DUers Who Were Around: Compare McGovern and Humphrey

[WillyBrandt]

Who was the more impressive candidate AS A POLITICIAN. Ignore ideology, views, etc: who was simply best on the stump, talking to reporters, connecting with regular folks?

I certainly wasn't around there, and I'm interested in hearing from those who were.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

1. Robert Kennedy

NT

[WillyBrandt]

2. Clearly, but between McG & HHH

[DemocratSinceBirth]

3. Neither One Of Them Were Particularly Charismatic.....

Decent men but not charismatic leaders.....

[dflprincess]

11. In 1968 I was too young to vote

but I was rooting for Robert Kennedy.

Humphrey was courageous in his day. It was his 1948 Civil Rights speech at the Democratic National Convention that moved him onto the national scene (he was mayor of Minneapolis at the time). But I never quite forgave him for selling out to Johnson on Vietnam.

Personally, I would take Wellstone over Humphrey, but I can tell you that, in Minnesota, no politician was more beloved in his day (and for a long time after his death) than Hubert Humphrey. The Republicans always ran someone against him but it was always a sacrificial lamb. I remember one of his senate campaigns where his slogan was "You know he cares". In his last campaign for the senate - when it was pretty obvious to anyone who would admit it that he probably wouldn't survive that term - his slogan was "Show him you care". Can you imagine many politicans who could get by using that for a slogan these days? (And Hubert won that on with his usual landslide.)

[Davis_X_Machina]

Humphrey was very much the Happy Warrior type.

McGovern could do a passable Old-Testament prophet routine.

George was funny, but in a way that was undetectable by the press.

Humphrey could be positively smarmy at times -- it's the unwillingness to be unpleasant that some politicians acquireover time, and I don't know why he came across that way, since when he was fighting the civil rights wars in the senate (See Caro's Johnson bio, vol. 2 for details) he wasn't interested in being lovable.

Both great men.

[CO Liberal]

4. HHH Was an Orator

He was a great public speaker. Unfortunately, he was too closely tied to LBJ - that cost him the election in 1968.

McGovern was a thinker - he had great ideas, but he was sunk by Nixon's dirty tricks gang, known as the "Plumbers".

BTW, 1972 was the first presidential election I participated in - my first presidential vote was cast for McGovern.

[papau]

14. I agree - the innovative cash to everyone would have worked if McG

had gotten in - Another Dem war hero that the media shot down because they were embarrased over the way they had avoided defending the country. (or they were bought, or they were controlled by the right - pick a reason).

But the media had a great time making fun of a "citizen monthly cash payout" - showing a lack of economic and political sense.

It was only a $100 per month as proposed - but it would have been a great way to bring the two nations - the GOP Haves and Have mores, and the rest of us - closer together.

But HHH was the better speech giver - and would have been a great president.

[Zen Democrat]

17. The Earned Income Tax Credit is essentially the same

guaranteed income McGovern had proposed. It's all in how you package it.

[papau]

21. True :-)

:-)

[dflprincess]

27. Humphrey was a good speaker

but he had a tendency to go on way too long (his son and grandson still make jokes about this when they get up to give a speech.)

I think it was in "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972" that Hunter Thompson had a line that went something like "Hubert Humphrey was beginning the 2nd hour of what he had said would be a 20 minute address..."

That was close to the truth.

[Capn Sunshine]

31. Kennedy was SO inspirational

problem was, back then the fascists killed you for that.

Note this isn't a big problem with politicians any more.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. That's a tough one

Humphrey was an inspirational speaker but McGovern always seemed so smart to me.

But when McGovern dropped Eagleton as his VP in 1972, I started ignoring him. That really pissed me off. We may have won that election. But in the middle of the summer, it was disclosed that Eagleton had been treated for depression so McGovern dropped him from the slate. {BTW, does anyone remember who he replaced Eagleton with? I don't] Anyway, that made the Democratic ticket look so bad that Nixon beat us. And Nixon was already not trusted and hated by so many, even Republicans. We could have easily won that election IMO if not for the nonsense with Eagleton.

This was the first election I was old enough to vote in and I was just sick to my stomach by election day. They haven't gotten a lot better since then. :puke:

[JohnKleeb]

6. He replaced him with Sargent Shriver, first director of the peace corp

and Kennedy brother in law.

[WillyBrandt]

8. That doesn't sound right--HHH almost won, McG lost in a landslide

[JohnKleeb]

10. Ive read that if Humphrey had one more day

he would have pulled it off, his VP Edmund Muskie was a lot like Edwards somewhat, a fairly young guy with a working class background who mentioned it a lot, I read one time that Muskie said you may not like the democratic party now but this party gave hope to my father a polish immigrant who worked hard, and even the most anti war dems applauded that. There was also a divsion that year in the party between the civil rights supporting wing and the conservative wing, remember Wallace got a lot of support.

[H2O Man]

13. Also:

Tom E didn't have treatment for "minor" depression .... he had what was then the most serious type of medical treatment (brutal stuff by today's standards) and had been dishonest with McG.

The truth is that McG had more in common in a real sense with Howard Dean; he was popular in a weak primary season, as Dean experienced early, but had no chance of beating Nixon. As a subjective youth, I certainly wanted him to beat Nixon; as an objective adult, I realize that the VP incident was damaging to an already lost cause.

HHH would have won if the elections were a week later. The person who recommended the LBJ book is exactly on target, except that even as a younger senator, HHH did get his feelings hurt by insults. He was a sensitive man, a good man. But not on the level of LBJ, JFK, or RFK. More like a Ted Kennedy: good senator, not a president.

