Hi jpseacadets,
Apologies, but this turned out to be a very, very long post. If you want to ignore it, I wouldn't blame you! But here it is anyway, with my honest regrets for its blabbiness.
Well, we share a lot of the same interests or pursuits -- especially public affairs, the news business, etc. I wasn't born at the time of Stevenson's first campaign but used to admire the man greatly. That admiration cooled a lot after I read of his pro-segregation stands (or at least hostility toward integration, including Brown) in 1956. Stevenson was the choice of the southern wing of the Democratic Party, including its most ardent segregationists, that year because he insisted upon a hands-off approach to the issue by the federal government. Sen. Estes Kefauver, his chief rival for the nomination, was a pro-integration southern liberal (from Tennessee) who lost support all over the South because of his stand, which was a truly courageous -- even physically courageous -- thing to do. (Kefauver and the junior Senator from Tennessee, Albert Gore, Sr., were the only two southern lawmakers who refused to sign Strom Thurmond's notorious "Southern Manifesto", opposing school integration and all other forms of desegregation, in 1956.) When Stevenson threw the choice of a VP nominee to the convention Kefauver won on the second ballot over JFK, but the ticket was so weak even Tennessee voted narrowly for Eisenhower. As to black voters, Ike won over 40% of their vote that year, and was even publicly endorsed by Representative Adam Clayton Powell, expressly because of Stevenson's anti-integration views. If only they'd known of Ike's own personal views on race, summed up by his expressing his dismay over Brown to Earl Warren at a White House dinner in 1954: "Can't you understand it if some mother doesn't want her sweet little daughter sitting next to some big ugly buck in school?" Can you believe a President of the United States in the middle of the 20th century could say such a stupid, racist thing? Even Nixon thought Eisenhower's racial views were primitive and uninformed, straight out of the 19th century. But Stevenson wasn't a whole lot better.
When Gore Vidal wrote his 1960 play The Best Man (filmed very well in 1964, with Henry Fonda), he modeled the central character (Fonda's) on Stevenson as he saw him: an egghead, very smart, but totally indecisive -- his point being that in the contest for the nomination depicted in that play, it was as well for the country that neither the ruthless McCarthyite demagogue nor the wishy-washy intellectual win the presidency, but rather someone from the firm and sensible center. Vidal was an admirer of Stevenson up to a point, but even he had the sense to see that Adlai's personal failings might not have made him the best President. Personally, I still would have voted for him over Ike, but I have long lost any blind admiration for the man, and looking back it was probably just as well (for a number of reasons) he never became President. By 1952 a change was probably in order, even though it elevated Nixon to national office. If Stevenson had been President Joe McCarthy would have continued his rampages unchecked, with the avid encouragement of an infuriated and frustrated GOP once again denied the presidency after 20 years of Democratic control. In the long run it was probably better to have had Eisenhower, though I'm no fan of his. He at least calmed things down and gave the country some respite from the confrontations of the previous years, though more were on their way.
I agree that Gene McCarthy was in the Stevenson mold, but I don't take that as a compliment. (McCarthy nominated Stevenson at the 1960 convention, in another quixotic gesture.) Gene was a true liberal, which Adlai was not, but he had always been considered self-absorbed and contemptuous of other political leaders. He once said he should be President because "I'm twice as smart as Johnson, twice as liberal as Stevenson, and twice as Catholic as Bobby", hardly the mark of a modest or emotionally stable or intellectually curious man. He was an odd person for public office and while he was smart and honest he was indeed extremely arrogant and incapable of leading, of cobbling together the kind of presidency that would move people and make real changes -- that would make for a workable, successful presidency. It's one thing to become the leader of a lot of people on a hot-button issue like the war -- in fact, that wasn't difficult -- and while it took political courage to defy Johnson, McCarthy was never deterred by strictly political considerations. In many ways that was to his credit, but in politics, once you get beyond making some grand statement, you actually have to work and lead, and in neither of these was McCarthy ever recognized as excelling. He was considered administratively weak (his campaign was chaotic, never a good sign), rather lazy and uninvolved in the Senate, and he had never been a leader in the Senate on anything -- legislation, the war, anything. That's why many anti-war leaders were surprised that McCarthy took the plunge and opposed Johnson -- most of them had considered him to be the last person in the Senate likely to do so, and it was clear that while his opposition to the war was honest, his campaign focused on little else, and he had no real plans of his own beyond a nebulous call for withdrawal. He was doing this in no small part to satisfy his own frustrations and sense of entitlement.
