July 13, 1972: The Democratic Convention concludes at the Miami Beach Convention Center. The Democrats blew it, big-time.
First, they may have nominated the wrong guy. Senator George McGovern of South Dakota was a "prairie populist," in the tradition of William Jennings Bryan and the man who finished 2nd this time, Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota. As the incumbent Vice President, Humphrey had been the nominee in 1968, and had nearly won.
Humphrey's running mate that time had been Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine, who ran for President this time, but got torpedoed by Republican dirty tricks in the New Hampshire Primary, and, though he won it, his campaign never recovered. Mayor John Lindsay of New York, previously a Republican, had switched to the Democrats in 1971, and everybody knew it was so he could run for President. He flopped completely.
Representative Shirley Chisholm of New York, the 1st black woman elected to Congress, made the 1st serious run for President by either a black person or a woman, with the slogan "Unbought and unbossed," but didn't get very far. She later said she got more resistance to her gender than to her race.
At the other end of the spectrum was Governor George Wallace of Alabama. The infamous segregationist, who had run a 3rd-party campaign in 1968 and won 5 Southern States, had won the Florida Primary. Then, he campaigned in the North on racial resentment, and finished 2nd in Wisconsin, 2nd in Pennsylvania, and 2nd in Indiana. He was shot and paralyzed while campaigning in Maryland on May 15, then won that State and Maryland the next day, possibly as a sympathy vote.
He had to drop out of the race, but was given 9 minutes to speak to the Convention from his wheelchair, while Chisholm only got to make a few brief remarks. This helped to depress the black vote for the Democrats.
Unlike Franklin Roosevelt, he couldn't fully stand,
but he could lean forward from his wheelchair.
And the most popular Democrat in the country? Senator Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy of Massachusetts did not run, because of the cloud that hung over him from the incident on Chappaquiddick Island 3 years earlier.
A big part of McGovern's appeal was his close friendship with Ted's brother, the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, and, before that, a strong working relationship with their brother, President John F. Kennedy. If Ted wasn't going to be the standard-bearer for the Kennedy fans' dream, McGovern was a convenient stand-in.
But everything that seemed to work for McGovern in the Primaries worked against him for the general election campaign. He had brought in young voters by running against the old Party bosses, such as Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, and union leaders like AFL-CIO President George Meany. Men like that saw the McGovern delegates as long-haired mods, longer-haired Hippies, feminists, Black Panthers and gay activists -- an exaggeration, but close enough to the truth for old-line Democrats to either stay home or switch to the Republican incumbent President, Richard Nixon.
I call this the McGovern Effect. I probably should call it the Goldwater Effect, but Barry Goldwater had problems beyond this tactic in 1964 that George McGovern did not have in 1972. Later Presidential nominees have fallen victim to it: Walter Mondale for the Democrats in 1984, Michael Dukakis for the Democrats in 1988, George H.W. Bush (despite being the incumbent) for the Republicans in 1992.
Once McGovern won the California Primary on June 6, there was no question that he would have a majority of the Delegates on the 1st ballot. He got 1,729, for 57 percent. Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson of Washington, running as a foreign policy hawk, thinking he could get the support of people who still supported the Vietnam War while everyone else split the antiwar vote, didn't seem to count on prowar people also supporting Wallace, and Jackson got just 525 Delegates. Wallace, despite no longer being in the race, got 382, basically a protest vote against the McGovern "Hippies" and "kids."
Chisholm finished 4th, with 152. Former Governor Terry Sanford of North Carolina got 78. Humphrey, in his 3rd and last run for President, got just 67. Representative Wilbur Mills of Arkansas, the powerful Chairman of the House's tax-writing Committee Ways and Means, got 34. Muskie got 25. Ted Kennedy, who wasn't even running, got 13. Representative Wayne Hays of Ohio got 5. Former Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, who had run in 1968, got 2. And former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota each got 1.
Both Mills and Hays would face sex scandals, and, not being members of the Kennedy family, saw their political careers come to an end.
The Miami Beach Convention Center
McGovern was officially nominated on Wednesday, July 12. Now, he needed a Vice Presidential nominee. Up until 1984, when Mondale announced Geraldine Ferraro a week before the Convention began, running mates were usually not chosen until there was a Presidential nominee. The deadline for filing such candidates was 4:00 PM on Thursday, July 13.
