From Defeat Rises a Free Spirit

Too old, too familiar, too talkative, too scarred, too compromised, just too much of everything--all of these terms have been applied to Hubert Horatio Humphrey. Then what is this? When a reporter last week asked President Ford whom he considered his likeliest opponent in the 1976 race, he replied, "Humphrey probably is as good a guess as any."

Humphrey demonstrates the risk of writing the political obituary of any politician who still walks the earth. After his loss to Richard Nixon in the presidential election of 1968, and then his defeat by George McGovern in the primaries of 1972, he seemed extinct. But within the past few weeks, the 64-year-old Minnesotan has risen from the political dead, looking more buoyant than ever. "There's no doubt about it," says Presidential Candidate Morris Udall, "Hubert has the bug again." Adds a top staffer at the Democratic National Committee: "The Humphrey talk is everywhere now. You hear it not only from state party people but from elected officials. You hear it from blacks, you hear it from unions. You hear it from moderates and extreme liberals. You hear a lot of people saying, 'This is the year for Humphrey.' "

A Unifier. Humphrey benefits, of course, from the weakness of the competition. The seven announced candidates --Udall, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, Lloyd Bentsen, Jimmy Carter, Milton Shapp, Terry Sanford and Fred Harris --have not aroused any enthusiasm in an electorate supposedly yearning for a new face. And with Ted Kennedy repeatedly rejecting all talk of a campaign, Humphrey is increasingly seen as a unifier who can keep the factious Democratic Party together. He still maintains loyal support among labor, blacks and farmers. Says a staffer on the national committee: "Any other candidate who depended on support from these groups would find Humphrey very formidable." His political base in the Midwest, especially in his home state of Minnesota, is secure. "Many Democrats are champing at the bit to do something for Humphrey," declares Tom Kelm, chief of staff for Minnesota Governor Wendell Anderson, who says that Humphrey is his first choice for the nomination, and his second choice too.

Since Humphrey returned to the Senate in 1970, he has risen again to a position of leadership. As chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, he has become a chief spokesman for the Democratic program of housing subsidies, national health insurance, and long-term energy and economic planning. Though much of this legislation has been rebuffed or vetoed by Ford, Humphrey has led the disorganized opposition with his customary good cheer and sportsmanship, disarming his critics and winning allies. George McGovern, for one, has strongly hinted that he would support a Humphrey candidacy.

Aside from the political scars he has accumulated, notably from old liberal hostility to his support of the Viet Nam War, Humphrey has some other liabilities. Last spring his 1970 campaign manager, Jack Chestnut, was convicted of accepting illegal campaign contributions from the dairy producers, who also helped finance the Nixon campaign in return for higher price supports for milk. Like Nixon, Humphrey ran into tax trouble when he tried to take a sizable deduction for the donation of his vice-presidential papers. He was required to pay an additional $240,000 to the U.S. Government. In addition, Humphrey had to undergo a series of debilitating X-ray treatments in 1973 for a tumor on the bladder; apparently he has fully recovered.

Run and Win. In public, Humphrey's yearning to become President has abated. "I am a U.S. Senator with no overriding ambition to be anything else," he says. "I am a free spirit." But he has acknowledged that he would accept a draft for the nomination ("I'd accept and run and win"), although he would not actively seek the nomination by going through the bone-crushing primaries. For the moment, his strategy rests on the assumption that no one will reach the convention with enough delegates to win, since there are too many candidates and too many primaries. In that case, the convention will be deadlocked and the nomination will be "brokered."

Humphrey has been doing s a little maneuvering. While he has not discouraged talk of a Humphrey-McGovern ticket, which would appeal to the party's left wing, he has also made overtures to the right by indicating a willingness to come to terms with George Wallace, who may arrive at the convention with one-third of the delegates. Humphrey has suggested that he would not place the Alabaman on the ticket but would let him participate in drawing up the party platform and in selecting a Cabinet if the Democrats win the election. Most comfortable when he is campaigning hardest ("I love it all," he says, as he alternately grabs hands and waves to traffic at a factory gate at 6 in the morning), Humphrey figures that for a man dedicated to what he once called "the politics of joy," life begins at 65.

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