You are under some illusions about McCarthy and some other political history I feel must be corrected (and I hope I'm not being harsh in saying so: I don't mean to be). First, John Connally did not "give" the South to Wallace. At the convention, he held the South for Humphrey (quite a spectacle: the northern liberal civil-rights champion being put over the top by conservative southerners!). In the general, Connally exercised no influence beyond Texas and in any case the notion that Wallace required his or anyone else's intervention to carry the Deep South is nonsense: he was assured from the beginning of winning his own AL, plus GA, MS and LA. Arkansas came later. Most thought he'd carry SC but thanks to Strom Thurmond Nixon pulled off an upset there. Nixon carried most of the rest of the South -- VA, KY, TN, NC, FL, OK -- where Humphrey never stood any serious chance (though he came fairly close in Kentucky). HHH carried only West Virginia and -- Texas. And that was expressly thanks to Connally's conservatives and the TX liberals under the guidance of Sen. Ralph Yarborough putting aside their differences to deliver the state to Humphrey -- which they did, by a scant but solid 39,000, despite the universal expectation that Nixon would certainly carry Texas...and despite the Wallace vote in the state. Connally certainly did not "desert" HHH. Quite the opposite: it was only because of him that Humphrey won Texas's 25 electoral votes, not enough to win, but it kept things closer. That sort of Democratic Texas is long gone, unfortunately.
As to McCarthy, there was no mythical "LBJ-HHH" cabal planning on taking his Senate seat away from him in 1970. McCarthy announced in early '69 that he would not run for a third term in '70, and years before his presidential campaign there had been rampant speculation, never denied, that he would retire then anyway, out of boredom with the Senate. There was never any "cabal" formed to force him out. Nor was there any indication that Humphrey, though he wanted back into office, would have run against McCarthy in the 1970 primary. He might have done so, but nothing was ever said of that, and there was no guarantee that he'd have beaten Gene had he run (though personally I think he would have done). In any case, it was all moot as very early on McCarthy made it clear he wouldn't run -- but not because he was being forced out by anybody. (Interestingly, Sen. Yarborough of Texas prophesied in late 1968 that he would be opposed in his 1970 primary by -- Lyndon Johnson! Johnson and Connally did indeed get involved in the 1970 Texas Democratic primary, backing Lloyd Bentsen over Yarborough -- in part for personal political revenge, in part because they believed -- almost certainly correctly -- that Yarborough would lose to Representative George Bush in the fall. The moderate Bentsen was their choice, and he won both the primary and general and became a distinguished Senator, VP nominee under Dukakis, and Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton. The defeated Bush, unfortunately, went further.)
And as to his remaining a Democrat, you said it yourself: in 1976 McCarthy ran for President as an Independent. What for? Was there an urgent summons from his countrymen to run? Why do so as an Independent with no chance of being elected? If it was that important, why not go through the primaries as a Democrat and compete there? Sorry, it had nothing whatsoever to do with a noble desire not to end his career on a vendetta: on the contrary, it can be well argued that his 1976 candidacy was itself a vendetta, an effort to demonstrate his influence by costing the Democrats the White House. Otherwise why not run as a Democrat? McCarthy might indeed have cost Carter NY had he been on the ballot; he did cost Carter Maine, Oklahoma, Iowa and Oregon. Carter carried NY by only 289,000, well under JFK's 383,000 and HHH's 370,000, and enough self-satisfied NY liberals might well have rejected Carter for the Great God Gene to throw the state -- and the presidency -- narrowly to Ford, who by the way would still have lost the popular vote. Such imbecile liberals did cost Carter the state in 1980 when they assuaged their consciences by voting for the hero of the hour, John Anderson, who had the Liberal Party line in NY despite having been a Goldwater conservative for most of his career. (They also cost Democrats two NY Senate races: in 1970 by flocking in droves to the embattled Charles Goodell, a conservative until his appointment to the Senate after RFK's death, over genuine liberal Richard Ottinger, in solidarity with what the New York Times urged: to teach Nixon a lesson for the WH's support of James Buckley -- doing, of course, exactly what Nixon and his minions wanted, deserting the real liberal candidate for the recent convert who couldn't win, thereby splitting the vote and handing the seat to Buckley; and in 1980, voting for Javits on the Liberal line and allowing Al D'Amato to squeak in...though the failure of Elizabeth Holtzman to become a Senator was absolutely no loss. God save us from noble, uncompromising liberals.) Anyway, in addition to his self-regardant 1976 campaign, McCarthy also ran weird little half-campaigns for Congress in both New Hampshire and later back in Minnesota, never being anything more than a curiosity factor of little substance and with no reason for running other than his desperate need for attention. No, Eugene McCarthy certainly had his merits, but he was a weak, indecisive leader motivated throughout most of his career by his own egocentric whims. His anti-war stance was genuine and his candidacy brave, but he was one of the least suitable people to have led it; any other, better qualified person who had run instead would have engendered similar support. McCarthy used 1968 as much to boost his own sense of self as to bring about real change. And that is the baleful truth.
