Midwest Populism, Chicago Conventions, and Hubert Humphrey with James Traub
We’re at the DNC Convention in Chicago this week, so it felt like the perfect moment to look back at the last time the convention was in Chicago - a truly historic year. There was no better person to discuss that with than James Traub, author of the biography of Hubert Humphrey that Sarah loved.
Want more Pantsuit Politics? To support the show, please subscribe to our Premium content on our Patreon page or Apple Podcasts Subscriptions, or share the word about our work in your circles. Sign up for our newsletter on Substack or follow us on Instagram to keep up with everything happening in the world of Pantsuit Politics. You can find information and links for all our sponsors on our website. To search past episodes of the main show or our Premium content, check out our content archive.
EPISODE RESOURCES
This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We hope you'll listen to it, love it, and share it with other people, but not with large language models or machines and not for commercial purposes. Thanks for keeping it nuanced with us.
TRANSCRIPT
Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.
Beth [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers.
Sarah [00:00:10] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.
Beth [00:00:12] Where we take a different approach to the news.
[00:00:14] Music Interlude.
Beth [00:00:29] Hi there, it's Beth. We are popping into your feed with a quick bonus episode this week. Earlier this year, Sarah read and loved James Traub biography of Hubert Humphrey called True Believer. And a couple of months ago, she sat down with him for a wide ranging conversation. We wanted to share a bit of that discussion today that we thought was a perfect accompaniment to our coverage of the Democratic National Convention taking place in Chicago this week. In a way, this conversation is about Hubert Humphrey and the 1960s, and as Sarah likes to talk about the smoke filled rooms. But in another way, it's about the psychology of leaders and about the tradeoffs and choices they make, about what motivates them and what inhibits them. So we hope this quick, rich conversation is a way of looking back in order to look forward. You might say it is an acknowledgment, an example of the fact that we exist in the context of all in which we live and what came before us here. Here's Sarah and James Traub.
Sarah [00:01:35] James, welcome to Pantsuit Politics. I'm so thrilled to have you here. I talked about your biography of Hubert Humphrey so often on our podcast it became a joke. And I said, get your bingo card because I'm going to talk about the Hubert Humphrey biography I'm reading right now. That's how much I've been talking about it.
James Traub [00:01:50] Well, I'm very flattered to hear that.
Sarah [00:01:53] Well, as I was reading it, I mean, the first thing about a biography of a man such as Hubert Humphrey is you forget how much of American history his own life spanned. And so, you're going to hear from FDR, you're going to hear from Lyndon Johnson. You're going to get all the way to Jimmy Carter, part of the book that made me cry. And so I think that the first thing is you're just walking through so much of American history. But I want to start with basically the only thing I really knew about Hubert Humphrey, which was that he was the nominee at the-- I think you call the chapter the apocalypse, right? The 1968 Democratic National Convention. So tell us about what do you think is accurate and inaccurate when people start with Hubert Humphrey in that particular moment in American history?
James Traub [00:02:44] Well, Sarah, it's not that anything is inaccurate. It's just that it's so incomplete. That is, if what we know about this guy is the most tragic moment in his life and a humiliating one. Because what happens is he gets the nomination at '68. But it's 1968. It's a yet more polarized and divisive moment than the one we're in today, though, in many ways analogous. And the kids hate him. And the streets of Chicago are filled with anti-war protesters, and no one can pay attention to what's going on in the hall. They watch the kids being beaten up by Mayor Daley's thugs. And so it's such a bitter moment, and he's been seeking this his whole life. He's an ambitious man. Finally gets the nomination. And a few months earlier, Martin Luther King had been assassinated. Bobby Kennedy been assassinated. Politics just seemed sickening, tragic. And so for him to gain this prize at that moment was a terrible irony. And of course, he lost in a, I want to say, bitter campaign. It wasn't bitter because Richard Nixon was bitter. It was bitter because his own party was divided against him. It was a terribly bitter experience. So there's so much more to the man than that.
Sarah [00:04:10] Well, and I think what was so interesting, as I was getting to the end of your book into 1968, I started Doris Kearns Goodwin's new book about her husband, Dick Goodwin and their lives in the 60s. So I'm reading Dick Goodwin going to New Hampshire, working for McCarthy, then he goes with Kennedy. So I'm like, living with him is his experience. Then I'm reading about Hubert Humphrey and especially that he didn't stand in any of these primary elections, which I think is so foreign to us, because then you have the McGovern Frazier Commission that changes the way we elect presidential candidates in the primaries. It takes them away from these party bosses that really gave him the nomination. So I'm reading about Hubert, I'm reading about Dick Goodwin, and also at the same time we're having this really interesting conversation I think right now about our own primary process. And with Hubert Humphrey, I think history has painted him as getting this nomination in some undemocratic way. And it's so fascinating. I wanted to ask you so much, like, what do you think about this conversation happening now? Well, maybe that was not a bad way to pick candidates. Maybe we should go back to that. Maybe we should get rid of the McGovern Frazier Commission's recommendations and go back to the delegates.
