Humphrey Makes His Choice

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31775, 4 September 1968, Page 15

Humphrey Makes His Choice

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) CHICAGO, Sept. 3. The Democratic Party’s problem at home now is a little like the Johnson Administration’s problem in Vietnam, according to James Reston, of the New York Times News Service.

It needs a political ceasefire. It needs to end the partybombing. It wants some honest peace talks with its political opponents in the north. But it doesn’t quite know how to arrange these things. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey talks a good deal about “party reconciliation,” but he relies on the big guns. He played the power game at the Chicago convention. He went with the old power centres of the Roosevelt coalition, or what is left of them —the union leaders, the Southern governors and the State chairman in the north —and he won, though, like Mr Richard Nixon, he was not able to get the support of either New York or California. It was. however, a very ex- | pensive victory. He came out ] of it as the symbol of the : old Democratic guard, the can- ; didate of the professionals, . running on a Vietnam platform controlled, if not dictated by Lyndon Johnson in 'a convention dominated by ;Mr Richard Daley, the Mayor

of Chicago, and his police force, by Mr John Bailey, of Connecticut, and Mr Carl Albert, of Oklahoma; both decent men, but symbols of the past. In an age of popular television politics, this is not necessarily a triumphant strategy.

Mr Humphrey was staggering along with Mr Johnson on his back before the convention opened. Now he has added to his burden Mr Daley, who is quite a weight. It seems unlikely, but the Democratic script—Chicago, demonstrations, cops, Mr Daley, and “end the war” chants on the floor —might have been written by Mr Nixon. This is even worse from the Democratic point of view than Mr Humphrey’s friends, and he has many of them, expected. “Wait until he gets the nomination,” they said before Chicago. “Then he will be his own man. Then he will be free of Johnson and the past Then he will be young again.” But will he really? This is the question, and it raises a fascinating human speculation among the men of his own age in Washington and Minneapolis, who have been close to him for 20 years and think they know him well. They have always thought of Mr Humphrey as a man ahead of his time, as a progressive innovator who had more energy and ideas than most men of the young generation.

In fact, the men closest to him have been startled and

appalled by the anti-war and anti-Administration demonstrators who regard Mr Humphrey as a defender of the status quo, an ally of Mr Johnson and the South, and even as a warmonger on Vietnam.

Yet it is not at all clear at this point who is right—the old Humphrey believers or the young Humphrey critics. x

Mr Humphrey is still caught between political ambition and personal conscience. For the time being he is playing the old political power game, counting on the old politics and hoping that Senators McCarthy, McGovern and Kennedy will still believe in him enough to bring their followers into the campaign on his side against Mr Nixon. It is quite a gamble. Under the rules of the old-fashioned politics it would probably have worked. Mr Nixon is so unpopular with Senators McCarthy, McGovern and Kennedy that it might succeed even now.

In the end they could swallow Mr Johnson, Mr Daley, Governor Lester Maddox, of Georgia, rather than lose to Mr Nixon, but it is not a sure thing. Mr Humphrey’s old MiddleWestern friends, Senators McCarthy and McGovern, are putting policy ahead of party or personality or even old friendship.

None of them could have won the Democratic Presidential nomination against Mr Humphrey’s power base, but any of them might have been Mr Humphrey’s Vice-Presi-

dential running mate. And Senators McCarthy, McGovern and Kennedy all refused. Also, while Senator McGovern will support Mr Humphrey for the Presidency, Senator McCarthy is withholding his support, and Mr Humphrey’s appeals to them for a show of unity at the end of the convention failed.

So Mr Humphrey’s hopes for an end to the bombing and a cease-fire within the Democratic Party have not materialised, and he must have expected this in advance.

In short, he is seeking reconciliation with men he knows very well and likes very well, but playing the old politics himself with men he likes and admires even less, counting on the unpopularity of Mr Nixon in the Democratic Party to bring Senators McCarthy, Kennedy and McGovern over to his side by November.

In this he may be right. The allegedly brutal police action in Chicago against the demonstrators may be more popular among the voters than among Mr Humphrey’s critics.

Anyway, Mr Humphrey has made his choice for the present. He is going with Mr Johnson and Mr Daley, regardless of their tactics. This is the kind of political strength that has kept the Democrats in power for 28 of the last 36 years, and Mr Humphrey apparently chooses to follow it even if Senators McCarthy and McGovern and his old liberal friends do not like it.