The President Lay Dying: A TLIAW
- Thread starter Vidal
- Start date
I'm not taking one side or another here, but it's worth remembering that Carter wasn't exactly a great candidate - this is a dude that nearly blew a 33-point lead in the polls. Sure, it's possible any other Democrat loses to Ford or Reagan, but given the overall environment it's just as likely they win in a landslide.
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If Jackson could've gotten through the primaries, he would've won the general election. The unions will give him their full support, and Ford is just about the only figure that could've made Jackson look charismatic. I do think McCarthy would've done better ITTL because Jackson is so tied to Vietnam. Carter's fresh appeal really deflated McCarthy's candidacy. But I don't see him clearing 5%. The war was over by 1976 and McCarthy was a pretty quixotic Hal Philip Walker anti-establishment candidate by that point. I'm guessing the Venn diagram between voters who voted McCarthy and those who didn't want any President was pretty much a circle. Jackson would've probably done pretty well with independents and moderate Republicans as well. I don't think Reagan would've ever been Ford's nominee but the threat of facing Jackson in the general is probably the only thing that would've made Ford ask.
That said I think almost every Democrat this side of George Wallace beats Gerald Ford. Allan Lichtman gave eight keys against the incumbent party in 1976, but crucially among them was the nomination contest. A sitting President has never faced a nomination contest and stayed in office post-Civil War.
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I suggested Bumpers. I don’t think Kentucky is Southern enough, and Chiles was popular in Florida but not especially prominent elsewhere.
A two-term Jackson presidency and all of the resulting foreign policy fuckups could lead to a anti-imperialist backlash later on.
marktaha
Banned
Jackson's big mistake was missing New Hampshire.However.I still think Ford would have beaten any Democrat bar Carter.
October 9, 1977
October 9, 1977
Hubert Humphrey laboriously opened his eyes. He was tired, unable to get out of bed. His throat was dry. His eyes tinged with pain. His breathing was slow. He knew that Death — who had, for the last year, stalked him with eagerness — had finally come for him. It was just less than a year since he’d been elected president. Since he’d gotten the diagnosis. He had been president for just 293 days. When he died in a few hours, he would end the third-shortest presidency in American history, out-serving only William Henry Harrison and James Garfield.
He lay in his bed in the White House residence, holding the hand of his beloved Muriel. His son, Senator Skip Humphrey, was also in the room. Before him the president lay dying.
Skip left the room to find his father’s press secretary. They needed to put out a statement that his condition had taken its final turn. They workshopped something quickly and released in the White House doctor’s name. The President’s condition had grown serious in the last few days. He was being made comfortable at home in the White House and was declining further treatment.
Chief of Staff Sherman asked Skip if they should dispatch the letter invoking the 25th Amendment so that Jackson could assume office. Humphrey had signed it months before so it could be used in the event his condition worsened. Skip didn’t think it was necessary. It was only a matter of time.
He roamed the halls of the West Wing while his father, drifting in and out of sleep, spent his final moments. Skip took a seat behind the desk in the Oval Office, looking at the photos of him as a child. The photos of his parents. Above the mantle rested a portrait of Harry Truman. Busts of Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Martin Luther King, Jr. rested on nearby tables. It was a room of history.
Skip thought about what his father’s legacy would be. Surely, there would always be some trepidation about his decision to not be forthright with his ailment if the full truth ever became known to the public. That was deserved. But he hoped that most Americans would remember his father for the courage he displayed at the 1948 Democratic National Convention and for the full employment act he had signed into law during his brief presidency. He hoped that would be his father’s legacy.
His hands in his pockets, he walked along the colonnade back to the Residence. The autumn air was biting. He noticed that outside the White House fences, a crowd was gathering. It was too bright for candles, but they brought flowers and laid them along the posts. Skip Humphrey brushed away a tear. They knew it, too — that inside this historic mansion their president lay dying.
His mother rose to put her arm around him when he came back into the room. His father was still alive, if barely. The president’s daughter, Nancy, helped him sip water through a straw.
The president drew in a deep and mighty breath. He looked at each of his children. He looked at his beloved Muriel. He offered them all a feeble smile. The president who had not spoken in over a day opened his mouth and whispered, “I love you.”