Oh, about this vendetta business: you seem to instill in Johnson et al superhuman powers and lay any liberal defeat to this mythical "vendetta". It's true that Vietnam played a role in the defeat of some senators -- Clark of PA was opposed by a pro-LBJ Congressman, Daniel Flood, in the primary and while he won, his anti-war stand cost him his seat in November; Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska, the only members of Congress to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, also lost their seats in 1968. But to put this down to some conspiracy-theory "vendetta" is fantasy. Pro-administration Democrats needed little incentive to oppose these guys, and Johnson was too preoccupied with the war and the other horrible events of 1968 to worry much about their political fates. Each race turned much more on its local dynamics. Clark's "elitist" liberalism didn't wear well with many in PA at that time, and he was in any case very vulnerable as he came up for a third term. Morse drew a former Congressman, Robert Duncan, as a primary opponent because in 1966 Morse had endorsed Mark Hatfield, the state's anti-war Republican governor, for the Senate over Duncan, the pro-war Democratic nominee who lost as a result of Morse's intervention; Duncan nearly beat Morse in the '68 primary where party disloyalty played the biggest role, and Morse in turn lost very narrowly to Bob Packwood that fall because of a disastrous debate performance days before the election that shifted the polls against him. Gruening lost his primary because his opponent, Mike Gravel, spent a fortune on last-minute TV commercials just before the primary, something new in Alaska politics in those days, and won; Gruening ran as a write-in in November and was expected to cost the Democrats the seat, but Gravel managed a victory in spite of this and went on to his own flaky Senate career. But even in these races neither Johnson nor his followers can be factually accused of following some organized vendetta against these guys. Certainly the war had split the Democratic Party and these splits were reflected in some intra-party contests. But that does not constitute some formal, set-up "vendetta" with secret instructions from on high. (I assume the Senator from Michigan you refer to was Phillip Hart; he did not lose his seat; he was reelected overhwelmingly in 1970 and retired voluntarily in 1976. Shortly after announcing his retirement he was diagnosed with cancer. He didn't quite make it to the end of his term: he died in late Dec. 1976, just a week or so before his term would have ended.) And as far as anti- and pro-war candidates go, in Ohio in 1968, an anti-war candidate, John Gilligan, an ex-Congressman, ousted the two-term conservative Senator Frank Lausche in the Democratic primary, though he lost in the fall when Lausche endorsed the entire Republican ticket, from Nixon on down. Gilligan was elected Governor in 1970; his daughter is Kathleen Sebelius, recently Governor of Kansas and now Obama's HHS Secretary -- though I wish he'd left her in Topeka so she could have run for the Senate next year, a race in which she was leading and would have become the first Democrat to win a Senate race in KS since 1932. Oh, well...kiss that one good-bye.
By the way, Gene did not win the most delegates in the NH primary. In fact he lost the primary, 49-42. The media portrayed that as a McCarthy "victory" on the basis that he ran much "better" than expected, just as four years later they deemed Ed Muskie the "loser" of the primary because he got "only" 48% of the vote, less than half, enough to convince them to anoint McGovern, with 32%, the "winner". Asinine and absurd.
I agree that RFK showed political cowardice in not taking on LBJ in the first place (he was the anti-war crowd's first choice), but it was not simply out of "partisanship". As you know Bobby hated Lyndon but his first consideration was not the party but his own career, with attendant (and, as it turned out, well-founded) concerns about his personal safety. He was never an LBJ supporter. His decision to enter the fray after McCarthy demonstrated LBJ's vulnerability was hardly courageous and plainly opportunistic but it's interesting to note that Kennedy nonetheless immediately eclipsed McCarthy and beat him soundly from then on, except in Oregon. But he should have stayed out and waited till '76, as I said before. A lousy year, 1968.
Of course, if you want to talk about opportunists, look no further than George McGovern, another "egghead" who was an unmitigated disaster as a candidate and would certainly have been a disaster as President. (My vote for him in 1972 was strictly a protest against the sure-to-be-reelected RMN.) McGovern dove into the '68 race late to sop up any stray RFK support and pave the way for his own bid four years later. Of course, at least he endorsed Humphrey. McCarthy, typically, skulked away and said nothing until way too late in the campaign, when he grudgingly endorsed him. He was typical of so many liberals who walk away when they don't get exactly what they want. It's these self-righteous fools who gave us Nixon in '68 and Bush in 2000 -- the Simon-pure crowd who deemed HHH too "tainted" by LBJ to merit the presidency despite the dishonesty and instability of his Republican opponent, who 32 years later thought the egotistical Nader a wholesome saint who could do no wrong (his manifest unsuitability to office notwithstanding, not to mention the impossibility of his winning), and so wasted their votes on him because they only agreed with 95% of what Gore was saying -- thus handing the presidency to the most unsuited, incompetent idiot to have occupied the office in at least 80 years. (Without Nader, Gore would have cleanly and clearly carried FL and NH and won without any biased Supreme Court intervention.) Politics isn't about being pure and losing, it's about winning power and exercising it for the best results possible, and a lot of people can't cope with that hard reality.
