5 Top Infamous National Convention Moments
As the GOP gathers in Tampa and Democrats gear up for Charlotte, National Journal takes a look back at five of the most notorious moments in the parties’ national convention history.
1. The Riot Police Charge In. Police bludgeoned antiwar protesters with batons, young people fled clouds of tear gas, and delegates entered a convention hall ringed by barbed wire and armed police. Antiwar protests rocked Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, while delegates clashed over whether or not to include a “peace” plank in the party platform. From the podium, Sen. Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut accused Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley of using “Gestapo” tactics against protesters. TV viewers at home could not hear the mayor’s angry response, but they sure could read his lips. The convention chaos and the violence on the streets shocked the nation, turning many voters against the Democrats and toward the “law and order” campaign of Republican Richard Nixon.
2. A Hurricane Strikes. Landlocked Minnesota doesn’t tend to experience a lot of hurricane damage. But the 2008 Republican convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul suffered an unexpected storm-induced disruption when Hurricane Gustav made landfall in Louisiana on the day the convention was supposed to begin. News that a major hurricane was heading straight for New Orleans, the city devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, brought back painful memories of President George W. Bush’s fumbling response to that disaster. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney canceled their scheduled convention speeches, Gulf-state officials made last-minute decisions to stay home, and talk even floated of postponing the event altogether. Luckily for the GOP, the convention did proceed on an abbreviated three-day schedule.
3. The Nominee Speaks Way Too Late. After the chaos of 1968, Democrats wanted to make their convention process more transparent and more friendly to minority viewpoints. But their tweaks to the election rules went awry in Miami for 1972 nominee Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota, whose acceptance speech was so delayed by vice-presidential nomination speeches that he didn’t go on camera until 3 a.m. “I assume that everyone here is impressed with my control of this convention in that my choice for vice president was challenged by only 39 other nominees,” McGovern joked. But there weren’t many viewers to laugh along with him. McGovern’s late-night acceptance speech was only the beginning of his vice-presidential troubles. His partner on the ticket, Sen. Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, disclosed days into the campaign that he suffered from depression and had to withdraw his candidacy.
4. Delegates Come to Blows. Delegates to the 1952 Republican National Convention in Chicago actually came to blows on the convention floor over which delegates from Georgia should be seated. The convention that year was bitterly divided between establishment supporters of Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio, son of a former president, and backers of Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, a war hero with widespread popular support. Although a similar fistfight didn’t break out at the 1964 Republican convention in San Francisco, party factions were just as bitterly divided that year. That was when Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona proclaimed that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” and when moderate New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller was loudly booed off stage.
5. Buchanan Steals the Gipper’s Thunder. Convention speeches can be controversial for their content or their timing. Patrick Buchanan’s 1992 speech at the Republican convention in Houston hit both marks. “There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as the Cold War itself,” Buchanan told the crowd, in remarks that rallied the conservative base but alarmed moderates. Buchanan’s speech had a bigger problem than its language, however: He talked so long that he kept former President Ronald Reagan out of prime time. The delay meant that most Americans never saw what turned out to be the final convention speech by the Gipper.
