Part 30 (2/2)

Hubert Humphrey said of his successor as vice president, ”I personally doubt that our country has seen in twenty years”-i.e., since Joseph McCarthy-”such a calculated appeal to our nastier interests.” John Ehrlichman responded in textbook tones of wounded innocence: ”I don't think it is illegitimate for someone in his situation to help bring a balance into communications. It seems to me a sort of desperation defense to say the vice president is polarizing people when he says the press is unfair.”

Ehrlichman added that, after all, ”politics is the art of polarization.”

And Agnew would keep on practicing the art: there was a lot more polarization to accomplish before November.

The Democrats were gaining traction by hammering on the economy. Nixon could could make things easier for ordinary Americans, they hectored, with wage-and-price guideposts like President Kennedy's. But Nixon had ruled that out in his first presidential press conference-”I do not go along with the suggestion that inflation can be effectively controlled by exhorting labor and management and industry to follow certain guidelines”-because, Democrats said, he was a greedy Republican. make things easier for ordinary Americans, they hectored, with wage-and-price guideposts like President Kennedy's. But Nixon had ruled that out in his first presidential press conference-”I do not go along with the suggestion that inflation can be effectively controlled by exhorting labor and management and industry to follow certain guidelines”-because, Democrats said, he was a greedy Republican.

He was also a wily Republican, with congressional elections to win. And on June 17, he went on TV and promised that the Council of Economic Advisers would issue ”inflation alerts”-wage-and-price guideposts by another name.

So frustrating for Democrats, running against a party led by a man with principles like that-though many Democrats were convinced this was their ace in the hole. The president's men were the greasiest of the greasy Old Pols. The way to defeat them was to contrast them with the idealism idealism of the New Politics coalition that seemed to be surging all around. of the New Politics coalition that seemed to be surging all around.

Save the party, save the nation, save your soul: it had been the New Politics message ever since the 1968 Dump Johnson movement. The ideals were rooted in the founding slogan of Students for a Democratic Society: it had been the New Politics message ever since the 1968 Dump Johnson movement. The ideals were rooted in the founding slogan of Students for a Democratic Society: partic.i.p.atory democracy. partic.i.p.atory democracy. New Politics theorists saw it as an increasingly postparty age, one in which people made up their minds via media that delivered experience directly into their homes. And that, in a society where the average age was falling every year and more and more young people were going to college, conservatism could only but yield diminis.h.i.+ng returns. New Politics theorists saw it as an increasingly postparty age, one in which people made up their minds via media that delivered experience directly into their homes. And that, in a society where the average age was falling every year and more and more young people were going to college, conservatism could only but yield diminis.h.i.+ng returns.

Kent State seemed logically to hasten the tide. The Voting Rights Act reauthorization vote was set for June; in March, Southerners desperate to see Harrold Carswell nominated had quietly put aside filibuster plans. Ted Kennedy and Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield spied an opportunity to lower the voting age to eighteen, an idea floating around in liberal circles since the 1940s. General Eisenhower had come out for it in 1966, reasoning that if you were old enough to die for your country, you were old enough to choose the leaders who sent you to do it. In 1968 Time Time underwrote a straw primary in which over a million college students voted (Eugene McCarthy got 285,998 votes, HHH 18,535). That June, LBJ suggested introducing the eighteen-year-old vote by const.i.tutional amendment. underwrote a straw primary in which over a million college students voted (Eugene McCarthy got 285,998 votes, HHH 18,535). That June, LBJ suggested introducing the eighteen-year-old vote by const.i.tutional amendment.

There hadn't been much movement since. Kennedy and Mansfield decided to force the issue by attaching a rider to the Voting Rights Act extension to give eighteen-year-olds the vote in federal, state, and local elections, effective January 1, 1971. Since the Const.i.tution was silent on setting a voting age, critics argued the Tenth Amendment reserved that power for the states (four had already lowered theirs), and that lowering it by statute would be struck down by the courts. Critics preferred the slower, safer course: a const.i.tutional amendment.

