The Democrats: Winning Is the Only Thing
SAYRE, NORA
The Democrats: Winning Is the Only Thing NORASAYRE New York Some swore that Madison Square Garden still reeked of elephants just before it was cleansed for the Democratic festival; as one circus...
...Ford also extolled "diversity," which is usually the property of the Democrats...
...Meanwhile, the spirit of eager cooperation which characterized the convention was apparent when many delegates' wives held open the doors of pay toilets for one another in the basement of the ladies' room of the Statler Hilton: We were all equal there...
...Most delegates I met volunteered that they had never before been involved with a candidate, and I heard happy sentences such as "I don't like politics," or "I was never into politics before...
...Unless an author's name is appended, the material appeared as editorial comment...
...The gays marched for the repeal of sodomy laws, there were appeals to "Stop Government Spying," and some Wall Street brokers intoned, "Back to Gold...
...This year's demonstrations seemed to be taking place at a solar distance from the minds and hearts of the delegates...
...How about bugging...
...For a veteran of Chicago '68 and both Miami Beach conventions of '72, the keystone of '76 was self-censorship: So many had been persuaded that debate or disagreement was not permissible, that the treasured "harmony" might be shattered by mere discussion, which was almost equated with violence and chaos...
...Anti-abortionists paraded with signs reading, "With Christians Like Carter, Who Needs Pagans?," "Democrats Support Dead Babies...
...But the few delegates of today who had once worked for Eugene McCarthy or Edmund Muskie or George McGovern were not enamored of the cast iron will and the foam rubber policies of this year's candidate...
...Carter was kind enough to compliment us on our national character...
...Angola...
...In his wisdom, he didn't echo Eugene McCarthy's offer of a few months ago to appoint "a Goddess of Agriculture...
...Asked how they had made the transition between their former choices and Carter, most replied that they didn't, but that they were dedicated to defeating President Ford...
...Presidential Campaigns I am convinced that the time has come for a militant political movement independent of the two old party organizations, and responsive to the needs and sentiments of the common people...
...an air of almost studied politeness...
...Despite the minimal God-bothering at the convention, references to the will of God are still unnerving...
...While few could fail to be impressed by the vigorous authority of Barbara Jordan, the intentional murkiness of the Carter positions seemed contagious even for her...
...in our haste to do all things for all people, we did not foresee the full consequences of our actions...
...to important positions in his administration, and that he would make the Equal Rights Amendment "a major part of his campaign...
...But at the time, Newsweek remarked on "McGovern's clear dominance from beginning to end...
...But columnists often and gleefully alluded to the Miami Beach convention as a "shambles," "an exercise in lunacy," and "a debacle...
...She got the sign...
...Their radiant lack of attention highlighted their detachment from what the speakers said or represented: Chatting with chums in the aisles or strolling in and out for chili dogs and soda seemed to sum up their commitment to the candidate—he was theirs and they were with him...
...Some of them said that he was all three...
...Yet a review of some of the major publications reveals that— right after the 1972 convention—"unity" was also the theme...
...Today one must wonder whether that 1972 convention did McGovern massive harm, as many now believe...
...The cameras left him for "a very special person"— Jacqueline Onassis waving at her friends...
...We must wear compassion like a medal" (John Glenn...
...In Miami four years ago, many had high hopes for working through the system to give new constituencies a share in the power...
...According to a CBS survey, only one out of eight delegates had been at Miami Beach...
...Brunching with many Carter delegates, or pursuing them through the fleshpress across the Garden floor, knocking back ice cream for Bella, or lining up together for Diet Pepsi, I found few repeaters from '68 or '72...
...few speakers mentioned 1972, and Vietnam was a Republican war...
...When it was suggested that Carter's stance on the war might be an indication of his attitudes toward intervention in the future, most receded into praising his "flexibility," his faith...