James Traub [00:05:31] Well, now, that's an interesting question. Sarah, as you say, there are important thinkers. I think of Jonathan Roush, for example, at the Brookings Institution who says we need a new vetting process. We need to have adults in the room. We need to have guardrails, the kind of guardrails that once upon a time prevented a Charles Lindbergh from getting nominated or Henry Ford.
Sarah [00:05:57] A celebrity, if you will. If we really wanted to press that metaphor down.
James Traub [00:06:02] Right. A crackpot celebrity. So that's a hard question because the same vetting process would have vetted out not only Jimmy Carter, who you mentioned, but Barack Obama.
Sarah [00:06:16] Right. That's a good point.
James Traub [00:06:18] We have this peculiar system which, unlike a parliamentary system where you rise to the top of the party, the party wins, the party then chooses you as prime minister, ours is this beauty contest. It has been. I don't know, depends on how you want to date it, but I would say probably from the time of, let's say, Martin Van Buren or something. It's not for the most dignified man. It's for the person who rallies the public best. So yeah, that's what we wind up with. I mean, the pathos of Huber in that regard in '68, is all the people who were passionate, idealistic, moralistic. Dick Goodwin, those people, they had their candidates. Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy. Who does Hubert belong to? Those middle aged jowly guys with the cigars inside the Chicago amphitheater. George Meany, the head of the AFL- CIO, and Dick Daly, the mayor of Chicago. And they were still city bosses in those days, which meant that you were simply the head of the Democratic Party in a big city. And he had known those guys forever. And owing to these great forces in the '60s caused by the war and race, there was this terrible divide. And people like Dick Goodwin who had been Humphrey's great friends, the activist wing of the party, he was their man. They loved him in 1960. Well, then he became vice president to Lyndon Johnson, who was despised. And so those men Dick Goodwin, often with great sadness in their heart, stood up against Hubert Humphrey, a man whom they had so admired in the past.
Sarah [00:08:05] Yeah, I think that's so interesting to me as I was reading your book. And it was such a great moment because Doris Kearns Goodwin lit up when I said I was reading a Hubert Humphrey biography along with her book, because she was like, oh, that's so interesting. Because she understands, obviously, his role in this journey he went on. And so often in history, it feels like these figures, these names are in the right place at the right time. But man, it's hard to feel like he wasn't always like a little behind. Like he was just a little late and they were changing the rules on him. I was so struck by the post-Watergate campaign finance reforms and how these rules he was following they suddenly changed and he got painted in this way that it seemed unfair.
[00:08:47] And in the sort of same journey with civil rights, he's at the leading edge, and then in pursuit of these ideals-- I mean, your book is called The True Believer-- he rises to these rungs of political power thinking like, oh, now I can accomplish these things. And in some ways you can say he did. I mean, he was the vice president and was instrumental in this passage of these landmark civil rights legislation. And then at the same time, the Vietnam War and his support of that and his working for Lyndon Johnson-- although I struggled to use that language because it feels like Lyndon Johnson didn't get the memo that he was working for Lyndon Johnson a lot of the times.
James Traub [00:09:28] Lyndon Johnson wanted a puppet, it turns out, not a vice president.
Sarah [00:09:30] Oh, my gosh. Again, reading these two in Congress together, I'm like, man, which Lyndon Johnson am I going to believe here? But I think it was true and it's true of Hubert Humphrey too. He is a true believer and also he was this political animal in that fight.
James Traub [00:09:45] And I think your point about time, that time passing him by, the '60s changes everything. And so a guy like Gene McCarthy, who was a very cryptic, odd character, really a philosopher who didn't really believe in politics.
Sarah [00:10:03] That betrayal was consistent no matter where you were at. Everybody was like, what [inaudible] dude.
James Traub [00:10:08] Yeah. But so a guy like that when Hubert was growing up, that's not what a politician was. Politicians loved the bandwagons and they press in the flesh and all. That's the world that need Hubert. And Lyndon Johnson was the same world, right? He was born three years prior to Hubert. Hubert's 1911. LBJ's 1908. But McCarthy's just a little younger, but that's not the point. He had this cool persona. He had this profoundly ironical man. Huber didn't have a grain of irony or cool. He didn't have any of that, and he seemed like a perfectly suitable guy in 1960. But he was someone who calls his wife ma and she calls him pa. You know what I mean? He's so out of sync with this moment.