Mansfield and Kennedy insisted the foul deed in Ohio made the situation too urgent for that.

On May 10 Mansfield warned he'd filibuster Voting Rights unless the Senate voted in his rider; the full Senate skipped committee hearings to do so. The House Rules Committee reported a similar bill out June 4; it pa.s.sed the House with a veto-proof majority on June 17. When Speaker McCormack announced the vote, the teenagers packing the galleries exploded. The eighty-year-old McCormack, so feeble he rarely appeared on the floor, would ordinarily have gaveled down such noise. But the spirit was electric. He let the hubbub stand. And Al Capp tried out a new one-liner: ”The opinions of eighteen-year-olds are valuable on things they know something about, such as p.u.b.erty and hubcaps, but nothing else.”

This was New Politics nirvana: a tide of 11 million newly eligible eighteen-to twenty-one-year-olds to ban the smoke-filled rooms forever, end the war, pa.s.s every ecology bill, change the world. change the world. The story was allegorized in the 1968 youth exploitation picture The story was allegorized in the 1968 youth exploitation picture Wild in the Streets, Wild in the Streets, in which a rock star led a crusade to lower the voting age to fourteen: ”We got more cats than little ol' Mahatma Gandhi had.” Then Max Frost became president after cops shot kids in a riot, and the kids remade America in their own image: ”You know, if we didn't have a foreign policy, we wouldn't even have small wars...and at home, everybody's rich, and if they're not, they can sleep on the beaches and live like they're rich anyway.” in which a rock star led a crusade to lower the voting age to fourteen: ”We got more cats than little ol' Mahatma Gandhi had.” Then Max Frost became president after cops shot kids in a riot, and the kids remade America in their own image: ”You know, if we didn't have a foreign policy, we wouldn't even have small wars...and at home, everybody's rich, and if they're not, they can sleep on the beaches and live like they're rich anyway.”

In the real world, New Politics theorists were hardly less exuberant. Fred Dutton, the LBJ White House aide, Pat Brown gubernatorial campaign manager, and University of California regent, had moved steadily leftward ever since watching Sirhan Sirhan a.s.sa.s.sinate his hero. He published a book in 1971, Changing Sources of Power, Changing Sources of Power, outlining a New Politics Democratic presidential strategy. ”The increased share of the eligible electorate gained by the 18-to 34-year-old group during the 1970s alone will be about as large as the additional slice attained by senior citizens during the last third of a century.” He quoted a voice of this group, a young Harvard instructor named Martin Peretz: ”These are times of moral enormity, when cool reasonableness is a more pathological and unrealistic state than hysteria.” Dutton spun out the political implications: ”While the prevailing personal goal of Americans in recent decades has been outlining a New Politics Democratic presidential strategy. ”The increased share of the eligible electorate gained by the 18-to 34-year-old group during the 1970s alone will be about as large as the additional slice attained by senior citizens during the last third of a century.” He quoted a voice of this group, a young Harvard instructor named Martin Peretz: ”These are times of moral enormity, when cool reasonableness is a more pathological and unrealistic state than hysteria.” Dutton spun out the political implications: ”While the prevailing personal goal of Americans in recent decades has been security, security, the objective may gradually s.h.i.+ft not back to the older cry for the objective may gradually s.h.i.+ft not back to the older cry for opportunity opportunity but to but to fulfillment. fulfillment. While there have been pretensions recently of striving for the...law and order society, the growing want among young people is simply a While there have been pretensions recently of striving for the...law and order society, the growing want among young people is simply a humane society. humane society. While there has long been a preoccupation with While there has long been a preoccupation with national national purpose, the rising concern is again with purpose, the rising concern is again with individual individual purpose. And not even purpose. And not even purpose purpose so much as so much as being.... being.... The balance is unmistakably s.h.i.+fting toward a concern with The balance is unmistakably s.h.i.+fting toward a concern with process, variety, and spontaneity.... process, variety, and spontaneity.... There will be an increasing insistence on There will be an increasing insistence on now. now.”

