Humphrey campaigning in California in 1968. All photographs courtesy of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs

by William Swanson

“The trouble with you, Hubert, is that you’re just too damn good.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson

On the warm, humid evening of August 29, 1968, Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. (B.S. ’39), the 57-year-old vice president of the United States, rose to the podium of the International Amphitheatre in Chicago and told the 13,000 Democrats in the auditorium and 20 million Americans watching on television that he was ready to be their president.

Humphrey’s formal acceptance would conclude one of the most tumultuous political conventions in American history. On the previous evening, when the vice president was finally about to receive the party’s presidential nomination, downtown Chicago was a war zone. Tear gas wafted into the lobbies of the Michigan Avenue hotels and up into the VIP suites. The vice president could peer down into the street from his command center on the 25th floor of the Conrad Hilton and see demonstrators breaking windows and police officers cracking skulls. When he turned from the windows to watch on TV as the mayor of Cleveland, Carl Stokes (B.S. ’54, J.D. ’56), seconded his nomination, Humphrey and tens of millions of shocked Americans saw instead 17 minutes of televised mayhem unlike anything they’d seen before—cops in battle gear whacking white kids, clergymen, reporters, and television crews.

Inside the amphitheater, the Democrats had been going at each other with only slightly less venom. The presumptive nominee, Humphrey had seemed at times almost a forgotten man, less a focus of speculation and excitement than fellow Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy (M.A. ’39), the contrarian anti–Vietnam War crusader; South Dakota Senator George McGovern, who, for many antiwar delegates, was carrying the mantle of assassinated candidate Robert Kennedy; and Kennedy’s younger brother, Ted. For four days, everything from delegate credentials to the individual planks of the party platform was a point of bitter contention.

Now, at the podium, Humphrey seemed oddly out of scale. Though a vital, vigorous man of respectable height and heft, he appeared to many of those watching somehow shrunken—small, certainly, in comparison with his boss, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was not a literal presence in the amphitheater that night but filled it nonetheless the way God fills a cathedral. He seemed smaller, too, than

A campaign wagon in the 1940s. Humphrey was mayor of Minneapolis 1945-48.

Bobby Kennedy, the murdered senator whose emotional cinematic memorial preceded Humphrey to the stage, and smaller than the frequently invoked ghosts of President John Kennedy, the murdered senator’s murdered brother; of Adlai Stevenson, the sainted should-have-been-president; and of Franklin Roosevelt, the greatest Democratic president of them all. Humphrey, by contrast, seemed vice presidential.

Humphrey—who had aspired to the presidency his entire life—expected to run for the top spot in 1972, after L.B.J. had completed his second term and their administration had successfully, or at least honorably, concluded the war in Vietnam and brought Americans “back together.” But in March, Johnson decided not to run. Now, late to the race and still beholden to the president at a time when his independence would be the critical question mark of the electoral season, the vice president struggled for voice, direction, and stature.

His aspect on the evening of August 29 notwithstanding, Humphrey was by many lights a great man—or, at the very least, a good man who had accomplished great things. Even after nearly four, often humbling years as Johnson’s VP, he was still—surely among the older Democrats, union members, and people of color who shared his history—the tireless paladin of New and Fair Deal Democracy. Before he was vice president, Humphrey had been a bold reform mayor and a powerful U.S. senator—one of the most skilled and effective of the 20th century.

Humphrey had been an exceedingly adroit and pragmatic parliamentarian, with close friendships and productive relationships that transcended background, breeding, bank account, and caucus. He was, during the late 1950s, then–Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson’s right-hand man, chosen for his ability to build bridges across deep political divides. On even the most abstruse issues, such as tax reform, he was called the “Senate’s quickest study.” Democrats who had worked with him would tell stories about his gregariousness, empathy, and photographic memory. He was known for his almost supernatural ability to remember the homeliest face, commonest name, and most ordinary life story years after a first encounter. Brilliant and well-educated, he had the common touch, having grown up the dutiful son of a Main Street merchant, attended public schools, raised a family, and never bothered to get rich.

Humphrey had addressed

Humphrey at 2 or 3 years old, photographed with Uncle Tom’s Cabin on his knee.

his party’s national convention before. In Philadelphia in 1948, Humphrey, then the 37-year-old mayor of Minneapolis and a senatorial candidate, had risen to the podium at the Democratic National Convention and taken on the entrenched segregationist wing of the party. Speaking for a minority plank on behalf of racial integration in the party’s platform, he defied its southern barons, not to mention a sympathetic but cautious President Harry S. Truman. In what would be an unusually concise address for the notoriously voluble young pol, Humphrey spoke for only eight minutes. But his words turned the convention on its head, provoked a Dixiecrat walkout, and established the Democratic Party as the party of human rights.