McGovern's aides practically begged Kennedy to accept the Vice Presidential nomination. He refused, and instead suggested either Mills or Mayor Kevin White of Boston. But Mills was a Southerner, and White had been a Muskie supporter, and both were thus unacceptable to most McGovern Delegates.
Humphrey was approached to accept the Vice Presidential nomination, as he had under Lyndon Johnson in 1964. So was the man who then won his seat that year, Mondale. So was McCarthy, the man who left the Senate, opening it for Humphrey. All three Minnesotans turned it down.
With 5 minutes left before their deadline – not quite literally at the last minute, but close enough – McGovern accepted another suggestion: Senator Thomas Eagleton. He was a moderate, a Catholic, a former Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General of Missouri, who would (it was presumed) bring in moderates, Catholics, and "law and order" fans.
What they didn't know was, a few weeks earlier, with a promise of anonymity, Eagleton had told conservative newspaper columnist Robert Novak that nominating McGovern was a sure defeat. (Novak promised not to reveal who'd said it as long as they were both still alive, and he kept that promise.) What they also didn't know was, Eagleton had received electroshock therapy for treatment of clinical depression.
To make matters worse still, the McGovern delegates decided to have a little fun with their votes for Vice President. There were nominating speeches for 8 candidates, also including Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska; former Governor Endicott Peabody of Massachusetts; and a member of the House of Representatives of Texas, Frances "Sissy" Farenthold, who had just forced, but lost, a runoff for the Democratic nomination for Governor of her State. Gloria Steinem, co-founder of Ms. magazine and the leader of the new wave of feminism, gave Farenthold's nomination speech.
The delayed roll call of the States for this nomination has been compared to a last day of school. There were 79 separate people mentioned as receiving at least 1 delegate:
* Senators: Eagleton, 1,742 Delegates; Gravel, 226; Birch Bayh of Indiana, 62; Kennedy, 15; Fred Harris of Oklahoma; Harold Hughes of Iowa, 10; Joseph Montoya of New Mexico, Hispanic, 9; Adlai Stevenson III of Illinois, son of the 2-time Presidential nominee and great-grandson of a Vice President, 8; McCarthy (former), 3; Sanford, 3; Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island, 3; Muskie, 2; Ernest Gruening of Alaska, 2; Abe Ribicoff of Connecticut, 2; Jackson, 1; Frank Church of Idaho, 1; Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, Asian, 1.
* Members of the House of Representatives: Peter Rodino of New Jersey, 57; Chisholm, 20; Mills, 5; Robert Bergland of Minnesota, 5; Ron Dellums of California, black, 4; Herman Badillo of New York, Hispanic, 3; Claude Pepper of Florida, 2; Robert Drinan of Massachusetts, an antiwar priest, 1; Nick Galifianakis of North Carolina, 1; Martha Griffiths of Michigan, 1; Allard Lowenstein of New York, Jewish, 1; Phillip Burton of California, 1; William Barrett of Pennsylvania, 1; Bill Chappell of Florida, 1; and 1 to John Z. Goodrich of Massachusetts -- a protest vote, for a man who died in 1885, and was a Republican.
* Governors: Peabody (former), 108; Jimmy Carter of Georgia, 30; Ned Breathitt of Kentucky (former), 18; William L. Guy of North Dakota, 8; Wendell Anderson of Minnesota, 4; Reubin Askew of Florida, 3; Wallace, 1; Lawton Chiles of Florida, 1.
* Lieutenant Governors: Roberto A. Mondragón of New Mexico, Hispanic, 4; Hoyt Taylor of North Carolina, 2.
* Mayors: Moon Landrieu of New Orleans, 19; Richard Hatcher of Gary, Indiana, black, 11; Daley, 2.
* State legislators: Farenthold, 405; Clay Smothers of Texas, black 74; Stanley Arnold of California (former, by this point a judge), 4; John J. Houlihan of Illinois, 4; Julian Bond of Georgia, black, 1; Joseph F. Smith of Pennsylvania, 1.
* Other State-level politicians: Bruno Agnoli, Chairman of the Democratic Party of Ocean County, New Jersey, 2; Charles Hamilton, Treasurer of Massachusetts, 1.
* Cabinet members: Clark (former), 2.
* Labor union leaders: Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers, Hispanic, 5; Leonard Woodcock of the United Auto Workers, 2; George Norcross Jr. of the South Jersey AFL-CIO, 1.
