By John Aloysius Farrell
In today’s edition of the Washington Post, two Princeton political scientists, Sean Wilentz and Julian Zelizer, have an op ed piece about our “rotten” presidential nominating system. The essay has problems.
Aside from decrying the current process (which, we can all agree, is sloppy but bringing out voters in huge numbers) the authors can’t make themselves come out for either democracy or efficiency. They condemn caucuses as “highly undemocratic,” but then suggest that we ban open primaries – which give a voice to more people by allowing independents to participate. They also suggest that some unnamed force should begin “grabbing power” from the media. Ah, blame the media. How original.
The op ed piece also includes some sloppy history. Poor ol’ Hubert Humphrey, whom the authors so easily dismiss as “craven” for his support of the Vietnam War, actually opposed escalation with such conviction in the Johnson administration’s internal consultations that LBJ excluded the vice-president from its deliberations.
After claiming the nomination, Humphrey publicly broke with the president’s war policy in the fall of 1968, and almost won the election. He lost, in part, because antiwar Democrats, in a snit, sat on their hands and let Richard Nixon take power.
Certainly, as a matter of conscience and politics, Humphrey was too loyal, for too long, to his president. But his political calculations in that awful year were no more “craven,” selfish or politically pragmatic than those of Bobby Kennedy and George McGovern, or even Eugene McCarthy. All three allowed personal spite and ambition to fragment the antiwar cause.
At the age of 15, I wore a McCarthy button in January, 1968 and then switched to RFK in March despite the fact that my man Bobby (for many of the same reasons that gave Humphrey pause) entered the presidential race only after McCarthy proved LBJ was vulnerable. After the assassination, I sided with McGovern, whose candidacy rested on the principal that no Kennedy delegate could support the haughty, unforgiving McCarthy.
It was years later, when working on a book about Tip O’Neill (who did his own tip-toeing through the minefield of Vietnam politics, as did all Democrats that election year) that I came across Humphrey’s long 1965 memo, urging Johnson to end the war. It gave me a better appreciation for the man we derided as “the Hump” in 1968, despite his long years as a champion of civil rights and other progressive causes.
Humphrey told LBJ the war was unwinnable, destablizing, too costly and unpopular. “It is always hard to cut losses. But the Johnson administration is in a stronger position to do so now than any administration in this century,” Humphrey wrote the president.
I’m not saying that Humphrey deserves a chapter in “Profiles in Courage.” He was a flawed character. But it’s inaccurate, and unfair, to single Hubert out as “craven.”
If only Johnson had listened to him.