Unmistakably. It was already happening. As Max Frost sang in Wild in the Streets, Wild in the Streets, in a song that made it to number twenty-two on the charts (in the real, not movie, world, and right before the 1968 presidential election): ”Nothing Can Change the Shape of Things to Come.” in a song that made it to number twenty-two on the charts (in the real, not movie, world, and right before the 1968 presidential election): ”Nothing Can Change the Shape of Things to Come.”

The president had a difficult decision to make. He said he favored the eighteen-year-old vote, but that its unconst.i.tutional implementation would sabotage its arrival. New Politics liberals a.s.sumed he was bluffing-surely Nixon knew the youth vote would keep him from ever being reelected. They were wrong. Nixon did did favor the measure. It would help him wedge the Democrats. favor the measure. It would help him wedge the Democrats.

The people most terrified of the eighteen-year-old vote were Old Politics Democrats afraid of New Politics primary challenges. Pa.s.sing it would harden the split in time for when the party would have to attempt to unite around a candidate for 1972. Nixon signed the Voting Rights bill-he was afraid of urban riots if he didn't-and released a signing statement indicating that he worried the eighteen-year-old-vote rider would be ruled unconst.i.tutional, urging the attorney general to get the inevitable const.i.tutional challenge over and done with, and imploring Congress to get to work on a const.i.tutional amendment.

As usual Nixon saw subterranean fissures rumbling beneath the surface, understood the enemy better than they understood themselves. George McGovern's commission was succeeding beyond its wildest hopes in reforming the Democratic Party's nominating procedures after the disaster of 1968. Nixon recognized the power of this development to slice the Democratic Party clean in half.

It is a lesson of the sixties: liberals get in the biggest political trouble-whether inst.i.tuting open housing, civilian complaint review boards, or s.e.x education programs-when they presume that a reform is an inevitable concomitant of progress. It is then that they are most likely to establish their reforms by top-down bureacratic means. A blindsiding backlash often ensues.

The effort to reinvent how the Democratic Party nominated presidential candidates was one of those stories. It began at the Connecticut State Democratic Convention in June of 1968. The Nutmeg State Democratic Party was run by a cla.s.sic Old Politics machine: delegates to the national convention were effectively chosen by party officials. Only nine of the forty-four had been for McCarthy in Chicago, in a state where most rank-and-file Democrats were against the war. It wasn't fair, Connecticut McCarthyites thought. But then, procedures across the country for choosing delegates to the national conventions weren't fair. In Hawaii, ”proxy votes” were cast on behalf of vacant lots. In Missouri, where caucuses took place unannounced in private homes, one official cast 492 proxies on behalf of a munic.i.p.ality with a third that number of Democrats. In Pennsylvania, McCarthy won 78.5 percent of the votes in the state primary and less than 20 percent of the state's delegates for his trouble. In New York, state law prohibited prohibited delegate candidates from telling voters which presidential candidates they preferred. Eleven states had chosen delegates before calendar year 1968, sometimes over a year earlier-before the Newark and Detroit riots, before the Tet Offensive, before President Johnson's withdrawal, before the Kennedy and King a.s.sa.s.sinations, delegate candidates from telling voters which presidential candidates they preferred. Eleven states had chosen delegates before calendar year 1968, sometimes over a year earlier-before the Newark and Detroit riots, before the Tet Offensive, before President Johnson's withdrawal, before the Kennedy and King a.s.sa.s.sinations, before the world changed. before the world changed. Ten states had no written rules about delegate selection, ten had rules that were all but inaccessible. Hubert Humphrey was about to exploit the messiness of the whole unpleasant backroom system to clinch the nomination. The reformers wanted to make their stand at the Rules Committee hearings in Chicago so that by 1972 no Old Politics hack could do that again. ”Do you know what it's like to work sixteen to eighteen hours a day and sleep on couches and win the election and get no delegates?” one of them asked. The bosses ”were subverting everything I was raised to believe. They were corrupting democracy.” Ten states had no written rules about delegate selection, ten had rules that were all but inaccessible. Hubert Humphrey was about to exploit the messiness of the whole unpleasant backroom system to clinch the nomination. The reformers wanted to make their stand at the Rules Committee hearings in Chicago so that by 1972 no Old Politics hack could do that again. ”Do you know what it's like to work sixteen to eighteen hours a day and sleep on couches and win the election and get no delegates?” one of them asked. The bosses ”were subverting everything I was raised to believe. They were corrupting democracy.”