* Aides to other politicians: John DeCarlo, a campaign aide to Wallace, 2; Patrick Tavolacci, an aide to Kennedy; Michael Griffin, another Wallace aide, who was already dead, 1; Hargrove "Skipper" Bowles, an aide to Governor Sanford, 1; Jim Hunt, a North Carolina political operative who was running for Lieutenant Governor, and was elected to that office and Governor, 1.
* Journalists: Hodding Carter, a white journalist from Louisiana who nonetheless had been a crusader for civil rights in Mississippi, and a 3rd person to receive at least 1 Delegate despite being already dead, 5 Delegates; Roger Mudd of CBS News, who had been critical of Nixon, 2;
* And these people who were not in any public office each received 1 Delegate. Eleanor McGovern, the would-be First Lady; Patricia Roberts Harris, black, a former Ambassador who later served in President Carter's Cabinet Ralph Nader, consumer advocate who later ran for President with disastrous results; Daniel Berrigan and Philip Berrigan, brothers and radical priests, 1 each; Benjamin Spock, the famed pediatrician who'd run an independent campaign for President; Jerry Rubin, agitator and one of the Chicago Seven; Fred Seaman, John Lennon's personal assistant; Martha Mitchell, loudmouthed wife of John Mitchell, Nixon's campaign chairman and former Attorney General, who wound up going to prison for Watergate; Mao Zedong, dictator of China, and thus ineligible to accept the nomination1; Ernest Albright and Robert Kariss, on whom I can find no information, 1 each; and Archie Bunker.
That's right: Someone cast a vote for a fictional character, the lead figure of the CBS situation comedy All in the Family, and a Republican, and a bigot. Mad magazine had printed a fake campaign poster with his face, saying, "NIXON AND BUNKER IN '72!" The Democrats would have been better off with Archie's portrayer, Carroll O'Connor, who was a liberal in real life, and knew all the conservatives' prejudices, the smart ones and the stupid ones alike.
As the vote went on -- and on, and on, and on -- Farenthold began to attract an unexpected level of support, eventually leading to something of a grassroots campaign to nominate her over Eagleton. However, this ultimately proved too late, and too disorganized to have any serious chance of denying Eagleton the nomination.
The whole thing looked disorganized. To use an expression that New York Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin had given to a group of mobsters, the Democrats looked like "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight." They looked like a bunch of hippies, feminists, Black Panthers and gay activists, making McGovern's supporters look as nutty on the left as Barry Goldwater's looked on the right 8 years earlier. Or, as Leo McGarry (played by John Spencer) said of the Democratic Convention on the TV show The West Wing decades later, "One night of this is great theater. Two, and we look like idiots."
Eagleton finally had the nomination secured at 1:40 AM. The process took so long that McGovern's acceptance speech didn't begin until 2:50 AM on the 14th. Theodore H. White, author of the Making of the President book series that concluded with the 1972 edition, noted in that edition, "Only in Guam was George McGovern speaking in prime time under the American flag." So nobody except political junkies and insomniacs saw McGovern's speech.
Too bad, because it was a good one. Introduced by Kennedy, his remarks included the following:
My nomination is all the more precious and that it is a gift of the most open political process in all of our political history.
It is the sweet harvest of the work of tens of thousands of tireless volunteers, young and old alike, funded by literally hundreds of thousands of small contributors in every part of this nation.
Those who lingered on the brink of despair only a short time ago have been brought into this campaign, heart, hand, head and soul, and I have been the beneficiary of the most remarkable political organization in the history of this country.
It is an organization that gives dramatic proof to the power of love and to a faith that can literally move mountains.
As Yeats put it, "Count where man's glory most begins and ends, and say: My glory was I had such friends."
This is the people's nomination and next January we will restore the government to the people of this country.
Unfortunately, as I said, so much of what worked for the McGovern campaign from January through June worked against them from July to early November. He paid tribute to his competitors for the nomination:
I treasure this nomination, especially because it comes after vigorous competition with the ablest men and women our party has to offer: My old and treasured friend and neighbor, Hubert Humphrey; a gracious and a good man from the State of Maine, Ed Muskie; a tough fighter for his own convictions, Scoop Jackson of Washington; and a brave and spirited woman, Shirley Chisholm; a wise and effective lawmaker from Arkansas, Wilbur Mills; and the man from North Carolina who over the years has opened new vistas in education and public excellence, Terry Sanford; the leader who, in 1968, combined both the travail and the hope of the American spirit, Senator Eugene McCarthy.
