by James Philip
Joanne Brenckmann sipped a mint julip, luxuriating in the warmth and guiltily enjoying a few days completely out of the public eye. From time to time the voices of her youngest son and his wife, and their three, still infant offspring drifted, between the splashing in the swimming pool up to the airy, first-floor room in the house loaned to the campaign by the Betancourt Foundation. The proud grandmother had been particularly struck by the playful, musical note in her eldest granddaughter, Tabatha’s squeals.
Sam was ‘playing the Hollywood Bowl’ that night; Joanne had no idea how he could be so relaxed, unfussed by the prospect now only five or six hours hence. Sam was off on tour again on Monday, leaving Judy and the young ones at home this time for at least six weeks.
‘I suppose it’s like being married to a guy on submarines,’ Judy had confided to Joanne.
The women had smiled, one to the other.
However, politics was never far from her thoughts.
“Assuming,” Joanne mused, out aloud, “Ted Kennedy’s delegates come over at the Convention, don’t we already have enough to carry the vote?”
“But then it’ll look like JFK fixed the race,” Larry O’Brien pointed out. “That won’t look good, even at the Convention.”
“It would be better,” Walter Brenckmann grunted, musing aloud, “if those delegates went over to McGovern.”
“Then we lose, even if all the Betancourt favours get called in,” the Director of the Brenckmann for President Campaign observed dryly.
“I know, I just wish there was another way to do this. But yes, I think the Kennedy delegates will swing in behind us, leastways, enough of them for us to win on the first vote.”
“George needs all the independents; and over half the DNC’s proxy votes to win in a straight fight,” Larry O’Brien prognosticated, wanting to talk business, not the rights and wrongs of the process.
The McGovern for President people understood that the Party did not believe he could beat Richard Nixon; so, this was no longer about who was on the ticket, it was about what happened after the election and George McGovern was far to intelligent a man not to be weighing his options.
It was a peculiarity of the primary system that both the Democrats and the Republicans retained a large slew of unelected delegate nominations to their own hierarchies. Within that internecine construct, each candidate fought for the scraps or factions. or simply bought, bribed or intimidated delegates, some of whom had multiple votes to cast, onto their side. It was hardly democracy but then in the land of the free many, many things were not quite what they seemed to be.
For example, George Wallace, comprehensively rejected by registered Democrats, had walked away from the race and declared he was running – with Curtis LeMay – as the candidate of the American Independent Party.
Pollsters were already predicting the Wallace-LeMay ticket might win Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and a longer shot, one or both of the Carolinas, worryingly sixty to eighty votes in the electoral college which might otherwise mostly fall into the lap of a Democrat. Understandably, the Governor of Alabama’s recent announcement had prompted a collective wail of despair in Democrat ranks.
“The way things stand we’ll end up fighting over Wallace’s delegates,” O’Brien complained with more than a hint of sour irony.
George McGovern was not about to make a play for the votes of red neck segregationists; and they were not, in their turn, likely to swing in behind a ‘socialist’ like him.
Unfortunately, George Wallace’s homeless delegates would inevitably, if they came to Walter Brenckmann’s door, be waving a long list of demands; probably including the restoration of the segregation of schools and colleges in the South.
“I don’t think,” Joanne decided, resignedly putting down her drink for the moment to concentrate, “that Walter is going to be very receptive to legalising the Klu Klux Klan or the reinstitution of the North Atlantic slave trade, Larry.”
O’Brien tried hard not to laugh, then helplessly exhaled a spontaneous gout of laughter. It was very hard to be downcast in Joanne Brenckmann’s presence.
“Holding the Convention in Memphis is a mistake,” her husband observed. “Wallace’s supporters will feel like they’re on home soil; they’re bound to try to make trouble with Doctor King’s people.”
Larry O’Brien rolled his eyes.