He turned to squint out the window at the crowd gathering for the final time and then Hubert Humphrey, who had asked the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights, who had finally — after four attempts — won the presidency only to spend less than a year occupying the office he’d chased for 16, closed his eyes and drifted away to meet his Maker. Muriel pressed her eyes shut as she felt her husband’s life pass from his hand. She refused to let go. Her son, Skip, at her side, hugged her tight. He put his hand out on his father’s skeletal legs and squeezed. The end had come for Hubert Horatio Humphrey.
The family took a moment with their husband and father. They knew what came next. The spectacle of lying in state. The riderless horse. The flight back to Minnesota. But for now they took the time to remember their father before the nation would be called upon to remember a president.
A few minutes later, Skip Humphrey left his father’s bedroom to find Norman Sherman. He needn’t travel far. Sherman had been posted outside the bedroom in a chair. He rose at the sight of Skip.
“Norman,” he said in a steady voice, “I need to call Vice President Jackson.”
• • •
Ham Jordan answered his phone with a gruff, “Hello?” The receiver lay wedged against his shoulder as Jordan shifted to get comfortable in his chair. His office was nothing like the one he’d enjoyed in the Old Executive Office Building, when he’d served as Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States. Now, in the James V. Forrestal Building — home to the new Department of Energy — Jordan enjoyed a dazzling view of the Smithsonian Castle, but any proximity to power had vanished.
“Ham, I’m calling with uh — well, it’s some bad news.” It was the voice of the White House Chief of Staff. “Ham, the uh — the President’s dead.”
Jordan winced, keeping his eyes shut and letting the severity of the moment wash over him. As he bit his lip he felt the pain — not of teeth piercing through skin but of that far worse Washington malady. It was a feeling known by many in this town — by Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater, Adlai Stevenson and even — at one point — the now-deceased president himself. It was the pain of what might have been — the pain of feeling power pass you by. If only Jimmy had listened, Ham thought to himself. If only he had listened.
With a quick nod, Jordan ended the conversation. “Alright. I’m sorry to hear that. Thanks for calling.” And he brought the phone down to the receiver with such force he was sure it would break. When he realized he hadn’t destroyed government property, Ham picked up the phone again. This time it was he who needed to make a call.
“Mr. Secretary,” he said, his voice hollow with regret. Even the title he used to address Jimmy Carter betrayed the opportunity both of them had missed.
“What is it, Ham?”
Carter was home in Georgetown, where he and Rosalynn, sitting in their respective arm chairs, had been enjoying some light reading.
“Mr. Secretary, President Humphrey is dead.”
Carter had known it already, as soon as Ham phoned them after dark. Now that he was Secretary of Energy, there were rarely calls to home. He never had a reason to dash to the Situation Room. There was never a need to interrupt his pleasure reading after a day at the office. The Secretary of Energy had been sold to him as a chance to transform America’s future. Now, Carter realized instead what it had been all along: A chance to sideline him — a final opportunity for Washington to get the last laugh.
Still, in this moment, Carter thought not of the opportunity that passed him by. He did not think about that alternate universe in which, at this very moment, Secret Service agents whisked him away, bringing him to the White House to put an arm around a grieving Muriel Humphrey. He did not think about how, in another world, he was waiting for the arrival of Warren Burger, donning a black robe, who would give him the Oath to repeat. He did not think about how, in that other world, he was assuming the most powerful office on Earth. Instead, he thought of Hubert Humphrey. The late president. The happy warrior. A man Carter considered a friend, despite all of the ups and downs in their relationship. Carter had looked up to him, admired the tenacity of his spirit. He’d been honored to join the ticket as Humphrey’s Vice President — even if the defeat at the Convention had stung him. When his president asked him to go out on his own and lead a newly-created Department of Energy to relevance, he blinked only once before saying yes. It was his duty.
He thought of the hotel room in New York, where he’d received Humphrey’s call. “Jimmy, I’d like you to be my Vice President,” Humphrey had said. And, just as he would do again a year later, Carter blinked just once before he accepted his assignment.
“Thank you, Ham,” he said. “Please make sure we send our condolences to Mrs. Humphrey. I’ll call her in the morning.”
Rosalynn, hearing her husband’s words, reached out to put a hand on his wrist. She looked at him with warm eyes. Washington had betrayed her Jimmy — kept him from the office he’d worked so hard to achieve. They would not do it again. Jimmy Carter, despite all of this cursed town’s efforts, would become President of the United States. Rosalynn Carter knew.
