Waiting for an Alternative

Waiting for an Alternative

Flashing his brightest smile, Cleveland's Mayor Carl Stokes shouted to the Negro youths in the Hough ghetto: "Who's gonna be the next President of the United States?"

"Stokes!" returned the chorus.

"No! No! No!" chided the Negro Mayor. "Who is this man by my side?" A few uncertain voices replied: "Humphrey." "All right," repeated Stokes. "Now who's gonna be the next President of the United States?" Chorus: "Humphrey." Stokes: "I can't hear you." Chorus: "Humphrey!"

Eventually Stokes got the volume he wanted, but for Hubert Humphrey, looking ahead more to November than to August, the cajolery in Cleveland was all too typical of the reception he has been getting across the country. Crowds have been slim nearly everywhere, and sometimes hecklers and protesters seem to outnumber supporters. Philadelphia police estimated that 20,000 people heard Humphrey's Fourth of July speech in front of Independence Hall, but newsmen reckoned that the true figure was closer to 6,000.

As the Democratic campaign enters its final weeks, Humphrey has a superabundance of delegate votes but a surprising lack of popular support. Robert Kennedy would have been mobbed in Hough; Humphrey was scarcely noticed. Eugene McCarthy attracts the young and active; Humphrey's audiences tend to be middle-aged and lethargic. The only ones who greet the Democratic front runner with anything like real friendliness and enthusiasm are Democratic politicians.

High-blown Jumble. Nor does Humphrey appear likely to change his campaign style. "It is a proud thing to be an American," Humphrey said in Philadelphia, but the pride was somehow lost in a jumble of high-blown rhetoric. With frequent references to the Depression, the Vice President, who styles himself a "man of tomorrow," comes out in favor of liberty, peace, justice, free expression, knowledge, public accountability, meaningful work, open opportunity, public compassion, movement and free association, privacy, rest and recreation and patriotism--everything but the "politics of joy," a theme now absent from Humphrey's oratory.

But it would be a mistake to overestimate Humphrey's problem. The situation may not be so bleak as it seems. The small crowds and the languid receptions, say his strategists, are in part the result of a national mood of political disenchantment following the assassination of Robert Kennedy. They may also be the result of the summer doldrums. "Wait until Labor Day," advises one Humphrey backer, with perhaps more than a little wishful thinking. "When the people know for sure that the alternative is Richard Nixon, Humphrey is going to look mighty good to them."

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