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The Coronation of Bill
Convention Diary
by Margaret Davis
"You are seeing a transition in American politics today. These will be presidential conventions -- not the Republican or Democratic conventions in the old sense of it, because all of these things are decided beforehand."CHICAGO -- His tones were hushed, his voice measured and paced to the pulse of a respirator. Nothing, he said, is impossible.-- Mayor Richard M. Daley
August 25, 1996
"That should be our motto," actor Christopher Reeve told the assembled delegates on the first night of the Democratic National Convention. "It's not a Democratic motto, it's not a Republican motto. It's an American motto."
Conventional people by Barry Crimmins
If Bill Clinton is the president of all the people, then his party is trying to show it can be the party of all the people. "America is stronger when all of us take care of all of us," said Reeve, whose spine was severely damaged by a fall from a horse just over a year ago. In defiance of his medical prognosis, he hopes one day to walk again.
But long after Reeve was wheeled off the podium to the sound of sobs and sustained applause, an unasked question hung over the convention hall. Is there any hope for regeneration of the presidential spinal column once the last vote is counted on November 5?
The nomination of Bill Clinton is, of course, a foregone conclusion, and his re-election as near a lock as these things come. This convention is designed to showcase his achievements. Bill Clinton has, of late, taken great pains to distance himself from the notion that the government ought to take care of all of us. Indeed, it is worth noting that it's not so much the spirit of party stalwart Ron Brown guiding this convention as it is the actual presence of Dick Morris -- the chief campaign strategist of uncertain party loyalties who has given a willing Clinton a hard shove to the right of center. But Democrats here, particularly liberal Democrats, seem only too willing to forgive the man whom Republicans in San Diego accused, only half in jest, of trying to run on their platform. Many seem to think that they've received some sort of nod and a wink from the president, an indication that come Election Day, things will be different.
From Barney Frank to Jesse Jackson to Donna Shalala, the belief is that an incumbent president, no longer worried about re-election, will be free to act in a consistently more progressive manner.
"I think that's a definite possibility," says Candace Gingrich, sister of the House Speaker, who's in Chicago with the Human Rights Campaign. But, unlike others, she adds a cautionary note. "He would be of the camp that would want to see Al Gore in 2000, and wouldn't want to do anything to jeopardize that."
The problem with Democrats, as former New York Governor Mario Cuomo reminded the convention Tuesday night, is that "we allowed ourselves to be characterized by our opponents." Whether it was "anti-American" in 1968, "soft on crime" in 1988, or "anti-family" in 1994, Democrats seem unable to stop Republicans from framing the terms of the debate. Somewhere along the line the Democrats abandoned not only their intellectual coherence and claim on the future, but their moral authority as well.
The man who four years ago pointed out "It's the economy, stupid," is now picking up a nice piece of pocket change for daring to say what a generation of Democrats have been uncomfortable stating: "We're right and they're wrong." Political consultant James Carville, as near a thing to a rock star as this convention has got, brings them to their feet each time he promises, "Never again will we let it happen to us -- this malicious, vicious, false right-wing piling on, and we just stand there and take it."
This move to seize the debate comes at the same time many within the party see what has been variously categorized as a resurgence of liberalism or the emergence of a new progressivism among Democrats. But what forces within the party will guide that impulse is not yet clear. One contender is the Democratic Leadership Council, the Clinton launching pad that has a deliberately moderate-Republicanesque platform that emphasizes family values, free trade, toughness on crime, and smaller government, and encourages breaks with labor and other traditional Democratic constituencies. Born of the conviction that the Democrats must beat Republicans by playing their game, the DLC found its latest poster boy in the convention keynoter, Indiana Governor Evan Bayh. The son of Senator Birch Bayh, the New Deal liberal knocked over by Dan Quayle in the 1980 Reagan landslide, the governor has cut welfare, criticized taxing and spending, and told Washington, "Give us the money and get out of the way."
