14

ADVENTURES  OF  AN  ADVANCE  MAN

            If a Presidential campaign reminds you of a circus, the kinship may be closer than you think.

            Both a circus and a national political campaign thrive on crowds, color and excitement.  Both feature bands, balloons, pretty girls in glittering costumes and performers who are either famous or soon hope to be.

            Not often do these ingredients appear spontaneously.  Thus both circuses and Presidential candidates have developed methods to create them synthetically.

            America’s first circus performance was presented by a Scottish immigrant named John Bill Ricketts.  His show opened in 1793 in Philadelphia, where, of course, only six years earlier,  a bunch of wise old birds in pigtails drew up the parchment document that made Presidential campaigns necessary in the first place.  George Washington, who had been elected to his second term in 1792, attended the Ricketts circus opening performance.

            At some point after that, perhaps when crowds began to slack off,  Mr. Ricketts or some other circus impresario may have started looking for ways to put more paying customers in the bleachers.  History doesn’t say so, but I can imagine old man Ricketts saying:

             “Hey, Sylvester--methinks I got a hot idea for stirring up bigger crowds.  How grabbest you the notion of sending out a few guys to put up posters and handbills?”

             “Everybody in Philly already knows the circus is here, boss,” Sylvester could have replied.

            “Not here, dummy.  I’m talking about one-horse towns where we ain’t played yet.  Go out in the boonies and stir up the yokels before we get there.  Get the rubes excited.  You know, send in some savvy promoters--some advance men.” 

            In the remote possibility that any conversation like this ever took place, Mr. Ricketts undoubtedly did not know he was creating a whole new breed of specialists--genus advance circus-politicus, the creature known today as The Advance Man..

            This chapter, dear friends, is an attempt to give you an inside peek at the role of the advance man, now known as either (1) the unseen hero of political triumph or (2) the convenient fall guy for political disaster.  [Check one.]

            Even though political advance men today face different and more sophisticated tasks, their predecessors of the circus world also had their hands full--finding and leasing the show grounds, getting the required licenses, contracting for supplies, buying newspaper advertising, posting billboards and distributing handbills. 

            For modern political advance men--particularly those in Presidential campaigns--the responsibilities are considerably more imposing.  These faceless technicians descend on a city several days in advance of the visit.  Day and night they work feverishly to guarantee that from the moment their candidate steps out of the airplane until wheels up on departure, he wrings the maximum political benefit out of every costly and precious campaign moment.

            Usually working in teams of three or four, these largely anonymous figures must find ways to stroke political friends, outwit foes, pander to the press, coordinate with the Secret Service, draw up schedules, develop routes, organize motorcades, raise crowds, build platforms, choose welcomers, arrange photo ops, hang banners, make signs, hire bands, set up sound systems, arrange dinners, rent rooms, scrounge up campaign money, jot down thank-you names, make sure there are backups for everything on this list and, most important of all, be prepared to take the blame for anything that goes wrong.  And something will go wrong.  Trust me.    

            While the historical record is hazy on advance men in Presidential campaigns before 1960, this highly specialized craft first began to creep into public awareness in the battle between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon. Awed by the effectiveness of these agents in the Kennedy campaign, Theodore H. White wrote in his classic book, The Making of the President, 1960:  

            “‘Advance men’--the small teams of agents who arrange the tours of major candidates--are practitioners of one of the most complicated skills in American politics; a good advance man must combine in himself the qualities of a circus tout, a carnival organizer, an accomplished diplomat and a quartermaster-general.”

            Considering the demands and perils of the job, what kind of people are foolish enough to take on advance assignments?  Who are these political kamikazes?  Where do they come from?  The answer is, from just about everywhere.  By and large, they are volunteers--lawyers, PR guys, lobbyists, Washington reps of large companies, political appointees or Hill staffers, local or state officeholders, you name it. 

            Once exclusively the domain of testosterone, the ranks of advance people today include a small number of women.  Even in this enlightened age, however, males still dominate the field--especially in Presidential campaigns.

