Word: humphrey
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Campaign Manager Larry O'Brien's Irish eyes were not smiling. Speechwriter Ted Van Dyk, ashen and somber, had lost his usual cockiness. Their man was not conceding. "I feel sufficiently at ease," said Humphrey, "that I want to get a good night's rest." But, like Charles Evans Hughes in 1916, he was heading for bed only to awaken and discover that voters in California (and Illinois in 1968) were electing his opponent to the presidency...
...outcome, as the victorious Duke of Wellington said of Waterloo, was "the nearest run thing you ever saw." One week before Election Day, nobody would have believed the race could turn out that way. In August, the party that nominated Humphrey at Chicago was a shambles. The old Democratic coalition was disintegrating, with untold numbers of blue-collar workers responding to Wallace's blandishments, Negroes threatening to sit out the election, liberals disaffected over the Viet Nam war, the South lost. The war chest was almost empty, and the party's machinery, neglected by Lyndon Johnson, creaked...
Fists Clenched. As if that were not enough, Humphrey opened his campaign with a wild, disorganized abandon that defied his advance men's efforts to bring out the crowds. Then there were the hecklers, taunting a Vice President who refused to repudiate his unpopular chief and run away from the record of the past four years. Humphrey's personal physician and adviser, Dr. Edgar Berman, complained at one point: "There is no adversity that has not been visited upon this campaign." He was not far wrong...
...turning point came on Sept. 30 in Salt Lake City, the day after Humphrey endured some of the worst heckling of the entire campaign. Fists clenched, lips tight, he flew to Utah to deliver a speech pledging that if he became President, he would risk halting the bombing of North Viet Nam in the hope of achieving peace. Twice before, Johnson had undercut him when he tried to stake out even moderately independent positions on the war. This time there was not a word from the White House...
From then on, the mood palpably changed. When a poll on Oct. 10 showed that Humphrey was clambering back from his post-convention slump, money began to flow in and Humphrey was able to spend some $12 million altogether. He spent $3,000,000 in the last week alone, most of it on TV. The deeply divided Democratic Party began to show signs of belated unity. Humphrey wound up his campaign odyssey of more than 98,000 miles amid laughter, with a triumphant Los Angeles parade and a four-hour telethon with Edmund Muskie. Humphrey flew home to Waverly, Minn...