Sorry, but that stuff about Johnson using the draft to silence critics is another canard. I don't mean to be nasty, but that's just plain ridiculous, as well as untrue. How could he have "used the draft" to do so? One reason there were hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters in the streets and campuses was precisely because the men mostly had deferments from the draft and were free to protest! No one did or could use the draft in a punitive manner -- how could you even physically go about it? Pick out the protesters from the pro-war kids on a nationwide scale, out of millions of draft-age people? Draft only anti-war protestors? This is absurd, Nam-era paranoia. I registered for the draft, had a somewhat low number and might well have "had to go" had I not also had a deferment. I was against the war but let's be honest, like a lot of people I was prompted in no small part by my own self-interest. A lot of poor kids not in school couldn't get such deferments and went instead, and I feel no pride in that, a situation in which I, like millions of others, played my small part.
Anyway, sorry for this excessively long post, but there was a lot to write about. Oh, my great-uncle (the Congressman from Queens) was James J. Delaney, a Democrat who served from 1945-47 and again from 1949-79. (He lost in the 1946 Republican sweep.) He rose to be chairman of the House Rules Committee in his last term. He began as a conventional, organization liberal but drifted right in the 60s and wound up being cross-endorsed by the Conservative Party from 1968 on. He flirted with party disloyalty, backing Buckley in his 1970 race, but after a tough primary in 1972 and Nixon's problems, he made his peace with the party and resumed his loyalty to it. He represented the so-called "Archie Bunker" district, where the TV character lived, so its blue-collar conservatism was reflected in his career. When he retired in '78 he was succeeded by Geraldine Ferraro, ulitmately Mondale's unqualified VP nominee in 1984. I know her and her family well and they're not to be trusted, to put it as mildly as possible.
Still here? I'd better quit before you tune me out for good!
hobnob
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jpseacadets
15 years ago
Your steadfast endorsement of Gore Vidal's words - - by way of Lee Tracy's
characterization of an ex-president from "The Best Man," - - is commendable.
Power is indeed not a toy we give to good children. It must be used for the
good of all. Vidal fashioned Tracy's character after Harry Truman. Now, to
be sure, Truman was no egghead like Stevenson(Fonda) or McCarthy. He knew
how to use power for the good of all -- like you say. Dropping the bomb on
Japan to end the war, for instance. Maybe the eggheads would have dithered.
However, Truman was also pragmatic. He knew how to appease the south enough
to win election in '48. He would never have won that year had he been for
school integration, for instance. True, Strom Thurmond bolted the party and
ran against Truman. But many like Sen. Jim Byrnes of South Carolina, who forced
Wallace off FDR's ticket in place of Harry because he thought Wallace too
liberal, held the south together for Truman to win. Truman also ran with
Alban Barkley of Kentucky as a running mate, a shrewed move on Harry's part.
Then, we must not forget, Truman began his career in Missouri with KKK
behind him. A point not forgotten by those tempted to throw their lot in
with Dixiecrat Thurmond. Of course, Truman needed the black vote as well as
the segregationists...so he threw them a bone by integrating the armed forces
by executive order(asking Congress was asking for a public brawl & blood-
letting, to be avoided). May I ask are you of the Afro-American race? The
reason I ask is because you seem to harbor ill will for Adlai because he
resisted integration. The charge is true only if you make the same charge
against Harry. In truth, both men were men of their times. Both were aware
that to antagonize the south was foolhardy. Few running for national office
dared to do so. Both ran with southern running mates. Both were not being
racist. Both were being pragmatic. You could make a better case, as many
did, that Adlai was soft on communism, than call him a racist.
Now on to '68. McCarthy did win more delegates even tho he garnered only
43% of the vote. This was because Johnson ran with two different slates
of delegates to Gene's one. Sort of like Obama winning in Texas over
Clinton, even tho she won the popular vote. Next, true Connolly did hold
the south for HHH at the Chicago convention. But it isn't because he
loved HHH. Connolly was a hawk(more so than HHH) and didn't want to see
a dove like Gene win. Together, they narrowly defeated the peace plank
the doves wanted inserted in the party's platform. No, Connolly had more
of a pragmatic reason to back HHH....and the reason was that he sorely
wanted to be Hubert's running mate. Once having secured the nomination,
however, HHH had other plans. He'd choose his senate colleague over the
Texas gov., who thought he made a deal with Hubert. Fuming...Connolly
felt betrayed and angry that Humphrey scorned him AND a balanced ticket
by going with a northerner like Muskie. Had he been on the ticket, the
outcome would surely have been different as both Nixon and Wallace might
not have fared so well outside Texas. So Connolly never strayed outside
Texas and later became a Republican serving a Republican president in his
cabinet. Humphrey blundered by not having a balanced ticket. He probably
expected Connolly, like McCarthy and McGovern, to bury the hatchet and jump
in and campaign for him at the last minute. He also underestimated Wallace
who also did well enough in northern states like New Jersey to carry it
for Nixon. So you see, it isn't just liberals who skulk away when rejected.
