A Little Friday Counterfactual Fun

I did one item already on Hubert Humphrey, but I hope you won't mind a second one. Nelson W. Polsby did an edited volume of counterfactuals once, and his contribution was "What If Robert Kennedy Had Not Been Assassinated?" It's been a while since I read it, and it doesn't seem to be readily available through a bit of googling (or, alas, on my bookshelf),  but the basic story Nelson told was that Humphrey would have won the nomination; would have offered the VP slot to Kennedy; and Kennedy, being among other things thoroughly a politician, would have accepted. The Democratic Party thus unified, Humphrey/Kennedy go on to defeat Nixon, and all sorts of good things (including, perhaps most importantly, a relatively quick exit from Vietnam) ensue.

That's what I remember from the essay, and I think it's all quite likely. One of Humphrey's problems in 1968 was that he was trapped by the prospect of LBJ withdrawing support; with Kennedy on his side, not only would many antiwar Democrats have been a lot more favorably disposed towards him even without any other changes, but at least in my opinion he would have had a lot more leverage to ignore Johnson. As it was, Humphrey wound up very close in the popular vote but down 301-191 in the electoral college (with Wallace taking 46 electoral votes). A three-point swing in each state would have brought Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Alaska, and (just barely) Illinois to Humphrey for 74 additional EV and a 265-227 lead. California, which Nixon held by 3.08%, would have put Humphrey over the top without going to the House. There's no way to prove anything one way or another, of course, and usually VPs don't make any difference at all -- but in this particular counterfactual, I think it's at least plausible that Humphrey/Bobby does three-plus points better than Humphrey/Muskie.

Now, I don't remember what Nelson speculated down the road, if anything, other than as a long-time Humphrey supporter he certainly thought HHH would be a good president. Just for fun, though...it's easy to imagine the oil shock followed by the deep 1974-1975 recession giving a somewhat younger Ronald Reagan the presidency in 1976 over Vice President Bobby Kennedy, perhaps with a GOP Congress (no Watergate landslide in 1974, for one thing). After that...well, I guess it depends on what you really think of Reagan. It's easy to argue that a pre-Laffer, younger, Reagan serves a couple of successful terms and actually establishes the GOP as a majority party for a while. On the other hand, it's also possible to imagine Reagan having a miserable time with the same things that Jimmy Carter couldn't handle, and Democrats reviving in 1978 and 1980.

But wait! I cheated a bit there; I ignored the 1972 election. I'm stipulating that Humphrey is pretty good at the presidency, and if so (and given what else we know) it's likely that he wins a major landslide in 1972. Over who? Most likely, Ronald Reagan, then halfway through his second term in California, and the clear conservative champion. It's true that in this alternative history the nomination process hadn't been reformed in the same way, but it's very hard for me to see Rockefeller or someone from the liberal wing winning, and I'm not sure who was available to succeed Nixon as the person who was tolerable to both sides. Maybe Reagan sees the writing on the wall and waits until 1976, but I doubt it. I say he runs, gets the nomination, and is totally clobbered.

And you know what? A history in which Goldwater and Reagan get clobbered (plus Nixon, originally from the conservative wing, losing two close elections) might just be enough to shift things around considerably. How? I have no idea. Perhaps it's Howard Baker or someone like that who becomes president in 1976, and Republicans evolve into a moderate conservative party with Reaganites marginalized, and wind up with a long-term majority instead of the deadlock that actually happened after 1980. Perhaps a true three party system emerges, with a southern-based, Wallacite Conservative Party replacing the Southern Democrats. Maybe then Republicans wind up relatively isolationist and libertarian, while Democrats keep serious Cold Warriors in the fold. Who knows?

I'm enjoying the comments over on the other Humphrey post, and I can't wait to see what y'all say on this one.

Hubert Humphrey

I'll direct everyone to an excellent op-ed today from Rick Perlstein on the occasion of Hubert Humphrey's centennial.

One of the ways to understand what an enormous figure Humphrey was is that one could easily write very different remarks on his legacy and still be correct. Perlstein emphasizes the extent to which the nation turned away from Humphrey's vision in the last thirty years, and that's one reasonable way to look at it. But one could also think about the extent to which the United States in 2010 is very much Hubert Humphrey's world. If we think about the major accomplishments of postwar, post-FDR liberalism, you get: fighting and winning the Cold War; ending formal segregation and the acceptability of explicit, public racism; and basically eliminating poverty among older Americans. Humphrey played a central role in each of them. And then the specifics go on and on, from food stamps to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to the Peace Corps...the Senate page on Humphrey is a good start.

Humphrey's failure to win the presidency despite multiple attempts, his service as vice-president, and his association with the war in Vietnam all (mostly unfairly) tarnished his reputation, especially with baby boomers; his speaking style was easy to mock, especially once it was associated with losing candidacies. But that same speaking style produced one of the most important speeches in American history -- no, I don't think that's an exaggeration -- his civil rights speech at the 1948 Democratic Convention, which Perlstein rightly mentions. There are, of course, big "historical forces" reasons that the Democrats turned from supporting to opposing racism, but individuals count too, and Humphrey was perhaps the individual who counted the most, from then through the final legislative successes of 1964 and 1965.