The fracturing of the party over the Vietnam War in the 1968, and the resulting debacle in the 1972 general election, led many Democrats to conclude that there was safety, if not guaranteed success, in the center. Since '68 only two Democrats have won the presidency: Jimmy Carter, who ran as a Southern outsider, and Bill Clinton, a self-styled consumer-friendly Southern moderate. But now a newly revitalized organized labor, as well as minorities and women who believe that the country's divisions follow class lines, are daring other Democrats to speak the L-word.
Barney Frank believes that Americans are coming to equate liberalism with getting something they want, like public safety or health insurance. "They're ready to see government intervene" to meet their needs, he claims. After the November elections, Frank intends to focus his energy on reducing military spending to provide funds for such programs.
Republicans have made government a dirty word. Out on the campaign trail, Bob Dole likes to stir up a crowd by proclaiming, "Democrats are for government, and Republicans are for people." It is about time that Democrats, instead of sitting in embarrassed silence, remembered that what America has is not merely a government, but a government by the people, for the people.
Bobby is dead. Hubert is dead. Gene and George answered the firebell one too many times, and were harnessed and dragged out to pasture. A concrete vault and a slab of bronze are doing their best to ensure we won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore. The only candidate left standing from 1968 is at the corner of Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue, begging for donations.
"I saw the riots from the inside of a limousine," chauffeured by a television production crew, explains Pat Paulsen, who ran his first and most successful campaign for president in 1968. "It's not exactly a fond memory." The sympathies of the Smothers Brothers' television show, where Paulsen was resident comic-cum-candidate, were decidedly anti-war. Paulsen campaigned from New Hampshire to California (he left the Ambassador Hotel shortly before Robert Kennedy was shot, and the FBI pored over his film crew's footage looking for clues in the assassination) and by some accounts garnered more than 200,000 write-in votes. (Some states refused to report them.) He has run three times since then, came in a distant second to Clinton in last winter's New Hampshire primary, and found his campaign newly invigorated when a cable channel, Nick At Nite's TV Land, recently decided to underwrite part of his campaign expenses.
A couple of cops approach Paulsen. "I see you survived '68," the candidate observes. "We were on the other side then," answers one. Students in 1968, they joined the force in 1971. Paulsen is a little fuzzy on those days. "I never exhaled," he explains.
He rattles his donation can, and a passing delegate lets out a happy cry of recognition. "Hey," she exclaims, "I thought you were dead."
Bob Kerrey's head is up Pat Leahy's nostril. Tom Daschle's front tooth is grazing the back of his already thinning hair. Worst of all, it looks like Alfonse D'Amato's curling sneer is going to slurp up the senator from Nebraska and swallow him whole.
Welcome to the Democrats' made-for-the- convention-hall podium. A giant video wall towers over the speaker's platform, home to inspiring pictures of friends and foes, sunsets and small children -- even the speakers themselves. Impressive in person, it's reduced to a sort of comic effect on television: Bob Kerrey becomes a human Q-tip; Sarah Brady speaks from the palm of her own hand. It has a tele-link capability, allowing the president to loom large over the hall, looking for all the world like Oz, the Great and Powerful, as he addresses the conventioneers from Somewhere in Topeka.
The Democrats are actually proud to admit they have a convention producer/director and a production designer. In charge of it all is Gary Smith, recipient of 23 Emmys and co-producer of Elvis's last television special. Ladies and gentlemen, Bob Casey has left the building.
"We're sitting there looking at Michigan Ave, at troops with machine guns and barbed wire curled. I thought, `This is supposed to be a Democratic Party convention?' " Jim Heidenreich and his brother were gassed when they traveled here from Wisconsin to "see what was going on" in August 1968. "It was hot, muggy, the gas stuck close to the ground," he recalls. "It's a miracle more people didn't get hurt . . . that gas stuff will throw a panic." Heidenreich credits his Marine Corps background with keeping him calm when others panicked. Still, he did not emerge unscathed: "It hurt. You can call me naive or what, but I've always had a strong belief in the United States form of government."
