THE LOSER: A Near Run Thing

AT the outset of a campaign that progressed from disarray to the brink of disaster, Hubert Horatio Humphrey confessed to close aides: “I’m dead.” He was down so far he had no place to go but up. And up he went—up from a 16-point deficit in the polls, up from the chaos of the Democratic Convention. When he bade good night to loyal Democratic Party workers in the ballroom of the Leamington Hotel in Minneapolis at 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 6, the Vice President was racing neck and neck against Richard Nixon. Crucial states were still teetering. “It’s a real Donnybrook,” Humphrey declared with characteristic ebullience. Yet the grin was grim. Giving endless thanks to his staff, family and supporters, Humphrey spoke less like a man who still entertained hope than like one who was recounting a heroic foray that had failed.

Campaign Manager Larry O’Brien’s Irish eyes were not smiling. Speechwriter Ted Van Dyk, ashen and somber, had lost his usual cockiness. Their man was not conceding. “I feel sufficiently at ease,” said Humphrey, “that I want to get a good night’s rest.” But, like Charles Evans Hughes in 1916, he was heading for bed only to awaken and discover that voters in California (and Illinois in 1968) were electing his opponent to the presidency.

The outcome, as the victorious Duke of Wellington said of Waterloo, was “the nearest run thing you ever saw.” One week before Election Day, nobody would have believed the race could turn out that way. In August, the party that nominated Humphrey at Chicago was a shambles. The old Democratic coalition was disintegrating, with untold numbers of blue-collar workers responding to Wallace’s blandishments, Negroes threatening to sit out the election, liberals disaffected over the Viet Nam war, the South lost. The war chest was almost empty, and the party’s machinery, neglected by Lyndon Johnson, creaked in disrepair.

Fists Clenched. As if that were not enough, Humphrey opened his campaign with a wild, disorganized abandon that defied his advance men’s efforts to bring out the crowds. Then there were the hecklers, taunting a Vice President who refused to repudiate his unpopular chief and run away from the record of the past four years. Humphrey’s personal physician and adviser, Dr. Edgar Berman, complained at one point: “There is no adversity that has not been visited upon this campaign.” He was not far wrong.

The turning point came on Sept. 30 in Salt Lake City, the day after Humphrey endured some of the worst heckling of the entire campaign. Fists clenched, lips tight, he flew to Utah to deliver a speech pledging that if he became President, he would risk halting the bombing of North Viet Nam in the hope of achieving peace. Twice before, Johnson had undercut him when he tried to stake out even moderately independent positions on the war. This time there was not a word from the White House.

From then on, the mood palpably changed. When a poll on Oct. 10 showed that Humphrey was clambering back from his post-convention slump, money began to flow in and Humphrey was able to spend some $12 million altogether. He spent $3,000,000 in the last week alone, most of it on TV. The deeply divided Democratic Party began to show signs of belated unity. Humphrey wound up his campaign odyssey of more than 98,000 miles amid laughter, with a triumphant Los Angeles parade and a four-hour telethon with Edmund Muskie. Humphrey flew home to Waverly, Minn., during the early hours of Election Day to vote in Marysville Township, his home precinct, which gave him 385 votes to Nixon’s 128 and 15 for Wallace.

During the afternoon, he drove eleven miles to nearby Buffalo, dropped off a blue suit at a cleaner’s shop and sipped a cup of hot chocolate at a local grill. That evening, the Humphreys drove through flurrying snow to his headquarters in Minneapolis.

The stubborn Democratic battle that Humphrey watched in a 14th-floor hotel suite was in no small measure a tribute to his rare amalgam of warmth, courage, do-gooding liberalism and practical politics. “Hubert is not a gut fighter,” Lyndon Johnson, an expert judge of the breed, carped in 1960. Yet Humphrey could hit hard and often—as he did in the closing weeks of the 1968 campaign. Despite his revilement by dis. sident Democrats, there is no reason why Humphrey should not remain a major figure in the Democratic Party. Still, his defeat marks an exit—the exit of a style, of a certain brand of liberalism, which seems about to be replaced, though by what is far from clear.

Mixed Futures

Inevitably, the outcome of the 1968 elections put the political futures of all the men involved into new perspectives and new lights—some brighter, some dimmer. Besides the Nixon-Agnew victory, what may prove to be a major factor in many careers is the surprisingly good showing of Hubert Humphrey.

