Metamorphosis

Hubert Humphrey, the most modern of the four major candidates in his understanding of contemporary society, is the oldest in the folk-myth image that he now evokes. Both Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater bear the historical traccs of the pioneers of the post-Civil War west; Johnson suggesting their shrewdness and sagacity, Goldwater their moral strength in the face of lawlessness. William Miller represents the late nineteenth-century immigrant flood become urbanized and acclimated.

But Humphrey's historical image, which until this past summer was a populist hybrid of William Jennings Bryan and a character from Sinclair Lewis's imagination, antecedes them all. He calls to mind the great senators of the 1830's and 40's, those men who were at first allied to their sections, the old, old west or mercantile New England, but who became the most famous, and most respected, spokesmen of nationalism--Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Thomas Hart Benton.

One could imagine Humphrey in a painting by George Caleb Bingham or see his bust in a corner of the Capital as he stepped down into the rawness of Logan Airport Thursday night, his long black hair carefully molded around his head, the black velvet collar of his black topcoat soft in the harsh lights. And as he orated to Massachusetts' industrialists, his language at once filled with references to deficit financing and the timeless rhetoric of a politician from the Northwest Territory, he seemed fully capable of standing in a crowded, dimly lit Senate chamber and delivering the reply to Hayne (no doubt as H. Horatio Humphrey).

Of course, a change in image doesn't remake the man; Humphrey is still somewhat the energetic, folksy, good humored Hubert we always knew. But there is a new reserve about him, one might say a sense of destiny, now that a humble pharmacist's son has nearly attained the second highest office in the land. One suspects that in his mind's eye Humphrey no longer sees himself solely as the populist-progressive crusader for the downtrodden, but as the Great Articulator for the Great Politician, the premier national statesman. When his audience snickered at a reference to turning the lights off in the White House, Humphrey stopped, smiled broadly, and replied with something less than complete ingenuousness, "That's the least I can do for my President."

Humphrey as majestic statesman was apparent at every platform on which he appeared Thursday night. As he sat waiting for his introduction, he would talk animatedly with Joan Kennedy or Edward McCormack, his handsome face fixed in a handsome smile, and one knew that he knew his smile was handsome and that he was appearing human and at the same time glamorously royal to the masses. As indeed he was.

His new sense of stature seems to deepen Humphrey, make him more untouchables. Always deserving of our applause, now he seems to demand our respect. And if his new awareness does not congeal into Websterian pomposity, we may have a national figure who will lead not only with his mind but with his manner.