Come Home, America

The title of this post is the catchphrase around which Senator George McGovern's acceptance speech was crafted, at the 1972 Democratic National Convention that nominated him for president. Whether one agreed with the substance, or thought the oratory stirring, is largely irrelevant because, at 2:45 a.m., Eastern Daylight Time, the audience was rather small.

The previous Democratic National Convention, in 1968, had been marred by street protests, which were met with what one Democratic senator called "Gestapo tactics" by the police of the host city, Chicago, much to the consternation of his fellow Democrat, the mayor of that city. On the night of the acceptance speech by that year's Democratic presidential nominee, Hubert Humphrey, the television cameras were focused as much on the violence on Chicago's streets, as on Humphrey's speech in front of those in the convention hall, who could be called, in the parlance of the day, "The Establishment".

Roles were somewhat reversed four years later. In 1972, much of The Establishment was shut out of the convention. And many of the delegates were of the faction that had been outside protesting in 1968. This reversal was brought about by: 1) significant changes in delegate-selection rules; and 2) a successful insurgent anti-war candidacy for the presidential nomination. And the name at the center of both of those phenomena was George McGovern.

The 1968 convention had created something called the Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection, which was chaired by McGovern. The commission was charged with recommending new rules for the delegate selection process, to be implemented for the 1972 nomination process. Later, when McGovern became a candidate, the chairmanship was turned over to Congressman Donald M. Fraser of Minnesota.

The major changes that the McGovern-Fraser commission brought about include:

1. Delegates allocated proportionately according to each candidate's share of the votes in a primary (i.e., no more "winner-take-all" primaries).
2. Affirmative action goals for underrepresented groups.
3. Open delegate-selection processes (i.e., no more "smoke-filled rooms").

One result of that third requirement is that most states began selecting delegates through primary elections, rather than party caucuses. Some states still hold caucuses (most famously, Iowa), but they now need to operate with open procedures.

And although the commission had been purely a Democratic Party activity, the changes to a great degree affected the Republican Party, as well. I see at least two reasons for that:

1. Those changes, such as the introduction of presidential primaries into more states, that involve state election laws, apply to both parties equally.
2. The Republicans would not have wanted to be seen as the party of old-fashioned machine politics, once the Democrats had adopted their modernized rules. In other words, for competitive reasons, the Republicans needed to make similar changes. That's not to say that the Republicans matched all of the Democrats' changes, however.

As noted above, much of the Democratic "Establishment" was shut out of that party's 1972 convention. The established leaders of the party tended to back candidates such as Humphrey and Maine Senator Edmund Muskie. With the rules changed, so that a potential delegate's presidential preference was more important than their standing in the party, McGovern's success in the primaries did not bode well for those leaders.

One result of all that was that the convention did not run very smoothly. It was certainly not run with the military precision that the Republicans had achieved at their convention that year.

On the final day of the convention, McGovern announced his choice for his vice-presidential running mate: Senator Thomas F. Eagleton of Missouri. (More later on post-convention problems for Eagleton.) The agenda of the convention that evening was to ratify the choice of Eagleton, and hear acceptance speeches from both nominees.

If I recall correctly, that Thursday night session started late, in the first place. I don't remember why. Then, the ballot for the vice-presidential nominee turned into a three-ring circus. Eagleton won the nomination in one ballot, but over 70 candidates received votes. They included just about every half-way prominent Democratic politician in the country. The list also included some who did not meet the constitutional qualifications for the office, such as Mao Zedong. The time it took to read out all of those votes put the session further and further off schedule.

I remember commentators saying at the time that that was the young delegates' way of letting off steam after sitting through a week of convention proceedings. They made them sound like schoolchildren who had behaved reasonably well throughout the school year, but started cutting up on the last day before summer vacation.

Getting back to my original point, that is why McGovern made his acceptance speech in the middle of the night. The candidate who could seemingly do no wrong in the lead-up to the convention saw, on the last night of the convention, the beginnings of his campaign turning into a comedy of errors.

Republican President Richard Nixon won reelection over McGovern in one of the largest landslides in American history.

I plan to write more, later, on how this episode contributed to the Democratic Party's creation of superdelegates.

Despite Nixon's landslide victory, he served less than half of his second term. He resigned on August 9, 1974, after he could no longer defend himself in the series of scandals known as Watergate.