Washington Week In Review; 275

the The U.S. Supreme Court considers taking action in the McGovern

Delegate controversy, the top story tonight on Washington Week in Review. From the site of the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, here is moderator Robert McNeil. Good evening from the Convention Hall in Miami Beach, where political eyes have been turning from Washington this week, and where they will be firmly focused all next week. Most of the Washington News this week has revolved around the last minute maneuverings of the Democratic Party as it prepares to nominate its opponent for President Nixon in this hall next Wednesday. Much of the action centered on the courts, last weekend a district court in Washington upheld the ruling of the Democratic Credentials Committee, taking more than half of his California delegates away from Senator McGovern. And the Circuit Court of Appeals overruled that decision and gave McGovern back his delegates. Now the anti-McGovern forces and the Democratic National Committee have appealed to the Supreme

Court, and a ruling on that may come this evening. The courts have also affected Mayor Daly of Chicago, depriving him and 58 Cook County delegates of any seats at the Convention, and he is appealing. All of this puts a victory from McGovern in some doubt and raises the possibility of fierce chlorophyting over credentials when the Convention opens on Monday. To discuss various aspects of the Convention's story tonight, we have Neil McNeil, Chief Conventional Correspondent of Time Magazine, Peter Lissa Gore, Washington Bureau Chief of the Chicago Daily News, David Murray, National Affairs Correspondent of the Chicago Sun Times, and Haynes Johnson, Political Correspondent of the Washington Post. Haynes to begin with, how does it look now for Senator McGovern? Can he survive the California Challenge if it goes to the floor? Rob, and I think first of all, obviously right now as we're speaking, the Supreme Court is deciding that case or is about to rule on it, and I hope we'll get something on that. That will clarify what happens.

But assuming we have a better floor flight, which I think we will, I would be foolish. Nobody can tell the whole lesson this year as you can't predict things. I would guess, though, that McGovern will survive that. He says he has about 45 to 50 vote cushion there. He's counting on a number of factors that can put him over. Obviously, he is the only candidate that's come to this convention with a completely solid block that will not break. But the other thing that is fascinating and is the real prospect that should he lose, he has said, and I believe he means it, that he would take the move to form a new political force, a third party in this country, and I think that would be, as he says, mean the end of the Democratic Party. You agree? Those are the states. You really think he means that, and he wasn't merely just saying that to frighten the anti-McGovern forces. Well, there's always a lot of political last-minute maneuvering and setting off smoke signals in the rest. But I really believe that he is sincere about that, with a point that he really feels he has no other alternative. Given the last three years, the history of reforms of the party, the way politics has

moved, the kind of people who have worked to come down to a convention and then feel frustrated, whether they're right or wrong, but they feel morally frustrated by a decision that they think is incorrect. How crucial is the Supreme Court decision in this? Does the Democratic Convention have to abide by a Catholic act on their own? Well, I think that Humphrey people, in the rest, have said they will act on their own anyhow. I mean, the principle, obviously, Neil, is that the court has no right to involve itself in the matter of a political party, which I think we should talk about later on this program. So we're going to see 3,000 delegates clapped in jail for contempt. Well, that's possible, but I don't think that's going to happen. You don't think so. But on this business of the government threatening to bulk, if he doesn't win the nomination, he's already set up as he not a condition which the southerners who don't like him either, they can say as Governor Wallace said on the plane in from Montgomery to Miami Beach that what he does, you know, he may take a walk because some people are saying they're going

to take a walk talking about my government. Has any set of kind of pattern now for some of the southern governors, some of the southern delegates take a walk? Well, yes, Pete, but I don't see that happening and why should they take a walk now? What they're there represent a very small part of this party right now. George Wallace, last time, don't forget, did run on the third party and he did not get more than a few southern states and that's about all you'd get and what is the leverage there to do it? I don't see the practical political mathematics level. I don't see it in the whole area, if you talk about the Democratic Party, about the governor leaving the Democratic Party, if he loses a nomination, what if he gets it? Let's talk that his candidacy will be so fracturing the party that will be destroyed anyway. Well, I think that's how it won't go with him and so on. Yeah, I think that's been said about everybody who's about to win over new forces. I was reading something about Franklin Roosevelt a long ago. I don't think it's true. I mean, again, the reality of politics is that you've got to come together.

