Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [61]
Later that night, when we were back in the hotel, Joyce and I looked out of the windows again. The demonstration began to take a less peaceful turn. Some in the crowd started to attack the police, hoping to provoke a violent confrontation that would garner press attention. The vastly outnumbered Chicago police tried to keep the crowd under control. Finally, the police deployed tear gas. The gas filled the lobby of the Hilton and eventually made its way through some lower floors. As the situation grew more tense, some officers took tougher actions. Police in robin egg blue helmets charged into the demonstrators, wielding night sticks and dragging some of the troublemakers to police vans. Other officers pinned people against the wall of the Conrad Hilton and, in the process of subduing them, some hotel windows were broken.9 The agitators in the crowd responded with more violence.
As the rioting continued, members of our listening post checked in with Richard Nixon and reported on what was happening. The unfolding disaster in Chicago understandably captured his attention. He asked a number of questions and expressed dismay at the level of violence. Like many politicians, Nixon was interested in gathering information about his political opponents—a few years later, of course, the country would find out just how interested.
The harmful aftereffects of the chaos in Chicago lingered for months. It cast an unwelcome shadow on the Democratic convention and on Hubert Humphrey’s presidential campaign. What the country saw on television was ugly, and the political fallout was substantial. What I witnessed left a painful memory and a lingering sense of sorrow about what had happened in Chicago, one of America’s great cities and my hometown.
I was struck by the fact that Nixon was running against a Democratic opponent who in many ways was his opposite. Aptly labeled “the happy warrior,” Humphrey was upbeat and engaging. He was also tough. Reciting the litany of previous incarnations of a new Nixon persona in 1952, 1956, 1960, and 1962, Humphrey noted, “Now, I read about the new Nixon of 1968. Ladies and gentlemen. Anyone who’s had his political face lifted so many times can’t be very new.”10 I had a feeling a Humphrey-Nixon debate would not help our side.
The Nixon campaign agreed—the candidate had not forgotten his difficulties debating John F. Kennedy in 1960. That September, Bryce Harlow, a friend and well-known Washington figure, came to my congressional office. Harlow was working hard on the Nixon campaign. He told me that Nixon did not want to give Humphrey the chance to debate and to untether himself from the unpopular Johnson. Furthermore, Democrats in Congress, at Humphrey’s and LBJ’s urging, were proposing to suspend the equal time provisions so that Governor George Wallace would be able to participate without any other third-party candidates. Wallace, a segregationist candidate from Alabama, was running for president as an independent. His candidacy promised to siphon support from Nixon in the south, and like Humphrey he was quick and entertaining in a debate format. Harlow told me Nixon was disinclined to give Wallace any airtime and that he considered it unfair for just one third-party candidate to be included.
Harlow asked me to help stop the suspension of the equal-time provisions that would have allowed for the three-way debate. I thought we had substantial common interests on the issue: I agreed with Harlow’s political assessment that a three-way debate was the worst scenario for Nixon, and I disapproved of the Democrats’ last-minute attempt to jury-rig the rules. I also thought this might be an opportunity for my group in Congress to get some attention for the issues we wanted to advance. “Rumsfeld’s Raiders