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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we continue our WNYC centennial series, 100 Years of 100 Things. It's thing number 14, 100 years of memorable speech clips from Democratic Conventions. We did the same thing with Republican convention speeches you may remember during their week last month. If you were listening yesterday, you heard a sample from one of those most memorable speeches, the one at the 1948 Democratic Convention by the mayor of Minneapolis at the time, Hubert Humphrey. To make a segue into today's 100 Things episode, let's hear one more clip from that time that Humphrey tried to wake his party up about civil rights. The old audio on this is very scratchy, but worth putting up with it. It runs 30 seconds.

Hubert Humphrey: My good friend, I ask my party, I ask the Democratic Party to march down the high road of progressive democracy. I ask this convention to say in unmistakable terms that we proudly hail and we courageously support our president and leader, Terry Truman, and his great fight for civil rights in America.

Brian Lehrer: Hubert Humphrey, in 1948, 20 years before he was the nominee for president. That'll be one of our themes of this 100 Year segments today, memorial convention speeches by people other than the nominee. With us as our guide through history for this is David Greenberg, journalism, media studies and history professor at Rutgers and author of the book, Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency, published in 2016, which traces 100 years of presidents trying to spin the press.

Did you know the first presidential press conference wasn't until Woodrow Wilson in 1913? I learned that from David Greenberg's book. He also has a forthcoming one that's a biography of the congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis. David, thanks for lending your 100 years of history chops to this. Welcome back to WNYC.

David Greenberg: Sure. Great to be with you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Take us back a little more than 100 years to start, 111 years, to be exact, to that first Woodrow Wilson press conference. It's not about a convention, but I think our listeners will be interested. Why him? Why then? Why hadn't there been a press conference before? There certainly were newspapers covering all the presidents.

David Greenberg: Sure. This was a time at which the presidency was growing in power and stature and influence. If you look at 19th century presidents, they weren't out there before the public constantly the way presidents are today. It was really Congress that was the center of the action. If you were a Washington reporter, you were going to the galleries in the Senate to cover how politics was being made, and the presidency was a, relatively speaking, less powerful office.

It's really in the progressive era, first Teddy Roosevelt and then Woodrow Wilson, that the power of the presidency expands dramatically. That power is rooted in communicating with the public and purporting to represent the public in a way that presidents, of course, always had in a certain sense, but not in the direct, constantly engaged sense. That includes engaging with the press. TR had done these informal press conferences. He'd be getting his afternoon shave, and he'd have a handful of reporters gathered around him as he held forth but it was Wilson who rationalized the process. He was a big believer in efficiency and systematization. This was a chance for all the reporters from Washington to gather on a regular basis and put questions to the president.

Brian Lehrer: Can you imagine Biden or Trump or Obama or any of them having reporters sit around while they're getting a shave? Just briefly, to satisfy curiosity, what did they ask about in 2013? What was the state of the presidential spin game at that first presidential official news conference?

David Greenberg: Wilson, despite his good intentions and wanting to open up the presidency, he talked a lot about publicity, which was starting to mean what we take it to mean today, spin or putting forth your take on things, but also just meant making things public and opening up those back rooms where deliberations were made for the press and by extension, the public to see. People asked about all kinds of different policy initiatives and the direction that his new presidency intended to go. They were also, as reporters, can be, a bit tough.

Wilson, who was not the warmest, most cuddly of men, had a bit of a stiff reaction. He never quite developed the warm rapport that Teddy Roosevelt had or that we associate with successors like Franklin Roosevelt or JFK, who history remembers as being so effective in charming the press in dodging questions effectively when they need to, humoring the press, becoming friends with many reporters. Wilson had a much kind of cooler and more standoffish personality, and he eventually abandoned these press conferences once World War 1 got underway.

Brian Lehrer: Now to our main act for this segment, speeches at Democratic Conventions by people other than the nominee. Since we did a whole segment on the 1948 Hubert Humphrey speech yesterday, I want to go right on to another Democratic Convention speech by someone who wasn't the candidate. The year is 1964. The theme, again is civil rights. This is Fannie Lou Hamer trying to get delegate credentials for an alternative group from her state of Mississippi called the Mississippi Freedom delegation.