Two decades later, old-timers could still repeat from memory a couple of the punch lines from the Philadelphia speech: “To those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights—I say to them, we are 172 years late!” And: “The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights!”

And in his 1964 acceptance of the Democrats’ vice presidential nomination in Atlantic City, he had reduced the Republican choice for president to the butt of a rollicking sing-along (“But not Senator Goldwater!”) that had the partisan crowd in the aisles.

But tonight, in Chicago, that was ancient history. Even the convention week’s ugliness had temporarily receded into a nightmarish blur, and what the vice president as newly nominated presidential candidate was obliged to address was the future. Whatever else he was, or had become, Humphrey had clung to his reputation as a visionary. He had been legendarily forwardlooking, ahead of his time—as demonstrated by his speech to the ’48 convention and, later, his leadership in the creation of the Peace Corps, food stamps, and other innovations. As presidential nominee, he would, perforce, talk about change and progress. He would refer to “the end of an era and the beginning of a new day.” He was still the best-known political orator in America, certainly alone at the public podium since Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in April, and this evening—after delivering countless speeches in more

Humphrey, far right, was on the 1938 University of Minnesota debate team.

than a quarter of a century—he was about to deliver what would surely be the most important speech of his life.

The speech’s preparation had been grueling, spread out over several weeks and involving many of the Democrats’ top guns, such as Bill Moyers, Jack Valenti, and poet and editor Norman Cousins. Its emphasis would be on the future, yes—but first the vice president would have to acknowledge the deteriorating situation in American cities and around the world, most critically in Eastern Europe and Indochina.

Later it would emerge that a small group of senior advisers had secretly hatched a spectacular plan in which Humphrey would use the acceptance speech to resign the vice presidency, present a blueprint for peace in Vietnam, and offer himself as his own man to the American people. Such a move would have been unprecedented. It would have been yet another one of the year’s stunning events—a towering bookend to the president’s surprise no-second-term declaration back in March. But, while intrigued, the vice president—ever the good son to the president’s domineering father—rejected the idea, believing, he told an aide, that “it would not look like an act based on principle or conviction.” He said, according to biographer Carl Solberg, it would seem “strange,” like a “gimmick.” And it would “enrage the president.”

The crafting of a more conventional speech, by Solberg’s account, would go on until the last minute as the vice president compulsively, as was his habit when he was nervous, picked up clothes, emptied ashtrays, and otherwise tidied his surroundings on Fortress Hilton’s 25^th floor. Every so often he would snatch the typescript from one of his wordsmiths, read the latest iteration, and scribble in changes with a felt-tipped pen, or he would dictate a thought or phrase to one of the stenographers who’d set up shop in the vice presidential suite.

To calm the demons that were roiling Chicago that week, he planned to invoke the words of Francis of Assisi. The 13^th-century friar’s familiar prayer had been struck from previous drafts by the vice president’s scribes. Now, at the last moment, he reinserted it in the text, beginning, appropriately—or ironically— enough, with: “Where there is hatred, let me sow love. . . .”

Minutes later, ascending to the convention hall’s dais in what he would later describe as his “moment of triumph,” the vice president heard the cheers and the music (including the

Humphrey upon return to Minneapolis after the 1948 Democratic National Convention

“Minnesota Rouser”) he had waited a lifetime to hear in that context. Ever conscious of his appearance, he could tell himself, as he waited to speak, that he looked his best for the thousands of party faithful in front of him and for the millions more watching at home. During the hours before his appearance, a chiropractor had kneaded the kinks out of his neck, shoulders, and back. Humphrey had dithered about the right suit and tie, finally settling on a dark blue Brooks Brothers and a maroon cravat. He’d had his thinning brown hair darkened and puffed. His makeup, though later criticized for giving him a grayish pallor, was chosen for the bright lights and the cameras.

Now, at the podium, looking out at the noisy throng—he would recall “the hall filled, the color, the lights, the thirteen-thousand people, mostly cheering, some possibly ready to embarrass me. (Where are they? I thought. New York back there. California.) Signs waving. The noise level building. And the TV cameras going to carry what I have to say to millions of Americans”—he resolved that this was the greatest challenge of his life and he was equal to the moment. “I proudly accept the nomination of our party!” he shouted into the microphone.

