Hubert Humphrey’s Successful Failure

by Andrew Michael Flynn

A Party Divided Against Itself Somehow Stood: Thesis

Never the most popular politician in the Democratic Party, then-Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey had to take an untraditional route to become his party’s nominee for President of the United States. The brokering of necessary relationships inside his own fractured party yielded him enough favor at the 1968 Democratic National Convention to attain the delegate count which would win his party’s nomination, along with a few breaks derived from absolute tragedy along the way. The factions within the Democratic Party would all ultimately have their say, whether they were loudest on the convention floor, out on the streets of Chicago, or at the ballot box on Election Day.

All The Leaves Are Shattered: Introduction

The United States was falling apart in 1968, both socially and politically. The Democratic Party was representative of this fracturing, drawing parallels of inner turmoil much like America on the world stage. Whereas the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy led to increased violence and a further unraveling of the country’s complex fabric, the Democratic Party had its standard-bearer, President Lyndon Johnson, announce his intentions not to run for another term, which caused an unpredictable turn of events that would end up with then-Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey as the party’s nominee. And even once the ballots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention were cast and the ticket was solidified, factions within the Democratic Party faithful were left unconvinced of much, including that of a General Election victory in November.

Shaking The Chaos Tree: Cause

On the last day of March 1968, President Lyndon Johnson went on national television to speak about the current state of the war in Vietnam. While the war itself was going badly with hundreds of American servicemen being lost every week (National Archives and Records Administration), it was the announcement by Johnson that he would not run for another term as President of the United States, predictably sending shockwaves across the country, to say nothing of his own political party. Within a few weeks, other national Democrats gained traction whereas before it may have seemed unlikely. Robert F. Kennedy, the former Attorney General of the United States under his brother, President John F. Kennedy, saw favorable polling in the weeks that followed. RFK, as he was come to be known, carried with him a servant’s heart and amiable tone to his speeches, proving leadership along with a sense of civil responsibility. Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota did as well, although his popularity saw its peak just right after President Johnson announced that he would not run, McCarthy would still be a party favorite running up to the Democratic National Convention in August 1968, although he would ultimately play more of a power-broker role. Every major political party in the modern world has a power broker of some sort. Maybe not one who pulls all the strings, but at least knows where all the strings are rooted in and how to gently influence the folks who eventually make the decisions. And while McCarthy and RFK succeeded in winning several primaries in Spring 1968, Johnson’s existing power and influence in the Democratic Party saw to it that his own vice president would act as a little more than a counter to these party heavyweights. This was a big-tent political party that was primed to eat its own young like very few other times in American history.

The Darkness of Springtime: Course

Just four days after President Johnson shocked the world by saying he would not “seek another term” (Humphrey, 357), civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered in plain sight in Memphis, Tennessee, at the Lorraine Motel. His earth-trembling death would cause an immediate national rage and set the unfortunate tone for tragic violence to further unsettle an already shaken America in 1968. Since this truly abhorrent killing and the nights of destruction and looting that followed, there has rarely been such an unsettled and shaky body politic in the United States. The night of Dr. King’s murder, Robert F. Kennedy broke the news to a crowd of supporters, beckoning them to not share in acts of incivility even though the violence had broken out in cities across the country in what would be known as the Holy Week Uprising, an amount of civil unrest not previously seen for decades. It was with his speech that night that Kennedy assumed a higher mantle, that of a uniter in his own Democratic Party, gaining clout with African-American voters and moderate-to-liberal Democrats alike. However, Robert Kennedy himself was the victim of assassination himself just two short months later, the night he won the California primary. It was Sirhan Sirhan, an Americanized Jordanian citizen who was the triggerman of this political killing. He would later be found guilty of murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Summer of 1968 splintered further, and the Democratic party still had leaders, although there were broad questions raised as to just who could go up against the Republicans in the General Election so that their imploding party could retain power at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

