Drama and Passion Galore

By Ed Magnuson

Despite its foregone conclusion, the convention was a sizzler of a show

As Walter Mondale prepared to end his long march to the presidential nomination at last week's Democratic Convention, he and his staff left no detail, large or small, to chance. Yet no planner can manufacture drama and passion, and the Democrats' four-day spectacular in San Francisco surprised everybody with its abundance of both. From New York Governor Mario Cuomo's poignant evocation of the party's melting-pot past to Jesse Jackson's sweaty, moving, 51-minute tour de force to Geraldine Ferraro's winning performance in her unaccustomed role as history maker, the Democrats put on a sizzler of a show. And to end it, even Fritz Mondale, with his vision of opening doors to the future, gave what may have been the best speech of his life, one that he had honed through no fewer than 15 drafts.

Yet Mondale very nearly scuttled all his meticulous plans with an uncharacteristically impulsive act on the eve of the convention: his move to oust Democratic National Committee Chairman Charles Manatt. Presidential nominees usually replace their party chairmen with their own people, but they generally wait until after the convention has ended. Even so, the firing of Manatt would probably not have caused much of a national stir had it not been for Mondale's choice of Bert Lance, President Carter's scandal-tainted Budget Director, to replace him. Whether they liked Manatt or not, and many did not, scores of delegates rushed to his defense. Willie Brown Jr., California's Democratic assembly speaker, sarcastically professed to see a plus for Mondale in the debacle. "He will now be perceived as a miracle worker," cracked Brown. "He made Chuck Manatt into a sympathetic figure."

Mondale, who felt indebted to Lance for helping him win crucial primaries in Alabama and Georgia last March 13, evidently hoped to ram through the appointment while the convention was celebrating Ferraro's nomination as Vice President. But a series of news leaks, riled the delegates before they arrived in San Francisco. By the time Mondale showed up on Monday, they were fighting mad, even though the Mondale camp had wisely decided to back off, at least halfway.

Manatt was kept on, but with a watchful Mondale loyalist, Michael Berman, installed as director--and de facto ruler--of the D.N.C., and Lance was given overall charge of the Mondale campaign. It had been a damaging blunder: not only had Mondale saddled himself with an unseemly link to the Carter Administration; he had seemed weak and vacillating in handling the uproar. Said Campaign Chairman James Johnson: "We did it in a clumsy way, and we wish we hadn't."

Mondale's two opponents, Jackson and Gary Hart, saw the dissension over Lance as a last chance to pry away Mondale delegates and block a first-ballot victory. Hart's aides happily spread the word that some 50 delegates who had been unpledged or in Mondale's camp had expressed interest in voting for Hart out of disgust over the Lance affair. Mondale's retreat, however, took much of the steam out of the fledgling revolt.

The Lance fiasco put delegates in a relatively subdued mood as they assembled in the 836-ft.-long convention hall. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley sounded an opening plea for unity that would be heard again and again: "We are not here to beat up on each other, but to beat up on Ronald Reagan."

The advice was followed with powerful effect by Cuomo. At times clasping his hands like a lawyer appealing to jurors, the Governor let his voice rise and fall to convey sympathy and deep conviction. He cited Reagan's claim that America is "a shining city on a hill" and then turned the words against him. "A shining city is perhaps all the President sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well." With biting irony, Cuomo declared: "There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don't see, in the places that you don't visit in your shining city." Cuomo urged his party to "get the American public to look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship, to the reality, the hard substance of things." People should not be diverted by "the President's amiability," he said, but must "separate the salesman from the product."

Speaking solemnly, but with a kind of coiled power, throughout his 39-minute address, Cuomo charged that Reagan would not have won the 1980 election if he had told voters that he would "pay for his so-called economic recovery with bankruptcies, unemployment . . . and the largest Government debt known to humankind ... That was an election won with smoke and mirrors and illusions. It is that kind of recovery we have now as well." Setting out a Democratic campaign theme, Cuomo said his party believes in "the family of America ... the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all." Cuomo was interrupted 50 times by applause and by chants of "Mario, Mario."

By Tuesday, Mondale's strategists faced three lingering obstacles to a harmonious convention. First, there were rumors of an incipient move among the 271 Hispanic delegates and alternates to abstain on the first roll call, as a way to dramatize their opposition to what they consider the discriminatory nature of the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration bill, which has been passed by both houses of Congress but in different forms that still must be reconciled. Second, Jackson was pushing four minority reports that sought changes in the party platform and using his sway over black voters as a lever to get them passed. Finally, Hart was backing one platform change and was still insisting, with no tangible evidence, that he would eventually win the nomination.

Hispanic disgruntlement came to a head at a noisy caucus on Tuesday morning. Mario Obledo, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, made an impassioned argument that Mondale had not taken a firm enough stand against the immigration bill. "Abstain! Abstain!" shouted delegates. A resolution advising abstention finally lost on a 38-to-38 tie amid boos and shouting.

