May 26, 2004
AT LEAST HE CARRIED MA:
McGovern: Kerry Shouldn't Delay Nomination (LOLITA C. BALDOR, 5/25/04, AP)
Democrat George McGovern, who ran for president in 1972, warned Tuesday that John Kerry should not delay the party's nomination schedule out of concern over money.The liberal South Dakotan told The Associated Press that Kerry's proposal to delay accepting the Democratic nomination would show that "money is king and everything else takes a back seat." And while McGovern said he wished he'd had more funds in his unsuccessful campaign against Republican Richard Nixon, he said money isn't everything. [...]
"It's the worst idea I've heard on timing since I gave my (acceptance) address at 2 a.m. in the morning," said McGovern, whose middle-of-the night speech accepting the Democratic nomination missed most television viewers. "I don't believe in monkeying around with things like that."
Bad enough that Mr. Kerry has become a figure of open ridicule by the Bush campaign, but how can you run a campaign so inept that even George McGovern is making fun of you? Posted by Orrin Judd at May 26, 2004 9:09 AM
Ther is nothing a Democrat can do that is so lame that some dodering liberal icon will not defend it. Case in point. In today's NYTimes Letters To the Editor, the 90 something Arthur Schlesinger Jr. writes:
No doubt concerns about fiscal equity provoked Senator John Kerry to consider postponing his acceptance speech until after the nominating convention (front page, May 22). But in fact such a postponement would constitute a return to a hallowed American tradition.It was Franklin D. Roosevelt who broke with the tradition in 1932 by flying to Chicago and delivering his acceptance address to the convention.
As late as 1940, the Republicans held fast to the tradition. The Republican convention in Philadelphia nominated Wendell L. Willkie on June 27. Mr. Willkie delivered his acceptance speech 52 days later — on Aug. 17 in his hometown, Elwood, Ind.
Critics who decry a delayed acceptance speech display their own ignorance of American history, even of American history within personal memory.
Ah yes, the Wilkie campaign! Of those who personally remember it, how many remember the names of their children?
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at May 26, 2004 1:10 PMJust a small point of interest:
Both Wilkie and his Vice-Presidential running mate died before the 1944 election. Had Wilkie won in 1940, the US would have experienced its first double vacancy in the two highest offices in the land - and in the middle of WWII, too!
Posted by: Oswald Booth Czolgosz at May 26, 2004 9:14 PM