Southern running mates were good enough for FDR, Truman, Stevenson, Kennedy,
but not for Hubert. Is not he an example of being "Simon-pure"?
LBJ did have a Draft Director named Gen. Hershey. College students who
protested the war were threatened by him that if they didn't stop, he'd
lift their deferments. I can't cite any cases where this happened, but
I do know of a few students who toned down their criticisms. I, however,
was not deferred nor drafted. It wouldn't have mattered anyway as I was
outspoken all during the war, writing editorials in my local Mt. Vernon
newspaper, the Daily Argus; attending anti-war rallies; hearing Bella Abzug
speak out; joining the Fifth Ave. Peace Committee, etc. Did stuff in college
as well.
Yes, I heard of your great-uncle. I knew other congressmen, like Fred
Richmond, Dick Ottinger, Ogden Reid; I lived in their districts. Fred
lost his seat due to a gay scandal. I campaigned for the other two for
Sen. and Gov. I met Ed Koch and voted for him as mayor over Cuomo because
Mario was using anti-Gay rhetoric against Ed in '77. I was president of
College Young Democrats and hosted Ramsay Clark, Shirley Chisolm, and
Paul O'Dwyer, a sainted dove devoted to the cause of peace and justice,
helped him to become president of the City Council. Voted for him twice
for Senator of United States. He lost to lap dog Javits. I voted for
Ottinger after he beat Paul, but, as you say, Goodell ruined it for us.
Decadent Rockefeller avoided Goodell after dropping him on us like a bomb.
I think it fitting the way NR died...in a love nest with a whore. To think,
this clown wanted to be president! Could tell you plenty about him and
the time I ran into his invention, Kissinger. But all that can wait for later.
Cheers.
P.S. Maybe you should give me your e-mail address. This is a movie site after all.
- - SoundTrak
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hobnob53
15 years ago
I knew you'd pick up on the veiled Vidalism I inserted...it was quite naturally on my mind! (Is there such a thing as "Vidalia", a reference to all things Gore Vidal? Like the onions?!)
No, I'm not African-American, just a white man. (Remember my great-uncle?) My point about Adlai was that for someone with such a reputation as a sterling liberal, his racial views were quite illiberal. It wasn't just that he was being pragmatic (and shameful enough if he was)...he genuinely had little contact with or understanding of the black community. He wasn't a racist like some psychotic anti-"Negro" politicians of his time, like Thurmond et al, but he was content to avoid this issue altogether and allow the South to do its own thing. Maybe he had other concerns he deemed more lofty. The fact that he had southern running mates both times clearly was meant to appease the South (though Kefauver was hardly the type of southerner to accomplish this), but in this he was following the traditional Democratic procedure of picking a southern running mate for "balance", especially since for decades no southerner could hope to be nominated for the top spot itself. Every Democratic VP candidate from 1928-1960 was a southerner, with the exception of Iowan Henry Wallace in 1940. Johnson and later Carter were the first southerners at the top of the ticket and so "reverse-balanced" it by choosing a northern VP. But you're correct, not only about HHH in '68, but on other occasions when a northern candidate chose another northerner for Veep ('72, '84, '00) the Dem ticket lost...although many of us continue to, shall we say, "question" that last result. Of course, having a southerner as VP didn't guarantee victory -- '28, '52, '56, '88, '04 -- but in those cases other issues were of much more importance.
John Connally (with an "a": it is confusing) may have wanted the 1968 VP slot, but if so he should have been a more adept pol to realize that with the baggage of LBJ already weighing upon him, the last thing HHH needed was "Johnson Lite" on his ticket. There's no evidence that sticking Connally on the ticket would have changed the basic result of a Nixon victory. He would have pretty much guaranteed Texas, but as I said before he did get out there for Humphrey, buried the hatchet, and turned his formidable organization loose for HHH, the main reason he carried the state anyway. But it's highly unlikely Connally would have been enough to pull any other southern state to Humphrey over either Nixon or Wallace, though he might have put Arkansas a bit more into play and have helped in Kentucky, where Humphrey lost by I recall about 48,000. But HHH would have lost Maine (carried only because of Muskie), and it's hard to see where else the conservative Connally might have helped Humphrey (perhaps Missouri). Of course no one can ever know for sure, but there's no real reason or evidence to believe that a Humphrey-Connally ticket would have been successful. He might well have cost Humphrey some states he did carry, such as Connecticut and Washington (state), besides Maine. Anyway, even if it was just in Texas, certainly not an unimportant state, Connally, whatever his issues, didn't skulk away from Humphrey and actively helped him. That was a hell of a lot more than McCarthy ever did. (Many conservatives also "skulk off" at times but that's fine with me as I have no wish to see them win. It's smug, self-satisfied liberals who assuage their own little consciences and vote in ways that throw elections to right-wing disasters like Bush in 2000 I have utter contempt for.)
