The Dustbin of History -- View From the Bottom

"Hello... Well, I'm just fine, Joe! Yesair!...Well, thanks, Joe. I think it went fine in Michigan...Harrisburg? Tomorrow? Fine, Joe. Well, that's great...give you a call in the morning...Fine, Joe. Goodbye."

Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minn.) dialed his scheduler. Ursula Culver, and told her to make sure that he called Joe Beirne. President of the Communications Workers of America, the next morning; that, it at all possible, he wanted to make an appearance on behalf of Senator George S. McGovern (D.S.D.) at the AFL-CIO dinner that evening.

Culver, who is known as one of the best schedulers on Capital Hill, had greeted us warmly upon our arrival at Senator Humphrey's office two weeks ago. During our 90-minute wait. Culver virtually ignored us, as she ushered in two black women from the Chicago Machine, who had entered the office fifteen minutes after we did. She apologized for Senator, nothing that an emergency" had arisen on the floor of the Senate.

Humphrey, whose deeply lined face makes him look markedly older than be does on television, walked across his office and sat down on the couch. His appearance was surprising--a sizeable paunch, bloodshot eyes, and hair, which he no longer dyes, the grey hair of an old man.

After he sat down, Humphrey began to discuss the upcoming campaign. From all appearances, Humphrey will go all out on behalf of the McGovern candidacy.

"I have about 20 cities that I'm going to for Mr. McGovern. That was Joe Beirne on the phone just now. He was complimenting me on my visit to Michigan. I'm going to Wisconsin. Tomorrow he wants me to go to Pennsylvania. Of course in Minnesota. I took McGovern all around and look him to the AFL-CIO meeting, look him over to the President of our AFL-CIO and we set up a state committee. I introduced him to all of the audiences there and gave him active support.

"I am going to California, Ohio, Michigan Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Masschusetts--these are just a few of the states in which I'll be campaigning for Senator McGovern." In spite of the bitter contests he's seen involved with in the last four years, Humphrey has not backed off from what he considers to be the most important principle in party politics when he talks about that principle, it's like a man affirming his belief in religion.

"Honestly, I have to say that George was not that active for me. But I think the word "loyalty" is a very valuable word, and I hope that young people remember it."

Humphrey seems to put his deepest feelings behind his belief in the principles of unity within the Democratic Party, noting that, while he and George McGovern have honest differences, he has no bitterness towards the South Dakota Senator. Although he considers victory in November a "highly questionable" proposition. Humphrey cited several factors in George McGovern's favor, advantages which he himself did not enjoy in 1968.

"First of all, I'd just gotten out of the convention on August 30th. While George had problems from the 15th of July up til now, he had time to get mailings out, to pick state coordinators, to set up labor committees, and to prepare his media--I hadn't done any media by this time. We came out of the convention a million dollars in debt.

"Remember, in 1968, the political environment in which we had to operate--the Tet Offensive. Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination. Bobby Kennedy's assassination, the McCarthy-Kennedy battles. Johnson dropping out of the race, the riots at the Democratic Convention--I had to campaign in that atmosphere.

"George doesn't have these problems this year. There isn't the harassment in the streets, not only for Mr. McGovern but for anybody. It's different political environment."

Humphrey suggested that the office of the Vice-Presidency was "some what constricting" in how he was able to campaign for the Presidency. Referring to the position as being

Standing in shirtsleeves at his paper cluttered desk, Senator Thomas F. Eagleton (D-Mo) managed a smile as two reporters entered his office. Two youthful bellbortom-cald aides, followed and took seats directly behind the interviewers.

Eagleton appeared tired and worn. The exuberant smile of Miami Beach was gone--it was replaced by a forced upturning of the mouth. His deeply set eyes held a dour, almost mournful image, and his face was noticable taut and lacking in expression.

Thomas Eagleton has become a figure in history, the martyr of election "72, and while publicly he is wearing such a title with dignity and strength, it was obvious that the events of the last two months had had a profound effect on the character the junior Senator from Missouri. When he was asked how his recent vacation had been, he repiled, "Fine, Now let's get going."

Eagleton propped his feet up on his desk and took a sip of ice coffee. An imposing picture of his father, the late Mark D. Eagleton, cast an imposing eye upon the Senator as he spoke of his youth and ventual career in politics.

"My father was largely responsible for my intereal on politics, although he did not have a preconceived design to thrust me into a political career. I suppose you could say that I was written by the bug at a very early age Between my father's activities' as a member of the St. Louis Board of Education and his position in Republican politics, I had an early introduction to politics. He took me to board meetings from the time I was eight and to the Republican convention when I was 11. Although I was young and didn't always know what was going on the flavor was tantalizing. I liked the challenge--the combatancy and the competitiveness exited me."