It's a compromised business. The whole Democratic Party, the oldest, largest party in this country, represents all kinds of coalitions that normally would not sit down and work together, different ideologies and all the rest. And I think the same thing will happen again. You have strength in numbers and that's how you win politically. That's how you get the rewards of politics. I don't think that's going out of this. Can I just come back to the numbers for a minute? The country's people are claiming that McGoverns' claims are inflated, exaggerated, that there are big areas of softness there, and those will be revealed in the daughter to actually start. What do you think about that? Well, I suspect that some of that's true, and yeah, at the same time, there's been nothing to indicate from the very beginning that there has been enough force to stop McGovern. Remember before the California primary when we were out there, and the governors were trying to put together a movement. The hungry people were trying to, Muskie was trying to do it, and it didn't work, and I don't suspect the numbers are there. You know, rubbing down here, I'd forgotten until we got here again after four years later. You remember four years when Mr. Nixon was down here, and every day, there was talk about

that one magic word, erosion. Rockefeller was claiming greater erosion. The Lindsey people were claiming greater erosion, and eroded right into this marvelous victory, which was all locked up from the beginning. I think we're saying the erosion, isn't the erosion, rather coming from the ocean? The other direction, isn't the erosion actually coming from the Muskie forces, particularly? And Governor Curtis of Maine had kind words for Senator McGovern yesterday, and isn't that what some of McGovern's strengths is like they'd come from? Well, I think, David, I think it's always operative that way. It's been that way in the past, and you remember again, that referred to four years ago, the people like Mark Hatfield was the first one of the first ones to come out and endorse. There are little tools and toys you can dangle in front of them. When that southern trip we were on, Peter, you remember every governor that George McGovern saw. He told him, I think you'd be a fine vice president on some kind of day, and they thought he was a more attractive man as well.

Yeah, but he's on the governor's demand that I'd like to ask you this question. McGovern has come on to this convention, or just before, just after the California vote, as a cool, rather, a strain man down the earth. But after the California vote, either calculated or not, he revealed a good deal of petrol and seemed to have lost his cool. Does that hurt him? Oh, Peter, I don't know if it hurts him or not. I'll just give you a quick instant of my own reaction. I have a feeling that one of the problems with George McGovern and the eyes of a lot of people is he wasn't, he couldn't express himself in terms of very forceful language. And he was isolate-controlled, very angry, and he's talking, I don't think, idle threats. He's showing he can be tough, and I suspect he is. Yeah, but who uses such time? I can ask you a quick question, because your time is right now, through. Who does McGovern choose his vice president? And in that, does he abandon the South? I don't know who he chooses. I mean, they're playing... Who would help him most?

They're playing... I think the person who would help him most would be a kind of a candidate who can attract not so much the Southern vote, but the big city, ethnic, blue collar, the labor people, the working people. Somebody like Ted Kennedy. Ted Kennedy would be extremely... And make sure the blacks come in, and that's where the population is, it's in the big states, and that's what you need to win. Let's go over to one of the big states, and Dave Murray, I know that Chicago and the mayor is not your only beat, but I'm just wondering, do you really think that Mayor Daley, who's had such a park to play in so many of the conventions in the last two decades, is not going to be a delegate of this convention, there's not some compromise going to be worked out to get him a seat here? Well, I think that even as we speak, up at the diplomat hotel, there's a great deal of activity going on, and an attempt to work out some kind of compromise, or two very key people here who are younger members of the Daley family, long-time members, Ray Simon the former Corporation Council, Neil Hardigan, who was currently the candidate for Lieutenant