About HST.... First, Truman was never favored by the Klan, even in his early political career in MO. In fact, it was KKK opposition that cost Truman the only election he ever lost, his reelection bid for Judge of Jackson County in 1924. Truman was well known for his opposition to the Klan, so there was certainly no association with that organization to help (or hurt) him -- in fact, had he been a Klan member or close to them, he wouldn't have gotten near the second spot on the 1944 ticket. This charge is simply untrue. Now, you're correct that in 1948 Truman favored the general civil rights plank that the party had adopted in 1944, and that southerners could live with. It was northern liberals led by Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey of Minneapolis (running for the Senate that year) who forced a vote for a stronger civil rights plank and carried the day against the southern delegates, leading to a walk-out of most of the Alabama and Mississippi delegates. Truman's stand was being pragmatic, but once the situation was forced he went along with it, though he barely mentioned the issue in the campaign so as not to risk further southern defections. But HST certainly did not want Barkley on his ticket. The Minority Leader was almost 71, and Truman preferred a younger liberal for a running mate. He tried to get Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas to leave the Court and run, but Douglas refused, and no other suitable candidate wanted the post. (In retrospect the VP business is ironic but at the time, with certain defeat at the hands of Tom Dewey looming, who would have wanted the Democratic vice-presidential nomination in 1948?) Barkley got the spot because of his rousing keynote address and the enormous affection in which he was held by the delegates, and it was seen more as a thank-you for his services than a nomination anyone thought would actually result in his being elected. Truman (pragmatically!) went along to appease the delegates, who he knew weren't enthusiastic about him.
Oh, here's something cool: George Wallace always claimed that he hadn't walked out of the 1948 Democratic convention after the strong civil rights plank was approved, that he was one of the few Alabamans to stay and vote for Truman. (Actually, Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia was placed in nomination to sop up disgruntled southern votes, and no one ever moved to make Truman's nomination unanimous, as is always customary.) Anyway, most of Wallace's biographers accept that tale. But there is newsreel footage of the southern walkout that I've seen many times, and there, very plainly, is a young George C. Wallace himself, not only walking out with the other delegates but very clearly heard (and seen) calling out jovially, "So long, Harry!" Really interesting to see this face from the future in an obscure pre-fame cameo! Plus it gives the lie to his claim of party fealty in '48.
As far as Jim Byrnes went, he certainly did not lift a finger to help Truman in 1948 -- and he sure as hell didn't help kick Wallace off the 1944 ticket to put Truman on it. Byrnes was himself then the leading alternative to Wallace, whom a lot of people (north and south) wanted off the ticket because of his extreme liberalism and unfocused, even bizarre, views and personal predilections. FDR was amenable to dumping Wallace for the sake of party unity but northerners balked at Byrnes, a talented and brilliant man who had served as a Representative and Senator from SC before being appointed to the Supreme Court by FDR. But Byrnes was a hard-shell conservative of decidedly racist opinions, which even in 1944 disqualified him in the eyes of most Democrats for national office. But Truman went to the convention as a Byrnes supporter --- definitely not the other way around. In fact, when first told that Roosevelt wanted him, Truman's response was, "Tell him to go to hell -- I'm for Jimmy Byrnes." But FDR, speaking by phone from Hawaii to his campaign manger Bob Hannegan (Truman's fellow Missourian), who held the receiver for Truman to hear, insisted that Truman take the nomination, and HST relented. Byrnes always held it against Truman that he, not Byrnes, got the VP nomination and, of course, eventually the presidency when Roosevelt died April 12, 1945. Truman threw him a bone by naming him Secretary of State soon after becoming President, but the two eventually fell out over policy and Byrnes resigned in 1946. He did nothing for Truman in 1948 and clearly took satisfaction in his impending defeat. Byrnes's own state of South Carolina was one of four southern states (along with Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana) where Thurmond was named by the state Democratic committee as the official Democratic nominee, which in those one-party days virtually ensured Thurmond's victory in those states. (Truman had to get a separate ballot spot, and did not appear at all on the ballot in Alabama -- neither did HHH in 1968, when George Wallace was the "official" Democratic nominee on the Alabama ballot.) Truman won the rest of the South because of one-party voting, complementing his strong nationwide surge that brought him victory, and Thurmond's collapse outside his four strongholds...again very similar to what happened in 1968, although the beneficiary then of George Wallace's collapse was the Republican, Nixon. James F. Byrnes was handed the governorship of SC as a consolation prize in 1950 -- everyone stood aside for him -- and he later ended up supporting national Republican candidates, like Nixon in 1960. He died an embittered man, despite all the offices he had held, in 1967. Truman himself said years later that had Byrnes been from Missouri or Kentucky or Indiana he would have become President, but the legacy of his segregationist views and overall southern conservatism, which Byrnes never shook off, doomed his ambitions for national office.