Despite his defeat, Edmund Muskie emerged as one of the most personable and articulate major finds of national politics since John F. Kennedy. His relaxed campaigning manner, understated Yankee humor and forthrightness in dealing with the issues won the respect of many voters who had barely heard of him only a month or two ago. In many districts, Humphrey probably slid in on Muskie’s coattails; Muskie obviously could provide much of the leadership of the Democratic Party during the next four years. He faces a reelection race for the Senate in 1970, but in 1972 will surely be a center of attention at the Democratic National Convention—and a potential presidential nominee.

By contrast, Humphrey’s demonstration that he could do well without Eugene McCarthy’s flower power threw the Minnesota Senator’s future into serious doubt. The doubt grows even deeper if one considers his odd behavior during the campaign, during which he first refused to endorse Humphrey and then finally did so only grudgingly. Two weeks ago, he declared that “I will not be a candidate of my party for reelection to the Senate from the state of Minnesota in 1970. Nor will I seek the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party in 1972.” What would he seek? The night before his announcement, he had insisted: “This is not the last hurrah. I think the Pied Piper will be heard from again.”

McCarthy’s first priority was to have been the reform of the Democratic Party —a cause that would have gained considerably more momentum if there had been no bombing halt and if Humphrey’s defeat had been worse. As it turned out, the cause lost some of its urgency; McCarthy, instead of being a major voice for reform, became more than ever a voice crying out in a wilderness of his own making. He will undoubtedly retain much emotional appeal for his followers, but inside the Democratic Party his real power—always limited—to work change is greatly diminished. Outside the party, perhaps as head of some coalition of youth, suburbanites, college teachers and Minnesota partisans, his influence could be even smaller. Obviously it is time for him to think second thoughts—second thoughts that McCarthy was clearly already pondering when he appeared last week on CBS’s Face the Nation. Did McCarthy still feel confident about his future? “Well,” replied McCarthy, “I don’t know about the Pied Piper.”

Although he also opposed Humphrey before Chicago, George McGovern refused to retreat into despond. After he and the remnants of Bobby Kennedy’s doves were outvoted in Chicago, McGovern quickly joined Humphrey on the convention podium. And while preoccupied with his own successful campaign for re-election to the Senate from South Dakota, he managed to keep on good terms with all factions of the splintered Democratic Party.

For Ted Kennedy, now 36, the next few years will be mostly a matter of biding his time—speaking his piece on the issues, keeping a skeleton political organization intact, tending to his Senate duties, playing foster father to Bobby’s children as well as father to his own three children. He will inevitably be tugged toward the presidency by the party and his own ambition, away from it by his family. From his receptivity to the draft-Kennedy movement in Chicago in August, it seems clear that Ted would opt for the presidency. There is no question that the oldfashioned, Depression-bred Democratic Party will have to be rebuilt. Robert Kennedy may have had the brains and the toughness to do the job; whether Ted can do it has not yet been proved, and will not be as long as he is withdrawn into his sorrow.

The near deadlock may have strengthened some of Nixon’s rivals within the G.O.P. Nelson Rockefeller is still a relatively spry 60. He could run for reelection to the New York governorship in 1971, and in 1972 bid again to make the presidential race. Charles Percy bet so heavily on Rocky in Miami Beach that Nixon actually hung up on him in the middle of a furious phone conversation. A Nixon landslide would have left Percy in political limbo. As it is, the G.O.P.’s narrower victory improves Percy’s chances somewhat, but not much; he may have trouble mustering support for re-election to the Senate in 1972 from Illinois Republicans of a less liberal stripe.

Two other Republicans who may well have benefited from the closeness of the election stand at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum and opposite ends of the country: John Lindsay and Ronald Reagan. Mayor Lindsay’s future depends largely on his agility in leaping from floe to floe in the sea of troubles surrounding New York City. Ronald Reagan, who was reportedly offered a Cabinet post before the Republican Convention, plans to stay on in California as Governor. So far, his objectives have been largely limited to economizing, but if he hopes to run for re-election in 1970, he must begin to build a positive, measurable record of accomplishment.

General Curtis E. LeMay and the Peace and Freedom Party’s Eldridge Cleaver can probably boast (if boast is the word) even more precarious futures. The general has lost his $50,000-a-year job as board chairman of a California electronics firm. Cleaver, who won nearly 200,000 votes, is headed for a California courtroom to stand trial for assault with intent to commit murder and assault with a deadly weapon—the result of a shoot-out with Oakland police officers last April. In the meantime, he is lecturing at Berkeley.