A Conventional History Lesson
By Jarrett Murphy,
CBSNews.com producer
"Until morning the political boomers made pandemonium in the hotels. They arose from hasty slumber as combative as ever … Every hour added bitterness to the strife."
The sense of drama in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle's coverage of the 1892 Republican Convention in Minneapolis is unlikely to be echoed in Boston next week when the Democrats gather for their quadrennial meeting.
Certainly, some of the action in the Fleet Center will recall earlier days of brokered conventions. A chairman will gavel the proceedings into and out of session. Nominations will be put forward and seconded. And the delegates will vote, with each state chairperson rising to say which candidate "the Great State of (state name)" favors to lead the nation.
But the result is not in doubt. There will not be the 103 ballots there were in 1924 when John Davis was the Democrats' nominee, or even the 46 ballots it took to select Woodrow Wilson in 1912. Conventions don't do that anymore; no major party has gone even to a second ballot to select its nominee since 1952.
Instead, it was decided months ago in a front-loaded round of primaries that Sen. John Kerry would be the nominee, and so join the proud lineage that has at its head none other than William Wirt.
William Wirt? Yes, William Wirt, one-time U.S. attorney general and the first candidate nominated for president by a political convention. Wirt was the pick of the anti-Mason society in 1831, and received about 8 percent of the vote in the 1832 presidential election.
Wirt might be an obscure figure, but the tradition his anti-Masons started has produced some of the more memorable moments in American political history. Here are just a few of the highlights from the Democratic side:
In the only convention to take place in two cities, the Democrats met first in Charleston, S.C. But when Southern delegates lost a bid to include a platform plank defending state sovereignty over slavery, they walked out, prompting Northern Democrats to shift the meeting to Baltimore, where they nominated Stephen Douglas. The split allowed Republican Abraham Lincoln to win the White House with less than 40 percent of the popular vote.
In one of the most memorable speeches in political history, the zealous reformer William Jennings Bryan made a passionate case for reforming the U.S. monetary system. He wanted the government to coin silver as an alternative to gold, to prevent deflation that hurt farmers and debtors. "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold," Jennings declared to the gathering in St. Louis. His oratory won him the nomination, but he eventually lost to Republican William McKinley — the first of Bryan's three failed attempts at the presidency.
Since George Washington's decision to forego a third term, incumbent presidents had observed an unwritten rule against seeking more than two terms in office. In 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to break that rule, but he wanted to do it ever so delicately. Rather than declare his candidacy outright, FDR wanted the convention to "draft" him into running. Leaving nothing to chance, Roosevelt's allies sent men into the sewers of the convention hall in Chicago to yell "We want Roosevelt!" at the appointed time. The delegates decided they did, in fact, want Roosevelt, and the nomination was his.
As they did in 1860, the Democrats tore along regional lines. Southern Democrats were so enraged that the platform supported federal civil rights legislation that they split off into a States Rights Democratic Party, nicknamed the Dixiecrats, led by Strom Thurmond. Unlike in 1860, however, the Democratic fissure did not cost Harry S. Truman the White House, as Thurmond received less than 3 percent of the popular vote.
At the convention in Chicago, Sen. John F. Kennedy made his first play for national office, running to be Adlai Stevenson's No. 2. After he lost narrowly to Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, Kennedy told his followers to make the vote unanimous. Kennedy's ill-fated candidacy and magnanimous gesture gave him national exposure that came in handy during his presidential run four years later.
As peace protesters and cops battled on streets outside, Connecticut Sen. Abraham Ribicoff scorned the Chicago Police Department's "Gestapo tactics," prompting Chicago Mayor Richard Daley to utter a vulgarity that was seen, but not heard, by TV viewers. CBS News' Dan Rather was roughed up as he reported from the convention floor. It was the tenth time Democrats held a convention in Chicago, yet the bitter taste of 1968 kept the Democrats away from the windy city until 1996.
Sen. Ted Kennedy's failed primary challenge to President Jimmy Carter ended the presidential hopes of the last surviving Kennedy brother. In a speech to the convention, Kennedy addressed the aspirations of the party's liberal wing that he had inherited but not fulfilled. "The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die," he said.
Mario Cuomo's eloquent speech about the dark patches in Ronald Reagan's "city on a hill" marked the New York governor as one of the party's leading orators. One passage ran: "We believe we must be the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound one to another … That the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might, to avoid pain, is our failure."
Texan Ann Richards opened the convention with a rollicking keynote address that floated the legendary one-liner, "Poor George (Bush), he can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth." Rev. Jesse Jackson — at the apex of his political power with 1,200 of his delegates in the audience — gave a passionate speech about the plight of the poor who, he said, are often not on welfare. "They work hard everyday," Jackson said. "They catch the early bus."
For Al Gore, nothing summed up the double-edged sword of the Clinton legacy than the night of President Clinton's address to the delegates. Before his bravura performance on stage, Mr. Clinton's walk from the ready room to the podium was broadcast to the convention hall and television viewers. As Mr. Clinton strode to the lectern like a conquering hero, the cheers in L.A.'s Staples Center turned to roars. The moment was probably the defining image of the convention, and thus framed Gore's dilemma: how to seize Mr. Clinton's popularity without being dominated by his presence.
By Jarrett Murphy