[WillyBrandt]

16. I just finished the third Caro book--I feel that an effective President

needs more than a touch of ruthlessness and cruelty, and a fair dollop of immorality. And thick skin.

[Zen Democrat]

19. It was the electric shock treatments that doomed Eagleton.

He never disclosed this to McGovern.

[H2O Man]

7. HH Humphrey was a great speaker

but his best work came before he served as LBJ's VP. I find LBJ to be a fascinating character, but he destroyed HHH almost to the same extent he did Leland Olds. (There's one for the DU history buffs!)

George M was (and is) a brave and decent man, a Dennis K with a strong military background. A true patriotic American.

But, HHH was the better of the two, in his prime in the late 1950s and very early '60s.

[Rowdyboy]

9. Humphrey was the better campaigner by far....

He actually enjoyed it!

[Zen Democrat]

12. Something to remember about McGovern is that he wasn't even on

the radar in 1972 until the dirty tricks campaign of Nixon's C.R.E.E.P. went to work in the primaries and knocked out front-runners Muskie and Humphrey by implying in poison pen letters that they were homosexual. Then they went after McGovern as a pinko nobody, even though he was a fighter-pilot hero in WWII.

Nixon went to China in 1972 and the press just slobbered and fawned all over him and Kissinger. You'd have thought he was the second-coming. Nobody mentioned the greatest flip-flop of all time. Nixon had led the charge for years against recognizing RED CHINA. No cultural exchanges, nothing would be tolerated. Then he went to China and embraced Mao and Chou-en-Lai and the press was blissed out.

Watergate happened in June, but it got no coverage until AFTER the election. The 1972 election was over before it began.

[hedda_foil]

24. Nixon and China.

You have a great point about this being one of the great flip flops of all time. Even more interestingly, from this standpoint, is that his people handled it with what may be the greatest meme of all time, the one that goes: "Only Nixon could go to China." It worked instantly, and it's still working for many, though it says absolutely nothing.

[Jack Rabbit]

15. Hubert Humphrey, hands down

He knew how to move his base consituants.

I also believe that had been elected he would have gotten his legislative program through Congress. We would have been much better off today had Humphrey defeated Nixon in 1968.

[Tosca]

18. As a politician...

Hubert Horatio Humphrey. Politician from the get-go.

[salonghorn70]

20. Humphrey

As a DUer who was around, I agree with the others. Humphrey loved campaigning. He loved the game. McGovern was a terrible campaigner and candidate. Having grown older, I still support McGovern's message but I now realize that he was just a terrible candidate with no chance to win. Muskie or Humphrey would have run better campaigns.

Its funny but I still remember this. Kennedy had just defeated Humphrey in the 1960 West Virginia primary. TV shows Humphrey walking into a silent room filled with supporters. There is one guy up front strumming a guitar and singing, "I'm gonna vote for Hubert Humphrey, I'm gonna vote for Hubert Humphrey, cause he's my man."
Humphrey goes across the room and embraces the guy.
Humphrey was the Happy Warrior. A great Democrat with soul.

As to the poster who mentioned Robert Kennedy. There is no doubt. Of the three, Kennedy was the best. He was my idol.

It still hurts.
:(

[H2O Man]

22. The politics of joy!

I didn't appreciate HHH as much when I was young. I do today.

Robert Kennedy was the most intense of all the characters from the 1960s. In the late 1990s, when I was in family court as part of my job, as a psychiatric social worker, one family complained that the judge and I talked about his collect of Robert Kennedy material during the court recess. I still wear the tie clip from when he came to town in 1964.

His son Robert's new book, "Crimes Against Nature," is fantastic. He always has reminded me of his father. But in this book, he really sounds like the Senator. Have you read it?

[bringbackfdr]

23. HHS's humanity was tremendous

In 1968 he could've creamed Nixon had he simply cut loose from LBJ and denounced the administration's Vietnam policy. Out of sheer loyalty he didn't. That says a lot about the man.

[bringbackfdr]

25. Make that HHH's ...

Sorry, I had a Bush moment.

[DerekG]

26. What did Humphrey really think of Vietnam?

I started a thread several months ago asking this very question, but the discussion didn't get too far.

[Zen Democrat]

33. Read any of the Lyndon Johnson transcripts from the time

Humphrey was against the war in Vietnam, but LBJ blackmailed him into supporting Johnson's conduct of the war and Humphrey as VP at the time had no choice but to go along, hope he got elected in spite of this and go his own way. After Chicago, he was flattened by the protests, but almost made it back. He was gaining day by day and came up just short on election day, but the conventional wisdom at the time said that if the election had been held even a couple of days later Humphrey would have been elected.

Poor Hubert is a tragic character in the sense that he bore the brunt of opposition to a policy he himself opposed.

[union_maid]

28. Humphrey, but that wasn't the issue

It's been said in other posts, so I'm just reiterating. Humphrey was tied to LBJ and the Chigago convention didn't help either. McGovern simply never had a shot. He was picked by the GOP via dirty tricks because he didn't have a chance of winning.

[UTUSN]

29. HHH--------------Big HEART n/t

[bemildred]

30. They both sucked really bad.

Nixon beat them both. Think about it.

[WillyBrandt]

32. Unfair. Nixon was an extremely good and clever politician.

[bemildred]

34. No he was not. He was an asshole.

Kennedy beat him (1960).
Pat Brown beat him (1962).
He was so worried in 1972 by McGovern he got impeached for
the shit he pulled. A good politician would not have
needed that, and would not have done that.

[WillyBrandt]

35. He was an asshole and an extremely good politician.