Campaign 1968: III: The Parties

This year has been especially conducive to pronouncements on the death of the conventions, of the Republican Party, of the Democratic Party, of the old Democratic coalition, of the “old politics,” and so on. But despite the suffocating atmosphere of Miami and the frightening one of Chicago, it is reasonable to venture that the parties, in their own terms, survived fairly intact, and whoever wins or loses, they will not be essentially very different four years from now. It is the degree to which the parties continue to drift their own ways, boring and/or antagonizing growing portions of the population, that will determine whether we are in for a political crisis.

Shortly after Richard Nixon won the nomination, Nelson Rockefeller was asked why he thought that he had lost. His explanation came in the form of a question: “Have you ever been to a Republican convention?” Despite all of the caveats about how conventions are not representative of the parties, it is hard to point to anything else that is. They represent those who have worked longest in the party, donated the most money, dispensed the most patronage. If they are atypical of the country, that is another matter.

Both conventions, for example, overrepresent the wealthy. Delegates must come on their own time and at their own expense, and it can be costly. The Citizens Research Foundation of Princeton, New Jersey, a nonpartisan group specializing in political finances, polled the delegates to the 1964 convention and concluded that the average cost of attending was $455. Moreover, several states also require delegates to make political contributions; this year, Iowa’s delegates were required to chip in $250. Only a few state organizations try to provide for the costs of less affluent delegates. The foundation also found that 30 percent of the 1964 Democratic delegates had incomes of $25,000 or more. The median incomes of delegates to both conventions in 1964 was estimated at about $18,000 for the Democrats, $20,000 for the Republicans. Both underrepresent blacks. Two percent of the Republican delegates to the 1968 convention were Negroes; 6 percent of the Democrats were. A survey made by the Ripon Society, a group of young, moderate Republicans, showed that the 1968 Republican Convention was one of comfortable, middle-aged, middle-class, white Protestant America. They were earnest, scrubbed parents who wanted an orderly and clean country, one without riots, without dope, without rebellious students. One college student, a McCarthy supporter as it happened, came to the Republican Convention with his mother, a delegate from California. “Any party that has my mother as a delegate,” he remarked, “is in trouble.”

In their hearts

There was a tendency on the part of students of the Republican Party to write off the 1964 debacle as an embarrassing aberration. The Nixon strategists never shared this belief. In their hearts, it was felt, this year’s group were Reaganites, but since Reagan was too new and too improbable, there was nowhere to turn but to Nixon. (Two Mississippi delegates reported of being invited into Reagan’s amphitheater-side trailer one night to talk to the candidate. They were for him, they said later, and felt he would run in their territory stronger than anyone; but they could not erase from their minds the feeling that they were taking part in a Grade B movie. They cast their votes for Nixon.) The ghosts of the 1964 convention in Cow Palace, where an angry, hissing Goldwater mob had disgraced the party on nationwide television, and, some said, “finished” the party, were strenuously and successfully exorcised at Miami Beach. This time the party would behave itself, and be “pragmatic.” The embarrassing Goldwaterites had been ousted from their positions of official authority in the Republican National Committee after the 1964 election, and the new chairman, Ray Bliss, was acclaimed because he carried no ideological baggage and was a master of “nuts and bolts” party politics.

The 1968 convention ended badly for the Republican moderates and liberals, but the crucial fact is that they left Miami sad but not angry. On the plane back to Washington, one Northern senator stared disconsolately out the window. “After Cow Palace,” he said, “everyone knew that that mistake would not be repeated. And now, we’re back exactly where we started.” Four weeks later, he, like several of his colleagues, was on the campaign trail with Nixon. Nixon and his staff were polite throughout, careful not to alienate anyone. Moreover, if Nixon won, there were Cabinet and other important jobs to be filled. Finally, parties tend not to reward those who have rejected them.

Nevertheless, every evidence is that the conservative tow of the Republican Party is in force, as it has been since 1964, and will be for some time. There are many who think, for instance, that John Lindsay’s only hope for national office is as a Democrat. “We are working for Nixon,” said one moderate, “but without enthusiasm. But what else can we do? A lot of the emotions and divisions that we saw in Chicago were there in Miami, too, but they didn’t come out, so we didn’t have the same bitterness. It’s not hopeless for the moderates and liberals, but I don’t believe our time will come for a while. It works more slowly than that. The 1972 convention will be pretty much like the one we had this time.”