            Usually they are people whose political savvy and talents have impressed the candidate they’re working for.  Some live in places like Dubuque or Schenectady, but most live in Washington.  They generally have jobs that enable them to take off with virtually no advance notice at all.  Take, for example, the experience of my friend Ken Burns.

            As a young Texas lawyer, Kenneth H. Burns came to Washington in the early 1960’s as a Capitol Hill staffer.  When Lyndon Johnson became President, Ken was working at the Federal Maritime Commission and serving  occasionally as an advance man for Johnson.  A week or so before Christmas in 1967, Ken was sitting at his desk, grateful that the government bureaucracy was spooling down for the holidays.  The last thing he expected was a call from Marvin Watson at the White House with an urgent question.

            “Can you be at Andrews in an hour?”

            “Uh, er--yes, I guess so,” Ken stammered.  “What is it--an advance?”

            “Yes.  And it’s important.  Are you certain you can make it to Andrews in an hour?”

            “I’ll make it.  Where we going?”

            “I’ll tell you on the plane.  Have you had your shots?”

            “Shots?  You mean like for going overseas?  No, I don’t think so.”

            “That’s all right.  We’ll give ‘em to you on the plane.  Remember now--Andrews.  One hour from now.”

            And that is how Ken Burns departed, without so much as a clean shirt or a toothbrush, for Australia.  Prime Minister Harold Holt had drowned while swimming, and President Lyndon B. Johnson, as he was prone to do, made an abrupt decision.  He would attend Holt’s memorial service in Melbourne.

            While advance men once were used mainly in high-profile political campaigns, they proved so useful that today they are dispatched to make arrangements for almost all top-level government officials on important trips.  Today, whether it’s a televised Presidential debate in Des Moines or an official NATO conference in Brussels, advance men are usually there to smooth out the bumps.  

            Of the Presidential and Congressional figures for whom I did advances, my fondest recollections center around Hubert H. Humphrey--one of the finest men I ever knew.

            In the mid-1960’s Humphrey, then Vice President, made a special trip to Fort Worth to speak to a big dinner staged by supporters of my boss, Jim Wright.  Most arrangements for the Vice President’s visit were made by one of the Congressman’s staffers in Fort Worth--Joseph L. Shosid, a man of many talents.

            Besides working part-time for the Congressman, Joe ran his own lucrative advertising and public relations firm.  In addition, his prowess as a basketball referee kept him in demand all over the Southwest.  And if all that weren’t enough to keep him busy,  Joe was an ambitious and tireless member of the U.S. Air Force Reserve.  Eventually he worked his way up to Major General.  

            Like many of us, the Vice President was impressed with Joe’s wide-ranging skills, his organizational ability and, perhaps most of all, his maddening thoroughness.  Never in his entire life had Joe Shosid left anything to chance.  Everybody occasionally makes a “things to do” list, but with Joe such a list took on almost reverential importance.  Once returning to his office at midnight, his list happened to slip out of his hand and slither through a crack down an elevator shaft.  Horrified, Joe rousted an elevator company workman out of bed and persuaded him to clamber down the shaft and retrieve the list.  

            Privately, I am sure, Humphrey thought, Aha!-- a perfect advance man!  So when Lyndon Johnson stunned the country by announcing on March 31, 1968, that he would not seek re-election, Humphrey launched his campaign for President--and promptly enlisted Joe Shosid as one of his key advance men.                

            A week or so later, Joe gave my name to Humphrey’s advance chiefs and they asked if I would like to help.  Intrigued by a chance for an insider’s role in a campaign for a candidate I genuinely admired, I asked Jim Wright if it would be OK.  Sure, he said, as long as I did the advances on my own time, rather than when I was being paid to work for the government.

            Hubert Humphrey’s 1968 Presidential campaign was less than three weeks’ old when I found myself on an airplane, outward bound on my first advance and thoroughly intimidated--for two reasons.  First, I had  no idea what was in the inch-thick pile of advance instructions that was abruptly plopped into my hands just before I climbed on the plane at National Airport.  Even worse, I began to consider my destination--Huntington, West Virginia.