A Liberal Lion’s Olive Branch Opportunity: Consequences

Vice President Hubert Humphrey didn’t fault anyone directly for the sheer turmoil in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention. He thought the demonstrators in Grant Park were “decent young people expressing their democratic right to dissent” (Humphrey, 387). It was also his contention that the mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, “may be a number of things, but he does not seem to me an evil man” (Humphrey, 386). Nonetheless, the Chicago police and their blunt club instruments had impact via Mayor Daley’s harsh direction over the anti-war protestors to the tune of harsh beatings and outright brutality while other madness was happening inside at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which was held in the last days of August that year. One has to wonder that had Mayor Daley backed off the demonstrations and let the protesters have their say, the tension might have been alleviated somewhat and the temperatures during the week could have been allowed to cool. The Georgia delegation even left the floor at one point during the convention (Summerlin, 237), adding to the chaos of the week. With enough delegates on his side and adequate relationships with party leadership including still-President Johnson, a party platform was agreed upon in a close, decisive vote and Humphrey won the nomination over McCarthy and a half-dozen other Democrats would ended up on that first ballot. Discontent could be heard from inside the hall when it was announced Humphrey had garnered enough votes, alongside his party nominee for Vice President, Senator Ed Muskie of Maine. This was the ticket for the 1968 Democratic National Party, however, and there was no going back from here.

A Forest of Disjointed Democracy: Conclusion

The choice of this topic was something I personally wanted to know much more about. Being wildly interested in political science and presidential elections since the Bush/Gore debacle of late 2000, I figured it would be worth a decent amount of research to enrich my brain with relevant and lesser-known information surrounding Humphrey’s political apex, plateau, and eventual loss in the 1968 General Election.

At this point in the American Experiment, this student hopes to not surprise any potential reader that our partisanship has swung towards extremism, having most of us just slap on the jersey of their favorite political party and go head-on into the rest of their lives. Try to find actual moderates in either party, and you’ll be disappointed if you thought you would. But once in a while we get a substantive debate, yet other times we’re too comfortable being angry behind a keyboard and social media account contained within our information silo of choice. Willing readers of young adult and middle-aged folks would be wise to review this chunk of the 1960s and learn a little more about just how they got to where they are in the current heartbeat of such a worldly, democratic experience. Well, Constitutional Republic, anyway.

Context is important when trying to understand the specific politics of an era, and nuance is crucial when trying to figure out just how a political party got to where they are now. While the current Democratic Party is hardly the one of its 1968 self, many of the ideals of liberalism within the confines of moderation are shared. The ceaseless warring of the factions still snipe at each other with a velocity that still makes everyone else think that they’re truly eating their young on a consistent basis. But for a shining moment in the latter months of 1968, the current liberal lion had his party’s nomination. Hubert H. Humphrey had the national voice of the Democratic microphone, in the hope he could guide a traumatized United States into a more beneficial, functional direction.

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Works Cited

The Education of a Public Man: My Life and Politics (Humphrey, 1976).

Acceptance Speech, by Hubert H. Humphrey (Chicago, IL: Vital Speeches of the Day, 1968, Vol. 34 Issue 23, p. 706).

Rhetoric As Ritual: Hubert H. Humphrey’s Acceptance Address at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, by Robert O. Nordvold (Chicago, Illinois: Today’s Speech, Winter 1970, Vol. 18 Issue 1, p34-38).

We Represented the Best of Georgia in Chicago, by Donnie Summerlin. (Chicago, Illinois: Georgia Historical Quarterly, 2019, Vol. 103 Issue 3, p211-253. 43p).

History.com Editors. (2018, March 16). 1968 Democratic Convention. History.com. Retrieved October 2, 2021, from https://www.history.com/topics/1960s/1968-democratic-convention#section_2.

National Archives and Records Administration. (n.d.). Vietnam War U.S. military fatal casualty statistics. National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved October 6, 2021, from https://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics.

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