I didn’t realize this until I checked but before 1972 delegates to both the Democratic and Republican national conventions were free to pick a candidate they prefered and not required to vote for the candidate who may have won their state’s primary. Those gatherings weren’t necessarily always the coronations they have become in our time.
Things changed after the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. If you’re my age, how can you not remember that one? Ever since then it has been a foregone conclusion that the candidate entering the convention from either party with the most delegates elected in the primaries would receive the party’s nomination to run for president.
That was until the convention occuring right now. Kamala Harris has something in common with 1968 and Hubert Humphrey. She’s the first person from either party since Humphrey to have won the nomination without having entered a primary. The run up to Joe Biden’s 11th hour decision not to seek reelection was a lot more like trauma than drama. Deflated Democrats were instantly elated and rallied behind Harris. Other would be aspirants for the nomination quickly fell in line and this week’s convention has unfolded smoothly if not totally without rancour.
In that regard just as Humphrey, was burdened and wounded in the election in November by his support for the United States’ continuing the Vietnam War and lost in the electoral college although barely in the popular vote to Richard Nixon, Harris will have to confront the opposition by a consequential part of her party to United States’ support of Israel for its ongoing actions in Gaza.
Tonight Harris will give “the speech of her life.” But really will it further energize her supporters more than they appear to be energized already? And will the television ratings be any higher than they have been in decades? Anything approaching a viewing audience of 25 million will be considered a success. By comparison last February’s Super Bowl was watched by nearly 115 million Americans.
National conventions since 1968, aside from being forgone conclusions, have been little more than days long political advertisements and decreased and splintered television coverage of them has reflected that. The legacy networks— ABC, CBS and NBC —now devote minimal broadcast time to them. Cable “news” channels with clearly partisan audiences— right wing Fox, left wing MSNBC and perceived by the right and admittedly others less dogmatic as left leaning CNN and PBS —have filled the space and reflect how even attempting to “be down the middle” is critiqued as “whose side are you own?” by many Americans today.
But fast backward to the past. In my lifetime has there been a more disruptive political convention and worst year for America than 1968? On March 31st President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek reelection. Five days following that on April 4th Martin Luther King was assassinated. Robert F. Kennedy was shot two months later on June 5th and in late August when Vice President Hubert Humphrey was nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate pandemonium broke out inside the convention hall as riots raged outside in the streets of Chicago.
I watched that convention at my parents’ home in Pennsylvania with a close college friend. I think the word traumatized by what we witnessed on television may be overdoing it but seeing the network broadcasts cutting back and forth from what was going on inside the hall to what was happening outside in the streets was close to how we felt. I consider it one of the few unfathomable events that have occured in this country in my 77 years.
Mayor Richard Daley’s use of Chicago’s police as a blunt instrument with blunt instruments was sickening. After it ended I asked my parents if I could borrow their car to take my friend home. I’m not sure they realized he lived in Illinois and we weren’t planning to drive there directly. Instead we headed for Canada but with no thought of emigrating.
We just needed a diversion— a way to cool off and absorb our disgust and dismay—and on our cross province journey we attended a Canadian Football League game in Hamilton, stopped in Joni Mitchell’s hometown of Saskatoon and crashed the North American Kentucky Fried Chicken convention in Banff. And yes, Colonel Sanders himself was there and all his franchise owners were dressed in white suits just like him. But even topping all this on our way back eastward across the top of the United States we drove out of our way to watch Evel Knievel launch his Honda motorcycle over 13 Toyotas in Missoula, Montana.
Subsequently, my career at ABC News was full of excitement and opportunities to search for, witness and do stories about things historic but mostly just interesting and I believe coverage of the national conventions was neither. It became an expense the network increasingly realized it could reduce. I was assigned to cover only a couple of them but I was lucky. The first was in 1984 in San Francisco. The other was in 1988 in New Orleans. I ate well.
I should add that in August of 1968, the tumult in the streets of Paris had largely died down. I mean, it was August, right, and every Frenchman goes on vacation in August, even rebelling students, striking workers, and unemployed terrorists.
Thanks for the memories, Peter. I was in Paris (yeah, soixante-huit) that summer and the convention barely registered. There was no TV of course and even if there had been, there was not much coverage of the Chicago convention--the French had a few more important things to think about. In fact, it was a tumultuous year all across Europe but perhaps nowhere as consequential as in the US.