“I’m aware of the general’s statement. I’m also aware that there is significant dissent from that view in the Defense Department. And,” Humphrey added, his face flushed with anger, “I’d like the President to understand that we’re looking for platform language here that can provide an alternative to the Kennedy plank. We think a conditional bombing halt can defeat a call for an unconditional one. We think we can paint Bobby into a corner. But if the President thinks this convention is going to simply wrap its arms around what we’re doing now, and if he thinks I can beat Richard Nixon without being my own man, then he isn’t nearly as shrewd about politics as I think he is . . . assuming of course, he wants me to beat Nixon.”
“Of course he does,” Watson muttered. “But this is about the safety of half a million American boys. So let me say it again: The President believes anything other than support for our policy will be read as a sign of weakness in Hanoi.”
When Watson left, Humphrey waved his associates away and sat alone for a long moment. He had sought the Presidency in 1960, and been crushed by the magnetism and the money of John Kennedy. He’d eagerly sought the Vice Presidency four years ago, assuming that Lyndon Johnson would spare him the indignities he himself had endured, from Kennedy, only to discover that Johnson was more than happy to inflict the same indignities on him. He had assumed he and Bobby Kennedy would be fighting for the nomination in 1972; instead, it was happening now. By June, he had become the insider, the candidate of the machinery, closing in on the nomination without winning a single vote. And then Bobby had survived the attempt on his life, and the campaign terrain had shifted out from under him.
Every instinct told him this was the time to break free, this was the moment for a declaration of independence. No sitting Vice President had won a Presidential election since Martin Van Buren in 1836, and if he were to break that pattern, he would have to stake his own claim on the office, and chart a course away from the disaster that was Vietnam. And every political calculation told him that following his instincts would be suicidal. His tormentor was also his most powerful benefactor; no one had to tell him what Lyndon Johnson would do if he saw his war repudiated by his own running mate. If he stayed with the course he knew to be a failure, he had a chance for the nomination, and then he could signal a change of course.
There was, however, one way to redeem himself.
And so he called Robert Kennedy, slipped away from his handlers, and that Tuesday night had a brief, urgent meeting. And they agreed on what each of them would do once the battle was over.
THE NOMINATING SPEECHES began on Wednesday at six p.m., after a two-hour recess that followed the debate on the platform. The Kennedy campaign had trimmed its sails some, offering a plank that called the Vietnam War a “tragedy” rather than a “disaster,” praising the courage of the troops, calling for negotiations among “all parties” to achieve “a just peace” and “an independent South Vietnam,” offering faint words of praise for President Johnson’s decision “to halt the escalation and open the door to negotiations.” The more temperate language came after a brief but intense dispute among Robert Kennedy’s team, but it proved tactically effective. By a narrow 1370-1180 vote, with 70 abstentions, the plank was adopted, defeating language drafted by the White House that praised the President’s “determined efforts to resist Communist aggression in Southeast Asia” and rejecting “dangerous concessions that would expose allied forces to increased danger.” What was left unclear was just how many Humphrey supporters backed the softer language, in hopes of giving the Vice President running room should he be the nominee. When the nominations began, no one could say for sure whether Kennedy or Humphrey would prevail, or whether abstentions and favorite sons would push the convention to a second ballot for the first time since 1952.
The nominating speeches were predictable, save for one dramatic moment: Connecticut Senator Abe Ribicoff, seconding Kennedy’s nomination, looked straight at the Texas delegation sitting directly in front of him and said, “With Robert Kennedy as President, we wouldn’t have to witness flagrantly undemocratic politics at a Democratic convention!” The TV networks cut to a split-screen shot of Chicago Mayor Daley enthusiastically applauding Ribicoff, while Texas Governor John Connally shouted (as he later insisted he said), “You phony!”
Just after nine p.m., a tall blond woman named Dorothy Bush, recording secretary of the Democratic National Committee, stepped to the rostrum as she had done at every convention since 1944 and intoned: A-la-bam-a . . . thirty-two votes!” And as soon as Alabama (“the Yellowhammer state . . . home of the Camellia . . .”) cast its votes, the full meaning of what had happened in the eighty-five days since that midnight in a Los Angeles hotel kitchen crystallized.