For people who don't know this history, they contended that the official delegation from the state, all white, was selected in an illegal segregated process in Mississippi in 1964. Fannie Lou Hamer made the case in part by telling the harrowing story of her own experience in Mississippi just trying to register to vote. We'll pick it up when the owner of the cotton plantation she's working on as a sharecropper learns that she did that.

Fannie Lou Hamer: Plantation owner came and said, "Fannie Lou, do you know-- Did pap tell you what I said?" I said, "Yes, sir." He said, "I mean that." He said, "If you don't go down and withdraw your registration, you will have to leave." He said, "Then if you go down and withdraw, so you still might have to go, because we are not ready for that in Mississippi." I addressed him and told him, "I didn't try to register for you. I tried to register for myself." I had to leave that same night.

Brian Lehrer: Apparently, she got fired from her job for daring to register to vote. We'll skip way ahead in the speech, but the infuriating story that she tells winds up with Fannie Lou Hamer in jail and she says this.

Fannie Lou Hamer: I began to scream, and one white man got up and began to beat me in my head and tell me to hush. One white man, my dress had worked up high. He walked over and pulled my dress. I pulled my dress down and he pulled my dress back up. I was in jail when Medke Evans was murdered. All of this is on account of we want to register to become first class citizens. If the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hook because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings in America. Thank you.

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: Is this America? Fannie Lou Hamer at the 1964 Democratic Convention. Historian David Greenberg is our guest. David, if conventions today are basically four night television commercials, there was a case 60 years ago when a convention scene was so raw and genuine and highly conflicted, even when the nominee, Lyndon Johnson, had already been selected. That was a truly important, memorable convention speech, right?

David Greenberg: Yes. It was so dramatic and compelling that Lyndon Johnson, who was not yet in Atlantic City for the convention, suddenly announced a press conference or press availability and got all the networks to switch away because he made them think he was going to announce his vice presidential choice. It turned out he had nothing to say. He just wanted to get the cameras off Mrs. Hamer. It backfired because then that night, all the networks showed the speech anyway on the nightly news, and more people ended up seeing it.

Look, the story of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party we could spend the whole hour on. This was really at the fulcrum, the core moment of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Despite the Civil Rights act having been passed earlier that summer, there was still no voting rights act. This was a bid for the Black people of Mississippi to say, "We demand representation as the Constitution guarantees us."

Her testimony, which was not in prime time before the convention itself, it was before the credentials committee so it was a fight to see whether the segregated official Mississippi delegation or this alternative integrated delegation would be seated. That's what people were watching with rapt attention. This woman sharecropper, unknown to most Americans, with her incredibly powerful testimony, just blew people away.

Brian Lehrer: I see there's Fannie Lou Hamer, 1964 convention speech. Breaking news this morning. Believe it or not, that convention, as you noted, was in Atlantic City. Just yesterday, the state of New Jersey installed a commemorative plaque on the boardwalk there in honor of the speech and its 60th anniversary. Did you know that?

David Greenberg: I didn't know that, but deservedly so. It's a true historic moment, and as I say, it's one that just galvanized the nation, drew attention to the lack of representation in the deep South, particularly states like Mississippi and Alabama, where despite ostensible constitutional protections, Blacks basically were deprived of the vote.

Brian Lehrer: I gather before we move on to other speeches from other conventions, that there's a sad and perfect addendum to the Hubert Humphrey story in this respect. He was about to be announced as Lyndon Johnson's running mate at that '64 convention but I've read that he brokered a proposed deal under which the all white segregated official Mississippi delegation would keep their seats, but two additional ones would be added for the Mississippi Freedom members, but the Mississippi Freedom group rejected it as too small a gesture. Humphrey had gone from leading edge civil rights champion at the '48 convention to, I guess, small steps, compromising insider by '68.

David Greenberg: By '64.

Brian Lehrer: '64, right.

David Greenberg: To be fair to Hubert, I think of it as a tragic story. He was just caught in an impossible position. Lyndon Johnson was terribly afraid that ceding the MFDP, as it was called, would cost him the election, which he wins in the landslide. In retrospect, that seems absurd, but George Wallace had done well in the Democratic primaries. There were the Harlem riots. There was a sense that a backlash was brewing against civil rights, and Johnson was afraid of going too far.