Governor, Illinois, and both of them are bright and sharp, and it's my opinion and also understanding that what is happening is that they are getting together with all of them in Singer's forces in an attempt to hammer out some kind of compromise in Singer's forces being the Insider's. Singer's forces being the Insider's. Yes, Bill Singer is a young, very attractive, very bright, tough, independent aldermen, and I think what they're trying to do is to get something going, a type of compromise of which they can then ram down the mayor's throat or try to. What has happened here, Robin, is the usual business, the irresistible force and the immutable object of the mayor is 70 years old, suddenly he sees his whole political world that he grew up in, that are completely collapsing, nothing ever happened to him like this

before. The 68 convention was bad enough, now he sees all of this business sort of just crumbling around him. He believed, and the great many of the people around him believed, that the McGovern, O'Hara Commission, which was set up after the 68 convention was supposed to issue a report which would then be submitted to the 1972 convention, and instead they got the various reforms shoved at them. They can't believe what is happening, the mayor said at one point, of course they won't refuse to see that, after all, we're Democrats as if the others were not. But Dave, all right, if they don't see them, what in the old days it had to be that a dick daily, you needed them to win the carol and what do you think that, what happens this year if they're not seated? Take it to the next step, Bill. Okay. The next step, then, Hans, is that you, then the Singaporeans have to find out how good the McGovern organization, which he has built up during the primary months, really is. Is it good enough in Illinois, and particularly in Cook County, to win without daily?

I don't know. I think anybody would be an idiot who would predict that that was going to take to a very long time. What does he do, though? What does he do? He starts off with 33 upwards of 3,300 precinct captains, many of whom are payrollers and dependent on the mayor's patronage for their job. There is no organization like the Cook County Democratic organization anywhere in the country. It just doesn't exist anymore. It used to exist in New York and other places. Then why could you have me ready for reform? Why could you have any doubts, then, that McGovern needs daily? He does, does he not? I think this, Peter, if you say McGovern can win without daily in Illinois, you're playing for the marbles, the only way you're going to find that out is on the evening of November 7th, when all of a sudden you have dropped Illinois. This is something that's working very much in the minds of a great many Democrats, particularly

in Chicago right now, is supposing Nixon wins the election because we lost Illinois. We are still Democrats. The mayor may have won on principle. We lost the election to the Democratic Party, and we are going to be marked very lousy with the national party. Could I ask you if Adelaide Stevenson, Senator Stevenson, were on the ticket with McGovern? Was that mean he could carry Illinois? No, but a bit of an offent muskie were on the ticket. Oh, he would carry Illinois. I don't think it would have that much to do with it. It would go a long way to play tape the mayor and go over to Adelaide Stevenson. Not the tape, sir. They would not? No. They have a very much ad-hull relationship. David, let's pull back a little bit from November and remain in Miami Beach on this question. If the Supreme Court, in effect, votes against seating mayor and daily, will daily fight that decision on the convention floor, on what prospects would he have it winning? I would think the prospects are fairly dim from winning on the floor, but it would be

a bitter, divisive battle, and the problem on that is, again, we'll go back to November is that the mayor would go back and I suspect sit on his hands. He would try and elect his state ticket, and he would try and elect the county ticket person. I guess you want another question about Chicago and the Democratic Party out there. In a national party, democracy seems to be raising its ugly head within the national party. Is the Chicago democracy not ready for that? It is raising its head, but it's very difficult to chart the speech after it's put sticks in the way you do with it, watching the progress of a glacier. Every time there's a new election, you get more evidence that there is reform going on. I think the March primary, for example, is a beautiful example of a real to hell with you election, it seemed that every Democratic, or not every, but about every third Democratic

voter went along in the voting machine and pulled down the second lever to vote against the establishment. At one point, Lard Daily, who used to run and still does constantly for office wearing an uncle Sam, so it was regarded as one of our local cooks, was getting something like 28 percent of the vote against Matt Dannahurst and all the associate of Mayor Daly's for the Cook County clerk of the court. Can we leave the mysteries of Chicago politics for some of the, and talk about money for a bit? Peter, this convention is estimated to be costing the Democrats $2.5 million. How does a party that is 9 million bucks in debt pay for this convention? Not easily. It's one of the most fascinating stories at this convention, Robin, Robert Strauss, who is the treasurer of the Democratic Party, Dallas Lawyer and businessman, is relying sustaining himself these days on a deep well spring of humor.