With the unit rule abolished, and an integrated delegation now seated, 12 of Alabama’s 32 votes went to Robert Kennedy—twelve more than chief Kennedy delegate hunter Dave Hackett had estimated back in June on the day Sirhan Sirhan had taken his pistol into that hotel kitchen.
In state after state, the pattern was the same: a few more, in some cases a lot more, votes for Kennedy. Alaska, home of Senator Ernest Gruening, one of only two senators to vote against the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that helped pull the U.S. further into Vietnam, cast 8 of its 28 votes for Kennedy. Georgia, whose delegation had been split in two by the credentials committee, gave him half of its 44 votes. Florida was solidly for Humphrey, but without the unit rule, 10 of its votes went for Kennedy.
Then Michigan reported, and the combined work of Walter Reuther and Detroit Mayor Jerry Cavanaugh—a white mayor in an increasingly black city—brought 50 votes for Kennedy. In Missouri, where Kennedy had whistle-stopped to celebrate the Fourth of July, a jubilant Tom Eagleton announced that 40 of its 60 votes were in Bobby’s corner. (“I’m in shock!” he shouted.) In Minnesota, Humphrey’s home, the anti-war forces that had rallied behind Eugene McCarthy put 25 votes in Kennedy’s corner. Nevada gave 6 of its votes to Kennedy, which surprised everyone except the handful who knew that in June, the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes had given a $25,000 cash contribution to Bobby’s campaign, in hopes he would end nuclear tests in Nevada. Ohio, whose delegates Kennedy had wooed so intensely in May, gave him 60 more; and while Pennsylvania’s big cities held for Humphrey, that vast middle of Pennsylvania, with its coal mines and steel mills, its farms and small businesses, went for Bobby, and 40 more votes fell to him. And in the press corps and among the shrewder number crunchers around the hall, a murmur began to grow: “ Texas, Texas will do it, can you believe it, Texas!”
“Tex-as!” Dorothy Bush recited. “One hundred and four votes!” And now the cavernous convention hall quieted; the cameras focused in on the delegation positioned in a place of honor at the very front of the hall. There, at the microphone by the state’s standard, was Governor John Connally, silver-haired, impeccably tailored in a custom-made pin-striped suit, his face set in full battle mode, and it was almost possible to read his thoughts: I’ll be goddamned if I let Texas put that little son of a bitch over the top.
“Madam Secretary,” Connally began, “Texas—the home of America’s greatest President, Lyndon Baines Johnson”—cheers, boos, catcalls erupted—“Texas, home of the Alamo, where American patriots chose death before surrender . . . Texas, voting under the unit rule”—and the convention exploded in noise. Behind Connally was Senator Ralph Yarborough, the ardent liberal whose blood feud with Connally had brought President Kennedy to Texas in November of 1963, who had been riding in the car just behind Kennedy and Connally when the shooting began. Now Yarborough was grasping for the microphone, yelling up at the rostrum, “Poll the delegation! Poll the delegation!” A thoroughly discomfited Carl Albert conferred for a moment with Dorothy Bush and the convention parliamentarian, then announced, “Since this convention abolished the unit rule, the Texas delegation will be polled. The roll call will continue.”
When the last delegation was tallied, Robert Kennedy had 1,290 votes, Humphrey 1,180. Had
the unit rule survived, Humphrey would have had just enough votes to deprive Kennedy of a majority, and the faint hope that a second ballot might produce defections from Kennedy’s totals. But when the cameras zeroed in again on Texas, they caught John Connally and dozens of the state’s delegates storming out of their seats, up the center aisle, and out of the hall, and a jubilant Ralph Yarborough was at the microphone.
“Madame Secretary,” Yarborough announced. “Texas votes as follows: thirty votes for Lyndon Johnson . . . sixty-five votes for Vice President Humphrey . . . and nineteen votes for the nominee of the Democratic Party, Senator Robert—”
Dave Hackett, camped in a command post trailer under the floor of the amphitheater, picked up the telephone and rang Suite 407 in the Blackstone Hotel.