            West Virginia, I thought.  Grimly I remembered that it was there,  eight years before, that Hubert Humphrey had suffered probably the most humiliating defeat of his life.  As a 1960 Presidential hopeful in the bellweather West Virginia primary, the Minnesota Senator was beaten 2 to 1.  In some wards the defeat was a mortifying 20 to 1. The winner was a charming, bushy-haired young man with an Ivy League look, armed with apparently unlimited campaign money and the most ruthlessly efficient political organization West Virginia had ever seen.  It was this thunderous primary victory that launched  Senator John F. Kennedy on his course toward the White House.  

            Even now, as the plane cruised westward, I realized that for Hubert Humphrey, it would require a large measure of political courage even to venture back into this state where he had encountered such a devastating loss.  I promised myself that at least on this advance, on my watch, I would do my doggonedest to see that everything went right and that no opportunity was missed. 

            For the next two days, I worked with Hal Lauth, an experienced Humphrey advance man, to make sure everything was in readiness for Humphrey’s speech to students in an “Impact 68” program at Marshall University’s Gullickson Hall.  With the diligence of a 747 captain and first officer running through a pre-flight checklist, Hal and I made plans to cover every imaginable contingency.  At least we thought we had.    

            The Vice President, as ebullient as ever, arrived at Huntington’s Tri-State Airport as scheduled on April 24.  He was greeted by Governor Hulett C. Smith, who had maintained a careful neutrality in the bitter Humphrey-Kennedy battles eight years earlier.  After that, everything on Humphrey’s latest visit went smoothly for, say, maybe 15 minutes. 

            Our carefully organized motorcade was speeding toward Marshall University.  Suddenly the car just ahead--the one carrying the Vice President-- skidded to a stop.  A traffic accident?  An assassination attempt?  Secret Service agents began piling out of their cars.  Then I saw it.

            Humphrey’s Drug Store, proclaimed the big sign over the building at the edge of the road.  It was an advance man’s dream--a one-in-a-thousand photo opportunity.  A golden chance for a warm and fuzzy feature story about a small-town drug store owner in West Virginia being flabbergasted to have a drop-in visit by another Humphrey--himself once a pharmacist in the family drug store back in Huron, South Dakota.  Only now the visitor was not a pharmacist.  He was Vice President of the United States.

            To spot an opportunity like this was one of the most important parts of an advance man’s  job--and I had missed it.  But Hubert Humphrey hadn’t--even when he was in a motorcade whistling by at 40 miles an hour.  If Humphrey doesn’t win the Presidency, I thought, with eyes that sharp he would have a great future as somebody’s advance man.

            It was in West Virginia also that I focused for the first time on what Humphrey described as his trouble with his “glands”--his own wry explanation for his inability to stop talking.  He would talk anytime to anybody about any subject.  In his four years as Mayor of Minneapolis, he made an estimated 4,000 speeches, or about three a day.  In 15 years in the Senate, introduced nearly 1,500 bills and resolutions.  He had so much to say he simply found it difficult to shut up.

            In Gullickson Hall that night, the students loved him.  But then, as he droned on and on, many began to squirm.  Our schedule called for him to take off for Oxford, Mississippi, at 9:10 p.m.  As that time passed, I approached one of the Secret Service agents who usually traveled with Humphrey. 

            “Do you have any idea how much longer he’s going to talk?” I whispered. 

            “No,” he said.  “But it will be 20 minutes after he says, ‘Ah, my friends, we live in a great country.’”

            But this verbosity, I came to believe, was nothing more than the reflection of his personal effort, however naive, to right all the wrongs in the world.  When somebody once snickered that Hubert Humphrey had more solutions than there are problems, Humphrey just smiled.  “What’s wrong with that?” he asked.