He had had this conversation with Walter before: it was almost impossible to discover if sufficient African-Americans, ‘blacks’ as most middle-of-the-road Democrats called them, had succeeded in registering to vote for their voice to be even a whisper at the coming general election.
“I want Doctor King to stand beside me on the stage at the Convention,” Walter Brenckmann said. “I want him on that stage whether it’s with George McGovern, or me, accepting the Party’s nomination.”
“Walter, we’ve had this argument…”
“The only slogan I will run on from here on in is: A PRESIDENT FOR ALL AMERICANS.” He thought about it. “Oh, and maybe: WE WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN!”
O’Brien glanced to Joanne, who was nodding vigorously.
“And,” her husband continued, “I will bring the best people into my Administration regardless of their political affiliations, the colour of their skin or their religious convictions.”
“Where does locking up Nixon fit into all this?” The other man retorted.
“That won’t be up to me; it will be up to the Department of Justice. Every crook deserves his day in court, and to be judged by a jury of his fellow citizens.”
Not for the first time Larry O’Brien was reminded that there was a single-minded remorselessness about the way Walter Brenckmann’s mind worked. His man was not about to bend in the wind no matter how hard it blew. Which really, really mattered because the man who won the Democratic nomination would probably be the man who wanted the prize the most.
He had been deconstructing the results of the late May and early June primaries the last few days, combining the raw voter numbers with the findings of the private polling among the general population – rather than registered Democrats -he had organised in Florida, New Jersey and California to try to get a handle on where the non-affiliated independents stood.
George McGovern had won Oregon and South Dakota by a country mile; no problem, the delegate numbers involved were buttons, not real currency in the coming battles.
Florida had been the Wallace-LeMay last hurrah, McGovern had won small and would have lost if the Cuban and redneck vote had not completely deserted the Brenckmann camp in favour of the Governor of Alabama. The large ex-patriot Cuban community in Florida was evenly split between people who blamed the Democrats (JFK mainly) for destroying their ancestral home; and those who still openly lauded the obliteration of the Castro and the Communists for which the destruction of practically all of Cuba west of Guantanamo Bay, and believed the immolation of ninety percent of the population was a price worth paying.
There had been unambiguous horror on the faces of the McGovern campaign workers when New Jersey went for Walter Brenckmann, and not by the width of a cigarette paper but by a sixty-forty split, and disbelief a few hours later when the result in California hit the wires.
Larry O’Brien had made sure he was being chased by the press in another part of the state, when his candidate and Bobby Kennedy had met up with the McGoverns at St Helena on the first day of the month. He had not had high hopes for the encounter; which by all accounts had been a very civil, respectful non-meeting of minds. Oddly, while this had infuriated the younger Kennedy brother, both Walter and Joanne had reported how nice it was to meet ‘George and Eleanor’, both of whom they agreed were good, and very impressive people. The meeting had ended cordially, indecisively but that had been three days before the final round of primaries.
The results of the California and New Jersey primaries had changed everything. It was just that the McGovern for President people had not figured that out yet. Once they had had a chanc
e to think about it, logically, the talks between the camps could recommence in earnest. Neither party had fully understood the facts on the ground at the time of that first meeting; so, when next they sat down together, it would be different.
“You know you’re going to have to offer George the VP slot, Walter,” O’Brien stated, much in the fashion of a man quoting from a screed carved into the living rock of the tablet he held in his hands, still a little breathless after his walk down from the top of the mountain.
The other man viewed him wryly.
“That wasn’t the deal, Larry,” he reminded his Director of Campaigns. “And besides, with Wallace and LeMay trying to hole us below the waterline in the South; I need Republicans and independents, undecided electors who would never vote for George in a million years to come over to us. That’s why I need you on the ticket, to cement the Democrat base for me while I go after the additional ten to twenty million votes – over half of them disillusioned or disaffected Republicans - that we probably need if we’re going to actually win this race.”