The Jackson platform challenge was more troublesome. Jackson was annoyed at not being consulted about the Lance appointment, complaining to numerous groups, "For women it's Ferraro, for the South it's Bert Lance, but for the blacks and Hispanics, so far they can point to nobody or no concrete commitment." The Mondale forces easily defeated Jackson planks calling for the U.S. to renounce the first use of nuclear weapons (2,216 to 1,406); a real decrease in defense spending rather than a modest rise (2,592 to 1,128); and the elimination of runoff primaries when no candidate receives a majority in the first vote (2,501 to 1,253). The intensity of black feeling over the dual-primary issue was demonstrated in almost brutal fashion when Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young spoke against the Jackson plank. Other black delegates booed and shouted throughout Young's brief speech. "You damn turncoat!" screamed one black delegate. "Uncle Tom!" cried another. Sweating profusely, Young looked shaken as he left the podium.

The Mondale forces wisely compromised on the fourth Jackson proposal, which called for a variety of affirmative-action techniques to provide greater job opportunities for minority applicants. Mondale operatives finally agreed to support the plank if Jackson would drop his demand for "quotas" in employment and substitute "verifiable measurements." This partial victory did not end black restiveness, and flyers circulated on the floor urging the 700 or so black delegates to vote for Jackson on the first roll call.

While Hart wanted to block Mondale from a first-ballot win, he had been boxed in. Mondale strategists had reluctantly agreed not to resist Hart's one floor motion, which sought to ban the use of U.S. troops, particularly in the Persian Gulf, until after all negotiations had failed and only if U.S. security was at stake. In return, Hart instructed his delegates to vote against the Jackson dual-primary plank. In an earlier unifying move, Mondale had agreed to let Hart address the convention on Wednesday night, right before the nomination balloting was scheduled to begin.

Still, the frustration felt by blacks raised fresh uncertainties about how Jackson would handle his long-awaited hour of glory at the convention podium on Tuesday night. When he appeared, he somehow managed to lift everyone, turning the political gathering into a revival meeting, complete with a humble confession and a plea for forgiveness. Subdued and speaking softly at first, he brought tears, then stirred delegates to shouts of joyful agreement with the powerful litany of his attack on Reagan's policies.

The first sustained applause came as Jackson vowed not to be a spoiler in the coming campaign. "There is a time to compete and a time to cooperate," he said. Then, in muted tones, he summed up his conduct as a candidate: "If in my high moments, I have done some good, offered some service, shed some light, healed some wounds, rekindled some hope ... or in any way ... helped somebody, then this campaign has not been in vain." Next he made a confession: "If in my low moments, in word, deed or attitude, through some error of temper, taste or tone, I have caused anyone discomfort, created pain or revived someone's fears, that was not my truest self.. . Please forgive me. Charge it to my head... so limited in its finitude; [not to] my heart, which is boundless in its love for the entire human family. I am not a perfect servant. I am a public servant... Be patient. God is not finished with me yet." Some delegates shouted, "Jesse! Jesse!" Others wept. Many did both.

Jackson made it clear he was reaching out to Jews, offended by his references to "Hymie town" and his slowness to repudiate the anti-Semitic rantings of the Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan. "We are much too intelligent, much too bound by our Judeo-Christian heritage . . . much too threatened as historical scapegoats, to go on divided, one from another." His face glistening by now, the Baptist preacher closed on an upbeat note. "Our time has come. Our faith, hope and dreams have prevailed. Our time has come." The emotional night ended as delegates, black and white, clasped hands high and swayed rhythmically to a stirring spiritual, Ordinary People.

But the next morning black frustration flared again. At a packed caucus of black delegates, Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King Jr., pleaded for unity. Her eyes brimming, she said, "Those of you who wronged Andy Young need to say, 'I'm sorry.' " She also was booed. Later, Jackson scolded the black delegates. "It is a source of embarrassment to me for those of you who respect me and my leadership to boo or hiss any black leader," he said. Looking at King, his eyes now tearful too, he added, "She deserves to be heard."

Appearing at the black caucus with Ferraro, Mondale took off his suit jacket and also appealed for a united front. He praised Jackson's address as "one of the most remarkable speeches in modern times." After noting his own strong record on civil rights, he said amid cheers, "I do not ask you today simply to join us in the campaign, but in Government, in the courts and in the Cabinet." Any large-scale defection of Mondale delegates apparently had been stemmed.

As the Wednesday-night balloting approached, only one substantive question remained: What kind of message would Hart deliver in his prime-time convention swan song? As it turned out, Hart paid obeisance to Mondale without explicitly abandoning his forlorn quest for the nomination. He praised his opponent's "unsurpassed grit, perseverance and determination." He told the loudly applauding delegates that whatever their nomination choice, he would "devote every waking hour and every ounce of energy to the defeat of Ronald Reagan." And he added a nice line: "This is one Hart you will not leave in San Francisco."