Yes, of course I remember Lewis Hershey. He blustered and spluttered but no one was ever in danger of having their deferments changed because of anything he or anyone else said. Like I said, student paranoia. Oddly, prior to Vietnam, Hershey had long been quite popular and respected as director of the draft, and very concerned with its inequities, in that it disproportionately discriminated against poorer young men and minorities. His bad rep stems mainly from attacks from deferred liberal students, even though had they been true liberals they would have agreed with his points about the draft's unfairness. Their protests had as much if not more to do with their own self-interests as anything to do with the draft or Vietnam. Hershey responded ham-handedly and came across as a reactionary fool but this was an unfair caricature. He had his issues but he wasn't the one-dimensional right-winger he's still often made out to be.
But we largely agree on NY politics, except I blanch at your description of Paul O'Dwyer as "sainted". I don't even consider Mother Teresa "sainted", so I would hardly apply that to a politician. I give O'Dwyer marks for political consistency and honesty, but I have no use for ideologues who see only what they want to see. He would have been a lousy Senator, in my opinion, because he was too confrontational and unrepresentative of those with differing views to be successful. I really don't know who I would have voted for in 1968 after he won the Dem primary over Eugene Nickerson and Joe Resnick (remember him?)...or for that matter, who I would have voted for in the primary (though Nickerson was the stepfather of two friends of mine, so I might well have voted for him for that reason). I had no major problem with Javits (who I met a couple of times in my teens because his son went to my high school), but like most liberal Republicans (remember them?) he did indeed too often sell out to his party hierarchy to maintain his standing. As for Ramsey Clark, the man is a fool, and though I did actually vote for him against Javits in 1974, that too was more a protest than any expression of support. Talk about self-centered ideologues. An utter disaster. Just because someone's a liberal Democrat doesn't make them smart or qualified for an office. Best thing that happened was Bella Abzug's loss to Pat Moynihan in the '76 primary. What a terrible Senator she would have made -- just another loud, reflexive, unthinking liberal -- especially against one of the leading intellectual lights, and most unjustly vilified public officials, of our age, though I disliked a few things he did in his career, especially under Nixon.
Interesting thing about Javits, though: even though most Republicans were well to his right, and he was personally quite arrogant, they all respected him because he was so smart, even brilliant -- even Gerald Ford regarded him as one of his top advisors; he was with Ford at the WH on election night 1976, and one of two people Ford asked for advice that evening. After Al D'Amato ran that disgusting campaign against Javits in 1980 and won, a number of conservative Republican Senate veterans took him aside privately and told him off in no uncertain terms -- that they regarded his assault on Javits as unseemly and insulting to one of their most esteemed colleagues, and that he'd better shut up, learn the ropes and do his job if he ever expected to get anywhere in the Senate. D'Amato was shocked and chastened -- probably for the only time in his life -- and kept low for a long time to earn the Senate's respect. Eventually, of course, he resumed his loud-mouthed ways, but with less of a personal edge. I can't believe we kept this guy in office for three terms, though at least when he finally lost it was to by far the best Democrat who had ever opposed him, Chuck Schumer.
You are correct, McCarthy did win more delegates in NH than LBJ due to the primary's structure. But the fact remains he still lost the primary itself, and that this loss was portrayed as a victory -- not because of the delegates, but because he did "better" than expected. Still more media silliness.
Maybe we should carry this on off this board -- why not use the Private Message boards here? Please use that means if you'd like to -- but post a quick note here so I remember to check my PMs!
See you later.
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marktayloruk
10 years ago
Just one point-if all Anderson's votes had gone to Carter,Reagan would still have won.I think McCarthy should have run in 1970-a Humphrey-McCarthy primary battle would have been worth watching!
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hobnob53
10 years ago
Just one point-if all Anderson's votes had gone to Carter,Reagan would still have won.
Yes, of course. Reagan took 51% of the vote anyway. But the electoral college would have been much closer. Reagan won most of the southern states by tiny margins, where Anderson's vote made the difference between victory and defeat for Carter. This was also true in most states in the Northeast. Of course not all of Anderson's voters would have voted for Carter; some would have voted for Reagan, a few for other third parties, and others not have voted at all. But the vast majority would have reluctantly voted for Carter, as polls at the time indicated. Also, without Anderson in the race the dynamics of the election would have been different, which would almost certainly have affected the outcome in ways we can never assess.