O’Brien’s eyes narrowed; he was supposed to be the career political insider and yet every now and again Walter Brenckmann gave him a quiet wake-up call, as if he was so accustomed to thinking two, three, four or five steps farther down the road than anybody else, that he did not get it that the mere mortals around him did not think that way too.
“Besides,” the candidate continued, “I’m just an old Boston attorney. I know nothing about DC, so my wingman has to be somebody who can navigate his way around the Hill, and do the behind the scenes heavy lifting, when I’m in the Oval Office.”
“That guy could still be George?”
This was greeted by a shake of the head.
“My Vice President will need to be a street fighter, Larry. I know that, you know that and that isn’t George McGovern. That’s the hardest part of all this. George is a fine man and at any other time I’d vote for him but this country is in a lot more trouble than most people realise. For example, all this baloney about the so-called ‘Nixon doctrine’ is, if it hasn’t already, going to get us into a war with the Communist Chinese that we cannot possibly win short of nuking Chongqing, and probably Shanghai and a score of other places. The Soviets must be watching what’s going on in the Western Pacific with a mixture of incredulity and gut-wrenching amusement.”
Larry O’Brien hesitated before objecting: “Most Americans think the Central European Demilitarised Zone is a great idea?”
Walter Brenckmann conceded the point, albeit only for a moment.
“The Russians would have given us that for nothing anyway; that whole Warsaw Concerto exercise was a propaganda stunt to prop up the home front. Nixon ended up buying peace in Europe with a de facto, open-ended commitment to deter Chinese aggression in Manchuria which the people in Chongqing, rightly interpreted as an attempt to undermine and cage-in their legitimate regional aspirations. Like the Soviets, the Chongqing regime is in the business of rebuilding its country. We ought to be sending the Chinese grain; not parking carrier strike groups off their coast!”
Joanne gave her husband a quizzical look.
He in turn grimaced apologetically, knowing he had very nearly raised his voice in exasperation.
He took a few seconds to re-order his thoughts.
“I confess that I only got into this thing because I was so damned angry that the Administration had been spying on my family,” he confessed. “And even then, I probably wouldn’t have said I’d run for office without a deal of quiet persuasion from a certain remarkable young woman of our mutual acquaintance,” he added ruefully.
O’Brien and his wife knew exactly who he was talking about.
“However, I said I would run and that behoves me, us, to aim high and to fight all the way down to the line. In my head I will be the Democrat nominee for President of the United States right up until the second, that I am not. That could happen in Memphis in August, or it could happen in November. I know that, maybe Jo and me will eventually get to retire down to the Florida Keys the way we were planning to back in October 1962. All that is in the hands of a greater power. I don’t know if there is a God, although I’ve always hoped that somebody was listening to my prayers. But I do believe in the American people and I don’t care a cuss if all the polls still tell us half of them plan to vote for Nixon. I trust the people.” He shrugged. “And when you’re in as much trouble as Richard Nixon is in, five months to go to a general election is an awful lot of time for something – well, something else - to go wrong.”
“Something else,” Larry O’Brien echoed dryly.
Walter Brenckmann nodded a half-smile to this.
“Half the people around the President are under subpoena or have already been indicted,” he went on. “If the House, or at least a few more members of the majority GOP caucuses in Congress and the Senate had the moral fortitude, or let’s be honest, the spine, to see past what they laughingly term their ‘party loyalties’, and resumed discharging their constitutional duties, or the Department of Justice wasn’t in the hands of White House place men, and crooks like John Mitchell – personally, I think the man is more of a bumbling oaf than a real shyster, but that’s by the by – Haldeman and all the others would never have been permitted to shelter behind executive privilege; and they’d all be in jail by now. As for the House allowing the FBI and the CIA to conduct their own internal inquiries into Operation Chaos, behind closed doors for goodness sake…”
They all shook their heads at this.
“The point I’m making is that the Administration is falling apart in front of the eyes of the American people, and sooner or later, Main Street is going to notice.”
