Looking Toward Chicago

Like everyone else, the Democratic politicians were watching Miami Beach --mostly to see how the ticket chosen by the Republicans would affect their prospects. The Democrats are bedeviled by the stubborn problems of the war abroad and strife at home, what appears to be a nationwide drift to the right, and an overwhelmingly unpopular Administration.

The problem is acute for Hubert Humphrey, odds-on favorite for nomination. Try as he might, the Vice President so far has not been able to shake the Johnson legacy or stake out his own position. Speaking in Los Angeles' south central ghetto last week, Humphrey was greeted with such deafening boos and shouts of "Honky, go home!" that he was forced off the stage. Though aides claimed that hecklers had been hired for the occasion, the truth still was that no more than 300 or 400 Los Angeles Negroes even bothered to come in the first place.

Good Memories. Indeed, though his position papers and public pronouncements inch toward independence from the Johnson Administration, Humphrey himself vacillates, afraid that outright divorcement has perhaps even more dangers than advantages. "I do not intend to run for the office of President of the United States," he told a $500-a-plate dinner in Washington, "by turning my back on those who have stood with me." Tears filled his eyes and his voice cracked with emotion as he said that he had no intention of "repudiating the work of my party, my President and his predecessors."

Yet even as Johnson showed signs of growing obduracy on Viet Nam and hinted that he might raise the level of fighting (see THE WORLD), Humphrey has been moving slowly toward the position of critics like Eugene McCarthy. Goaded by McCarthy last week, he took mild issue with the Saigon government's five-year jail sentence for Truong Dinh Dzu, the peace candidate and runner-up in last year's presidential election, who advocated negotiation with the Viet Cong. Humphrey hinted, delicately, that he might even agree with Dzu. "What I'm saying," he declared, "is that at a negotiating table, if you're really looking for a political settlement, you really have to make some concessions." McCarthy, by contrast, said that Dzu's imprisonment "signifies Saigon's complete unwillingness to discuss, let alone accept, the only reasonable terms on which the war is likely to be settled."

Worries Ahead. Still, little by little, the Vice President was shedding his cloak of amiable ambivalence. After more prodding by McCarthy, he released delegates bound to him by the unit rule, which in some states binds all delegates to one candidate. He then challenged his adversary to release McCarthy delegates in Oregon and Massachusetts, proving, when McCarthy backed away, that the issue went both ways and had been exaggerated from the beginning. Belatedly, McCarthy admitted that Humphrey's gesture would bring only about eight delegates to his side. When Lieut. General Lewis B. Hershey, director of Selective Service, undiplomatically suggested that he could work very well with George Wallace as President, Humphrey took even that small opening to say--with an eye to the young voter--that a Humphrey Administration would hire a new man to guide the draft.

Though all readings to date point to a Humphrey victory in Chicago with a margin of perhaps 600 votes (1,312 are needed for nomination), the Vice President finds ample reason for worry. Once nominated, he must still bring both the Kennedy and McCarthy people to his side, pacify the peace vote in New York or California, and best the Republican candidate in TV debates. He is already looking beyond Chicago, but not very joyfully.

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