Gene McCarthy cost Carter four states in 1976: Maine, Oklahoma, Iowa and Oregon. (And there were many other states Carter lost by very small margins: New Jersey, Virginia, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico, Nevada, and others where it was close, such as California.)
In 1980, Anderson clearly cost Carter at least 12 states: Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, Delaware, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas. Pennsylvania and Louisiana were close enough to have flipped as well in a different race, or if Carter hadn't imploded in the final week of the campaign. Had that collapse not happened due to Carter's poor performance in the debate, Reagan's close victories in those states almost certainly wouldn't have happened even with Anderson, again per the pre-debate polling. Reagan would have won anyway, but his narrow popular victory would have been reflected in a closer electoral vote win, along the lines of 326-212, or maybe a bit larger, but not the 489-49 e.v. he did get.
Self-proclaimed liberals are basically idiots. They find Carter imperfect so fall all over themselves for a man who for most of his career was a Goldwater conservative and was in 1980 little more than a self-absorbed spoiler, and end up with a genuine Goldwater conservative. Twenty years later they smugly found Gore lacking in some way and voted for another self-absorbed egoist who cost Gore not merely a couple of states but the election...and look where the country wound up.
Yes, an HHH vs. Clean Gene Senate primary in MN in 1970 would have been an epic something. But I think Humphrey would have won, and the general too. In later years McCarthy changed his mind and ran for office a few times in MN (and also in New Hampshire, once), but never got anywhere of course.
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marktayloruk
10 years ago
Last Democrat I'd have voted for would have been Truman. Would have considered a protest vote for Schmitz in 1972 and would have voted for Buchanan in 2000 and Nader in 2004;otherwise Republican. Would also replace the Electoral College with direct popular vote-100,000 supporters to run- and a runoff if nobody got over 50% on first ballot.
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hobnob53
10 years ago
That's fair, because the last Republican I would have voted for would have been Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. Willkie, Dewey and Eisenhower would have been acceptable to me but I wouldn't have voted for them over FDR, HST or Stevenson.
I met John Schmitz when he spoke at my university in 1972. He was interesting in an offbeat way but there's no way in the proverbial million years I would ever vote for a John Bircher. Did Buchanan run in 2000? I don't even remember that. I like Pat personally but not his politics or his prejudices. But third party votes for Schmitz, Buchanan and Nader are pretty all over the map ideologically. You wouldn't have voted for Ross Perot?
I will never waste my vote on an independent because protest votes are to me pointless. Of course, there have been a couple of Democrats who I disliked and didn't want to see elected but voted for because they didn't stand a chance, so in a sense they morphed into protest votes: McGovern and Mondale. I couldn't stand McGovern and thought he'd have been a disastrous president (not that Nixon was much better). Mondale himself was okay but his running mate Geraldine Ferraro, whom I knew quite well, was in my personal experience vindictive, self-absorbed and dishonest.
But I wholeheartedly agree with you about the electoral college: it needs to be scrapped. For a country busy telling others that they need a democracy reflecting the will of the people as expressed in a free vote, to maintain such an undemocratic system is outrageous. It's unreflective of the actual popular vote and can allow the loser in the latter to win, as we saw most recently in 2000, albeit thanks to a biased Supreme Court. I don't agree that you should need a threshold to run -- by what means would you even determine that? Let the parties nominate their candidates via primaries or conventions as they do now, then have the person with the highest popular vote win. I would only have a runoff if no one topped 40% (or maybe 45%) since we need some finality as quickly as possible and we don't require runoffs in general elections anywhere except in Georgia.
A Constitutional amendment providing for such a scenario has been introduced a number of times but never made it out of Congress. Unfortunately it won't happen anytime soon because the small states block any change since the present system gives an individual's vote more theoretical weight in, say, Utah than in New York. Ex-Senator Alan Simpson says without the EC no one would have an inducement to campaign in his state of Wyoming. Someone should ask him when was the last time any presidential candidate campaigned seriously in Wyoming. No Democrat goes there because he knows no matter what he does he can't win it, while Republicans ignore it because they know they can't lose it. Contrary to Simpson's bizarre assertion, eliminating the EC would encourage candidates to campaign everywhere. It wouldn't matter if they went to a state they knew they'd lose because all that would matter is getting as many popular votes as possible. But a lot of people cling to idiotic preconceptions in spite of the facts staring them in the face.
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marktayloruk
10 years ago
Threshold-100,000 signatures on nominating petition. Runoff between top two if no one gets over 50%,as in France.No-I wouldn't have voted for Perot.
Schmitz-protest against Nixon's shortcomings. Buchanan and Nader-preferred them to the alternatives.Pity there was no debate between Buvchanan,Nader and Harry Browne (Libertarian) in 2000!
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