...But the delegates of this year were mainlining a new brand of confidence: High on their proximity to a winner, they exuded an excitement that sparkled through their boredom, and it was the brightest brace of confidence I have ever witnessed...
...Let's put this nation back to work" (Muskie...
...Alexander Garnish, delegate from Massachusetts), and "We just want the truth again" (Carter...
...Robert M. LaFollette Sr...
...Time had evoked "an air of gentleness...
...A Yippie spokesman explained that his playmates were not "into violence" this year—"What we're into is anarchism...
...The two black Congressmen spoke eloquently for the impoverished and black Americans whose suffering had been ignored in the jubilations of July: Those who are denied jobs for the sake of the economy and at the same time chided as being reluctant to work...
...Since most of those who can't stomach each other's views were told what they wanted to hear, many managed to ignore Carter's reassurances to their opponents...
...Afterwards his praise for our "simple decency" stayed with me while some happy delegates plundered the Garden, yanking up posts and grabbing signs and snatching at bits of bunting...
...March 1968...
...October 1936 On the basis of their platforms, there is precious little to choose between the Republicans and the Democrats...
...some wheeled toddlers in strollers, while older children raised banners demanding, "KILL The Killer Abortion Plank" and pictures of mutilated fetuses were waved about...
...The police made about six arrests around the Garden on such charges as peddling jewelry without a permit and unauthorized use of a loud speaker...
...Even the gay delegates were hopeful of Carter's "supportiveness" in the future, although the proposed platform plank on the right to "sexual and affectional preference" was rejected...
...The National Women's Political Caucus retreated from the goal of fifty-fifty representation for the convention of 1980...
...George Wallace, inaudible to the delegates because no one bothered to put his wheelchair close enough to the microphone...
...simply to gain entrance to the elevator itself, one had to go in the wrong direction...
...July 1924 We must choose between FDR with his forward looking, humanitarian record, and the reactionary Republican candidate [Alf Landon] chosen and backed by the duPonts, Morgan, Hoover, Hearst, the Liberty League, and the Wall Street interests they represent...
...Carter's mother has often described the vein which throbs in his forehead when he is excited, and certainly his followers throb in unison...
...His tactic has been summed up as, "Sleep with me now and I'll marry you some day...
...as one circus yielded to another, a whiff of Barnum and Bailey seemed like a warning against overconfidence among Jimmy Carter's troops...
...then he realized that the war was divinely willed...
...And do you really want soapsuds for breakfast every morning...
...How about communism...
...Risking jail by returning to this country, Efaw was determined to address the nation at large on behalf of some 750,000 Vietnam era veterans with less than honorable discharges—which make them virtually unemployable—who were excluded from Carter's "pardon" proposal...
...I believe it was good," one teacher said wistfully...
...Jimmy Carter did not come from nowhere" (Margaret Constanza...
...A black Alabama delegate who had attended all the Democratic conventions since 1944 eagerly compared Carter to FDR: "He wants everybody to vote for him, including the Wallaceites," and Flor-ynce Kennedy, the black feminist lawyer, said Carter is "like the antidote that keeps us from dying from the poison of Wallace's racism...
...The man who had upheld busing began to deny that he had done so, as though taking a cue from Carter on abortion...
...In 1968, when I last heard Wallace at the Garden, yelling about "kowtowing to anarchists," "the sick Supreme Court," "students who collect money and blood for the enemy," and "professors calling for communist victory"—while fights flared across the floor and several blacks accompanying a pastor from Harlem were thrashed by a turmoil of toughs who were clamoring for law and order—it would have been impossible to foresee that an equal number of voters polled by Dan Rather in 1972 would pronounce Wallace a moderate, a conservative, and a liberal...
...While a New York high school chorus sang Hello, Jimmy to the legendary tune which once hailed Dolly or Lyndon, LBJ's baleful ghost seemed to hover fleet-ingly over the convention, at which he was rarely named...
...But many now feel that the televised convention made it appear that "the hippies" had seized the party, that the majority of Americans felt that they had no representation on that floor...