The speech lasted 48 minutes, not overly long for a presidential acceptance speech or for one of the vice president’s perorations. Those who track such minutiae tallied 71 interruptions for applause and three standing ovations. The vice president acknowledged “the troubles and the violence which have erupted regrettably and tragically in the streets of this great city” and recited St. Francis’s prayer. He talked about the end of the era and the start of a new day, and called forth the spirits of his Democratic predecessors. Only then, at the mention of the absent sitting president—L.B.J. was watching from his ranch in Texas—was there noticeable disapproval among the big crowd: boos and catcalls from McCarthy’s antiwar delegates and other malcontents who resented L.B.J.’s juggernaut.

Chin out, the vice president pressed on. Instead of creating some breathing room for himself, let alone declaring his independence, he called on “history” to “record the greatness of [the president’s] contribution.” “And tonight,” he added with an obsequiousness that had to seem provocative to the anti–L.B.J. element in the audience, “to you, Mr. President,

Humphrey campaigning in California in 1968

I say: Thank you, thank you, Mr. President.” Mostly L.B.J.’s people, the crowd rose, cheered, and shook cowbells, overriding, if not muffling, the dissenters’ jeers.

The vice president spoke about “the three realities that confront this nation”—“the necessity for peace in Vietnam. . . , the necessity for peace in our cities. . . ,” and “the paramount necessity for unity in our country.” He said, “Let those who believe that our cause in Vietnam has been right—and those who believe it has been wrong—agree here and now: Neither vindication nor repudiation will bring peace or be worthy of our country. The question is: What do we do now? No one knows what the situation in Vietnam will be on January 20, 1969”—the next presidential inauguration day. “Every heart in America prays that, by then, we shall have reached a cease-fire in all Vietnam, and be in serious negotiation toward a durable peace. Meanwhile, as a citizen, a candidate, and vice president, I pledge to you and to my fellow Americans that I shall do everything within my power to aid the negotiations and to bring a prompt end to this war!”

He talked about the administration’s progress toward peace around the world, on behalf of freedom against the forces of tyranny and oppression, and toward stopping the worldwide creep of nuclear weapons. “We have been building, patiently stone by stone, each in our way, the cathedral of peace,” he intoned. Here at home, he went on, “there can be no compromise” in the effort to protect the right of every American, “black or white, rich or poor,” to a “safe and decent neighborhood.” Democrat to Democrat, he talked about the right to a job, home, and education. And because this was the summer of 1968, the cities’ streets were up for grabs, and the party’s right flank was under fire, he spoke, too, of the right to “law and order.”

Finally, the vice president said, essential to all other efforts and achievements is “the necessity . . . for unity in our country, for tolerance and forbearance, for holding together as a family. . . . Are we to be one nation, or are we to be a nation divided between black and white, rich and poor, north and south, young and old?” Acknowledging the discord in the party, he made note of his “good friends”

Humphrey with his wife, Muriel, in 1968 when he announced his candidacy for president of the United States

McCarthy and McGovern, and urged unity among Democrats. He appealed to America’s hopes, faith, and good judgment, and he declared himself prepared to be its president.

Most conventioneers rose and applauded. Humphrey delegates jitterbugged beneath their state standards, and balloons clotted the heavy air. Front and center, Humphrey beamed, eyes shining and arms raised. His high forehead glistened with exertion. He was excited, exhilarated, and spent. He was also, he would concede later, enormously relieved: The walkouts and disruptions that some feared might cloud his presentation had not come off, and even the restive, raucous New York and California delegations were cheering. He had done his best, and judging by the response and demonstration, he had done all right. The prize he had pursued his entire adult life was finally within his reach.

His wife, Muriel, and their children and grandchildren joined him on the platform. So did his running mate, Maine Senator Edmund Muskie, and Muskie’s family. McGovern came out to a surge of enthusiasm from the antiwar stalwarts. McCarthy was a no-show—he had gone to join the counter-crowd in Grant Park, where he declared the gathering a “government in exile.”

Eight years later and two years before he died of cancer, Humphrey wrote, “As I talked about a new day for America, I thought I . . . saw signs of hope for the future of our party and the candidacy of Ed Muskie and myself.” In fact, that night in Chicago, he and Muskie—and the party as he knew and loved it—were finished.