This week, Heidenreich returned to Chicago as an alternate delegate from Wisconsin. Recently retired after 28 years as a bus driver in Milwaukee, he served as president of his local of the Amalgamated Transit Union for two years, and as vice-president of the Milwaukee County Labor Council's AFL/CIO central body for six years. And he says what was true about the Democratic Party 28 years ago is true today: "I think there's still a core set of beliefs in the Democratic Party. We care about people. We say not only we care about families, but we try to support them." As a new union member, Heidenreich says, he took a vow to look after the widows and orphans of brother union members.
Heidenreich is holding court in the quaintly aging lobby of the Palmer House, one of the city's historic hotels, smoking cigars and trading buttons with a couple of other Wisconsin friends. "Some people say we're going to call ourselves progressives and get rid of this liberal term. There's nothing wrong with liberalism. You talk about the Rush Limbos that have made liberalism a bad word. Well, if you look it up in the dictionary, no one should be ashamed to be a liberal."
Something has fried the C-SPAN school bus. Blown its circuits and melted its relays. A weary staffer leans his head against the metal skin of the mobile studio. "I feel like I'm at the bedside of a sick friend," he says sadly.
It's not certain, but conspiracy theorists think what zapped the C-SPAN bus is the same 220 volts that ran down a 110 line and blew out three Washington Times VDTs earlier in the week. The Media is not happy.
For a reporter, the week in San Diego with 2000-plus delegates who think you're lying scum was made tolerable by the RNC press operation, which efficiently provided everything from multiple copies of the party platform to the biography of the guy who turns out the lights each night at the convention. Two days into the convention, the DNC press office is still promising to locate a master list of delegates, and reporters have taken to stealing copies of the platform from under the delegates' chairs.
Corporate largesse provided reporters with free food, beer, telephones, and faxes in comfortable hotel surroundings at the Republican Convention. The corporate largesse is here, but the DNC has housed it in a tacky media village of inflatable Quonset huts and porta-potties. Located in the parking lot next to the United Center, it sits under the watchful eye of Malcolm X College. Thunderstorms have flooded workspaces and knocked out power; security guards show up long enough to help themselves to media T-shirts and pins; and there are no seats to sit on while you eat the free food. Revenge is exacted with the pen: an inordinate number of stories are being filed about the perils of union labor and the ethics of the delegates and politicians being lavishly entertained by corporations and lobbyists. (Somehow in San Diego, where the reporters got theirs, such things rated low on the interest meter. Reporters partied happily at a media extravaganza sponsored by, among others, a newspaper that was trying to bust the local reporters' union.)
There is one thing Democrats do better than Republicans. Their buses run on time, and free. The Republicans contract out their transportation needs to private businesses, which charge delegates and media a hefty price for four days of rides. The Democrats muscle the local transportation authority into providing free transit. At each shuttle stop in Chicago, a CTA employee stands, waiting to make sure that everybody's happy.
"Shoot to kill" arsonists and "shoot to maim" looters.The cops have been to sensitivity-training sessions, and, for most, it seems to have taken, although a former alderman is charging that police used excessive force to break up a birthday party on the Southwest Side last weekend. A toddler was reportedly clubbed when partygoers were slow to turn down music and move illegally parked cars.-- Mayor Richard J. Daley's orders to police, spring 1968
"I wanted you to know that however unwelcome you may have felt 28 years ago in the middle of very troubled times, you're welcome today. We cannot change the past. And we may not even agree completely on our interpretation of the past. . . . The challenges of today are just too great to fight the battles of the past."
-- Mayor Richard M. Daley to a gathering of protesters from 1968, on August 25, 1996
Somebody -- the mayor's office claims not to know who -- greased the statue of General John Logan and his horse in Grant Park. In '68, the Yippies used the statue as a staging area, climbing the horse and draping it with flags. Why anyone would think grease would deter an alumnus of the party that ran a live pig for president is anybody's guess.
In 1968, the mayor forced businesses to neaten up for the convention by erecting redwood fences. In '96, his son prefers wrought iron. Business owners on the convention route complained that city inspectors made perfectly clear that unless they cleaned up, landscaped, and installed the expensive fencing they faced heavy fines.
"I kicked butt," the mayor happily admitted.