And I was as moved as well by the appearance in the Convention Hall of the Governor of Alabama, George Wallace. His votes in the primaries showed clearly the depth of discontent in this country, and his courage in the face of pain and adversity is the mark of a man of boundless will, despite the senseless act that disrupted his campaign. And, Governor, we pray for your full recovery so you can stand up and speak out for all of those who see you as their champion.
He knew they looked disorganized and divided, but tried to reassure voters at home:
To anyone in this hall or beyond who doubts the ability of Democrats to join together in common cause, I say: Never underestimate the power of Richard Nixon to bring harmony to Democratic ranks. He is the unwitting unifier and the fundamental issue of this national campaign. And all of us are going to help him redeem a pledge made ten years ago: That, next year, you won't have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore!
He went on:
We must now show that peace and prosperity can exist side by side. Indeed, each now depends on the existence of the other. National strength includes the credibility of our system in the eyes of our own people as well as the credibility of our deterrent in the eyes of others abroad.
National security includes schools for our children as well as silos for our missiles. It includes the health of our families as much as the size of our bombs, the safety of our streets, and the condition of our cities, and not just the engines of war. If we someday choke on the pollution of our own air, there will be little consolation in leaving behind a dying continent ringed with steel.
So while protecting ourselves abroad, let us form a more perfect union here at home. And this is the time for that task.
He spoke of putting Americans back to work after the recession of 1970-71, of a fairer tax system, and of national health insurance. And he spoke of ending the American role in Vietnam. He did not, as his critics said he believed in, speak of peace at all costs, amnesty for draft evaders, the re-legalization of banned drugs, or abortion on demand.
He did speak of patriotism, but a just patriotism: "And this is the time to stand for those things that are close to the American spirit. We are not content with things as they are. We reject the view of those who say, 'America: Love it or leave it.' We reply, 'Let us change it, so we may love it the more.'" From there, he closed:
It is time to live more with faith and less with fear, with an abiding confidence that can sweep away the strongest barriers between us and teach us that we are truly brothers and sisters.
So join with me in this campaign. Lend Senator Eagleton and me your strength and your support, and together we will call America home to the ideals that nourished us from the beginning.
From secrecy and deception in high places, come home, America.
From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation, come home, America.
From the entrenchment of special privileges in tax favoritism, from the waste of idle lands to the joy of useful labor, from the prejudice based on race and sex, from the loneliness of the aging poor, and the despair of the neglected sick, come home, America.
Come home to the affirmation that we have a dream. Come home to the conviction that we can move our country forward. Come home to the belief that we can seek a newer world. And let us be joyful in that homecoming, for this "is your land, this land is my land, from California to New York island, from the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters, this land was made for you and me."
So let us close on this note: May God grant each one of us the wisdom to cherish this good land and to meet the great challenge that beckons us home. And now is the time to meet that challenge.
Good night, and Godspeed to you all.
"This Land Is Your Land" had been written by Woody Guthrie in 1945. The line "To seek a newer world" had come from the 1842 poem Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, whom the Kennedy brothers admired, and Bobby had used it as the title of a book published in 1967. It also evoked Jack's "New Frontier," Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal," and, for the oldest of living Democratic voters at the time, Woodrow Wilson's "New Freedom."
If the speech had ended at 11:00 PM or so, as most Presidential nominees' speeches tend to do, with pretty much anybody wanting to see it still awake to do so, would it have made a difference? We'll never know. Instead, the speech ended at 3:40 AM. It was impossible for the Democrats' poll numbers to receive the usual "Convention bounce." And with the Eagleton selection turning into a fiasco a week later, it began to seem like Nixon was running unopposed -- or running not against McGovern, a war hero who believed the war in Vietnam war wrong, but against his loopy, disorganized supporters.
Indeed, despite having previously been so paranoid as to order the bugging of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, at the Watergate complex in Washington, Nixon barely had to mention McGovern's name: Most of his TV commercials were pro-self, and not really anti-anybody.
Despite being beaten as badly as any major-party Presidential nominee ever has, George McGovern remains the South Dakota native who has come the closest to becoming President.
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