...Ron Kovic, a Vietnam veteran who in 1968 was shot and permanently paralyzed, awarded a purple heart, a bronze star, and a Navy commendation medal, announced, "I am your living dead, your Memorial Day on wheels .. . your John Wayne come home...
...The final session was "a glorious unity night" (Newsweek), when a "gesture of party unity turned magic loose in the convention hall" (The New York Times...
...Freedom is never a resting place" (Humphrey...
...a notion which evidently stunned the other sentimentalists who had merely craved a souvenir...
...Although John Glenn's creaky keynote speech displeased the Carter aides for failing to rouse his hearers, it was clear that Muskie was overplaying it: He grew hoarse and almost frantic in what was clearly a series of auditions...
...Dellums protested against "government of the money, for the money, by the money," and urged the Democrats to "speak to human misery...
...October 1956 The Republican candidate, Vice President Nixon, represents just about everything in American political life that The Progressive lives to oppose...
...Halfway through the convention, I read President Ford's solemn warning of "a growing danger to this country of conformity," addressed to some newly naturalized citizens on July 5. Was the old rebel honing his subtle weapons to attack the unanimity in New York...
...Undeniably, some black people at the convention were far less anxious about Carter's racial policies than liberal whites were...
...One recalls how reluctant President William McKinley was to enter the Spanish American War of 1898...
...Some 5,000 New York hospital workers chanted, "no contract—no work," and those protesting nuclear energy plants repeated, "no nukes, no nukes," while the anti-abortionists sang, "All we are saying is give life a chance...
...Lurking behind Carter's reliance on deliberate vagueness is the realization that many do not want to be reminded of national problems or "unpleasant memories" (like Vietnam...
...The promises whisked by, and then they were gone...
...And when the people raised their voices in protest, we did not listen...
...You could have fed them a maraschino sundae followed with cold squid salad, then curried kidneys and guacamole dip washed down with Fresca—and they would have swallowed it all without protest, probably with gratitude...
...Describing how he accidentally killed one of his own men, and then how his squad unintentionally shot a group of Vietnamese citizens, he recalled his initial anger at the antiwar movement, which he joined right after Kent State...
...Despite the benign, florid presence of Mayor Richard Daley, no one seemed to be shooting looters that night...
...Perhaps this is the year when Americans tend to confuse cynicism with intelligence...
...George McGovern, pensive, dignified, and faintly rueful, remarking dryly that "those who thought winning was all that mattered were buried in their own landslide...
...It seems that political confidence assumes a new shape every four years...
...Without attacking Carter, Efaw argued for a far broader amnesty, and drew even more support than he expected: 20 per cent of the delegates (including many of Carter's) signed the petition which enabled him to speak, and cheers topped the warm waves of applause when he finished talking— suggesting that far more Democrats may sanction amnesty than their leaders have supposed...
...Surely, these lines were a recantation, an apology for the number of blacks at the 1972 convention...
...But many who rejoiced at the selection of Senator Walter Mondale as Carter's running mate also noticed that he had joined the league of self-contradictors...
...But the presence of fleshly ghosts was more pungent—the living losers who had been summoned to perform at the podium...
...The inhibitions were particularly conspicuous at the press briefings held by the black caucus and in the majority of the women's caucuses, where most participants were acutely protective of Carter...
...I also heard that "Jimmy puts his hands on the table," and "he is bringing us back to our roots" and "he believes there's good in everyone...
...Our deafness was only a temporary condition and not an irreversible one...
...Earlier, Wallace's gaunt face was quite impassive as he reminded voters that "some of you laughed at me" for denouncing the Washington bureaucracy "but now you're saying it...
...The number of black delegates decreased from 15 per cent in 1972 to 10.6 per cent in 1976, and the women delegates diminished from 40 to 33 per cent...