He basically forced both Hubert Humphrey and Walter Reuter, who was a labor leader, to do his bidding and try to force this compromise onto the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. As you say, they rejected it. Ed Henry, one of their members, compared taking the two seats to Blacks having two seats in the balconies, having to sit in the balconies in segregated theaters. I'm sorry I said Ed Henry. I meant Aaron Henry. There was a real sense we didn't come all this way, as Mrs. Hamer said, for just two seats.

In retrospect, the compromise did have one very important component, which is it said in the future you could not have a segregated delegation. By 1968, all Democratic delegation from every state, even Mississippi, have to be integrated. There was a victory in there that wasn't fully appreciated at the time but, of course, if you're there to be seated in '64, you don't really want to be told you have to wait till 1968.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're just joining us, it's 100 Years of 100 Things. Thing number 14, 100 years of memorable moments from Democratic Convention speeches, mostly by speakers other than the nominee, with David Greenberg from Rutgers and author of the book, Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency. Moving on in history, I know that one non-nominee speech you wanted to highlight was Ted Kennedy's at the 1980 convention after he failed in his bid to unseat President Jimmy Carter by primarying Carter around the country that year. Here's a minute and a half of Ted Kennedy in defeat at the convention in 1980.

Ted Kennedy: Well, things worked out a little different from the way I thought but let me tell you, I still love New York.

[crowd cheers]

My fellow Democrats and my fellow Americans, I have come here tonight not to argue as a candidate, but to affirm a cause. I'm asking you to renew the commitment of the Democratic Party to economic justice.

[crowd cheers]

I am asking you to renew our commitment to a fair and lasting prosperity that can put America back to work.

[crowd cheers]

This is the cause that brought me into the campaign and that sustained me for 9 months across 100,000 miles in 40 different states. We had our losses, but the pain of our defeats is far, far less than the pain of the people that I have met.

Brian Lehrer: Ted Kennedy, 1980. David, again, not the most unified. Everyone is on message article of spin we might expect today. What do you think about the context of that speech?

David Greenberg: People have to remember that Jimmy Carter, as fondly as we remember him today, really disappointed a great number of Democrats, both liberals but also moderates. He had enough troubles and failures as president that he lost his base. He ended up rallying in the primaries to get the delegates he needed. The Ted Kennedy candidacy, it was also the last of the Kennedys here after JFK and RFK had been murdered. He carried the hopes of a whole generation.

It was this beautiful, eloquent speech. He ends it with this phrase, the dream shall never die. That is basically saying, we've lost this race but the ideals of liberalism, the ideals that the Democratic party has held to over the last 50 or some years, are not going away, and he's going to continue to be the standard bearer for that in the United States Senate, which, of course, he went on to do and arguably became one of our greatest senators. Perhaps it was a better role for him, we can't say really, than the presidency might have been.

Brian Lehrer: That was 1980. Just four years later, 1984, very different context, as Walter Mondale is the Democratic nominee, Carter's former vice president and former senator from Minnesota. He would get blown out by Ronald Reagan in November. Making a national name for himself at that convention was the governor of New York, Mario Cuomo. Here's two minutes of his moral cry on behalf of his party in 1984.

Mario Cuomo: The middle class, those people who work for a living because they have to, not because some psychiatrist told them it was a convenient way to fill the interval between birth and eternity.

[applause]

White collar and blue collar, young professionals, men and women in small business desperate for the capital and contracts that they need to prove their worth. We speak for the minorities who have not yet entered the mainstream. We speak for ethnics who want to add their culture to the magnificent mosaic that is America.

[applause]

We speak for women who are indignant that this nation refuses to etch into its governmental commandments the simple rule, thou shalt not sin against equality. A rule so simple.

[applause]

I was going to say, and I perhaps dare not, but I will. It's a commandment so simple it can be spelled in three letters, E-R-A.

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: Governor Mario Cuomo at the 1984 Democratic Convention. Julian Hastings is calling in about that speech. Julie, I think you didn't know we were going to play that clip. Hi. You were on the air.

Julian Hastings: Oh, hi. Thanks, Brian. Yes. Mario Cuomo, eloquent and substantive, so much so that his keynote in '84 instantly made him a front runner for '88, the peak of Reagan's popularity. When President Reagan's talking about the city on the hill, that patriotism and freedom being small government, and Governor Cuomo talking about two cities, that he's arguing that the Reagan administration and Republicans are policies, their trickle down economics is hurting the little guy.

