(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Chicago has a rich history of political conventions, and with the 2024 Democratic National Convention (DNC) beginning Monday, WBBM’s Rob Hart revisited three conventions that left an indelible mark on the country.
Hart spoke with political analyst, author and historian Jeff Greenfield about the DNC of 1944, the Republican National Convention (RNC) of 1952 and the DNC of 1968. Each story can be found below.
By the way, WBBM’s guide to the 2024 DNC can be found online. It has the breakdown for street closures, speaker schedules and more.
1944 DNC: A running mate changes the rest of the 20th century
In July 1944, Democrats gathered in Chicago to nominate Franklin Delano Roosevelt for a fourth term as president. Four years earlier — also in Chicago — Roosevelt was nominated for a third term over his then-Vice President John Nance Garner.
Garner was succeeded as vice president by Henry Wallace, who was Roosevelt's secretary of agriculture.
“Wallace was very popular among, for instance, farmers because his whole family had been very much involved with agriculture,” Greenfield said. “He was a hero to progressives because he did have a liberal view of a lot of things, which by 1944 was a problem.”
Greenfield noted that, in 1944, Roosevelt's health was on the mind of Democratic party insiders.
“There was no way that Franklin Roosevelt was going to live out a fourth term,” he said.
Given Roosevelt’s health, his 1944 vice presidential pick was closely watched. Wallace, though, was unacceptable to more conservative party leaders. Roosevelt eventually settled on Missouri Sen. Harry Truman, who ascended to the presidency when Roosevelt died the following April.
Greenfield said the Truman pick meant Wallace, who had a dovish view of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union, would not have been president at the dawn of the Cold War.
“How would [Wallace] have responded to Stalin’s moves into eastern Europe?” Greenfield said. “Would he have resisted him? Would there have been a Wallace Doctrine, like there was a Truman Doctrine? Would there have been a [North Atlantic Treaty Organization]?”
The decision also spared America from the presidency of James Byrnes, the former South Carolina governor, senator and Supreme Court justice.
“If James Byrnes had somehow been the president, you would’ve had a Democratic party led by an ardent segregationist,” Greenfield said.
All because of one convention in Chicago.
1952 RNC: A Chicago convention makes television history
By 1952, Republicans had been locked out of the White House for 20 years.
That year’s convention, which took place at Chicago’s International Amphitheatre, was a battle between conservative and liberal Republicans. The former group wanted to nominate Ohio Sen. Robert Taft, and the latter group backed Gen. Dwight Eisenhower for president.
It was the first time a political convention was covered live on television, which meant the political fight was taken into living rooms across the country.
“It was the first time TV was in millions and millions of homes,” Greenfield said. “There were floor flights, quite literally, floor fights [with] fisticuffs. There were, tunneled in the hall, furious fights about the credentials of different states.”
Greenfield said voters saw Illinois Sen. Everett Dirksen, a Taft ally, blast the liberal wing of the party, which was led by New York Gov. Tom Dewey.
“We followed you before, and you took us down the road to defeat,” said Dirksen.
Greenfield said viewers, though, who were outraged by the parliamentary maneuvering of the Taft forces, made their voices heard. They liked Ike.
“The convention was flooded with telegrams urging the delegates not to go with the Taft forces, and that’s how Eisenhower wound up with the nomination,” he said.
For the first time, party insiders had to contend with a new power player: television.
“The power of television, for the first time in 1952, was demonstrated powerfully because it affected what the convention did,” he said.
1968 DNC: A president has second thoughts
Chicago and America itself was near a boil in the summer of 1968.
Riots, assassinations and the toll of the war in Vietnam led to a convention at an International Amphitheatre that was surrounded by barbed wire fencing.
The battle for the democratic nomination involved Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy, and South Dakota Gov. George McGovern, who was standing in for the murdered Robert Kennedy.
Although President Lyndon Johnson had famously announced he would not run for re-election, there was evidence that the president was having second thoughts.
“He not only had total control of the convention, but there was at least a theory in his mind,” Greenfield said. “It was his birthday during the convention, and his notion was he would go to Chicago to celebrate his birthday. In some way, there was at least, I think, in his mind, a thin possibility that the convention would be dissatisfied with Hubert Humphrey, would not nominate Eugene McCarthy or George McGovern — that he might have a chance.”
It was another what-if scenario in a year that was full of them.
Chicago didn’t host another political convention until the DNC in 1996.
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