The reformers recruited Iowa governor Harold Hughes, a prominent member of their ranks, to chair a Commission on the Democratic Selection of Presidential Nominees to study the problem, and placed their eight-page report on the chair of every Rules Committee member in Chicago. It concluded, ”State systems for selecting delegates to the National Convention display considerably less fidelity to basic democratic principles than a nation which claims to govern itself can safely tolerate.” It argued, ”This convention is on trial.... Recent developments have put the future of the two-party system itself into serious jeopardy.... Racial minorities, the poor, the young, members of the upper-middle cla.s.s, and much of the lower-middle and working cla.s.ses as well-are seriously considering transferring their allegiance away from either of the two major parties.”

The Humphrey people rushed out a counterdoc.u.ment: ”An unofficial, largely self-appointed group under the chairmans.h.i.+p of Governor Hughes of Iowa, composed princ.i.p.ally of McCarthy supporters, has prepared a lengthy doc.u.ment embodying a long series of quite radical changes in the convention rules” that ”would seem designed expressly to alter the outcome alter the outcome of the convention by disenfranchising large numbers of duly elected delegates.” of the convention by disenfranchising large numbers of duly elected delegates.”

The doc.u.ments became the basis for the committee's minority and majority reports. The full convention voted on the reports on Tuesday, August 27, 1968. It was late at night in the fetid, brawling Stockyards Amphitheatre, and word was trickling in about the violence in the streets. Representative Carl Albert had the one-page minority report read out inaudibly over the din for a vote. It pa.s.sed by a large margin. Humphrey delegates had voted under instructions to throw the left a bone, though the convention was such chaos by then that many hardly knew what they were voting for. Thus did the 1968 Democratic National Convention call for the formation of a commission to ”study the delegation selection processes in effect in the various states” and ”recommend to the Democratic National Committee such improvements as can a.s.sure even broader citizen partic.i.p.ation in the delegate selection process” for 1972. The newspapers hardly reported it at all, what with all the heads being cracked on TV.

In 1969 the DNC chair Fred Harris named the delegate-selection reform commission and chose as its chair a compromise figure: George McGovern, a dove who was friendly with Humphrey. The commission's twenty-eight members, Theodore H. White wrote in The Making of the President 1972, The Making of the President 1972, were ”spread nicely among regulars, Southerners, and insurgents, with scattered places for such traditional allies as labor and academics (two members each).” But openness feels like closedness to those previously overrepresented, and that was the beginning of the trouble. Labor's old buffalos were used to were ”spread nicely among regulars, Southerners, and insurgents, with scattered places for such traditional allies as labor and academics (two members each).” But openness feels like closedness to those previously overrepresented, and that was the beginning of the trouble. Labor's old buffalos were used to running running the Democratic Party. They saw the reformers as wreckers whose only accomplishment was to hand the presidency to the Republicans. Steelworkers president I. W. Abel withdrew from the commission on the instructions of AFL-CIO chief George Meany. Absent the Old Politics counterweight, the vague and contradictory convention minority-report injunction simultaneously to ”recommend...improvements” and ”mandate...all feasible efforts” was interpreted in every instance in favor of mandates. At the first meeting, in March of 1969, the only person who spoke up for the old ways was a former Texas Democratic chairman, Will Davis. ”There are plenty of conservative Democrats who are in control of the legislatures in several Southern states, for example, and they are not going to line up like sheep to pa.s.s reform legislation.” Immediately, two other commissioners, David Mixner of the Vietnam Moratorium Committee and Fred Dutton, responded that if anything, reform wasn't being pushed aggressively enough. the Democratic Party. They saw the reformers as wreckers whose only accomplishment was to hand the presidency to the Republicans. Steelworkers president I. W. Abel withdrew from the commission on the instructions of AFL-CIO chief George Meany. Absent the Old Politics counterweight, the vague and contradictory convention minority-report injunction simultaneously to ”recommend...improvements” and ”mandate...all feasible efforts” was interpreted in every instance in favor of mandates. At the first meeting, in March of 1969, the only person who spoke up for the old ways was a former Texas Democratic chairman, Will Davis. ”There are plenty of conservative Democrats who are in control of the legislatures in several Southern states, for example, and they are not going to line up like sheep to pa.s.s reform legislation.” Immediately, two other commissioners, David Mixner of the Vietnam Moratorium Committee and Fred Dutton, responded that if anything, reform wasn't being pushed aggressively enough.

