Exactly 40 years ago people wondered what had happened to Hubert Humphrey. The fiery former Minneapolis Mayor and Senator who had delivered the famous 1948 convention speech on civil rights apparently had become Lyndon Baines Johnson’s lapdog Vice President. Today they are wondering about John McCain for many of the same reasons they questioned Humphrey.
When Johnson announced he would not run for a second term and Humphrey threw his hat into the ring, many Humphrey supporters assumed the vice president would cut the leash that had bound him to Johnson. Then as now, the overwhelming issue dividing the country was a war, this one in Vietnam.
Johnson’s announcement gave many people hope that the United States would finally agree to negotiate an end to the war. With the anti-war candidacies of Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy growing stronger, everyone waited for Humphrey to finally break free of Johnson and announce his own plan to end the war. Humphrey, who was above all a man of principle, found himself caught between two irreconcilable sets of values. The first, as later documents would make clear, was his own personal doubt about the war. The second was his loyalty to the man who had made him vice president.
Fast forward to the current campaign and it is not hard to find another Humphrey. Former war hero John McCain also appears to be caught between conflicting principles, the same that ultimately cost Humphrey the presidency. In this case Humphreyitis may cost McCain the nomination.
Before declaring their candidacies both men had reputations as being independents and firm believers in principles. Several years ago, Washington buzzed with rumors that the maverick McCain might even cross the aisle and become a Democrat or Independent. He openly criticized a key element of the Republican Counterrevolution, the Christian fundamentalists and their icon, Jerry Falwell.
Even today many Republicans feel McCain has burned too many bridges to ever be a major force in the party. One Republican blogger wrote, “As of today, as far as we are concerned here in South Florida, he is anathema.” Richard Viguerie’s new book, Conservatives Betrayed identifies McCain, as a backstabber along with Congress, Democrats (of course), and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Today, former McCain supporters find themselves shaking their heads and asking what happened to the “real” John McCain just as 40 years ago Democrats asked what happened to the “real” Hubert Humphrey. To most people who are neither die-hard McCain supporters or minions of Jerry Falwell, McCain’s overtures to the fundamentalists seem particularly crass and opportunistic. The man who could not be broken in a North Vietnamese jail has figuratively crawled on his knees to Liberty University to kiss the fundamentalist “pope’s” ring.
It would take at least another post to detail whether McCain ever really deserved his label as a maverick. Those who challenge the image point to how McCain carefully chose his targets and also quietly changed his stance on others. But whether one believes McCain’s carefully nurtured image or not, the point remains that the image has apparently disappeared just as Humphrey’s did in 1968.
To this Democrat and Minnesotan, Humphrey’s credentials have more credibility than McCain’s. Yet even as Humphrey tried to salvage his campaign in the waning days before November, he ended up losing a close election to Richard Nixon in part because his own president did not deliver his home state to Humphrey.
McCain, on the other hand appears to have turned from idealistic independent to rank opportunist like a light switch. Humphrey as vice president could at least legitimately claim he owed Lyndon Johnson something. McCain owes nothing to George W. Bush or his inside circle who savaged McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary.
Still, as with Humphrey, it all comes down to a war. As Republicans have become more dissatisfied with George Bush’s prosecution of the war just as Democrats did with Johnson’s, the war has become an albatross around the GOP’s neck. McCain, like Humphrey, refuses to part ways with George Bush and offer some alternative.
The trouble with McCain, as it was with Humphrey, remains that it may already be too late. With McCain now saddled with an image as an opportunist, it won’t help if he also changes on the issue of the Iraq War. One can just see his opponents dusting off the “flip-flop” ads they used on John Kerry.
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