Still, Hart could not resist some not-so-veiled echoes of his earlier complaints about Mondale. "We have failed when we became cautious and complacent," he said of his party. He criticized "the policies of the comfortable past that do not answer the challenges of tomorrow." His followers gave Hart a warm ovation, and some wept in the realization that his candidacy was over. Others in the hall felt he had been less than gracious in defeat.

The actual roll call proved anticlimactic. The final tally, before Hart made the traditional motion for a unanimous decision, was Mondale, 2,191; Hart, 1,200; Jackson, 465. Mondale had fallen just nine votes shy of the 2,200 targeted by his staff and was a comfortable 224 votes above a majority.

Now the remaining suspense centered on personalities and performance. In a convention of blazing oratory, how would the nation's first woman vice-presidential candidate stand up to her first big test? How would the reserved Mondale measure up against the forceful Cuomo and mercurial Jackson? The answers, when they came on Thursday, were pleasing to the Democratic Party.

As the convention's versatile band played the theme from New York, New York, the slender woman stepped with poise into the hall's glaring lights to accept the historic nomination and one of the emotional convention's most spirited ovations. Once again the faces of delegates, beaming or moist or both, reflected the excitement of the breakthrough.

"My name is Geraldine Ferraro," she said in a low-keyed but firm voice when the tumult subsided. "I stand before you to proclaim tonight: America is a land where dreams can come true for all of us." Her selection, she said, sent "a powerful signal to all Americans. There are no doors we cannot unlock. We will place no limit on achievement." Stressing the openness of her party, she declared, "Change is in the air, just as surely as when John Kennedy beckoned America to a New Frontier; when Sally Ride rocketed into space, and when Rev. Jesse Jackson ran for office of President of the United States." More cheers.

On campaign issues, Ferraro said that as an assistant district attorney in New York, "I put my share of criminals behind bars ... If you break the law, you must pay for your crime." She charged that because of the Reagan Administration, "the rules are rigged" against too many Americans. "It isn't right that a woman should get paid 59-c- on the dollar for the same work as a man." Turning to cuts in student-loan funds, Ferraro bluntly addressed Reagan: "You fit the classic definition of a cynic; you know the price of everything, but the value of nothing."

Mondale was introduced by a fit-looking, relaxed and sardonic Edward Kennedy, who lashed Reagan with Boston clubhouse punches. "Send him back to Hollywood, which is where both Star Wars and Ronald Reagan really belong," shouted Kennedy, who went on: "By his choice of Geraldine Ferraro, Walter Mondale has already done more for this country in one short day than Ronald Reagan has done in four long years."

In his acceptance speech Mondale avoided the high-pitched delivery that sometimes sounds shrill on television, speaking more slowly and in more natural if nasal tones. Mondale contended that "the drowsy harmony of the Republican Party" contrasts with the open debates of the Democratic Party, and he claimed that there was another difference: "They are a portrait of privilege, and we are a mirror of America." Addressing anyone who voted for Reagan in 1980, he said, "I heard you. And our party heard you." He had learned since then, he conceded, "that America must have a strong defense, and a sober view of the Soviets ... That government must be as well managed as it is well meaning ... that a healthy, growing private economy is the key to the future." Added Mondale: "If Mr. Reagan wants to rerun the 1980 campaign, fine. Let them fight over the past. We're fighting for the American future--and that's why we're going to win this campaign."

"By the end of my first term," he vowed, "I will reduce the Reagan budget deficit by two-thirds." Mondale said he would use his veto power to check needless spending if Congress did not. "To the corporations and the freeloaders who play the loopholes and pay no taxes," said he, "my message is: your free ride is over."

Mondale also promised "a renaissance in education, in science and learning," advising parents to "turn off that television" so students can do their homework. On foreign affairs, he pledged that he would "work for peace from my first day in office and not from my first day of campaigning for re-election."

Buoyed by their rousing reception on their night of triumph, the two Democratic candidates moved onto the floor to shake the hands of delighted delegates, while the band struck up rock tunes designed to appeal to the younger generation that the Democrats are courting. They returned to the podium for the traditional show of unity, with the defeated candidates closing ranks behind the winner. The delegates swayed once more in unison as a black Broadway musical performer, Jennifer Holliday, belted out The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Rabbi Jacob Pressman pronounced the benediction.

Months of strain within the party--the bitter primary fights, the wrenching divisions between blacks and Jews, the philosophical struggles between old-style liberals and neoliberals--seemed to fade in that joyous, convention-ending tableau. Democrats being Democrats, however, at least some of those strains are likely to come back in sharp focus before November.

--By Ed Magnuson. Reported by Benjamin W. Cate, David S. Jackson and Christopher Ogden/San Francisco

With reporting by Benjamin W. Cate, David S. Jackson, Christopher Ogden/San Francisco