The word for it might have been revenge, revenge, but reformers didn't use words like that. They tended to couch things in terms of principle. The McCarthy and Kennedy campaigners of 1968 had placed their faith in the system. They believed they had won in a fair fight, then that the game had been fixed against them-Humphrey hadn't entered, let alone won, a single primary! The bosses, on the other hand, believed that they would never have become bosses unless they had demonstrated a proven sensitivity to the will of the electorate-a will these radicals knew nothing about. ”The so-called 'political bosses' were smart enough to pick candidates who could win,” the AFL-CIO's political director, Al Barkan, thundered. ”These 'bosses' gave us a Truman, a Stevenson, a Kennedy, a Humphrey.” but reformers didn't use words like that. They tended to couch things in terms of principle. The McCarthy and Kennedy campaigners of 1968 had placed their faith in the system. They believed they had won in a fair fight, then that the game had been fixed against them-Humphrey hadn't entered, let alone won, a single primary! The bosses, on the other hand, believed that they would never have become bosses unless they had demonstrated a proven sensitivity to the will of the electorate-a will these radicals knew nothing about. ”The so-called 'political bosses' were smart enough to pick candidates who could win,” the AFL-CIO's political director, Al Barkan, thundered. ”These 'bosses' gave us a Truman, a Stevenson, a Kennedy, a Humphrey.”

To the reformers the flaw in that reasoning was obvious. Stevenson was a two-time loser. loser. Humphrey had been nominated-and Humphrey had been nominated-and lost. lost. The Old Politics had failed in what it claimed it was best at-giving the public what it wanted. Surely The Old Politics had failed in what it claimed it was best at-giving the public what it wanted. Surely that that was a mandate for change-as was the charnel house in Vietnam. They insisted it was was a mandate for change-as was the charnel house in Vietnam. They insisted it was reformers reformers who knew what the public wanted now. who knew what the public wanted now.

The reformers could betray a certain callowness. They suffered a certain sociological narrowness. You might call them the liberal 1960s version of the kind of people Richard Nixon organized his Orthogonians against at Whittier College: graceful, well-rounded, fluid talkers-the toryhood of change. They were people like the spokesman of the Harvard Vietnam Moratorium Committee, who said after Richard Nixon's November 3, 1969, Vietnam speech-the one where he scored a 68 percent overnight approval rating-”What Nixon has tried to show is that there is a silent majority behind him. We know better.”

