Michael Barone: Conventions Held During Wartime Can Be Gloomy

Michael Barone, in the WSJ (Aug. 30, 2004):

[Mr. Barone, senior writer at U.S. News & World Report and contributor to Fox News, is co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.]

... One might assume that presidents' wartime conventions would be occasions for triumphant celebration. But at least four of these five conventions assembled in a state of political gloom and doom. As it turned out, the Democratic Party did lose in 1952 and 1968, when wars were raging in Korea and Vietnam which its presidents did not seem to be able either to win or to end.

But by far the bleakest outlook was at the Republican convention in Baltimore in June 1864. Abraham Lincoln was thought to be a sure loser: War news was bad, and Grant's army lost 7,000 men in 20 minutes at Cold Harbor just seven days before the convention. Many Republicans wanted to shove Lincoln aside, but he was as shrewd a political maneuverer as he was an inspirational leader, and his agents out in the states made sure that the delegates would back the president. He stayed in the White House and pulled the political strings 40 miles away in Baltimore.

Lincoln's task was to placate both the radicals who wanted tough treatment of the rebels and the conservatives and Democrats he sought to attract to a party which four years before had won only 48% of the popular vote in the states voting in 1864. The radicals were placated when National Chairman Edwin Morgan opened the convention by calling for a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. To placate the conservatives and Democrats, delegates were seated from Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana; but also seated was a radical delegation from Missouri. The Republican platform was drafted by the editor of the New York Times (not likely this year), and included the antislavery amendment, the transcontinental railroad and encouragement of immigration (one of the few fractious issues among Republicans today). When the roll was called, not in alphabetical but in geographical order starting with Maine, Lincoln got every state's votes but Missouri's. The nominee, according to custom observed until 1932, did not appear at the convention.

But if the radicals got the platform, the conservatives, thanks to Lincoln, got the vice presidency. In the preceding weeks, Lincoln told key politicos that he wanted to dump incumbent VP Hannibal Hamlin of Maine for Andrew Johnson, the Tennessee Democrat he had made military governor of Tennessee. On the roll call several key delegations switched their votes, and Johnson was selected. So, after Lincoln was assassinated, the U.S. had a president opposed to equal rights for blacks, and whom the radicals impeached and nearly removed from office.

The Democratic convention that renominated commander in chief Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944 assembled in Chicago in July, a few weeks after D-Day, in a somewhat more optimistic atmosphere. But the fighting in Europe and the Pacific was fierce, casualties were high, and the May Gallup poll -- polls were less frequent then -- showed Roosevelt ahead of 42-year-old Thomas E. Dewey by only 51% to 49%. Roosevelt loved the title commander in chief, and a week before the convention he told Democratic National Chairman Robert Hannegan that he would accept renomination reluctantly, as a "good soldier." The military motif continued: FDR delivered his acceptance speech from the San Diego Naval Base, en route to Hawaii. (Imagine the fuss if Mr. Bush tried that!) But he did not get a bounce. An August Gallup poll showed him behind Dewey 51% to 49%.

As in 1864, the most important thing the convention did was select a new vice president. Roosevelt's wartime convention adopted a liberal platform but dumped liberal Vice President Henry Wallace. Like Lincoln, Roosevelt did this deviously. On June 11, he wrote Hannegan a penciled note favoring Sen. Harry Truman. Days later he told Wallace, "I hope it's the same team again, Henry." He urged the former senator, James Byrnes, a top wartime aide, to run. But Byrnes was vetoed by left-wing labor leader Sidney Hillman and Bronx boss Ed Flynn. On July 13, Roosevelt wrote the convention chairman that if he were a delegate he would vote for Wallace. On July 15, he wrote Hannegan a letter saying that either Truman or Supreme Court Justice William Douglas would be acceptable, and that when Hannegan made a choice he had to "clear it with Sidney," who was organizing labor's first big voter-turnout drive.

Then Truman, who had agreed to give the nominating speech for Byrnes, refused to run. Roosevelt called Hannegan in his suite in the Blackstone Hotel -- the suite that was the original smoke-filled room -- and said, "Well, tell the senator that if he wants to break up the Democratic Party by staying out, he can; but he knows as well as I what that might mean at this dangerous time in the world." Truman caved, and New York put him over Wallace on the second ballot. The left accepted the result: "We were for Wallace always, but not against Truman," Hillman explained. Nine months later Truman was president, shaping the postwar world and meeting the challenge of the Cold War. Wallace opposed the Cold War and ran against Truman in 1948 as a third-party candidate, with Communist support.

The Democrats assembled in Chicago in 1952 and 1968 when America was mired in apparently unwinnable wars in Korea and Vietnam. Little wonder they did not want to have much to do with the incumbent president. The main competitors for the 1952 nomination were the Illinois governor, Adlai Stevenson, who had been an aide to the secretary of the navy in World War II and then returned to Chicago, and Sen. Estes Kefauver, who had conducted investigations of the criminal ties of Democratic machines and won most of the (few) primaries. Stevenson was nominated on the third ballot -- this was the last multiballot convention -- after big city bosses rallied to him to defeat Kefauver. Truman showed up to introduce Stevenson when he delivered his acceptance speech. Gallup showed him trailing Dwight Eisenhower 47% to 41%.

Over the 1968 Democratic National Convention hung the specter of Vietnam, and the tragedy of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. And overshadowing the raucous and angry proceedings in the hall were the demonstrators outside and the police who beat them. Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who had run against Lyndon Johnson, was infuriated; some of his aides were among those beaten, too. Mayor Richard J. Daley tried to convince the 36-year-old Sen. Edward Kennedy to run; when he declined, Vice President Hubert Humphrey had the votes to win. Johnson had scheduled the convention late in August, to coincide with his birthday. But he dared not appear before the angry delegates, while in a hotel room Humphrey consultant Joe Napolitano started typing up a general election strategy. What is amazing is that, with George Wallace taking southern votes away from Richard Nixon, Humphrey came close to winning.

History doesn't always repeat itself. If the Republicans streaming into New York are not as confident of victory as Roosevelt's Democrats in 1944, they are surely more upbeat than Lincoln's Republicans in 1864. Lincoln and Roosevelt propitiated their parties' wingers with the platform; no one has been paying much attention to that this year. Lincoln and Roosevelt both plotted to dump their vice presidents; the head of Bush-Cheney '04 seems unlikely to do that this year. But as in 1864 and 1944, delegates must know that their man's chances depend heavily on the fortunes of war. Lincoln's standings rose after Sherman marched from Atlanta to the sea and Grant advanced in Virginia; Roosevelt's poll numbers rose as Allied armies streamed through Europe and MacArthur kept his promise to return to the Philippines. Today we wage a different kind of war, but Mr. Bush needs more than a good convention to win.