“Bobby,” he said, “it’s Dave. I just have one thing to say to you—when you pick a running mate, don’t fuck it up like you did the last time.”
IT HAD BEEN ON his mind for days, weeks; it had in fact claimed a part of his thinking from the first moments he had decided to enter the contest. It stirred some of his most painful memories. Just as it was his brother’s reckless behavior that had put his career in the malevolent hands of J. Edgar Hoover, just as it was his brother’s fear of political defeat that had kept the United States entangled in Vietnam, it was his brother’s decision to run with Lyndon Johnson in 1960, and it was Jack who had kept Bobby from forcing Johnson off the ticket that Thursday afternoon in Los Angeles eight years ago. There may well have been self-delusion about Robert Kennedy’s belief; without Johnson on the ticket, John Kennedy might well have lost that election, and there was no way to know whether political pressures might have kept John Kennedy from leaving Vietnam in a second term. By 1968, however, Kennedy had come to believe that Lyndon Johnson was not just a failed President, but a dangerous one. And from that belief came a recurring sense of guilt that he and his brother had put this cowardly, dangerous man in the White House.
So he’d been worrying over a running mate long before Dave Hackett’s wisecrack at the moment he won the nomination. He knew his choice had to be credible as a potential President—after what happened to Jack and what had almost happened to him, the possibility of a sudden succession to the White House was no dim abstraction. Beyond that were hard political calculations. He started by thinking about his top supporters. Senator George McGovern (“the most decent man in the Senate,” he’d called him once, then amended it to say, “maybe the only decent man in the Senate”). But McGovern was up for reelection, and if he joined the ticket, Democrats would almost surely be sacrificing his Senate seat. Senator Ralph Yarborough of Texas was tempting, if only for the grief it would cause President Johnson, but Yarborough was too hot, too likely to stir uneasiness about his finger on the button. Senator Al Gore of Tennessee would balance the ticket geographically and generationally (he was sixty-one), but he’d voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Kennedy remembered that his Justice Department had sniffed out some troublesome financial dealings between Gore and billionaire wheeler-dealer Armand Hammer, who was more or less the Soviet Union’s financial enabler in the West. Governor Harold Hughes of Iowa was a former truck driver, a recovering alcoholic with a commanding presence and a blunt, no-bullshit approach. But Hughes was also running for the Senate, a sure bet to win, and Kennedy might well need that vote to get his program through. Besides, Hughes had a streak of mysticism that would unsettle voters. One of Kennedy’s Nebraska coordinators had spoken with Eugene McCarthy’s Nebraska treasurer, a thirty-three-year-old financial wunderkind named Warren Buffett, who was helping Hughes in his Senate bid. Hughes, Buffett said, had casually mentioned having conversations with his brother—who’d been dead for ten years.
“I love Hughes,” George McGovern had said to Kennedy. “But picking a running mate who even seems a little mentally unstable? It’d be political suicide. You really have to be careful here, Bob.”
Besides, it became increasingly clear to Kennedy and his advisors that they would have to pick a running mate who had not supported him. Whatever his young Senate aides might think about running with someone who had been hawkish on Vietnam, a divided Democratic Party could not win in November.
“You write very nice speeches about a coalition government in Vietnam, and reconciling black and white and young and old at home,” Kennedy chided one of his speechwriters. “Now you want to tell me that if somebody was for Hubert, they’re beyond redemption?”
Some of Humphrey’s most prominent backers could be eliminated very quickly. Maine Senator Edmund Muskie, New Jersey Governor Richard Hughes, San Francisco Mayor Joe Alioto, were all Catholics, and two on the ticket would be one too many. Senator Fred Harris of Oklahoma was a young, fresh face, but, at thirty-seven, he was too young to be running with a forty-two-year-old Presidential nominee. Besides, Ethel wouldn’t stand for it; they’d more or less adopted Fred and Ladonna Harris, had them to Hickory Hill any number of times, and as soon as Hubert announced, Fred had jumped right on his bandwagon. As my brother might have said, he thought, sometimes party unity asks too much.