            At any political event, the one indispensable ingredient is a big crowd.  It is the measure by which news reporters judge the popularity--and thus the electability--of a candidate.  Thus an advance man always tries to have an event in a location that will make a crowd look biggest.  In other words, if you are fairly certain to have 1,000 people, look for an auditorium that holds 750.  For 100, find a room school classroom that accommodates 50. 

            When reporters covering the 1960 Presidential campaign became enthralled at the spectacle of crowds breaking through barriers to swarm joyously around John F. Kennedy, the lesson was not lost on Kennedy’s advance man, Jerry Bruno.  He began the practice of using two men,  each holding one end of a rope, to restrain the crowd.  Then, just at the right moment, he signaled  the men to drop the rope, allowing spectators to surge forward and enthusiastically engulf Kennedy.  Bruno later denied, however, that he used a handsaw to cut nearly through sawhorses to be used for crowd control, thus assuring their collapse at the most emotional moment.

            With crowds occupying such a crucial role in a successful campaign appearance, advance men look for live bodies anywhere they can get them.  But they must be wary of crowd-raising promises by self-promoters, screwballs and people with hare-brained ideas.   This lesson I learned first-hand one pleasant June day in Florida.

             With two other Humphrey advance men, I had been sent to prepare for an important campaign appearance by the Vice President.  My companions were Sam Shipley, who in real life was Secretary of Commerce for the State of Delaware, and Zel Lipsen, an up-and-coming Washington lawyer. 

            Outside, along the pristine white beach in the resort city of Bal Harbor, the brilliant afternoon sun glistened off the waves crashing in from the Atlantic.  A bronzed  young lifeguard studiously critiqued a girl in a blue bikini as she lay on a towel, rubbing lotion on her legs.  Kids frolicked in the surf.  All seemed right with the world.

            But upstairs in Room 213 of the nearby Americana Hotel, the mood was darker. 

            “It’s no use,” Sam said, hanging up the phone.  “They’re still saying they can’t help us.”

            “They’ve got to help us, dammit,” I said.  “They promised.  We can’t do it without them.  Who did you talk to?”

            “The president of the union.  He said the business agent never told him anything about helping raise a crowd, and it’s too late now to get his members organized.”    

            “And this guy expects us to raise a crowd?  Does he know we only got here last night?  None of us knows a soul in this town.”

            Sam looked glum and stared at the floor.

            “Well, so what are we going to do?” asked Zel,  looking at me.

            “Oh, it’s simple,” I snapped.  “I’ll just call Washington tell the Vice President that his advance men are glad he’s coming to Florida, but sorry--we won’t have anybody here to meet him.”

            Sam tried to look on the bright side.  He pointed out that the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the group to which Humphrey was scheduled to speak the next day, would certainly have a group of its members out to meet him.

            “I’m not talking about just a group,” I said.  “I’m talking about a crowd--a big crowd.  People cheering and whistling.  Teenagers jumping up and down.  People trying to get  Humphrey to kiss their babies.  Come on, you guys--think.”

            Sam shifted in his chair.  “Well, there was this one fellow...” he began.

            “And?” Zel asked.

            “While I was downstairs at lunch today I ran across this one fellow who acted like he might be able to help us raise a crowd,” Sam continued.

            “Yeah?  Who is he?” I asked, frowning.

            Sam said the man identified himself as a public relations specialist who handled all kinds of beachfront promotions.  When Sam mentioned that he was one of three guys who just arrived in Bal Harbor as advance men for Hubert Humphrey,  the PR guy started gushing about how much he admired the Vice President.

            “How would this guy go about raising a crowd?” I asked.

            “He didn’t say.  But he said he thought he could help us, and wouldn’t charge us a cent.”

            “Get him on the phone.  It can’t hurt to ask him if he can drop by and tell us what he’s got in mind.”

            We met later that afternoon in the hotel cocktail lounge.  Having been exposed on Capitol Hill to a variety of self-promoters and con men with axes to grind, I was instinctively wary.  I was not greatly reassured when this guy showed up in a sports jacket flashy enough to use as a maritime distress signal and a diamond ring that would have choked a goat.  Despite my misgivings, I explained that Vice President Humphrey was arriving the next afternoon  and we needed help in raising a big crowd outside the hotel.