• • •
The temperature hovered in the mid-fifties and there was no humidity in the air. It was a fair autumn day in the nation’s capital as dignitaries gathered to commemorate a departed president. The day, just now dawning, was soon to behold the pageantry that was typical of such an occasion. Jimmy Carter, already awake, sipped his coffee as the sun came into view. He was sitting at the kitchen table of his Georgetown home.
Carter’s first obligation that day was to join the rest of the cabinet and various elected officials at the Capitol Building, where they saw off the casket of Hubert Humphrey. Flag-draped, the coffin steadily approached the door of the Capitol. The military men carrying it paused. A 21-gun salute commenced.
The first seven bullets pierced the sky.
Holding Rosalynn’s hand, Carter’s mind drifted to memories of James Earl Carter, Sr, his beloved father. He could see the image of his father, wearing a straw Panama hat, cigarette dangling from his mouth. And he remembered all that his father had seen and done. In those final moments of his father’s life, Carter had felt the weight of his father’s legacy fall onto him. Most Americans would not remember the senior James Earl Carter for any reason other than the fact he was Jimmy’s dad, but to Carter, his father carried a legacy larger than life. He’d been a successful farmer, a deacon, a beloved community member, a state senator.
Carter was raised at a time of intense racial segregation — a de facto system that Earl, which was how most in Plains knew him, had no problem upholding. But he was impressed to learn of his father’s quiet ways of pushing the system. He generously lent money to a Black man so he could purchase a car that enabled him to move out of Plains. It was Earl Carter who build a small wooden casket for the two-week old baby of a Black tenant farmer who had just died. On his deathbed, Earl had summoned his son Jimmy to bring him his ledger books, not so he could give his son guidance on debts to collect but instead to cancel the debts of all those who owed him money. [1]
Seven more bullets pierced the sky and Carter shivered.
The flag-draped coffin sat still as Carter considered his father’s expectations. His father’s heightened standards of excellence — of perfection. His father’s belief that one should finish what one started. Earl Carter was a simple man from a simple town, but he possessed great hopes and dreams, and he expected his son Jimmy to meet them.
The final round of bullets burst from the barrels of the guns.
Carter, squinting into the curiously bright gray sky, considered the man lying dead in the casket that was now slowly creeping down the steps of the Capitol as the Marine Corps Band played. He thought about the man he had revered and how, in the final acts of his presidency, he’d conspired to keep Jimmy Carter’s life ambition unfulfilled. And his mind drifted again to his father and what Earl Carter would have said to his son in such a moment. And as the casket marched forward, nearing the hearse, Carter realized what it was his father would tell him. Finish what you started.
Then, all of official Washington gathered for the funeral of Hubert H. Humphrey at the National Cathedral in Northwest Washington. The Carters included. The Energy Secretary wore a pained expression throughout the service, especially at the beginning as congregants milled about awaiting the arrival of President Jackson. Not one person who shook Carter’s hand that day could help but think about the fact it should have been him for whom they waited. Since Humphrey’s death days earlier, the conspiracy to keep Carter from the Oval Office began to emerge in dribs and drabs.
Yes, Humphrey had sense that something was wrong — it was not yet known that he understood he had cancer as early as November 1976 — and felt that Carter would not be a compatible successor ideologically. He had wanted someone else, the rumor went.
The rest of the day unfolded in splendid melancholy. The whole time, Carter gripped Rosalynn’s hand. There were two eulogies that day. The first came from Minnesota’s own Walter Mondale. The second came from President Henry Jackson. Both men praised the New Deal Democrat whose presidency had been “too brief.”
After the service, when Humphrey’s casket was on its way to Minnesota aboard Air Force One, Carter and some of his staff gathered at his Georgetown home. They shared dinner and caught up on one another’s personal lives. By nine o’clock the guests were trickling their way out of Carter’s home until it was just Ham Jordan and the man who may, tonight, have been president, if only he’d not made a fateful decision.
Jordan asked his boss what he was feeling.
Carter replied simply, “I resent most of all that they made us look like fools.”
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[1] All of these anecdotes come from His Very Best, 87.
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Beautiful work. A small correction is needed however.
Thanks so much for your work on this.
Given the date it should say under.
Thanks so much for your work on this.