He's got plenty of it, and he needs it now. He's living in a penthouse at the Fontainebleau Hotel, and he's eating cold cuts for lunch. He's had one room service call, a couple of weeks back when he first came down here for a bucket of ice cubes, but the only time he's called for room service, the reason being that he has to pay in advance for everything that's cash on the barrel head. He has to take down a week's rent to pay for all those rooms in the hotel, the convention hotel. Now, to hear him tell it, this may be the first political convention in history that it could be four clothes before it's over. He has, it's $2.5 million, and he's $150,000 short, and he's on those telephones day and night trying to pick up this additional $150,000. A lot of the sources have dried up for them, the $9.3 billion debt accounts for a drying up of sources, but there are other reasons for it. So now he's going to this national telephone routine to try and pay off the $9.3 billion

debt. He's going through the Sunday night and going through the Sunday, and he says that he might pick up a few nickels on that telephones. Any one of those things ever worked, Peter? Well, they work on fatal diseases or incurable diseases like muscular dystrophy, and some people may think the Democratic parties in that condition, David, but he has figures to show that these causes do produce several millions of dollars. If you think about the telephone service, there's been a lot of talk over the last year and so about the telephone company, not allowing the Democratic party phones. At the same time, telling the, that's for the Republican law, AT&T, so much money, so much money. But that's what they're telling publicly, and for the benefit of the White House, privately they're telling the manager of the Democratic party that everything's all right. Which way is it now? They have phone service.

On credit. It's not on credit. Nothing is on credit. It's cash. He had to put up a certain thumb for the expected telephone bill, and if it goes over that, he's going to scrounge up some more money. He scrounging around like a beach comer at Miami Beach for Dull, and he first to admit it. He's tapping his Texas friends. He says he thinks they're tapped out. He's going all over the country. The New York funds have dried up considerably. Why are they tapped out? Why is the Democratic party so hard-pressed to... Well, the one thing is Wall Street is afraid of McGovern. They think he's a probable nominee, and they are just not contributing. It's just before McGovern. No, no, no, no. Not this... It's broke for four years. Oh, yes. That's because Democrats are usually broke, I guess. But they just had trouble raising money, that's the simple size of it. Why, I don't know. But McGovern will have no problem with money. The candidate will always get a fair share of dough.

McGovern may, but the average presidential candidate can get money. How do you account for McGovern having a continuing large supply of money? He had... That's a good question. That's so much money. It's a good question, because McGovern of all the candidates seem to have figured out the money deal early on. They sent out letters, he got small contributors, $10, $15, I think he had a $15 limit, and they sent their money in, which may go to the question of what this electorate is like. We may... There may be some hidden springs here. I'd like to talk to you about that. He didn't leave this terrible crisis of how to switch and hold cuts for a minute. But why we're talking down here, the president's out in San Clemente, last week the vice president gave a speech comparing McGovern to Neville Chamberlain. Yesterday, Mr. Laird just talked again about the white flag of surrender. The Congress is under attack from the Nixon administration. Do you see...

What's happening? What are the Republicans doing here? How much fear are... What do we see? Is this a foretaste of the campaign to come? I think so, Haynes. I think it's going to be a bitter campaign, a tough hard campaign, and they're laying the groundwork for it now, they're calling the Democratic Congress a miserable failure. As you say, Defense Secretary Laird is saying that McGovern's defense program, cutting about a third of the defense budget, is raising the white flag of surrender, all sorts of things going on. But at the same time, I would remind you that the new chairman of the committee to re-elect the president is talking about overconfidence. I think Clark McGregor understands that those who glowed in July often grieve in November and he's trying to jolt the party back into some sense of the reality of this election. But I must say there's no sign of complacency in those things you've mentioned, the attack on the Congress, the attack on the government's budget, and other things. Would you think that kind of approach would be successful, Pete, what you're the kind of a tax you're talking about?

Well, the president doesn't understand anything but that kind of a tax. We've got to remember that even though he's been in the White House for four years, he can't have changed that much. He believes that politics, the essence of politics, just go on the attack, stay on the attack, hit him, cut him, you know, the... Do you see what's the significance of the resignation of John Mitchell in political terms and why did he resign? Was it because of why? Some of the Democrats say that they've suffered so many blows this year that John Mitchell's resignation is only the last in the series. They would have liked to have seen Mitchell be the chairman of the committee. They don't think much of Mitchell as a political operative. That's true. They believe that he almost lost the 1968 election and Nixon went in with a 15% edge on Hungary and almost lost. Now as for why he resigned, I suppose it's a blow to feminism, but his wife said that she wants him home smoking that pipe and wearing those slippers at five o'clock in the evening and there he's going to be.