            “All right--picture this,” he ordered.  “First we alert the media that the Vice President is going to get a big surprise.” 

            “Yes?”

            “And then, just as the Vice President arrives, here comes the surprise!  It’s speeding along the ocean near the hotel!  And what do we see?”

            “Don’t play games with us.  What are you talking about?”

            “The symbol of the Democratic Party!” he cried triumphantly.

            Sam and Zel and I looked at each other.  Clearly they were as much in the dark as I was.  “OK--what is it?” I ventured.

            “Don’t you know what the symbol of your own party is?” our new acquaintance demanded.

            “Are you talking about a donkey?” Zel asked.

            “Certainly!”  whooped our friend.

            “You’re going to bring in a donkey by boat?” demanded Sam.

            “By boat?  Of course not!” cried the PR man.

            We three wizard advance men looked blankly at each other.

            “On water skis!” he exclaimed.

            I pondered this imaginary scene for a moment.  “Are you trying to tell us you have a donkey that you can bring in on water skis?”

            For a moment our PR friend fell silent.  It was if we had ferreted out his innermost secret.  “Well, actually, no.  I don’t have a donkey any more,” he admitted.

            “Did he drown?” I asked.

            “No, natural causes.  But I’ve got the next best thing.”

            “And that would be?” I said. 

            “A Shetland pony.”

            “You really do have a Shetland pony that water skis?”

            “You bet!  How about it?”

            “I’m afraid we could never pass off a Shetland pony as a Democratic donkey,” I said gravely.

            “Not even if I put some big ears on him?” he said hopefully.

            I thanked the man for his time, gulped down a double vodka, and went back to my room to begin making some calls.  I was looking for people who might like to come down and greet the Vice President the next day--preferably wearing their own ears. 

            Thanks to the AFSCME union members staying at the hotel,  we finally rounded up a decent number to greet him on his arrival.  But in addition to the crowd problem, we had another crisis.  It came in an urgent telephone call only a few hours before the Vice President’s plane was due to arrive. 

            “Say, you know those buses I was supposed to get to take those news reporters to the airport?”

            “Yes, that’s all set, isn’t it?  You’ve got them, haven’t you?” I asked, dreading his answer.   

            “Well, not exactly.  I wasn’t able to make the arrangements,” he mumbled.

            Having worked 12 years in the newspaper business, I did not need to be told that political reporters expect and require exalted treatment.  If disappointed in this respect, they can wreak terrible vengeance on candidates for public office.  For 30 or 40 reporters and television news people to be promised a press bus which never materializes would create a scene unsuitable for small children and adults with coronary problems.  

            Grabbing the phone book, I looked up the bus company with the biggest advertisement in the yellow pages.  By invoking the name of Vice President at 30-second intervals,  I managed not only to charter a bus but also to persuade the company to send the bill to Humphrey headquarters in Washington.  I guess that bill finally was paid, because I didn’t receive a telephone call like the one Norman Sherman got.

            As Humphrey’s longtime press secretary, Norm possessed a response capability as instantaneous as one of those scary Cray supercomputers.  No matter how unexpected or off-the-wall the question, Norm never failed to come up with an immediate answer which always sounded reasonable and was often accurate.  In 1969, a year after the election, he was with Humphrey in Minnesota when he got a telephone call from an “action line” reporter for a Chicago newspaper.

            The reporter was calling on behalf of a Peoria, Illinois, airplane pilot who complained that nobody had ever paid his $300 bill for sky-writing he performed at Humphrey campaign rallies.

            “Who hired this sky-writer?” Norm asked.

            Naming a key Humphrey advance man, the reporter demanded:  “Why hasn’t he been paid?

            “He misspelled HHH,” Norm replied.

            Despite this inspired response, Norm got orders from Humphrey to see that the bill was paid.  Not all political campaign creditors, of course, are so fortunate.  Money is always a problem.  Take, for example, the Great Doughnut Crisis.