[00:11:04] Music Interlude.
Sarah [00:11:14] You feel bad for him? I felt sincere angst for him bumping up against these different momentums in history. How much do you think media played a part in that? How much do you think television and this changing culture-- I thought the part about him dying his hair was so painful. It was painful.
James Traub [00:11:39] So after he loses in '68, I'm sure everyone's saying, "Hubert, get with it." And so he tried so hard. He loses a little weight. He lets his hair grow almost to his collar. He dyes it in the color that people say it looks like it could have been shoe polish. And it can't be a new Hubert. It just wasn't. It was like the new Nixon. So yes, that's part of the pathos. Now, in 1960 when he runs against JFK-- obviously 1960 belongs to the '50s. It doesn't belong to the '60s. And so you could say well that should have been Hubert's moment. But going back to this question of why Americans elect presidents, they want a romance of some kind. Let's say they used to. We used to think.
[00:12:34] And Kennedy, of course, was a larger than life figure. He was a romantic figure. And of course, in those days, we didn't know about all of his infidelities. We didn't know about all the medications he was taking. We just had this beautiful picture and his beautiful young wife Camelot. And Hubert was the guy next door, your talkative druggist. And so, in some ways, you could say Hubert never was made of the material that Americans seek in their presidents. In a prime ministerial system, he would have been perfect. He knew more than anybody about everything. He was an engaging, gregarious person who rises to the top of any gathering. He would have been a great prime minister, but that's not the way it works in the United States.
Sarah [00:13:27] Well, and I think what's so interesting that he ended up as Lyndon Johnson's vice president in this sort of partnership or this pairing, the way you think about them is, man, in the same ways those things are true. I think of Lyndon Johnson that he didn't have cool but he was a highly capable political animal. But that tension that he had with the moment, with the culture, with the younger generations made him so paranoid or maybe he already was. Maybe he already was. Whereas, Hubert kept this idealism. I kept being like, why do you keep letting them beat you up? Aren't you going to get mean at any point in this story? But he really did it. He never did.
James Traub [00:14:09] You know what? It had never been his nature before. It often happens with politicians who are nice guys, that the people around them become their designated haters. And so, they'll fight with guys who the candidate himself or the politician himself won't fight with. And so the people around Humphrey, they hated Gene McCarthy, they hated Lyndon Johnson. Hubert didn't. He had every reason to hate actually both of them, though, of course, Johnson was a much more central figure. When Johnson dies in '73, Hubert is the lead eulogist and he talks about what a beautiful experience it was for him. And when Walter Mondale in '76 is asked by Jimmy Carter to be his vice president and Hubert's is mentor and his great friend, and he says, "Hubert, you had a terrible experience. I shouldn't do this, should I?" And Hubert said, do it. Don't even think about it. You have more power than you ever had before. You have to do it. And I think for Mondale, it was a very important conversation.
Sarah [00:15:18] Yeah. And I think it's relevant now as you see people fight for Trump's vice presidency and you're like, why? And I kept hearing Hubert Humphrey voice being like, no, you just got to do it. You're still going to be the vice president of the United States under any rubric.
James Traub [00:15:29] I was thinking about that this morning, in fact, as I was reading about yet another candidate, a legend candidate, Ben Carson, who's friends were saying, Ben, don't do it. And think about Mike pence. Mike pence was not quite as Hubert, but squashed in the same way and also forced to do things that he himself regarded as shameful, which I don't think that you well know that is kind of similar to Hubert now that I think about it. So, yeah, that's a poisoned chalice too, isn't it?
Sarah [00:16:00] Yes. And I thought that was so interesting to watch that and that light and dark of their personalities. And I think especially as you go to the end of his life and he has this long and very complicated career, to see how that he is held up in his embrace. Again that story with Jimmy Carter and how he took him to Camp David on Air Force One where he never was as vice president speaks to both of them. And what a good person Jimmy Carter is. But this sense that he's this lion, it reminded me of Ted Kennedy and how Ted Kennedy had become a caricature, I think, to a lot of Americans because of Chappaquiddick and because of his family. But then at his death, you saw all his colleagues really saying this is the man I knew. This was the impact of his life. This was the complexity and the comprehensive nature of his work and his impact through his public service.