And now they were in the driver's seat of the Democratic Party, anti-bossists who sometimes appeared to behave like bosses-who in their self-righteous arrogance had a hard time seeing how anyone could accuse them them of making power plays. The McGovern Commission met only four times. The small staff, along with a squad of college interns, did all of the drafting. The research director, Ken Bode, was an a.s.sistant professor of political science who had been George McGovern's floor manager at the '68 convention. The chief counsel, Eli Segal, was a twenty-five-year-old McCarthy organizer. Both shared a semiconspiratorial view of how the party regulars kept their power. Both burned with an idealistic flame. Bode had considered exiling himself from America after the RFK a.s.sa.s.sination; Segal was so distrustful of power he wanted to ban elected officeholders from convention delegations altogether. They based their recommendations on regional hearings stacked with reform const.i.tuencies. They couldn't imagine that the old buffaloes in their back rooms might bear any wisdom worth preserving. They never seemed to ponder whether the kind of candidate that could win majorities in open Democratic primaries, where activists were overrepresented, would always be the best ones to win over the full electorate-or to arrest the exile of working-cla.s.s and Southern voters to a Nixonian Republican Party. They viewed ”openess” and ”partic.i.p.ation” as ends in themselves, and presumed victory would follow. of making power plays. The McGovern Commission met only four times. The small staff, along with a squad of college interns, did all of the drafting. The research director, Ken Bode, was an a.s.sistant professor of political science who had been George McGovern's floor manager at the '68 convention. The chief counsel, Eli Segal, was a twenty-five-year-old McCarthy organizer. Both shared a semiconspiratorial view of how the party regulars kept their power. Both burned with an idealistic flame. Bode had considered exiling himself from America after the RFK a.s.sa.s.sination; Segal was so distrustful of power he wanted to ban elected officeholders from convention delegations altogether. They based their recommendations on regional hearings stacked with reform const.i.tuencies. They couldn't imagine that the old buffaloes in their back rooms might bear any wisdom worth preserving. They never seemed to ponder whether the kind of candidate that could win majorities in open Democratic primaries, where activists were overrepresented, would always be the best ones to win over the full electorate-or to arrest the exile of working-cla.s.s and Southern voters to a Nixonian Republican Party. They viewed ”openess” and ”partic.i.p.ation” as ends in themselves, and presumed victory would follow.

And when the full commission met to sign off on their draft reforms, the staff bore a certain psychological advantage: it was hard to come out openly against openness. Especially when the old, unreformed ways had brought the nation to an inferno. Here was the kind of thing Senators Mansfield and Kennedy exploited when they arranged it so you could not vote against the eighteen-year-old vote without voting against an extension of the Voting Rights Act, telling anyone who would slow the deliberative process down that the crisis was too great to ignore-kids were burning down buildings!

The conclusion of the final McGovern Commission report, Mandate for Change, Mandate for Change, released in a well-covered press conference at the Capitol two days before Nixon's Cambodia speech, was apocalyptic: ”If we are not an open party, if we do not represent the demands of change, then the danger is not that people will go to the Republican Party; it is that there will no longer be a way for people committed to orderly change to fulfill their needs and desires within our traditional political system.... The only alternative to broader citizen partic.i.p.ation in politics was the anti-politics of the street.” It claimed that the 1968 ”minority report of the Rules Committee, subsequently pa.s.sed by the delegates a.s.sembled in Chicago, carried an unquestionably stern mandate for procedural reform.” Which wasn't precisely true. In an unguarded moment, Segal admitted to an interviewer, ”There were only maybe half a dozen people...who knew what they were actually doing, who understood what the votes meant in political terms.... I must admit I was amazed at the way they let us run things.” released in a well-covered press conference at the Capitol two days before Nixon's Cambodia speech, was apocalyptic: ”If we are not an open party, if we do not represent the demands of change, then the danger is not that people will go to the Republican Party; it is that there will no longer be a way for people committed to orderly change to fulfill their needs and desires within our traditional political system.... The only alternative to broader citizen partic.i.p.ation in politics was the anti-politics of the street.” It claimed that the 1968 ”minority report of the Rules Committee, subsequently pa.s.sed by the delegates a.s.sembled in Chicago, carried an unquestionably stern mandate for procedural reform.” Which wasn't precisely true. In an unguarded moment, Segal admitted to an interviewer, ”There were only maybe half a dozen people...who knew what they were actually doing, who understood what the votes meant in political terms.... I must admit I was amazed at the way they let us run things.”