             This little drama occurred in 1976, as Jimmy Carter’s Presidential campaign was beginning to pick up speed.  Carter’s people had called me and said they needed an experienced advance man to work with some younger staffers in Newark, New Jersey.  Even though I was told I would have to scare up money for whatever supplies I needed, the assignment seemed simple enough.  Carter was to hold an early-morning rally in  Manhattan.  Then the former Georgia governor would climb aboard a special train for a whistlestop tour--similar, he hoped, to the train trips that helped Harry Truman score a spectacular upset victory over Thomas Dewey in 1948. 

            First stop on the Carter whistlestop would be Newark.  My job would be to make sure there was a big, enthusiastic crowd there.  Then, as the rally ended,  I was to board the train to lend a hand at other appearances en route to a big, windup rally in Chicago.   

            Arriving in Newark, my first job was fairly easy.  From local Carter supporters I rounded up several hundred dollars to print the handbills announcing the candidate’s forthcoming visit.  Arrangements already were in place for the banners, the band music and signs, but I figured we were going to need a big supply of free coffee and doughnuts to build and hold a crowd on a chilly morning at the Newark railroad station.  This was a problem, because Carter headquarters had warned us there was no money--not even for coffee and doughnuts.

            So frugal was the budget that one of the campaign volunteers from Atlanta knocked on my door at midnight a couple of days before Carter’s arrival.  He was young enough to be my son, and he looked worried.

            “Tell me, sir,” he said.  “Are we doing everything we possibly can to get out a big crowd for Mr. Carter?”

            “Considering that we have no money, yes--we’re doing everything possible.  Why do you ask?”

            “Campaign headquarters in Atlanta just had me on the phone,” he said anxiously.  “They told me if we didn’t have a big crowd here, they’re not even going to give me a plane ticket back to Atlanta.  They’re going to make me hitchhike home.”

            I did my best to assure the young man that somebody in Atlanta was pulling his leg, but I’m not sure be believed me--and, for that matter, I’m not sure I believed me. 

            The next day I was lucky enough to find a businessman to pick up the coffee bill, which would run several hundred dollars.  He drew the line, though, on the doughnuts.

            Then I met a labor union official who agreed to give $500 for the doughnuts--on one condition.

            “Rather than giving the money directly to you, I want to handle it through the Newark Democratic organization, so they will know our union participated,” he explained.  “But I’m sure they will gladly pass along the money to you for the doughnuts.”  He was wrong.

            When finally, after a half dozen calls, I got through to the local Democratic chieftain, he had a question.

            “Who ordered the doughnuts?” he growled.

            “I did,” I said.

            “Then I suppose, Mr. Lynam, it’s up to you to find a way to pay for them.” 

            He was right, and I did.  The crowd which cheered Jimmy Carter at the rail station the next day enjoyed the doughnuts.  When the doughnut man asked about his money, I gave him the name and phone number of my lovable friend at Democratic headquarters.  “As the local Democratic leader, he will be delighted to defray Mr. Carter’s expenses here, I’m sure,” I told him.  Then I got on the train for Chicago.

            For an advance blunder that could have been seen by millions, however, nothing stands out like an incident on opening night of the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta.  It was one of the most exciting moments of my life.  I was standing on the platform.  At my elbow was Jim Wright, the hometown man for whom I had worked for 26 years.  As a lifelong Democrat and Speaker of the House, he was chairman of the convention--the boss of the whole dazzling shebang.

            In a moment he would step to the rostrum to deliver the opening speech of the convention.  The hall was packed.  In the heady glare of the television lights, the cameras were focused and ready.  America was waiting.  As Jim Wright strode to the microphone and acknowledged the welcoming applause, I was almost bursting with pride.   The TelePrompTer began rolling.

            “When I was a boy in West Virginia...” scrolled the first few words.  With  a coast-to-coast television audience awaiting my boss’s opening speech, the TelePrompter crew had put on the speech of Senate Majority Leader Robert C.  Byrd of West Virginia.