James Traub [00:16:52] A point about Teddy Kennedy, although it's a very good analogy. And here's the point that I think people don't recognize about either one of those two guys. They were great legislators. And now that word great legislator is archaism, because you can't be a great legislator in the unless you can win over people from the other side. In the Senate where you need 60 people, that's the trick. And Teddy Kennedy, for all of his people thought almost self-parody, liberal passion with someone who the other members, the other side, they loved the guy. Orrin Hatch, they loved the guy and they were prepared to work with him. Hubert was someone who needed to be loved and was. And early on in the mid-50s, he writes to a friend and says my best friends here are the Southerners. Because he found the Southerners, people who like himself, really believed in legislating. I mean, Jim Crow resists these people. And civil rights was Hubert's great cause.
[00:17:59] Nevertheless, he wanted to be part of their world. They kind of control the inner sanctum of the Senate. And he wanted to be in the inner sanctum. And he was. And so what this meant is that his whole career he was building up these relationships. And finally, when there's a Democrat in the white House, (John Kennedy, and then, of course, later Lyndon Johnson, Humphrey, while he's still in the Senate, becomes the whip of the Senate) he's able to use those relationships to pass all this legislation that he'd been dreaming about. The Peace Corps and what was called area redevelopment. And, of course, the beginning of civil rights legislation. And then in 1964, that's really the capstone of his career in many ways. The passage of the Civil Rights Act, which arguably was the most important thing the United States Congress did, at least back to the Social Security Act, if not in the whole 20th century.
Sarah [00:18:57] Yeah. And I thought it was so interesting at the end of his life and his career in the Senate that when he could finally sort of lay down this running for office, he couldn't stop. It was like a compulsion to run for higher office.
James Traub [00:19:10] The other guy I wrote a biography about was John Quincy Adams, and Adams and Humphrey had that in common, that Adams was president. And he went back home and he couldn't bear it, and he ran for Congress. And he's the only guy to have served in the Congress after being president. And Hubert does the same thing. He goes back to the Senate after serving as vice president. He can't live without it.
Sarah [00:19:32] Well, and that's when people get into conversations about why don't they retire? I'm like, you got to go read something like this. You have to understand the compulsion it is. And I don't think it's necessarily-- I don't want to say that with a sense of judgment, because I think human beings need purpose. And when someone finds their purpose in public service-- and it's not just public service, it's politics and it's celebrity, of course. But I do think that the people who can't stop feel the impact of their work, and that is something that human beings want and need. It's not surprising that they go back to the well, but I just thought it was so interesting at the end of his life that he turned so much to sort of foreign aid and foreign development. And after working so hard on domestic issues that this is where he sort of followed that passion outside of the political pursuit.
James Traub [00:20:16] I would say there's sort of two things at the end of his life, and both have to do with people's well-being, prosperity, the economy. So one is you say is foreign aid. And he was in the 1950s when foreign aid really was a big deal in the United States. Humphrey was the most single minded proponent to foreign aid to, by the way, a very naive degree. He really thought that America could use foreign aid to make these countries more democratic and more pro-American, which turned out not to be so. And by the time it's the early 70s, what you were talking about, he's chastened and he's actually thinking about foreign aid more carefully than almost anybody else in the Congress. He's saying how can we target foreign aid so as to reduce corruption, increase democracy, accountability, the things that will make governments more legitimate. So that was the foreign thing. The thing in whole is really, in a way, the second stage of the civil rights movement.
[00:21:15] He says, "I lost in '68 in part because so many working class white voters thought that what I was saying to them is you have to sacrifice in order to make black people whole." That's the politics is. We're going to take from you because you have too much and you give to them because they don't have enough. That's a dead end. And he understood that was a dead end. So we said, how can we find a way of thinking which shows to working class and middle class, black and white people, what they have in common? And that was the goal of his last years in office, was full employment, good jobs, nondiscrimination, but above all, employment, employment, employment. That was his issue. And finally, there's something called the Humphrey Hawkins bill was passed, which is a very watered down version of his hopes for a full employment legislation.
[00:22:11] Music Interlude.
Beth [00:22:20] Thank you to Sarah and James for that discussion. Thank you to all of you for listening. We'll see you again on Friday. And for everyone participating in one form or another, have the best DNC available to you.
[00:22:30] Music Interlude.
Sarah: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.
Beth: Alise Napp is our Managing Director. Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.
Sarah: Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.
Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.
Executive Producers: Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Emily Helen Olson. Barry Kaufman. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. The Pentons. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Jen Ross. Sabrina Drago. Becca Dorval. Christina Quartararo. Shannon Frawley. Jessica Whitehead. Samantha Chalmers. Crystal Kemp. Megan Hart. The Lebo Family. The Adair Family. Genny Francis. Leighanna Pillgram-Larsen. The Munene Family. Ashley Rene. Michelle Palacios.
Sarah: Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.