With the best of intentions, the reformers conflated what savage cops did in the streets with the backroom deal-making that wired the convention for Hubert Humphrey-just as Mayor Daley's police tarred peaceful McCarthy campaign bureaucrats with the rampages of the revolutionary left. The reformers were heir, too, to the spirit of Eugene McCarthy's 1960 nominating speech for Adlai Stevenson, which celebrated his pure-hearted n.o.bility: ”Do not turn away from this man.... Do not leave this man a prophet without honor in his own party!” They used a curious word in describing their intentions: ”to purify purify...the power exercised by future Democratic conventions.”

But some would say that purity and power don't mix.

The last full meeting of the McGovern Commission, the week after the New Mobilization protest brought three hundred thousand to Was.h.i.+ngton in November of 1969, saw the process's only contentious debate. The first section of the guidelines draft, A-1, demanded ”State Parties overcome the effects of past discrimination by affirmative steps to encourage minority group partic.i.p.ation.” It was an attempt to honor the spirit of the Mississippi Freedom Democrats disenfranchised at the 1964 convention-and the fact that in 1968 the number of black delegates, at 5.5 percent, was a fraction of their representation in the Democratic Party as a whole (Mississippi and Georgia's regular delegations didn't include a single one). The second section, A-2, required state parties to extend the same representational consideration to people between the ages of eighteen and thirty, and women.

Austin Ranney, a political science professor at Wisconsin, suggested the guidelines ”at the very least urge” states to choose minority delegates commensurate with their representation in the state population. Chairman McGovern reminded him that at their September meeting they had unanimously decided ”that it was not feasible to go on record for a quota system.” Senator Bayh suggested adding ”two or three words to sort of give guidelines saying that to meet this requirement there should be some reasonable relations.h.i.+p between the representation of delegates and the representation of the minority group in the population of the state in question.”

The motion was put to a vote. It pa.s.sed ten to nine.

Fred Dutton said the same language should apply to women and youth in section A-2. Sam Beer of Harvard objected, ”It's not for us to say to the voters of a state you've got to elect fifty percent women. If the voters want seventy-five percent women or seventy-five percent men, it's up to them.... I think it would be a great mistake and would make us look really ridiculous.”

Dutton returned with a political argument: ”I can't think of anything more attractive or a better way to get votes with media politics than to have half of that convention floor in 1972 made up of women.” It would be a symbol that would ”activate young people.” Professor Beer complained, ”Our charge is to clean up this process.... Our charge is not to decide what the outcome is supposed to be.” George Mitch.e.l.l, the national committeeman from Maine, Edmund Muskie's representative, said it would be interpreted as ”some sort of quota.” Professor Ranney said he feared he'd opened a ”Pandora's box.” Will Davis of Texas said the South would never stand for it. The vote was called; what would later come to be called ”affirmative action” won 137. However, Mandate for Change Mandate for Change included a footnote: ”It is the understanding of the Commission that this is not to be accomplished by the mandatory imposition of quotas.” included a footnote: ”It is the understanding of the Commission that this is not to be accomplished by the mandatory imposition of quotas.”

The New York Times New York Times gave the release of the McGovern Commission's report on April 28, 1970, a big spread. They led with the commission's apocalyptic claim that ”the only alternative to broader citizen partic.i.p.ation in politics was the anti-politics of the street.” Chairman McGovern was quoted acknowledging that ”Certainly party leaders in some states have been critical.” But they were ”a tiny minority. I expect that we will get a broad compliance.” gave the release of the McGovern Commission's report on April 28, 1970, a big spread. They led with the commission's apocalyptic claim that ”the only alternative to broader citizen partic.i.p.ation in politics was the anti-politics of the street.” Chairman McGovern was quoted acknowledging that ”Certainly party leaders in some states have been critical.” But they were ”a tiny minority. I expect that we will get a broad compliance.”

The AFL-CIO's Al Barkan swore, on the other hand, ”We aren't going to let these Harvard-Berkeley Camelots take over our party.”

