The Original Triple "H"

Hubert Horatio Humphrey:

When the Gropinator came out last night and make his odious remark that he decided to become a Republican because of Richard Nixon's imaginary debate with Hubert Humphrey, I blanched. Not just at the fact that was a complete and utter historical falsehood, but because it really reflect the change in 30 years.

In the 1970s and 1980s if a Republican stated such a thing, it was in a party primary only. Nobody would utter the "N" word ("Nixon") in that period, especially to compare him to Humphrey.

But that is a reflection of how the world works and a demonstration of the lie that is the So-Called Liberal Media.

People under 40 have only a vague idea of Watergate, and pretty much no idea of who Humphrey was other than he has a terrible Dome stadium named after him in Minneapolis.

But I remember in early 1978 when the "Tonight Show" was interrupted and NBC News announced Humphrey's death and ran a ten minute long biography. Can you imagine such an interruption for a non-President now? Especially on broadcast television.

But that, of course, tells you something about the decline of news. But it also tells you something about the influence of Humphrey; a man, who never was, but should have been, President.

Forget the Kennedys, Hubert Humphrey was the soul of the Democratic Party that was the progressive force it was for a quarter-century.

In his introduction to the national stage, Humphrey, the oratorical descendant of Williams Jennings Bryan, was given time for an address at the contentious, fractious 1948 Democratic National Convention. Like Barack Obama, Humphrey was running for the Senate after being a reform-minded Minneapolis Mayor. Humphrey had united the Democratic Party of Minnesota, with the farther-left remnant of the grange movement, the Farmer-Labor Party. He forged the "DFL" the party that would dominate completely Minnesota politics for thirty years and make it one of the most progressive and best governed states in the country.

Heading into the convention, Humphrey wanted to give a speech that created a vision of the Democratic Party he wanted, not the party that had to kotow to the powerful Dixiecrats -- essentially reactionaries and the original DINOs -- frankly, racists --who would become Republicans.

Truman had integrated the Armed Forces and supported the creation of a Department of Equal Employment and the Dixiecrats were not going to stand for that. Truman was trying to win the election, and had already lost the far left headed by his Vice-Presidential predecessor Henry Wallace.

Without the progressives, the Southerners dominated the platform committees (for an update on this fact, see the 2004 GOP Platform that nobody seems to want to publicize, including the Bush Administration), the Civil Rights Planks to the Platform were consistenty voted down. The State's Rightists, the bigots had won and were the dominant force on the floor of the convention.

Caught between a rock and a hard-place Truman let Humphrey give the speech he wanted. But Humphrey worried that if the Southerners marched out it would end his political career. It would be a predominantly hostile audience he would be speaking to, many delegations threatened to walk. But doing what was right won the day.

Fellow Democrats, fellow Americans:

I realize that in speaking in behalf of the minority report on civil rights as presented by Congressman DeMiller of Wisconsin that I am dealing with a charged issue -- with an issue which has been confused by emotionalism on all sides of the fence. I realize that there are here today friends and colleagues of mine, many of them, who feel just as deeply and keenly as I do about this issue and who are yet in complete disagreement with me...

Friends, delegates, I do not believe that there can be any compromise on the guarantee of civil rights which I have mentioned in the minority report.

In spite of my desire for unanimous agreement on the entire platform, in spite of my desire to see everybody here in honest and unanimous agreement, there are some matters which I think must be stated clearly and without qualification. There can be no hedging -- the newspaper headlines are wrong! There will be no hedging, and there will be no watering down -- if you please -- of the instruments and the principals of the civil-rights program!...

To those who say, my friends, to those who say, that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late! To those who say, to those who say this civil-rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: the time has arrived in America for the Democratic party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights!

With this last, great paragraph, Southern Delegations marched out of the convention. They marched until nominating Dixiecrat, miscegenation decrier and hypocritical practicer, and naturally, future Republican, Strom Thurmond at a convention assembled shortly thereafter.

Humphrey emerged a national figure out of this speech and went on to serve the next sixteen years in the Senate. He was the champion of progressive causes, while at the same time strongly anti-communist. He loved to debate and did so tirelessly; speaking in his flat, clipped, nasal, midwestern voice.

In 1964, it was Humphrey who steered the Civil Rights Act through the Senate, using all his powers of persuasion to win conservative Illinois Republican Everett Dirksen over to the cause when Southern Democrats (like Thurmond) and the future ascendant Western Republicans (like Goldwater) opposed it and tried to fillibuster it as they had most all such legislation.

Humphrey went on to be LBJ's Vice-President and in 1968 this champion of progressives saw the ball and chain of Vietnam weigh his candidacy down against all of his beliefs, sans loyalty. Despite Vietnam, the unpopularity of Johnson, and the fact that the Dixiecrats splintered off to support either Wallace or Nixon, Humphrey still almost won.

And, of course, Humphrey should have won. After a nominal retirement, Humphrey returned to the Senate in 1970 and remained there for the years of his life.

He was one of the last of the great, old-fashioned speakers, often teased for his lack of brevity and refusal to speak in soundbites. Nonetheless he was a passionate believer in progressive ideals, and was famous for being delighted to fight for them. Even Republicans liked Humphrey the man, known to all as "the Happy Warrior".

I remember in 1976 when he refused to run, or try to stop what was becoming the Carter Juggernaut. Northern Democrats were distrustful of this Georgia Democrat's civil rights beliefs. But Humphrey, probably knowing he was dying at the time, demurred.

By 1977 cancer was eating away at Humphrey, only a thin withering shell still playing host to a great mind.

Tragically, even many progressives do not remember him. But this progressive does.