            I didn’t know whether to commit suicide or to wait a few minutes for Jim Wright to kill me.  But then, to my astonishment and gratitude, I was saved by the Speaker’s polished platform skills.  He simply ignored the words flowing across the screen in front of him.  Without a moment’s hesitation, he smoothly began intoning from memory the words of his own speech.  Flawlessly and forcefully, he delivered every ringing phrase that had been so carefully and lovingly crafted--a speech whose pages I knew still rested in the breast pocket of his coat.  In the hall or out across the United States, nobody could possibly have detected the difference. 

            “I remembered it pretty well,” he told me later.  To me, his words were as welcome as a last-minute reprieve from the governor.  He never again mentioned the matter.  I didn’t either.

            The richest reward of advance work is an occasional chance to get to see, close-up and for real, some of the people future generations of Americans will read about in the history books.  Hubert Humphrey will never be listed among those who made it to the big prize at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Even though the malignant roots of the Vietnam war stretched back through the presidencies of Eisenhower and Kennedy, it was Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey who ultimately inherited most of the political blame for America’s longest and most frustrating war.

            In a way, though, it may be a blessing that Humphrey never became President.  His heart may simply have been too big to cope with a job where there are hardly any decisions that don’t hurt somebody, somewhere.  Hubert Humphrey could have been the first casualty if he ever had been confronted with a decision like the one Harry Truman was forced  to make on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

            For Humphrey wanted to help everybody, as evidenced by the incredible range of interests for which he fought.  Besides the broad causes of civil rights, public education, labor laws and health care, Humphrey in a typical week in the Senate might speak on migratory birds, dairy reports, disaster loans, disarmament, domestic economy, price supports, consumer problems, trade development, antitrust laws, the public debt, North African policy, passports, French politics, international civil aviation, Lithuanian independence, captive nations, wildflowers of the Northwest and the need for more office space.

            Like many great men before him, Humphrey was the product of a small town and never forgot it.  On one trip, during a short break between two public appearances, I escorted him to his hotel room to relax for a few minutes.  He flipped on the television and happened to catch scenes of student protests which for weeks had crippled New York’s Columbia University, at times through the seizure of campus buildings. 

            As Humphrey watched the swarms of young people storming angrily in the streets of New York,  I heard him whisper, almost to himself:  “Thank God for Waverly”--his tiny adopted hometown in Minnesota where, after a heroic battle with cancer, he was destined to die in January, 1978.

            It was during this battle with cancer that Humphrey demonstrated once again the generous spirit that marked his life.  Press secretary Norm Sherman reported later that Humphrey, knowing he would soon die, telephoned Richard Nixon, not one of his favorite persons,  to convey his best wishes on Christmas Day, 1977.

            And later, realizing that as a former Vice President his funeral would be held in Washington, Humphrey made an unusual deathbed request.  He asked that Nixon be invited to attend his funeral--not because he had forgotten Watergate and many other Nixon acts he found appalling, but as a step toward national healing.  

            Knowing this would be Nixon’s first trip to Washington since resigning the Presidency, Humphrey saw his impending death as a chance to bring Nixon back from political exile--a fate Humphrey believed should never befall a former President of the United States, whatever the circumstances.

            “He always sought to heal, not exacerbate, differences,” Norm said.

            Even though the national anguish over Vietnam ultimately robbed him of the Presidency, Humphrey must have enjoyed the belated recognition and acclaim that began to blossom for him in the final weeks before the 1968 election.

            One of his last major campaign swings was a triumphant six-city tour of Texas.  As one of the Vice President’s key political strategists, Jim Wright had not only represented him before the rules and credentials committee at the Democratic convention but also had opened a statewide Humphrey campaign headquarters in Austin.       

            To prepare for Humphey’s eleventh-hour swing through Texas, Jim Wright set out on what most political experts thought was a hopeless task.  Hoping to show a Texas Democratic Party unified solidly behind Humphrey, he began trying to negotiate at least a temporary truce between Governor John Connally and Senator Ralph Yarborough.