Eagleton graduate from Amherst College in 1950 and entered Harvard Law School later that year. He recalled that though he was a strong supporter of Stevenson in 1952. Stevenson's supporters were unstructured and disorganized, yet loyal and enthusiastic. There was no organized activity per se, so I can't say that I took any active political role at Harvard."

Eagleton noted that in 1956, when he ran for circuit attorney of St. Louis at the age of 27, his father's initial reaction was negative.

"As a matter of fact my father tried to discourage me from running and he felt that I should try and establish myself as an attorney first and save politics for later. Anyway I entered the race and was the youngest man ever elected to that office.

He went on to become the youngest Attorney General in Missoun's history in 1960 and the youngest lieu tenant governor in 1964, a race he won by more than half a million votes.

Missouri politics is know for its tenacious and often dirty political campaigns and Eagleton admitted that he had to downplay his Amherst Harvard background during his early campaign. Most of Missuri's politicians are educated in state and I can recall several me occasions where opponents tried to criticize me for my Eastern Establishment academic credentials. While Amherst and Harvard are excellent academic institutions within their own spheres, my schooling was used as ammunition against me, and although I can't say it hurt me, I can't say my New England education helped me with the voters of Missouri.

Eagleton won the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate in 1968, running against the incumbent. Edward B. Long, and True Daeis, ambassador to Switzerland in the Kennedy Administration. He won the November election by a 30,000 vote margin while the national Democratic ticket lost the state by 30,000 votes.

Since entering the Senate in 1969, Eagleton has generally taken traditional liberal Democratic positions on issues, voting for end the war legislation and extension of civil rights laws.

In Many of 1969 Eagleton introduced controversial measure designed to permit college and university officials to see injunctive relief in Federal court "whenever force or the threat of force" is used to disrupt "only a spokesman for the Administration," he expressed his belief that his creativity and power to affect change, which had brought about far-reaching social legislation throughout his years in the Senate, were stifled in the Vice-Presidency.

"Obviously, my campaign suffered from all this too. Also, I truly believe that I was hurt by the press." "Humphrey seemed disdainful of newsmen, and calls them "newsies", "In September, when I drew 20,000 in Seattle and then 50,000 in Philadelphia, in both cases, the cameras weren't on me or the crowd; they were on the 50 or so demonstrators trying to break up the meeting."

While generally known as a spokesman for the "old guard" of the Democratic Party, Humphrey acknowledged that the party was in a "distorted form" throughout the sixties. The Minnesota Senator, who became a strong advocate of party reform following his loss to Richard Nixon, and who helped found the McGovern Commission in 1969, stated his qualified support for the Commission's guidelines.

He recognized that there were practices in effect over the past years sometimes prevented" large numbers of young people inorities, and women from taking and active role in the Party.

"The changes that we made from '69 to '72 were based on the theory that you must go on out and bring people into the Party, and the only way to do this was to set quotas. Now I generally don't like quotas; I think they're undemocratic. I think they tend to build more friction than harmony over the long period of time. But, even though I don't think we should have quotas next time, I think the price we paid was worth it, and, in the long run, we'll have a better political party."

Humphrey said that he would recommend to the Democratic Reform Commission that they do away with the "strict kind of percentage system" that was used in the selection of delegates to this year's Democratic Convention.

Though Senator Humphrey expressed his approval of the Nixon Administration's troop withdrawal program in 1969, he said that his greatest opposition to President Nixon right now comes from Nixon's handling of the war in southeast Asia.

Referring to the President for the first time as "Nixon", Humphrey stood up to show the personal hurt he felt from Richard Nixon's management of the war: "He said he wanted to be judged and held accountable for his actions in getting us out of the war. He said he'd have us out in six months. He won an election on that!

"He won that election from me and he told the American people that he was going to get out of that war and he's still in it.

"Sure, he's taken out troops. But we've increased the amount of air power, we've increased the amount of naval power, we've increased the amount of fire power. And I think the President did not keep his word."

"It's bad enough for him to say that there would be no rise in unemployment and that inflation would be brought under control--this I suppose you could say is some what political. But when the war was the key issue, it was the thing, I'm sure that won for him--the promise that we'd be out of there.

"He hasn't kept that promise And I don't like it." In his own office. Humphrey showed a degree of outrage of the war, and a depth of committment against it that had never shown in his campaign It is a side of Hubert Humphrey that he seems unable to communicate on television.

Discounting reports that many of his former supporters were jumping on the Nixon bandwagon, Humphrey said that the anti-McGovern feeling among disaffected Democrats will soon subside.

"When the chips are down, we're all Democrats. George McGovern is our nominee, and my idea is that you pull the team together and go to work."

A buzzer sounded in his office, the buzzer that tells every senator that an important vote will be taken on the Senate floor in five minutes. Humphrey stood up, straightened his tie, and strode confidently out of the office, down the marble hallway, with an aide trailing behind