“We know the Emperor has no clothes,” Joanne put in helpfully. “And there are still five months left for Americans to actually notice the President is naked.” She pulled a face. “And when that happens, that will come as a very unpleasant surprise to a lot of people.”
Chapter 32
Monday 10th June, 1968
Georgetown, Washington DC
Forty-year-old Theodor ‘Ted’ Chaikin Sorensen had accepted a position, an unpaid honorarium as Deputy Chair of Democrats for George McGovern the previous fall but contrary to the misinformation disseminated by the GOP and their Langley surrogates, he had not written, or consulted on any of McGovern’s speeches. Eleanor McGovern was by far the most influential – rightly so - person in her husband’s campaign, and understood far better which words would most naturally spill from George’s lips. Had Sorensen been consulted he would, it went without saying, have offered his advice; however, he had not been consulted.
For all that McGovern was his kind of candidate, he had worried that the junior Senator for South Dakota lacked the tempered, cutting edge he would need if he ever got into the White House. Being a nice guy and wanting to do the right thing had got JFK into a lot of trouble before he got up to speed and realised that the CIA, and by no means all his Democrat ‘allies’ on the Hill, were neither his friends, or even, actually on his side.
Therefore, Ted Sorensen had never really engaged with the McGovern people, notwithstanding he regarded many of them as friends, electing to remain above the fray, and a little distanced from the cut and thrust of the primary campaign.
Later, there had been those conversations he had had with Bobby and latterly, JFK, about the way the wind was blowing. Not that he could ever have come on board the Brenckmann ship while the Ambassador’s daughter-in-law, Gretchen was at the wheel – and in the back office, down in the engine room, picking fights she did not need to fight and doing everything except driving the Ambassador’s campaign bus – which meant, initially, he had rejected any thought of hitching his wagon to the Brenckmann caravan.
Bobby had made the first, somewhat elliptical approach, predicting that the Ambassador’s campaign would run onto the rocks but not necessarily founder, in New Hampshire.
Sorensen and the former US Attorney General had had their moments, befor
e and after the October War, and become unhappily estranged in 1963 and 1964, partly because Sorensen had gone home to his native Nebraska to, he had firmly believed at one time, die after the war plague-influenza came for him a second time. Yet he had survived, mourning by then for the loss of so many of the men he had sat with as a member of Excomm, the group JFK had hurriedly convened to – unsuccessfully as it turned out - avert Armageddon in the days before the Cuban Missile Crisis ended in catastrophe.
Other Excomm members like Bob McNamara had gone back to the Ford Motor Company, Bobby Kennedy had seemed to be in the political wilderness, tormented like his elder brother by all the ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys’ surrounding the events of those dreadful days in late 1962. Of the others: Maxwell Taylor, the then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had gone missing when his aircraft crashed a thousand miles from the nearest land coming back from Hawaii in 1963; Dean Rusk, JFK’s first Secretary of State had been murdered at the beginning of the Battle of Washington in December 1963; US National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy had returned from illness to serve again, and his strength exhausted, passed away in 1965; while Ambassador Llewelyn Thompson – the Administration’s Russia expert and a friend of the Khrushchev’s – had passed away that spring.
For Sorensen, DC had become a lonely place. Worse, under Richard Nixon’s regime it had become a lonely place where sometimes, one was wary of even trusting a rare, old surviving friend.
In JFK’s time, Operation Chaos had never been the monster it had become in 1965 and 1966. Sure, Bobby and the others had not been adverse to playing occasional dirty tricks; and after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, JFK had got angry with a lot of people on the Hill but they had all regarded James Jesus Angleton as an eccentric, throwback Templar sort of figure and frankly, just let him get on with whatever he was doing because, well, life was easier that way. Sorensen for one, had always assumed that John McCone, JFK’s Director of Central Intelligence had had his counter intelligence chief on a short leash; now everybody in DC was asking each other: ‘what dirt does Richard Helms have on the President?’