Beyond the wreckage

Although it takes some doing, the Democratic Party has to be viewed, in terms of its long-run prospects, apart from the wreckage of the Chicago convention. That was Lyndon Johnson’s wreckage. The convention site, the style of the convention management, the weakness of Humphrey, the fury of the protesters were all his work. The divisions of 1968 were caused by the tactics of the Johnson men and the issue of the war, neither of which is very likely to be on the scene four years from now.

If the war is over, barring other foreign misadventures and accepting the fact that unpredictable things do turn into big issues, the argument among the Democrats is more likely to be over who shall lead rather than which direction to go. A continuing struggle for power seems inevitable

— a struggle that will not respect an incumbent Democratic presidency

— among the forces who put Humphrey across, the Kennedy forces, and the group, mainly young, which was behind McCarthy’s candidacy. The Kennedy group is far less cohesive than the term implies; there are deep and growing antagonisms among the men who were close to John and then Robert Kennedy. Moreover, as this group grows as it turns to each brother, it becomes more layered and cumbersome. Nevertheless, for old times’ sake, for the joy of the sport, the lingering taste for power, and, presumably, a preference for the candidate, a large and politically sophisticated group would reform around an Edward Kennedy candidacy, which from all signs is already under way. Yet some of these men, practicing politicians and amateurs both, volunteered to help Humphrey following the 1968 convention.

It is the McCarthy “kids” who provide the most interesting new element. As one Democratic theoretician put it, “They are unpredictable, and, I think, fickle. Any politician who wants them on his side four years from now would do well to lay low for some time. Yet it would be foolish to ignore them. They may not be important voting statistics, but it is altogether clear they are an important political force. Writing them off would be like dismissing the Beatles. They are exaggerated symptoms of what is going on in the middle class.”

Clean out

The Democratic Party is most open to change from within because of a reform in the rules which the convention adopted — largely, it appeared, because it knew not what it was doing. The change specifies that “the unit rule not be used in any stage of the delegate selection process,” and that “all feasible efforts [be] made to assure that delegates are selected through party primary, convention, or committee procedures open to public participation within the calendar year of the national convention.” The proposals grew out of an effort by McCarthy supporters, later joined by members of the Kennedy group, which culminated in a sort of ad hoc, unofficial “Commission on the Democratic Selection of Presidential Nominees,” headed by Governor Harold Hughes of Iowa; they were offered in the form of a minority report of the convention’s Rules Committee. The Hughes commission’s report, a highly interesting document, argues that the “remarkable hodgepodge of systems” by which the state parties select their delegates to the convention “displays considerably less fidelity to basic democratic principles than a nation which claims to govern itself can safely tolerate.” By way of documentation, it offered the fact that over 600, or roughly one fifth, of the votes at the 1968 convention were cast by delegates who “were selected by processes which have included no means of voter participation since 1966. At no time, then, were the issues of this presidential year presented to those voters whom these delegates will now represent in nominating the Democratic candidate.” In some states, the delegates were chosen by the governor; in some, by the state party executive committee; in some states, they were chosen by party convention, the delegates to which may or may not have been chosen in open party caucuses. The processes may or may not have recognized minority views along the way.

The new rules create the possibility of extensive changes in the delegates to the next convention. How much difference they actually will make will depend on who is playing the game at the time, and how hard they go at it. There is little reason to expect the Democratic National Committee to rush forth to enforce the rules. The requirement for racial reform adopted in Atlantic City in 1964, an issue of much greater political importance with the electorate, lay dormant for some time, and was far from fully utilized in 1968. Moreover, it is doubtful that any serious presidential candidate will set about challenging the legitimacy of, say, the Illinois delegation.

There are a surprising number of Democrats now holding office who would just as soon see the party lose this election, in order, as one put it, “to clean out the old crowd.” Whether the “old crowd” would move on so willingly is questionable. Age and time are probably more important factors. Moreover, despite all the railing at the 1968 convention, there is substantial evidence that this same group might well have nominated Robert Kennedy. Even his thirty-six-year-old, largely unknown, officially noncandidate brother had a chance. The Kennedy forces, in both instances, pinned their hopes on none other than Mayor Daley (who was, they now say, supporting Robert Kennedy).

There are other reasons some Democrats offer for the utility of a party loss. “We’re stale,” said one youngish Northern congressman (who apparently feels that his own prospects are safe enough), “and we do well politically knocking the other party’s program. More important, I’d rather see the Republicans settle the war than have the Democrats have to live with the consequences of another ‘loss,’ which is what it would be called. Finally, I think Nixon would be more able to contain the forces of reaction, since they are more for him, than any liberal could. The Democrats might want to do more about the domestic crisis, but they would be stymied; with us baiting Nixon, and with his own following contained, he might be able to get more done.”

— Elizabeth B. Drew