CLINTON ST. QUARTERLY By M.G. Horowitz For a while, it looked like the Democrats might redeem their sporadic tradition of responsiveness. As this reporter flew into the Apple in early August, substantial numbers of Carter delegates were uneasy over Jimmy’s dramatic slippage in the polls and his poor judgment in having deputized his brother. As a result of this restlessness, several intra-party movements burgeoned, each welcoming the attention of the world’s media, including the CSQ: 1. Committee to Continue the Open Convention. Represented by a spunky Long Island congressman, Tom Downey, CCOC opposed the proposed rule binding delegates to their candidates. Joining the committee were a host of party luminaries including New York’s Governor Carey and Mayor Koch, Washington senators Jackson and Magnuson, and Oregon Congressman Weaver. Several journalists tried to paint the CCOC as a Kennedy front but, in fact, many members — like Downey himself — were Carter supporters who felt that Jimmy would fare better as the nominee of an open convention. 2. Democratic Agenda. Formed in 1975 as Democracy 76, the Agenda boasted a hearty coalition of unionists, minorities, feminists and environmentalists dedicated to revitalizing the Democratic platform. Buoyed by the participation of such progressives as Michael Harrington, Gloria Steinem, Julian Bond, Cesar Chavez, and Douglas Fraser, Democratic Agenda lobbied the convention on behalf of health insurance, public energy, women’s rights, and job programs. 3. Kennedy for President Committee. From the moment his organization moved to within a mile of the convention, the Senator’s campaign seemed to respire with a vitality we hadn’t seen on television in previous months. Volunteers flooded the solon’s headquarters while television crews chased publicists for five- minute audiences with the suddenly more credible candidate. So infectious was this kinetic overture to the convention that it affected John Anderson. During this period, Anderson met with Kennedy and announced afterward that he would reassess his candidacy should Carter not be renominated. For a few days, in fact, it looked like Anderson’s National Unity campaign might fuse with a rejuvenated Democratic Party, led by a resurrected Senator Kennedy. But who, after all, was the expert on rebirth? Did anyone expect the Born Again king to passively yield the metaphor of renascence? It is generally recognized that Carter’s pre-convention comeback began with his press conference regarding brother Billy. Unarguably, this was vintage Carter: cool and forthright, if vague and incomplete. Reporters emerged from the briefing convinced that Jimmy never knew the Libyans were financing Billy or that Carter ever altered American policy as a result. In the end, the unanswered questions hardly mattered; the answered ones were fielded smoothly enough. From there, the President’s Men moved into New York with growing confidence and renewed strength. This reporter was only one of 11,000 journalists who took a Knickerbocker Holiday from business-as- usual to ponder ’n’ party with what they’ll tell you is the Free World’s largest political organization. Yet though I represented only 15,000 Oregon readers, the Carter machine touched even me. In a stopover at Carter headquarters to retrieve the latest broadside against Kennedy one night, I was buttonholed by a young operative and asked whether I ’d like to chat with the Secretary of Commerce, who just happened to be reading a newspaper across the room. (Conventions are interesting, aren’t they? If CSQ had wanted to inverview the Secretary of Commerce any other time, it almost certainly would have been shunted to some applecheeked Deputy Under!) The exclusive with Secretary Klutznick did not, of course, turn out to be the smooth PR ploy that my hostess had intended. Before the Secretary had a chance to put his paper down, he was reminded of the depression in the Oregon homebuilding industry and the hundreds of inscribed building blocks that disillusioned Democrats in the state have been sending the President. The Secretary blamed the homebuilding depression on interest rates, which he quickly added were dropping. Didn’t the troublesome energy market also contribute to the industry’s problems, this reporter wondered. Klutznick nodded yes, energy was a “ contributing cause.” But people had to realize that two million unit years were over; we needed to adjust to 600,000 to one million. Was that a progressive standard, we asked. “ I don’t think it’s healthy,” came the reply. “ But it’s not that wnhealthy.” Ah, the comfortable complacency of the Carter Administration — which it prefers to call realism. Of course, sluggish construction is not particularly distressing — unless you’re a laid-off mill worker or a family on a waiting list for public housing. But for every reporter the Cabinet didn’t impress during that Lost Weekend, there were scores of journalists it did. Carter’s lieutenants seemed to be everywhere. No one was surprised, for example, when Neil Goldschmidt and Alan Webber visited the Oregon caucus the night before the rules showdown. (Despite Administration efforts, the Oregon delegation performed with characteristic independence. Not one Kennedy delegate nominated Carter after Kennedy’s withdrawal; yet a Carter delegate abandoned the President on the night of the rules fight.) By the following morning, it was apparent that, by and large, the President’s delegates were going to stick with him. Opposed to Kennedy, even anxious Carter delegates saw no alternative to the President. As Carolina’s Robin Britt asked the Times, “Who else is there? Would you want to run with Henry Jackson? With Robert Byrd? I don’t think Mondale or Muskie would take i t . . . . ” The Democrats’ denoument arrived inexorably: the defeat of the Open Convention by a 20 percent plurality, Kennedy’s dramatic cry in the night, the appendage of some liberal platform planks that could be easily circumvented, and the delayed appearance of a reserved Kennedy on the podium at convention’s end. Yet even as liberals left New York without a place in either of the traditional parties, mavericks were sniping at the Administration from the wings, flanks bearing names like Citizens, Libertarian, National Unity, and Socialist. One could detect aspects of the Kennedy program in some of the planks of these other parties: opposition to draft registration, limited nuclear war, and nuclear plant construction . . . support for price control and national health insurance. But whether the Democratic left would be attracted to these likenesses remained unclear. September Song By September, however, some clarity did begin to appear. To further woo progressives in late August, John Anderson had selected a Kennedy Democrat, former Wisconsin Governor Pat Lucey, as his running mate. Two weeks later, the New York Liberal Party dealt the Carter camp a major blow by switching its endorsement to Anderson’s National Unity ticket. The Liberal Party has been a staunch supporter of Democratic standardbearers for four decades; its alienation from candidate Carter suddenly made nationwide liberal defections more likely. And yet there were those who wondered why these New York liberals found Jimmy Carter’s second term impossible to support . . . while Truman, Johnson, and erstwhile Carter had been, well, okay. A glance through the last year’s pages of The Village Voice — a quintessential New York liberal journal — provides a ready answer. With veteran analysts Alexander Cogburn and James Ridgeway scrutinizing Carter’s domestic record and legendary investigator I.F. Stone weighing the President’s foreign stance, the Georgia Peach hasn’t been permitted much license. Cogburn and Ridgeway claim, for example, that by deregulating oil, Carter “ turned over energy policy to the major oil companies and to OPEC, which jointly . . . establish world prices.” And, according to the two authors, the result has been that this year’s oil glut was not followed by lower prices; unchallenged monopolies, they argue, do not have to drop prices when demand falls. Stone, on the other hand, finds recent Carter foreign policy to be nothing short of jingoism. In the Pueblo affair in North Korea, Stone remembers, Johnson was willing to make some apologies to the Koreans to resolve the incident; given the CIA’s record in Iran, he wonders, why can’t the President do likewise regarding that country? Izzy’s conclusion: “ A peaceable solution would require a price and Carter is not willing to pay it.” If acknowledged, jingoism and monopoly are awkward items for progressives to support; Ted Kennedy was surely speaking for liberals in July when he said, “ Democratic policies have not failed these last four years. They have not been tried.” With barbs like these from Kennedy and the liberal press, defections by the Democratic left were perhaps inevitable. It was the task of the convention, of course, to turn the ebbing tide, to convert desertion into unity. But if New York is any indication, liberals had closed the book on Jimmy Carter months before. Which meant that, after confirming the rules, all the President could do in Madison Square Garden was win. 30 Collage by Robyn Tarbet
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