Peter, but his clock McGregor all had red hot. He certainly was not what you would call the greatest candidate since Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he ran against Gilbert Humphrey. No, I don't think... McGregor is an amiable fellow, but his political astuteness, I think, has been very effective on congressional relations, more effective than that. Not if they call that Congress a miserable failure, Robin, but I mean in terms of subjectively to the Congressmen themselves. Yeah, I think he's a friendly fellow, an amiable fellow, they like him, but they don't vote for the administration programs, make up that what you will. New, everybody says this convention is so different from others, probably because of the makeup of the delegates and so on. You've just come down here, you've been sniffing around a little bit. Does it really feel different to a reporter than other conventions? Well, at first, since you go back to James A. Garfield, I neglected to say that. Actually, General Taylor. No, I've been covering National Conventions, Man and Boys since 1944, and I did notice

this afternoon a certain parallel among all of them. One thing I noticed was that in the week before the convention, which is where we are, the reporters are interviewing other reporters, that's what I'm doing, yes. I mean, desperate situation, there's not all that much, much fact about. There are a certain number of little flurries each candidate is coming in, Wallace came in this afternoon with a, with a Jeremiah against the busing, Umphrey arrived, again this afternoon, radiating a confidence, which is managers don't feel. But we being on the inside, there's a, there's a storm brewing from Ralph Abernathy, the poor people. The hippies are often from Eagle Park, a great crisis with the Miami Beach city council, things of that nature.

But how about the do? More importantly, if I may go on things, what the reporters are generating among themselves, I think, is a flock of rumors. Well, there it's pretty good ones, they want is on the Supreme Court decision, which is that Chief Berger, Chief Justice Berger, we'll let span the stay order by, um, the, uh, a pellet court, and, uh, in effect, have the Supreme Court finesse the issue, stay out of this nasty political thicket. Another rumor we're making around is that there is now a, uh, a thoroughly organized stop McGarbon movement involving, uh, Hubert Humphrey, Wilbur Mills, remember him, Ed Muske, and, uh, perhaps even Wallace, um, a lot of talk about here is, what does Wallace really want? Is it merely respectability, the possibility that he might still, uh, move into something? That, that has become very clear, though, and the possibility that this might become a,

a different type of convention, and the conventions we've had in the last several years, is that it may go beyond one ballot. So it hasn't been a convention, uh, go beyond one ballot since 1952, and that was Adelaide Stevens, and one of the third ballot, and the Republicans go back to 1940 with, uh, Tom Dewey's second try, but in a real sense, much is different, I think, in terms of this particular convention. It hasn't shown yet. I think it will show next week, on the floor, with this extraordinarily large number of, uh, new Democrats, non-organizational Democrats, who are the delegates here at the convention? Neil, how do you feel? You've mentioned the Supreme Court and the thicket of the languages. How do you feel about the courts in interjecting themselves into a political party mechanism? Give us some perspective on that. Well, you know, the problem with the Democratic Party, and it's there every year, again, is that the Democratic Party, at this point in the convention, is never on speaking terms

with itself, in the words of Mr. Dooley, uh, I would think that the Supreme Court knows that, and would take a very little review of entering in this particular area. I don't want to predict the action of the court becoming if we've proven any of it within five minutes. But if I were advising the Supreme Court, I would advise to finesse that they can get themselves into nothing but trouble, and I don't see that their decision in binding on the court, as Peter said earlier in the program, he can't lock up three thousand delegates for the night. How about these delegates themselves, Neil? We hear all of this new politics, and they represent something new. Is that true? I don't know. I mean, just how different they are. We've heard a lot about my government, and he knows that, that he will destroy the Democratic Party and so on. And the conventional wisdom on the government is that his vote reflects a, um, a sense of protest within the Democratic Party. I think there's more to it than that. I don't know that it's going to be an unremarkable decision.

I'm sorry, Neil. That's all the time we have this evening, Haynes and David, thank you very much for joining us. We'll be back next week with another Washington Week in review. I'm Robert McNeil, good evening. This has been a production of N-Pact, the National Public Affairs Center for Television. I don't want to go to the award ceremony, this is a futile haste that people make,