Perlstein says that Humphrey is forgotten...I don't know whether that's true or not, but it certainly shouldn't be. Hubert Humphrey was simply one of the most important politicians in American history, and one whose legacy was, as far as I'm concerned, almost entirely a positive one, both in substance and style. In other words, a great man, and a great American.

History Much, John Weaver?

More on the fascinating news today and yesterday about feuding in the GOP, but first, a little bit of fun: here's McCainite John Weaver on McCain's attempts to steer the party in his direction:

“John remains the titular head of the Republican Party and he will be until there’s a new nominee,” he said. “Most of the people that ran and lost you never heard from again,” he said. “He’s not going to be like Ed Muskie or Hubert Humphrey.”

Hmmm....let's start with Muskie. Ed Muskie was a VP nominee in 1968, sought the Democratic nomination in 1972, and was drummed out of the race relatively early (thanks in part to Nixon's efforts to use dirty tricks to undermine strong Democratic candidates). He was never a nominee, and therefore seems pretty irrelevant to the point. At any rate, Muskie continued in the Senate for the rest of the 1970s, eventually serving briefly as Jimmy Carter's Secretary of State in 1980. As far as I know, his service in the Senate was reasonably distinguished in the 1970s, although I think his real achievements preceded his failed presidential run.

Hubert Humphrey? Well, Humphrey was the Democratic nominee in 1968. After he lost, he then...ran again for president, in 1972, and was just barely defeated for the nomination by George McGovern. After that, he returned to the Senate, passed the Humphrey-Hawkins employment bill, ran for (and lost) for majority leader, considered running again for president in 1976 (and was widely seen as a serious possibility, although my memory on this is that most Democrats thought his time had passed by then). He was, throughout the last decade of his life, a major figure in the Democratic Party. Here's Wikipedia:

On October 25, 1977, he addressed the Senate, and on November 3, 1977, Humphrey became the first person other than a member of the House or the president to address the House of Representatives in session. President Carter honored him by giving him command of Air Force One for his final trip to Washington on October 23. One of Humphrey's speeches contained the lines "It was once said that the moral test of Government is how that Government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped," which is sometimes described as the "liberals' mantra."

Hey, good luck to McCain and all, but his pre-nomination political career wasn't a tenth of Humphrey's (and that's awful generous), and I'll be astonished if he's anywhere near as well-known and important as "never heard of again" Hubert Humphrey was after being his party's nominee.

Were Old Senates Better?

Here's Tom Schaller over at FiveThirtyEight:

Alabama’s John Sparkman; Arizona’s Barry Goldwater and Carl Hayden; Arkansas’ J. William Fulbright; Connecticut’s Abe Ribicoff and Thomas Dodd; Georgia’s Richard Russell; Idaho’s Frank F. Church; Illinois’ Everett Dirksen; Indiana’s Birch Bayh; Louisiana’s Russell Long; Maine’s Edmund Muskie and Margaret Chase Smith; Minnesota’s Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy (and later, Walter Mondale, who filled Humphrey’s seat at the end of that Congress); Mississippi’s John Stennis; Montana’s Michael J. Mansfield; Nebraska’s Roman Hruska; New York’s Jacob Javits; North Carolina’s Sam Ervin; Rhode Island’s Claiborne Pell; South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond; South Dakota’s George McGovern; Tennessee’s Al Gore Sr. and Estes Kefauver; Texas’ Ralph Yarborough and John Tower; Virginia’s Harry Byrd; Washington’s Scoop Jackson; West Virginia’s Robert Byrd; and Wisconsin’s William Proxmire.

Wow.

Really? Humphrey, Fulbright, and Kennedy were certainly Senators who wound up as, well, in baseball they'd be inner circle Hall of Famers. Schaller makes much of the presidential and VP nominees here (he lists Sparkman, Goldwater, Humphrey, McGovern, Thurmond, H. Byrd, and should add Muskie to that list) but that hardly seems like an impressive crop to me. Let's see...1963 to 2009; I'll try 1986, halfway there. The 99th Senate included Goldwater, Biden, Quayle, Dole, Bentsen, Gore, and Kerry, plus Strom is still there, and also Eagleton. That's a much more impressive group of national nominees, I'd say -- it's three actual VPs, plus three real presidential nominations. 1963 had Gene McCarthy, who had a more important failed presidential campaign than 1986er Gary Hart, but then again 1986 had authentic American hero John Glenn. For Senate leadership, Dirksen, Mansfield and Byrd aren't nearly as impressive as Dole, Mitchell, McConnell, and Byrd again. Who else is there in 1986? Bill Bradley, Pete Dominici, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jesse Helms, Sam Nunn, and Phil Gramm are all notables. If Dodd '63 was notable for being a father, then Dodd '86 is notable for being a son. Pell, Long and Proxmire are still Senators in 1986. There are by my count twenty-three past or future presidential candidates -- that's right, over a fifth of the 99th Senate ran for president.

I know some people would argue that any Senate with Hubert Humphrey will rank higher in terms of talent than any Senate without him, and that's a fair point, but beyond that I'm not seeing big differences. Of course, it's very hard to assess more recent Congresses, because we don't know yet whether Amy Klobuchar, Sherrod Brown, John Thune and Ben Cardin will wind up stars or forgotten, but I suspect that the 110th Senate (2006-2007) will wind up stacking up just fine in terms of star power, since Ted Kennedy's colleagues that time included Joe Biden, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama.