The Nonconsensus

Having claimed an arsenal of 1,811 delegate votes -- 499 more than he needs to capture the Democratic presidential nomination in August -- Hubert Humphrey might understandably have been content to tend to his Washington chores or else to rusticate back home in Waverly, Minn. Instead, acting for all the world like a ravenous underdog, the Vice President scrambled through a grueling Midwestern campaign tour.

One reason for Humphrey's hyperactivity was psychological: if he stayed aloof for the final weeks before the Democratic Convention, Eugene McCarthy's supporters could claim all the more plausibly that the Administration had engineered a closed convention. Beyond that, Humphrey was still actively proselytizing among delegates and dissidents because he feared the long-range damage his candidacy might suffer if 1) a McCarthy-supported fourth party materialized, or 2) large numbers of disaffected Democrats decided to sit out the November election.

Through the Ranks. Humphrey aides reason that if anti-Administration Democrats form a splinter party or organize a massive write-in campaign for McCarthy, the Republican nominee might well walk into the White House through the Democrats' shattered ranks.

Everywhere last week Humphrey preached the politics of unity and consensus. Even Actress Ann-Margret failed to distract him from the theme during a Minneapolis celebration of Svenskar Dag (Day of the Swedes).

Sometimes he spoke with an excess of counterpoise. In St. Paul, he told an air-pollution conference that automobiles "are choking our cities and polluting our air" -- but not before he had lavished praise upon the auto industry.

Later, when a listener complained that the military had too much control over the U.S. war effort, he declared: "You don't win wars with social workers"*#151;after which he went on to deliver a paean to social workers. Similarly, when he discussed the war, Humphrey followed a militant line to the effect that "the U.S. should fulfill its commitments" with a sentiment more congenial to doves: "We have tried to do maybe too much in the world." Treading gingerly but using backroom muscle on all factions of the party, Humphrey will hold meetings, inviting Democrats of all persuasions to help shape the platform. To counter charges that he was stacking the convention, the Vice President's forces agreed to cede some delegates to McCarthy -- provided that their loss involved no danger to Humphrey's nomination.

"I'll Blast Him." As for McCarthy, if he is to break Humphrey's hammerlock on the delegates, he probably will have to challenge the credentials of some of his opponents. Dwight Eisenhower did so and defeated Robert Taft's conservative forces at the 1952 G.O.P. convention. Ike won that fight with a heavily financed, expert organization headed by Henry Cabot Lodge. McCarthy's staff at this stage seems incapable of managing any such coup. It was only last week, in fact, that the Senator's organization chief, Thomas Finney, persuaded McCarthy to begin actively seeking convention delegates and playing more traditional politics. His effort was only moderately successful. In New York, for example, 300 McCarthy partisans stalked out of a Democratic state committee meeting that allotted the Senator only 151 of the state's 65 at-large delegate votes, giving the rest to Humphrey despite McCarthy's June 18 primary victory, when his forces won half of the delegates elected from congressional districts.

The role of politician did not entirely suit McCarthy. Last week he repeated his intention of traveling to Paris to check on the progress of the peace talks and consult with the Hanoi delegation, thereby inviting charges of irresponsible meddling. When McCarthy announced that he would turn up in Atlantic City for the annual N.A.A.C.P. convention, the organization's director, Roy Wilkins, jealously defended his group's nonpartisan tradition. "If he comes here," warned Wilkins, "I'll blast him."

McCarthy appeared all the same, to address a motel reception of some 300, about half of them N.A.A.C.P. delegates. By bickering with Wilkins, McCarthy hoped in part to win favor with young Negro militants who mistrust the older N.A.A.C.P. leaders. The Senator's rapport with Negroes has not been close, even though he has repeatedly spoken out during the campaign for "the release of the colonial nation of Negroes in the U.S." He would like ultimately to gain the endorsement of Mrs. Martin Luther King Jr., who shares his antiwar stand. Meanwhile, his somewhat clumsy bid for the black vote came as a relief to the Humphrey camp, which in recent weeks had begun to view the professor's quiet powers as something eerie and unnatural.

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