front of me and I will make peace!” The line always drew immediate applause. O’Brien made a practical case for adopting a new and definitive Humphrey statement on Vietnam. In a general campaign staª meeting he said, “We cannot hope to win this election without carrying both New York and California.We cannot carry New York and California without the peace vote.” O’Brien called me on the campaign plane to ask if I thought Humphrey would deliver the independent statement both of us previously had wanted him to make.I told him that I thought he had no option but to do it. Among other things, peace hecklers and, to a lesser degree, Wallace hecklers were disrupting most of his campaign appearances. Media were focusing on the disruptions and not on a series of international and domestic policy proposals that he was oªering in speeches and white papers.The Vietnam issue had to be dealt with decisively. The campaign at that point was nearly broke. At mid-September, cash on hand totaled about $200,000. O’Brien and I discussed the possibility of using it to buy half-hour blocks of national television time to deliver speeches on Vietnam and law and order.The statements would be delivered from television studios.No other campaign activity would be scheduled on those dates, thus forcing media to focus on the statements. If the Vietnam speech were scheduled, I said, Humphrey would recognize that it had to be one that once and for all defined his own position.O’Brien proceeded.Half-hour time slots were purchased for September 30 and early October...