Instead of The Donhole's presser, I watched a documentary on Hubert Humphrey ...

[eppur_se_muova]

http://www.hhh.umn.edu/news_events/Centennial/ArtofthePossible.html

(link includes full transcript)

This aired on "World Channel" (PBS #3) on Wow! cable.

Some excerpts:

NARRATOR: Time was running out and the only way that Humphrey could avoid violence in Chicago was to bring together Johnson and the anti-war Democrats. With only days remaining until the convention, Humphrey and Nixon were invited to the LBJ ranch. While Nixon’s visit was well publicized, Johnson forbid Humphrey to tell the press. Humphrey took the opportunity to present Johnson with his own proposal to end the war and unite the party.

HUMPHREY: I discussed with him the necessity of phasing out; reducing our commitments, reducing our forces, reducing our bombing, and leaving the struggle to the people of Vietnam themselves - and trying to negotiate our way out of it. He frankly was furious with me. I remember what he said. He said “you know I have two son-in-laws over there, and your proposal would leave them at the mercy of the enemy.” And he became very personal about it.

NARRATOR: Working against the clock, Humphrey wrote a compromise Vietnam peace plank, that was agreed to by all sides – including the president’s closest advisors.

MCGOVERN: Then Hubert, being Vice President as well as a presidential candidate, had to clear it with the White House. The president squelched it.

MONDALE: And he insisted that the resolution that we had be replaced by a very pro-Vietnam War resolution.

MCGOVERN: By then we knew that Hubert wanted a peace plank in the platform to end the war. We knew that- and we knew why it didn’t happen.

HUMPHREY: I remember so well in September of 68 after the convention. The whole environment of politics had come apart, I mean it had become polluted and destroyed and violent. The president’s popularity at a low point, the war in Vietnam exceedingly unpopular, the Democratic National Committee unable to function with little or no money. I was a loser. I was 20 points behind in the polls. Politicians were leaving me like I was a contagious disease.

NARRATOR: By late September Gene McCarthy had not delivered his promised support and there was no progress in the Vietnam peace negotiations in Paris. But the real problem was that Humphrey had not found a way to separate himself from Johnson and the war, without angering a president who could ruin his campaign.

BESCHLOSS: Humphrey knows the way he can bring Democrats back in to the fold, is to say in public what he really thinks in private, which is: if I’m president in January I am going to get this country out of the Vietnam War very quickly. Lyndon Johnson says to him “You know Hubert if you get away from me on Vietnam, I am going to dry up every Democratic dollar from Maine to California. I’ll hurt you. I will make sure that you do not become president.” And the result was that so many people in the fall of 68, thought that because Humphrey wouldn’t say it, that Humphrey would not take the country out of the war.

NARRATOR: Finally, still 20 points behind in the polls and little left to lose, Humphrey used the last of his borrowed money to make the speech that many Americans had been waiting for. On September 30th in Salt Lake City he outlined his Vietnam policy to a national audience.

HUMPHREY: As president, I would stop the bombing of the north – as an acceptable risk for peace. Set a specific time table by which American forces could be systematically reduced – to bring our men and resources in Vietnam back to America. As president I would undertake a new strategy for peace in this world – based not on an American omnipotence, but on American leadership. In a troubled and dangerous world, we should seek not to march alone.

NARRATOR: Humphrey’s call for withdrawal of troops and an end to the bombing was perceived by the public to be a significant break with Johnson’s Vietnam policy.

VAN DYK: When he broke with Johnson, I had never seen him more liberated and effective. He had broken the cord and he was very very effective in that last month of the campaign

NARRATOR: Miraculously in three short weeks, Humphrey erased a 20 point deficit, and by the end of October he was in a dead heat with Richard Nixon. Some polls showed him leading Nixon for the first time in the campaign.

JOHNSON: My fellow Americans. I speak to you this evening about very important developments in our search for peace in Vietnam.

NARRATOR: Just days before the election, Johnson announced a breakthrough in the Paris peace talks. Peace in Vietnam would give Humphrey the presidency. The peace talks would include American ally President Theiu of South Vietnam. But only hours before the election, Theiu changed his mind and refused to attend. The Nixon campaign had convinced him to stay away. The talks would then stall, Humphrey would lose the election, and he would get a better deal from Nixon as president.

MANN: Nixon was engaging in what some might call treason.

MONDALE: You can imagine dealing in a way that would certainly add to the number of American deaths, did I’m sure, for political reasons.

NARRATOR: After the collapse of the Paris peace talks, Richard Nixon beat Hubert Humphrey by less than one half of one percent of the popular vote.

'68 was a year too full of drama and controversy for every story to be told in full. But the story of Nixon's treachery should not be allowed to slip through the cracks -- and we should remember that every Republican President after Eisenhower has given the American voter ample reason not to trust him, and has violated whatever trust he did enjoy.




ETA: Yes, I know that should be Thieu, not Theiu -- I decided not to include any editorial gotchas, just posted the TS as is.

[lastlib]

1. Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Cheney--treason seems to be in the Republican DNA

. . . . . . . . . . . .

[hifiguy]

2. The last one who wasn't a crook was Eisenhower.

How different things would have been if Humphrey had managed to beat Tricky Dick. Another week of campaigning and he would have, too.

[lastlib]

3. Or even if Reagan hadn't stolen the 1980 election from Carter.......