Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
Humor:
- Hubert Humphrey's
- West Virginia Primary
fiasco
- an excerpt from Theodore H. White's The Making of the President 1960:
... $17,000 of unpaid debts hung over his head as he entered West
Virginia ... Humphrey had exhausted every resource and friendship he knew to raise money
for this new campaign...
Strangled for lack of money ... Humphrey's [total] expenditures in West Virginia were ...
only $25,000 ... He needed advertising, he needed workers, above all he needed TV to show
himself across the state.
I remember the final Saturday morning, shortly after it was revealed
that Kennedy's TV expenditures alone across the state had mounted to $34,000. Humphrey had
had but four hours sleep that morning and was up at seven, prepared to barnstorm north
from Charleston in his bus on a rainy morning; at that point one of his assistants
informed him that the TV stations that had booked him for a Sunday night half hour were
threatening to cancel unless they were paid that day, cash in advance, for the time.
It was one of the few times I have seen the temper of genial man snap.
"Pay it!" snarled Humphrey. "Pay it! I don't care how, don't come to me
with that kind of story!"
Then, realizing that his crestfallen aide was, like himself, destitute,
Hubert pulled out his checkbook at the breakfast table and said, "All right, I'll pay
for it myself," and scribbled a personal check of his own.
Mrs. Humphrey watched him do so, with dark, sad eyes, and one had the feeling that the
check was money from the family grocery fund -- or the money earmarked to pay for the
wedding of their daughter who was to be married the week following the primary.
My memory tells me that the sum of that check was $750 -- not a particularly large sum for
a statewide hookup of half an hour. But such a grocery-money check buys time only -- it
does not buy the production, the preparation, the care a major television manipulation of
the public requires.
- What happens when a man goes on cold on TV in politics
with such a grocery-money investment was grotesquely shown by Humphrey's final appeal to
the voters of West Virginia on that day before the election.
From somewhere he had raised another $750 for another half hour of TV
time, and now (like Richard Nixon much later in the year) he was prepared to save all with
a telethon.
A telethon is a political gimmick in which a candidate, theoretically
but not actually, throws himself open to any and all questions from any voter who cares to
call the broadcasting station. A good telethon requires good staff in order to screen
questions and artfully sequence them so they give the illusion of spontaneity yet feed the
candidates those pretexts on which he can masterfully develop his themes. It is commonly
one of the most spurious and obnoxious devices of modern political gimmickry.
What happens when such a telethon is authentic -- not spurious -- Humphrey demonstrated
with his modest $750 investment on that Monday.
For when authentic, unscreened questions are fed to the candidates the
effect is comic. Except that, watching Hubert Humphrey fight his last national battle with
family grocery-money, the effect was more sad than comic.
The telethon opened with Humphrey sitting alone at a desk; before him was a manual
telephone with switch buttons for two lines, which he was supposed to punch alternately as
questioners telephoned in. The viewing audience was to hear both unscreened question and
answer over the TV set.
The first question was a normal mechanical question: "What makes
you think you're qualified to be President, Senator Humphrey?" So was the second
question: "Can you be nominated, Mr. Humphrey?"
Then came a rasping voice over the telephone, the whining scratch of an
elderly lady somewhere high in the hills, and one could see Humphrey flinch (as the
viewers flinched); and the rasp said,
"You git out! You git out of West Virginia, Mr. Humphrey!"
Humphrey attempted to fluster a reply and the voice overrode him,
"You git out, you hear! You can't stand the Republicans gitting ahead of you! Why
don't you git out?"
Humphrey had barely recovered from the blast before the next call came:
what would he do about small-arms licensing for people who like to hunt? Then, what would
he do about social security?
None of the questions were hitting anywhere near the target area of
Humphrey's campaign program, and then a sweet womanly voice began to drawl on the open
switch, "How about those poor little neglected children, Mr. Humphrey, I mean how can
we lower taxes like you say and take care of all those little children who need more
schools and more hospitals, and more everything . . ."
On and on she went, sweetly, as Humphrey (his precious, costly minutes,
oozing by) attempted to break in and say that he, too, was for the poor little neglected
children.
By now the telethon was becoming quite a family affair, and the next
voice was a fine mountain voice, easy, slow, gentle with West Virginia courtesy, and it
said, Senator Humphrey, I just want you to know that I want to apologize for that lady who
told you to git out. We don't feel like that down here in West Virginia, Senator Humphrey,
and I'm very sorry that she said that..."
He would have rambled on and on, but Humphrey, desperate, expressed
quick thanks and pressed the other button.
He had barely begun to answer the question when a clipped voice
interrupted on the party line of the caller, "Clear the wires, please, clear the
wires this is an emergency!"
Humphrey attempted to explain that they were on the air, they were
answering questions to a TV audience.
"Clear the wires, clear the wire at once, this is an
emergency," repeated the operator on the party line that straggled down some unknown
West Virginia hill on which, perhaps, someone was trying to summon a doctor; and Humphrey,
his face blank and bedazzled, hung up, shaken, to press the button for another call (a
gruff voice, with a thick accent, asking what he and Kennedy were going to do for the coal
operators, they'd only been talking about the miners up to now, not the operators).
From that point on the telethon lost all cohesion -- proving nothing
except that TV is no medium for a poor man...
[As a final insult to injury...]
In the morning, when Hubert Humphrey awoke, the Presidential image had
evaporated. Outside the Ruffner Hotel, his parked bus had overnight been given a ticket
for illegal parking.
|