"Our nation cannot tolerate discrimination of any kind. That's why the Americans With Disabilities Act is so important. It must be honored everywhere. Its purpose is to give the disabled access to every opportunity in society."Joel Sheffel is upset. He's undone his shirt collar and mopped his face and he still can barely speak straight. "You want me to go on camera? I'll go on camera," he froths, although, alas, all the cameras are pointed elsewhere.-- Actor Christopher Reeve in his address to the Democratic National Convention August 26, 1996
Sheffel is a regional representative to the Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities in Illinois. He and some of his friends have received special invitations to a Grant Park rally welcoming Vice-President Al Gore to Chicago. They arrive -- one blind, one unsteady, one with compromising medical conditions -- only to discover that the rally area is not wheelchair-accessible, and that there is no handicapped and elderly seating. Sheffel swings into action. He finds makeshift seating on a riser three feet off the ground. He demands water, and organizers scurry to find some. The first case of water is short-stopped by technicians in the camera stand, the second by the good ladies from a local church choir (who, in fairness, are swooning under their heavy maroon robes). Finally, a half-empty case reaches the elderly and disabled. There is not enough to go around.
"They don't care, the Democrats just don't care," a stunned Sheffel stammers. "They're supposed to plan for us."
But somehow, inexplicably, they don't. Two nights later, dozens of disabled people, special guests of the convention, flock to the United Center to hear Christopher Reeve. The CTA buses are handicapped-accessible, and transport to the convention is easy. Inside, however, they find the elevators jammed with partygoers headed for hospitality suites. If they make it to the right floor, they discover there is no seating for wheelchairs, and indeed some of them have been issued credentials that do not even allow them access to the hall. A woman in a wheelchair, her young daughter at her side, fights back tears. A man with no legs, a survivor of other Democratic conventions, says to no one in particular, "This is nothing. You shoulda seen Atlanta."
So your brother's bound and gagged.Of all the songs for aging children out there, "The Age of Aquarius" ranks pretty near the bottom of the playlist. Especially when it's performed by a cast of Gen Xers who stage it as a minstrel show in bell bottoms. Wish I'd died before I got old.
And they've chained him to a chair.
Won't you please come to Chicago
Or else join the other side.-- Crosby, Stills and Nash fundraising song written for the Chicago Eight, 1969
-- Web site ad on hat worn by Bobby Seale in Chicago, August 1996
There is an official protest zone outside the convention center, peopled largely by kindly old ladies who want universal health care and individuals with too much time on their hands who want a stamp for John Belushi. The folks who took it to the streets in 1968 are taking it to the Arie Crowne Theatre for a Tom Hayden-conceived "Return to Chicago 68/96." The new cast of Hair is here, the name of Wavy Gravy is invoked, and all the NO SMOKING signs are strictly observed. (A shame. Although Rennie Davis, still in short pants, is doing water with "altered atomic structure." Soon to be found, he promises, at a supermarket near you.)
Not all of it grates on the soul. Bella Abzug and "For What It's Worth" -- especially in the hands not only of Stills and Nash but Bonnie Raitt and Keb' Mo' -- still wear surprisingly well. Jesse Jackson and Studs Terkel still sustain a vision.
"That's Dave who?" squeals a young woman photographer. "He's 81? Oh, he's so cute!"
Cuteness is in the lens of the beholder. Entering his ninth decade, David Dellinger continues to lead the most committed of lives. A radical Quaker pacifist, he brought his National Mobilization Committee to Chicago in 1968 not "to storm the convention with tanks or Mace," but rather "to storm the hearts and minds of the American people." Nearly three decades after standing trial with the Chicago Eight, he says, "Society is even sicker today than it was in 1968." But unifying causes, he admits, are harder to find. Thirty years ago it was "civil rights and the war in Vietnam. Now it's like Heinz: 57 different issues. Basically they don't add up to the same thing." What the advocates of all these causes must realize, he says, is: "You have to go out in the street, or in your own local town, and change the way things are done. Problems will not be solved by either the Democratic or Republican Party, but by people changing their lives in their neighborhoods and their communities."
Conventional people by Barry Crimmins