09:00 am
August 23rd (I mean 28th)
I’m in the middle of Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland — definitely the history nerd beach read of the summer. I’ll review it once I finish it, but Perlstein just drew my attention to something, and I don’t want to wait until I finish to comment on it.
As I’m sure you know by now, Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver will take place on August 23rd 28th, the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Many have speculated that Obama will use the speech to help heal some of the still-unresolved wounds in this country involving race.
In Nixonland, Perlstein points out that August 23rd 28th also was the day in 1968 when the Democratic party imploded over the issue of Vietnam. It was the day when the old party bosses — including Southern racists who had no intention of voting for a Democrat come November — successfully rammed Hubert Humphrey’s nomination through a divided convention. It was the day that the Chicago police beat, tear-gassed, and arrested those demonstrating (some peacefully, some violently) against the war outside the convention. It was the day that television viewers heard those demonstrators chanting “the whole world is watching” over and over again. And it was the day that Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff, in the course of his speech nominating George McGovern for President, accused Chicago Mayor Richard Daley of using “gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago.”
That day was, in many ways, the death-knell of the New Deal Coalition and the birth of Nixon’s Silent Majority. As Perlstein notes, “Hubert Humphrey [won] the Democratic nomination. But [was] he leading a party or a civil war?”
So perhaps Obama should think about using his speech to bind and heal another set of wounds — those the Democratic party inflicted on itself in 1968, and which to this day have continued to hinder its efforts to reestablish itself as this country’s majority party.
Once again the whole world will be watching. But this time, they could witness the birth, not the death, of a grand new coalition, one that could change the face of American politics.
UPDATE: Thanks to Rick Perlstein for letting me know I got the date wrong.
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