COMPASSION IN NEW YORK
Schroth, Raymond A.
DEMOCRATS ASSEMBLED COMPASSION IN NEW YORK The first thing I saw as I arrived at Madison Square Garden on opening night was a policeman with a club bent over a man with a bloodied head! It was a...
...John Glenn Himself, ignored on the podium, reminding me of those plastic super-hero toys my nephews play with, with the toys' spontaneity of gesture and warmth...
...Certainly Jimmy Carter must have read Senator Walter Mondale's balanced but courageous defence of busing in the New Republic [March 4, 1972], bought it, and seen there, as well as in his other consultations, the combination of intelligence, realism and "compassion" he sees in himself and wanted to characterize his cause...
...But Carter's, with its populist denunciation of the privileged, was a speech McGovern could have given: he too was calling on America to come home...
...This time America might be ready to listen...
...Of course no one who lives in New York and keeps his eyes open can feel optimistic about social progress, and the journalist who shelves his skepticism may as well surrender his typewriter...
...Three blocks south of the Garden, a direction in which no delegates needed to walk, children romp and old men play dominoes alongside derelicts sprawled on the sidewalk...
...Phil Tracy, who never wanted the Convention to come to New York, correctly pointed out in the Village Voice [July 16] that there is something cynical about the Mayor Abraham Beame administration hustling to create a Potemkin Village in midtown for 15,000 visitors while the hospitals, the city university and neighborhoods were falling apart...
...For official New York the Democratic Convention was, more than anything, the extension of the joyous, smalltown July 4th festival that had begun a week before when the city's millions milled in the streets of lower Manhattan, gawked at the tall ships, pressed their bodies together in the evening to oohaah at fireworks popping above the Statue of Liberty, and felt a little better about their country...
...The convention gang at the Penn Bar watching the All-Star game on TV rather than the proceedings from the hall...
...Yet, if New York Carter-boosters Beame and William vanden Heuvel, and the Carter promises are correct, we may well be on the threshold of garbage-free gutters, graffiti-less walls, unpotholed avenues and silent subways...
...Carter, the People...
...Roman-collared delegates on the floor, but no prelates on the podium because, reportedly, Catholic powers were boycotting the benedictions to protest the abortion plank...
...The prominent Catholic journalist selling Gerald Ford "I Got My Job through the Washington Post" T-shirts ($4) on the street...
...Carter did not mention God...
...I am afraid that political men have become so practiced at pretending they remember people that it is difficult to believe them when they actually do...
...The flesh-pressing of tan-faced, blue-haired pols struggling for one another's names as they peer over each other's shoulders toward a more familiar face...
...Two correspondents from the dope magazine, High Times, cornering brusque little meerschaum-puffing Maryland Governor Marvin Mandel, grilling him on his opposition to the decriminalization of marijuana, then chortling over his own indictment...
...In the campaign, I predict, Mondale will represent Government...
...Martin Luther King, Sr., took care of that...
...He did not have to...
...The 12-year-old reporter for the Children's Express telling his buddy in the Statler-Hilton elevator, "I don't care about Jimmy Carter, I shook hands with John Glenn...
...Finally, the best evidence that the Carter-Democratic campaign and administration might actually "translate love into simple justice" is the skill with which the former nuclear engineer engineered both the convention and the selection of the Vice Presidential candidate...
...But the TVer, I think, misses the inner convention, the country picnic or college bar without the beer...
...The only background noise, other than cheers, was the steady clackety-clak-clak of newsmens' typewriters-like the thrilling ratatatat of Washington Post typewriters that orchestrated Nixon's inaugural address in All the President's Men...
...Humphrey Himself, his carefully set hair now apparently four colors, providing a welcome floor disruption by plowing through the Minnesota delegation shaking hands...
...RAYMOND A. SCHROTH...
...This continuity between the calm-spirited Bicentennial celebration-which had been preceded by hysterical fears of chaos and mob violence-and the four-day public liturgy celebrating reconciliation within the Democratic party may well mark the beginning of a new era...
...It was a startling second of deja-vu-as if I had suddenly been flipped back to Chicago '68-but it was the least characteristic vignette of the week, and the poor man was not so much a victim of the policeman's toughness as just another victim of the city and the object of the cop's solicitude...
...In a narrow sense, the TV viewer is better "informed" on the convention than I, with my periodical press pass, prowling the floor, politely ushered along by smoothfaced boys in bright-blue blazers trying to clear the aisles...
...As he spoke the full house listened with a reverence normally reserved for a grandfather reading the Bible aloud...
...George McGovern had been told to keep his Tuesday speech not-too-controversial...
...And the crowd sang "We Shall Overcome," a lovely hymn I have not heard in the right context in a long while, while the reporter to my left, John Miller of the Toronto Star, pounded out a classic lead: "Jimmy Carter-nuclear engineer, peanut farmer, governor of Georgia-was born again today-as Democratic nominee for the Presidency of the United States...
...The key '68 McGovern aide, now a Carter floor-manager, who told me in January the nominee would be Humphrey...
...In a brilliant symbolic touch, Carter did not abruptly appear on the podium but entered across the floor, emerging from the people...
Vol. 103 • July 1976 • No. 16