...After Conyers nominated Dellums for Vice President, Dellums stressed that he was not seeking the nomination and that his "candidacy" was not meant to be "divisive," but that there was no other way to explore undiscussed issues before a convention which had ruled against debate...
...Still, a campaign which has been focused on personality rather than issues makes it all the easier to regard Carter as a mythic healer, an imaginary compress...
...A few wrote rather as though McGovern's delegates had demanded forced abortions for homosexuals while smoking pot...
...Cuba...
...When the Democrats convened this year, those earlier aspirations had been humbled...
...Like if you don't want to punch cops, you don't have to...
...If we propose, we must produce...
...Throughout, the Democrats tried to disown their immediate past, to shed it like a snakeskin...
...I had always thought he disarmed himself with his habit of self-contradiction: proffering and then retracting the $1,000 a year for everyone, the 1,000 per cent support for Eagleton, the remarks in favor of and against a "quota system," the statements that he would and would not keep troops in Thailand, or that he had and had not authorized Pierre Salinger to talk with the North Vietnamese in Paris—to name a few...
...How about abortion...
...ideas or policies hardly signified...
...Suddenly one of them hollered, "But I can get a thousand dollars for it...
...in fact, Carter coupled it with "religious" and "cultural" and "ethnic" on the final night—no doubt as a replacement for "purity...
...Occasionally, the 1968 Chicago demonstrations were blamed for every sin committed during the eight years of the Nixon-Ford Administrations...
...Both documents are masterpieces of evasion, heavy-laden with florid verbiage calculated to conceal rather than reveal the position of the parties on the overriding issues of our troubled times...
...They all let go...
...But if they had lent an ear or two, they would have heard "We must listen to the people" (Robert Strauss), but we must "light the torch of morality" (Abraham Beame...
...Four tired delegates struggled crossly over the long wooden pole which identified the Canal Zone...
...The unfulfilled past was regurgitated as gobbets of stale or undigested politics were cast up before us: Hubert Humphrey, brimming with glow and bounce, seemed to forget that he wasn't the candidate...
...November 1960 We support Senator Eugene McCarthy because he understands the need to reverse our priorities by directing the men, money, energies, and skills demanded by the nation's obsessive emphasis on Vietnam, to a bold and affirmative program of action designed to combat the social and economic ills that threaten to cripple our country...
...While it was good to hear numerous speakers insist that unemployment must be reduced and many new jobs created, it seemed as though canapes were being quickly offered to a multitude...
...His advisers favored it, but he continued to resist until he consulted the Deity...
...Then he called Mondale "a good and decent person" and withdrew his name...
...But this audience was so zapped by sensations of victory that it would have devoured any combination that had been put on their plates...
...The strongest speakers were Representatives John Conyers of Detroit and Ronald Dellums, veteran Ron Kovic, and draft resister Fritz Efaw...
...Representative Ronald Dellums of Berkeley said he supported "whatever compromise" came out of the women's caucus, though he observed, "Since women make up half of the world and over half of this country's population, my spirit and my soul cannot understand why fifty-fifty representation in the decision-making process may still be controversial...
...A crowd of two children on bicycles and three reporters had greeted Wallace on his arrival at the airport in New York...
...What we like most about Kennedy is that he is not satisfied with things as they are...
...But he gave the impression that he would do more to equalize the races and the sexes than any previous President, so he received their robust backing...
...Honesty is more than a catchword" (Rabbi Emanuel Feldman...
...Trickling through Jordan's hazy oration were hints of the Nixonian complaint that the blacks and the poor had asked for and received "too much" in the 1960s—a fix which has been bought by many Democrats in the 1970s who can't distinguish between greed (of the rich) and survival (among the poorest...
...Yet both groups won "definite assurances" from Carter that he would appoint more blacks and women Nora Sayre, author of' 'Sixties Going on Seventies,'' is now working on a book about the 1950s to be published by Harper and Row...
...She did add, "Of course an antidote is soapsuds...
