The Democratic Principals

EVEN in the little things, George McGovern has luck. Way back in January, the Democratic party staged a "hotel draw" for Miami Beach's elegant Doral On-the-Ocean, the first headquarters choice of several of the contenders. McGovern got the second straw, right behind John Lindsay, and thus will be ensconced with his entourage in 235 rooms at the Doral. With success has come additional need: he holds 299 rooms at eight other hotels as well. Hubert Humphrey (450 rooms) will be at the Carillon, Edmund Muskie (470 rooms) at the towering Americana in Bal Harbour. George Wallace will be off at the Sheraton Four Ambassadors and Dupont Plaza in Miami; he has 150 units, one equipped with a tilt table for his physical therapy. Shirley Chisholm (50 rooms) and Wilbur Mills (200 rooms) are both at the Deauville.

Charisma. The trip and the big suites are no longer necessary for most of the contenders; the Doral is where the action will be. McGovern sweeps into Miami Beach counting on a first-ballot nomination, capping one of the most extraordinary success sagas in U.S. politics. The first to declare for the nomination, he was dismissed as a one-issue candidate, lacking charisma or recognition, a good Senator about to enact the Peter Principle by reaching for a role beyond him. But he had helped write the rules for the nominating process, and his young cadres knew how to use them. They outorganized everybody in sight; McGovern won the key victories and, in the end in California and New York, the big ones as well. He won no overwhelming mandate, but he got the delegates.

Now everyone knows who George McGovern is, but the real George McGovern remains a somewhat elusive and contradictory figure. At 49, he is warrior turned dove, preacher turned politician, a gentle, sometimes boring man whose even exterior masks an obsession to be President, a prairie populist who has become the darling of chic city liberals. McGovern has a way of uttering ideas thought radical by many in so folksy a manner that even some conservatives come away intrigued.

Despite a willingness to waffle on his more extreme views, he retains an aura of conviction and simplicity. No one really knows whether his success has welled from some deep voter malaise with the way things are --and a concomitant if unfocused demand for change, even along McGovern lines --or whether it has happened because of his superb and dedicated organization.

Humphrey comes to Miami Beach with the second most delegates, still the happy warrior of what McGovern derides as the old politics, now dressed in mod suits for his third (he is 61) stab at the presidency. He may still be the ablest man in the Democratic ranks, but his all too familiar image and his promises of everything for everyone have hurt him. Still, he narrowly lost to McGovern in California; had he won, it might have turned things around. In a way, the most lugubrious legacy being brought to Miami Beach is that of Edmund Muskie, who seemed to have the nomination locked up before the race ever began--and simply dissolved into near invisibility in the mists of the center where he stationed himself. He was running against Nixon, he believed, and was brought down from behind by the men running against him.

The other also-rans will be in Miami Beach too. Crippled George Wallace, winner of five presidential primaries, his goals and his support still undefined but perhaps dangerous. Shirley Chisholm, black, feminist, sensible, who hopes to use her slender resources to influence issues if not events. House Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills, enjoying every minute in the limelight. Duke University President Terry Sanford, run over by Wallace in his own state. Washington Senator Henry Jackson who, like Muskie, dropped out of primaries midway.

Some of the presidential possibilities--Muskie, Edward Kennedy --have been mentioned for the vice-presidential slot, as have a gaggle of others, including Mills and Sanford. McGovern, who has dropped several names over the months, thinks highly of Florida Governor Reubin Askew, perhaps the most progressive leadership example of what has been called the Emerging South. His main drawback, in purely political terms, is that he favors busing.

Zealous. The conventional Southern-running-mate notion is, of course, only one strategy available to McGovern, and, indeed, in purely traditional terms, Mills would probably do him the most good in reassuring Southern conservatives. But Nixon seems to have the South so well in hand that alternative strategies may be more useful. It is hard to think of a state that McGovern, with Mills on the ticket, could take away from Nixon, and Mills' presence would hurt McGovern among his liberal following. McGovern has been in trouble with Jews, who worry about his commitment to Israel; the front runner has mentioned Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff as a vice-presidential possibility, but that is unlikely enough to suggest that McGovern may simply have been currying votes. Then again, McGovern may hear the more zealous of his original constituency argue for an ideologically "pure" ticket. Fellow Senate liberals who more or less fit that billing would be Minnesota's Walter Mondale, 44, Wisconsin's Gaylord Nelson, 56, Illinois' Adlai Stevenson III, 41, and Alaska's Mike Gravel, 42.

McGovern could use help with labor and ethnic blocs, which would suggest Muskie or perhaps Indiana Senator Birch Bayh, 44. Former Massachusetts Governor Endicott Peabody has campaigned for the vice-presidential nomination. One intriguing strategy for McGovern might be throwing open the second choice to the convention, as Adlai Stevenson did in 1956. That might conceivably produce Kennedy as a running mate by means of a mass, emotionally rendered offer that Kennedy could not refuse.

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