For Democrats, who had made up the American electoral majority for most of the previous half-century, 1968—annus horribilis—was the end of an era.

In retrospect, 1968 marked the effective death of what latter-day progressives called the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” Champions of human rights, progressive taxation, public education, and protections for the working class and poor, liberal Democrats had been a major force since the advent of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s. A muscular consensus of social activists, intellectuals, union members, and ethnic minorities, led or enabled by a phalanx of tough and forceful governors, legislators, judges, justices, and presidents, the “Democratic wing” produced a series of advances that profoundly changed American

Humphrey delivering his civil rights speech at the 1948 Democratic National Convention

life in the 20th century.

By 1968, however, the core alliance was coming undone as chaos in the streets and on campuses produced demands for “law and order” and the Black Panthers and other violent organizations terrified erstwhile allies and sundered the civil rights movement. Young Democrats were facing off against their elders on matters small and large, from hairstyles and hallucinogens to the increasingly divisive Vietnam War, which by the late 1960s was producing alarming numbers of American dead, atrocities by U.S. forces in the field, and a sea change in attitudes about America’s role in the world.

Bound by old loyalties—including his almost filial dependence on the president’s good opinion—and what seemed to many Democrats a failure of imagination, Humphrey couldn’t come to grips with the changes reshaping America’s cultural and political landscape. To the vice president, who had been ahead of the curve his entire career, the sense of the times passing him by had to be startling—yet, like many members of his generation, he seemed powerless to respond in a meaningful way. With

Bobby Kennedy dead and a sour, dispirited McCarthy no longer mounting a serious challenge, Humphrey became his party’s standard bearer. But the party was in a shambles, and Humphrey would be unable to rally its disparate factions, especially the rebellious young. “Unlike McCarthy,” observed British author Dominic Sandbrook, “Humphrey made no attempt to challenge the orthodoxies of the 1940s and 1950s: he stuck to the rhetoric of the Fair Deal, basing his campaign on a defense of the welfare state and the Cold War.”

If his only adversary had been Republican nominee Richard Nixon, Humphrey may still have been elected president in 1968. But if ever a person did not need enemies with the friends he had, it was the vice president. Cowed by Johnson and sideswiped by McCarthy, Humphrey was unwilling to break the bonds that chained him to the president’s failing Vietnam policy until it was too late, and his late-starting, poorly managed, and chronically underfunded candidacy was an uphill slog. It is a testament to his spirit and tenacity that he rallied in the campaign’s final days and made it one of the closest presidential elections ever.

“Even without the Vietnam

Humphrey campaigning in Rush City, Minnesota, in 1948

issue, Humphrey, at fifty-seven, would have been a victim of the generation gap,” historian Mark Kurlansky has argued. No doubt. But in the autumn of 1968, Nixon, though slightly younger than Humphrey, was hardly the candidate of America’s youth. With an earlier and more enthusiastic endorsement from McCarthy, who gave his niggardly blessing only a week before election day, and another couple of weeks to raise money and buy television time, it’s not difficult to imagine a different outcome—and a different future for both the Democratic Party and the nation.

Then again, the challenges of the era may have been impossible to overcome by President Humphrey. It might have taken Humphrey as long as it took Nixon to extricate U.S. forces from Indochina. The government’s response to poverty, civil disorder, and racial conflict might have been as fitful and unsatisfactory during a Humphrey administration as it was during Nixon’s. All we know for sure is that under Nixon and Gerald Ford the war dragged on until 1975, that the nation’s social fissures grew more pronounced, and that the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” declined in power and influence—to the point where liberal would be almost as leprous as Communist once was within the party. Politically, the center would slide to the right, and the two Democrats—Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton—elected president in the subsequent decades were “pragmatic” southern centrists more reminiscent in their business-class orientation of moderate Republicans than of their progressive Democratic forebears.

Fittingly, the last of the Great Society liberals to run for president was Walter Mondale (B.A. ’51, J.D. ’56), one of Humphrey’s bright, young protégés. Mondale, like his mentor, had been a popular and effective U.S. senator before serving as vice president (under Carter), but he was swimming against a high conservative tide. In the 1984 presidential election against incumbent Ronald Reagan, Mondale carried only the state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia.

William Swanson (B.A. ’68) is a senior editor of Mpls.St.Paul Magazine and the author of Dial M: The Murder of Carol Thompson.