“In a perfect world,” Larry O’Brien had said earlier in the day, “you’d find a Southerner with proven experience, who opposed your nomination, and who could help deliver a big state . . .”
“Do you think Lyndon Johnson would be interested?” Joe Dolan asked. “He is constitutionally eligible, you know.”
Now, an hour after he’d won the nomination, he and his aides were gathered in the living room of his suite at the Blackstone. He’d taken the awkward pro forma call from Richard Nixon, the gracious congratulatory phone call from Hubert Humphrey, the stilted, formal call from Lyndon Johnson, who told him, I’m sure Jack Kennedy is looking down tonight, and I’m sure he’s proud of you. Then, almost as an afterthought, Johnson said, I know you don’t need my advice, maybe you don’t want it, but I’d take a hard look at Sanford down in North Carolina. I thought about him for myself four years ago, but I thought two Southerners would be overreaching.
As the group worked through the possibilities, they kept circling back to Terry Sanford, the fifty-one-year-old former governor of North Carolina. Back in ’60, when he was elected, Sanford had risked the wrath of local Democrats by backing John Kennedy for President. As governor, he’d been a symbol of “the new South”—sending his children to integrated public schools, pushing for more money for schools and colleges, leveraging his clout with the White House to create the Research Triangle Park that jump-started the economy of Raleigh-Durham. He’d signed on as Lyndon Johnson’s campaign manager earlier in the year, then headed up the citizens’ committee for Hubert Humphrey. Picking Sanford wasn’t going to help him win North Carolina, they all agreed, but as Kennedy said, “With my views on tobacco, I couldn’t carry North Carolina if Jesus was running with me, and then the New York Times would say I was alienating the Jewish vote.” But it was the right signal to unhappy Democrats; it was a nomination that spoke directly to the challenge posed by George Wallace’s third-party campaign, and the idea of Sanford in the Oval Office was reasonable.
It was left to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the resident historian, to note the unprecedented nature of the choice.
“I never thought I’d see the day,” he said, “when a Southern governor would wind up on a Democratic Party ticket.”
If that break with tradition was a surprise, it was matched on Thursday night when Terry Sanford finished his acceptance speech, motioned for the applause to stop, and said, “I am honored now to welcome the man who will introduce our nominee for President . . . a tireless champion for justice and equal rights, Minnesota’s favorite son . . . ,” and a roar erupted as a smiling, energized Hubert Humphrey bounded onto the stage. This was the gesture he and Kennedy had agreed to on their phone call: that whoever lost the nomination would come to the convention hall to introduce the winner.
“He looks liberated,” said one newsman.
“He is,” his colleague said. “I just hope the ne
xt time he goes to the White House mess he brings a food taster along.”
“I had hoped to be here under somewhat different circumstances,” Humphrey began, and launched into a podium-thumping celebration of the Democratic Party. He ended by bringing the convention to its feet when he thundered: “To those who believe that we Democrats cannot overcome our differences and unite in November, I have three words for them: President Richard Nixon! We’ve had a family argument,” Humphrey concluded, “but it is time now to stand together, work together, for the American family. It is time for a President with the vision and the energy to heal our divisions. It is time for the next President of the United States: Senator Robert Kennedy.”
He walked onto the stage slowly, almost solemnly, shook hands with Humphrey, and approached the rostrum. There were no waves at the crowd, no expansive gestures. Only a pointed reminder from Fred Dutton kept a smile on his face, his eyes level, instead of looking down at his feet. (“It makes you look uncomfortable, ill at ease,” Dutton said. “I am ill at ease,” Kennedy replied.)
He began with thanks to Humphrey (“I am grateful he did not get to speak before the balloting, because I might well have been out here introducing him”), paid fleeting tribute to Eugene McCarthy—May his lecture fees increase, he thought—and then addressed his other adversary.
“There were clear differences—profound differences—between the President and myself. There is no sense attempting to hide that truth—besides, when it comes to avoiding the truth there is no way any of us could compete with the Republican nominee. But when the history of our time is written, it will record that Lyndon Johnson was the Second Great Emancipator—who did more than any other President since Lincoln to make the promise of equality a reality. And for that, every American, black and white, owes him our profound gratitude.”
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