Reformers were confident by the time the 1970 election season rolled around: about the failure of Nixon's economy, the overwhelming pa.s.sage of the eighteen-year-old vote, the nearly one thousand college campuses that had protested against Cambodia in May. Garry Wills, in his Esquire Esquire article on Nixon's Billy Graham appearance, profiled a former fraternity brother who led the protests. Once he had been ”rah rahiest of rah-boys.” His conversion was a leading indicator, thought Wills, that ”tips the balance for Nixon to defeat. It heralds the end of the hard-hat war on long hair.” article on Nixon's Billy Graham appearance, profiled a former fraternity brother who led the protests. Once he had been ”rah rahiest of rah-boys.” His conversion was a leading indicator, thought Wills, that ”tips the balance for Nixon to defeat. It heralds the end of the hard-hat war on long hair.”

That summer the McGovern-Hatfield amendment to end the war by July of 1971 generated the greatest flood of supportive mail in Senate history. One letter came from a twenty-three-year-old marine set to go to Southeast Asia. It pointed out that the war ”hasn't been declared, can't be fought, and can't be won.” The marine was the son of Senator William Saxbe of Ohio, a Nixon Republican elected in 1968 on a promise to rein in dissent. The father was especially haunted by his son's paraphrase of General Patton: ”Old soldiers don't die, young ones do.” Saxbe let his California colleague Alan Cranston-who was receiving some eight thousand antiwar letters a day-enter it into the Congressional Record. Congressional Record.

In July, Life Life published photographs of the ”tiger cages” in which our Saigon allies confined ninety-six hundred prisoners on the island of Con Son, some for merely advocating peace: four-by-nine-foot concrete pits, each holding three to five prisoners, chained together. A U.S. spokesman replied that Con Son was ”like a Boy Scout recreation camp”; Illinois Republican Phil Crane said the cages were ”cleaner than the average Vietnamese home.” (Later, published photographs of the ”tiger cages” in which our Saigon allies confined ninety-six hundred prisoners on the island of Con Son, some for merely advocating peace: four-by-nine-foot concrete pits, each holding three to five prisoners, chained together. A U.S. spokesman replied that Con Son was ”like a Boy Scout recreation camp”; Illinois Republican Phil Crane said the cages were ”cleaner than the average Vietnamese home.” (Later, Time Time magazine described what prisoners looked like after they were released: ”grotesque sculptures of scarred flesh and gnarled limbs...skittering across the floor on b.u.t.tocks and palms.”) Four heartland senators, Harris of Oklahoma, McGovern of South Dakota, Hughes of Iowa, and Bayh of Indiana were positioning themselves for ”reform Democratic” presidential runs. Possibly Ramsey Clark, too. McGovern sent a young Denver lawyer, Gary Hart, to Was.h.i.+ngton to open McGovern for President headquarters. magazine described what prisoners looked like after they were released: ”grotesque sculptures of scarred flesh and gnarled limbs...skittering across the floor on b.u.t.tocks and palms.”) Four heartland senators, Harris of Oklahoma, McGovern of South Dakota, Hughes of Iowa, and Bayh of Indiana were positioning themselves for ”reform Democratic” presidential runs. Possibly Ramsey Clark, too. McGovern sent a young Denver lawyer, Gary Hart, to Was.h.i.+ngton to open McGovern for President headquarters.

But reformers seemed not to notice how poorly antiwar challengers did in June congressional primaries. They seemed not to notice the overwhelming defeat in Oregon of a change in state law to lower the voting age to nineteen. They seemed not to notice new data out of the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center that twice as many voters under thirty-five had voted for George Wallace in 1968 than had voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964. Youth's vanguard might be left-wing, the professors wrote. ”At the polls,” though, ”the game s.h.i.+fts to 'one man, one vote,' and this vanguard is unmercifully swamped within its own generation.”

States got to work dissolving caucus and convention and committee systems falling afoul of Mandate for Change. Mandate for Change. Delegates would now have to be selected via ”proced

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