...I am no enemy of unity, but I can't bring myself to apply that word to a program which bundled Coretta King and George Wallace and Cesar Chavez and Richard Daley all together: The fact that they all appeared in the same building could hardly suggest an affinity group...
...This was my first convention without preparation for tear gas...
...But few besides Jordan and Humphrey, Carter and Mondale, could wring a response from that audience—which was both the most ecstatic and the most indifferent crowd I have seen at a convention...
...Carter was lauded for his willingness to "sit down" with the blacks and the women, which he really had to do to prevent a floor fight...
...Representative Yvonne Burke of California sternly told the black caucus, "A lot of people thought it was too female and too black...
...None of the delegates with whom I talked—including two young New England men who had deplored the war—knew what Carter's stand on Vietnam had been, and some were embarrassed by not knowing...
...Meanwhile, Carter has been assuring his critics among Catholic leaders that he would try to "restrict" the use of Federal funds for abortions...
...On hearing that he had supported the war until the final days in 1975, a couple of them shrugged—if a bit sadly...
...When her stirring voice rebuked "interest groups" which are "seeking to satisfy private wants," it initially sounded like a criticism of greedy tycoons...
...But that was the essence of '76: In this nearly themeless (or seamless) convention, unmarked by snags or rips or tears, moderates were called "militants," and the image of "compromise" persisted when—because of the overcrowding of the Statler Hilton's elevators—it was often necessary to ride down in order to go up, and vice versa...
...Busing, which was rarely mentioned at the convention, was occasionally alluded to as though it were a transit problem...
...Such cloudiness has paid off: Liberals and conservatives and feminists and right-to-lifers and gay activists have quite different perceptions of Carter's positions, but each is utterly sure that he or she is right about what the candidate "really" means...
...Yet she left some of her admirers uneasy, because at certain moments she seemed to dissolve the skepticism about Carter's campaign, while at others she contributed to it...
...In Chicago eight years ago, many were confident that if they put enough pressure on the system they might actually begin to change their own society: The aims were peace, racial equality, an America in which property would be valued less than human life...
...If we promise, we must deliver...
...America is a good country and we're a good people" (Morris Udall...
...Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver are the more hopeful choice for independents and progressives...
...In retrospect, some say that they then thought: How can someone run a country if he can't run a convention...
...An elderly radical told me, "It's awfully hard to fight ooze...
...Hearing and watching her speak and then reading her words afterward provided a searing contrast, since she dealt in double meanings...
...THE WAY WE SAW IT These excerpts from articles and editorials published during The Progressive's sixty-seven year history have been edited only to achieve brevity...
...Repeatedly, the 1924 convention in New York was characterized as a disaster—as though it had been the party's last gaffe...
...Rival forces are apt to battle about their interpretations of Carter's rhetoric, but so far, few seem to trace their mutual hostilities to the slurs between his words...
...The Vice Presidential hopefuls appeared to be undergoing a ritual humiliation: trying out in front of the Carter staff...
...During the nominations, his name became one of the "others" (as Shirley Chisholm's had been in 1972), when the television screen recorded all the votes for Leon Jaworski, Cesar Chavez, Milton Shapp, Fred Harris, and Wallace, as "others...
...Now, we can better understand Carter's own tactics in 1970, when he wooed the Georgia segregationists, accused his opponent of being "ultra liberal," and then proved more cordial to blacks than anyone had expected...
...Kovic nominated Efaw, the draft resister who came to the convention as an alternate delegate after seven years' exile in England...
...But she could also have been warning blacks to restrain themselves when she asserted that the Democrats had "made mistakes...
...he said that Vietnam and Watergate and "the embarrassment of the CIA revelations could have been avoided if our Government had simply reflected . . . the high moral character of the American people...
...Almost no one but Barbara Jordan could utter such vapid phrases with such power to convince her audience...
Vol. 40 • September 1976 • No. 9