            In Texas politics this was the equivalent of trying to mix nitric acid with glycerin.  The two men had feuded for years.  Connally, every inch the genteel establishment conservative, might well have come from a different planet than Yarborough, the fiery, garrulous champion of Texas liberals.

            To the astonishment of virtually everybody in Texas--perhaps including himself--Jim Wright succeeded in bringing Connally and Yarborough together.  Before a throng of 10,000 people in Fort Worth’s Burk Burnett Park, the Governor and the Senator radiated sweetness, light and political unity, offering rousing endorsements which allowed Humphrey to bask in the rosy glow of party harmony.

            “In 24 years we’ve never had as united a party in Texas,” Yarborough cried.

            With his behind-the-scenes handiwork, Jim Wright had made Humphrey look like the world’s foremost political peacemaker.  This unheard-of display of Texas Democratic cohesion surprised nobody more than the savvy national political reporters traveling with Humphrey.  On the plane en route to Austin that afternoon, I watched Scripps-Howard correspondent Dan Thomasson peck out the lead for his national story:

            FORT WORTH--Hubert H. Humphrey may have done today what all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t do--he put the Texas Democratic Party back together again.

            At every campaign stop on the Texas swing, Humphrey was greeted by cheering, enthusiastic crowds.  To me personally, the visit in San Antonio was particularly exciting. For one thing, the city stirred memories from boyhood, when I thought the old Transit Tower surely had to be the tallest building on earth.  Moreover, I knew that somewhere in the welcoming crowd today was my cousin, Olive Dareos, who with her husband George ran La Louisianne, the most elegant restaurant in town.

            For sheer political drama, though, I never expect to see anything to equal Humphrey’s final campaign visit to Texas--a joint appearance, only two days before the election,  with President Johnson in Houston’s famed Astrodome.  Johnson’s own tenure in the White House was contaminated by the war he inherited and was able neither to win nor end. He had made this special pilgrimage to Texas to display his support for Humphrey who, ironically, was destined to lose--principally because of his unyielding support of the President.      

            There was no place for irony, however, that Sunday in the Astrodome.  An astounding crowd of 40,000 people jammed the massive stadium.  The band music, the applause,  the euphoria made an unbelievable scene.   I remember seeing a national television anchor man gazing upward, obviously awed by the sea of cheering humanity.

            “What do you think?” I shouted over the tumult.

            “I think I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” he said.

            As the Humphrey campaign had steadily gained momentum in the few weeks just before the election, many of us dared to hope we could overcome the political damage growing out of the anti-war riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago.  Even as we gathered on election night in the Lemington Hotel in Minneapolis, there were occasional moments of hope.

            “Well, at least we’re scaring hell out of them,” Humphrey laughed at one point.

            But victory was not in the cards.  Out of a total popular vote of 63 million, even though Nixon got only half a million more than Humphrey, he got them in the right places.  In the electoral vote count, Nixon won big, 301 to 191.  Jim Wright and those of us who worked in Texas took consolation, however, in carrying the state for Humphrey.  It was the only Presidential election since 1924 that a Texas majority went differently from the nation. 

            Exhausted but satisfied we had done the best we could,  I climbed on an airplane, headed for Austin, where I had left a rented car.  After turning it in, I boarded a bus for the 80-mile trip to San Antonio, having called my cousin, Olive Dareos, to ask her to meet me there.

            Like myself, Olive was disappointed over Humphrey’s loss.  But as she drove toward home, it was clear that she had something else on her mind, also.  I bided my time.  Finally it popped out.

            “You know, I think I’m beginning to understand politics,” she said.

            “Really?  How so?”

            “When you came to San Antonio a week or so ago, I watched you come down the stairs--right out of the Vice President’s plane.  Bands were playing.  People were cheering.  And there you were--right in the middle of all those important people.  I was so proud.  Then, two days ago, there was the election.”

            “Yes?”

            “And today,” she said,  “you call and ask if I will come and pick you up at the Greyhound bus station.”