I became a lifelong political convention junkie in 1972, the year that George McGovern secured the nomination with a brilliantly executed ploy that nobody saw coming until it was over, and that even the sainted Walter Cronkite mistakenly reported as a disaster.
I was 18 years old. Most of the Democratic convention was held in the wee hours of the morning, and I went sleepless following the battle on black and white TV, jumping up every few minutes to twirl the dial to another network. All realtime analysis came from the anchormen, and at the crucial moment, the anchormen had no idea what was happening.
After a tumultuous primary season, McGovern had eked out a bare delegate majority by winning California’s winner-take-all primary with 44% of the vote. But his opponents had challenged the winner-take-all rule and won a victory in the Credentials Committee, which reallocated 56% of California’s delegates to McGovern’s opponents. To win the nomination, McGovern had to overturn that decision via a vote on the convention floor.
Could McGovern win that vote? Everyone thought so, until they thought otherwise. There was another credentials challenge before California—South Carolina, with nine delegates at stake. Presumably the South Carolina vote would reveal McGovern’s true strength and predict the California outcome.
Along with the rest of the country, I gasped as the roll call proceeded and it became clear that McGovern was losing the fight over South Carolina. Cronkite and the other network anchors announced in solemn tones that McGovern had lost control of the convention, that he would surely lose the fight over California, and that the nomination would soon be up for grabs.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, McGovern’s aides were celebrating the South Carolina loss that they themselves had orchestrated. They and a few of their counterparts in rival campaigns were the only people in America who understood what had just happened.
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Come back with me to 1972. As the drama is unfolding, here’s what the politicians realize and the news anchors don’t: Because the disputed delegates can’t vote on their own credentials, there is some ambiguity about how many votes McGovern needs to win those credentials fights. Does he need a majority of all the delegates (including the non-voting Califorians and South Carolinians) or just a majority of the voting delegates? Does he need 1509 votes, or just 1433?
To McGovern’s great relief, the party chairman has ruled that 1433 is enough.
But McGovern still faces a potential nightmare scenario: Suppose he wins the South Carolina fight with more than 1433 votes but less than 1509. Then, this result is sure to be challenged from the floor, triggering a fight over the rules. Because this is a rules fight, as opposed to a credentials fight, the disputed delegates will be allowed to vote, which means McGovern will probably lose. The 1433 rule will be overturned and the 1509 rule will take its place. Next it’s on to the fight over California, and McGovern will have an impossibly high hurdle to clear. He’ll lose the California credentials fight, and his campaign will be over.
Of course the rules fight is sure to come up sooner or later, but if it can be delayed until the California credentials fight is on the table, then the hostile Californians will be barred from voting. Then McGovern wins the rules fight, which means he wins the credentials fight, which means he wins the nomination.
So while McGovern would love to win the South Carolina fight with more than 1509 votes, his second choice is to lose with fewer than 1433, delaying the rules fight. As the South Carolina vote unfolds, delegates on the floor receive constantly updated instructions by walkie-talkie from the candidates’ trailers. McGovern’s opponents—Hubert Humphrey, Ed Muskie, and others—try desperately to engineer an outcome between 1433 and 1509. McGovern, realizing that 1509 is probably out of reach, aims for less than 1433.
In the end, the McGovern position commands 1429 votes. Scores of McGovern delegates have followed instructions to vote against the South Carolina challengers and against their own instincts. This is all the more remarkable because the South Carolina challengers are seen as feminist standard-bearers and command a lot of sympathy in the McGovern ranks. In other words, McGovern, who is being described on every network as an ineffectual loser, has in fact won a great victory through iron discipline.
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As the candidate breathed a sigh of relief, all of America—at least those of us who were watching at 2AM—believed his campaign was over. Once it came clear what happened, I was hooked on political minutiae for life. Every year, I hope for something as exciting as 1972. I’m not optimistic that this will be the year, but I’ll be watching just in case.
That was a great description thank you, and of course conventional wisdom is now that conventions are no longer the place for fights like this.
But they sure seem like fun when looking back.
McGovern went on to carry one state in the election.
Wasn’t the really interesting stuff what happened afterwards…
his VP selection?
So, what you’re saying is that McGovern’s opponents all understood the ploy too. That is, everyone with skin in the game knew what was happening, but the press did not.
That seems about right. :)
I trust you’ve seen “The Best Man”
Steve, it’s not nearly as interesting as the McGovern thing, but it looks like there will be some action in this convention:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/romney-rules-changes-could-spark-gop-convention-fl
The issue is that Ron Paul supporters got themselves chosen as delegates in a few states, even though the states officially went to Romney. So you have a situation where they’re “bound” to Romney, but they want to vote Paul. The RNC tried to solve this problem by writing a rule that essentially allows candidates veto power over the delegates chosen to represent them. This was done to avoid the embarrassment of a few delegates voting for Paul in the middle of Romney’s nomination, but now it raises a potential new embarrassment: a rules fight on the convention floor. Since grassroots activists (especially Tea Party types) and state parties don’t like the idea of surrending control of delegate selection to the whims of the candidates, you may get some mild unpredictability at the event, which is almost unheard of in the party conventions of the past few decades.
Just in time, a fight over rules committe members at the gop convention http://m.freedomworks.org/blog/mduncan/romney-camp-removing-rules-committee-members
So, the press in 1972 were a bunch of boobs. Some things never change, I suppose.
“So, the press in 1972 were a bunch of boobs. Some things never change, I suppose.”
Nope. And I see a connection to the armchair thread here too. Rogers likes Costco since, in essence, they insulate him from the data and present only conclusions. So he might like MSNBC’s approach to covering the convention too! http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/28/msnbc-abandons-gop-convention-during-every-speech-by-a-minority/
That campaign was part of my undergrad wrap up in PoliSci and my move to grad school. For me it went from academic to emotional. I had been in the military for 6 years and I had learned to extinguish political emotions in the middle of a bitter war in Viet Nam and in the streets at home. McGovern was refreshing wind for me. The outcome of course was a bitter comeuppance for me and many others. The next time I invested that much in the process was in the Obama campaign that began in the Convention of 2004. My flame still burns for his reelection.