He was, in a way, anticipating today's argument that you have economic injustice of two cities and that the Democrats-- Then he pivoted to the Democrats. He argued, starting with Franklin Roosevelt and even before with the progressives forward, having a plan to have in favor of the common good, in favor of everybody having a fair shake. He was eloquent and his son told the Purdue TV, they told the stage managers of the convention to turn off all the lights on the floor so all the TV attention was on Governor Mario Cuomo.

Brian Lehrer: Great memories. Thank you very much. David Greenberg, was that a surprise to people at that time, that Mario Cuomo was so effective in that context?

David Greenberg: It was something of a surprise. He wasn't yet the huge national figure that he would become. He was, of course, the Governor of New York, and by virtue of that office was a national player. Some people thought that that keynote speech would be given to Ted Kennedy but Cuomo, who was very much in a similar political tradition, got the node. As the caller said, Reagan is out there talking about the shining city on the hill and Cuomo says, and he says it explicitly, this is a tale of two cities and pointing to those who had been left behind by the Reagan revival.

Look, 1984 was a year of galloping economic growth so the economy after the doldrums of the Carter years and the Reagan recession of the early Reagan presidency was now back at full strength. Cuomo wanted to direct people's attention to those who were left behind, those who were still struggling financially. Again, this is an issue that hasn't gone away. We can say we have a strong economy now, but there's still a lot of people who are feeling the hurt. How politicians can address both those things remains a rhetorical challenge. There's no question that this, again, like the Kennedy speech of 1980, kept the flame of liberalism alive during a time when Ronald Reagan and his conservative vision seemed to be dominant in the country.

Brian Lehrer: So dominant that Reagan not only beat Mondale in a landslide nationally, Reagan even won New York, Cuomo's home state, the last time a Republican presidential candidate won this state.

David Greenberg: No question about it. That was really the last true landslide election we'd had. 1988, Reagan's vice president, George Bush defeats Michael Dukakis as the Democrat pretty handily, but maybe it's not really a landslide. In 1984, the combination of economic return, patriotism, this was the summer of the Olympics in Los Angeles, and a lot of flag waving, a sense perhaps, that we were turning the corner in the Cold War, although that really wouldn't come for a few more years. All those things, I think, would have made it difficult for any Democrat to defeat Reagan in '84.

Brian Lehrer: It's 100 Years of 100 Things. Thing number 14, 100 years of memorable moments from Democratic Convention speeches, mostly by speakers other than the nominee. We'll continue with more of those with historian David Greenberg when we continue in a minute. One speech from a nominee from decades ago that David wants to highlight. Stay tuned and see who that is.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC in our 100 Years of 100 Things series. Thing number 14, 100 years of memorable moments from Democratic Convention speeches, mostly by speakers other than the nominee, with David Greenberg, journalism, media studies and history professor at Rutgers and author of the book, Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency. This is more of a tape-oriented segment than a call in oral history segment listeners.

We've got some more interesting clips to play from the past, but if you have anything really good and really short that might be a memory of a speech moment or something off the stage, that was not from the nominee at a Democratic Convention. We took one call from Julian Hastings reflecting on that Mario Cuomo 1984 speech. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. From '84, we jump ahead 20 years for the next example of a memorable convention speech by a speaker other than the Democratic nominee.

The year is 2004. The nominee is John Kerry. The speaker is a little known state legislator from Illinois, not a national figure at that time, but a candidate for US Senate from Illinois, a young state legislator named Barack Obama, who got the whole country's attention with a speech that included this.

Barack Obama: Now, even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is the United States of America.

[applause]

There is not a Black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America. There is the United States of America. The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states. Red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats but I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red states.

[applause]

We coach little league in the blue states and yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: Illinois state legislator Barack Obama in 2004. David Greenberg, did the Democratic Party leadership have any idea the Obama speech would resonate the way it did?

David Greenberg: Probably not quite the way it did. It really was a sensation. I remember I was writing about politics at the time. There was some chatter beforehand, "This guy's really good." There was a sense of anticipation among people in the know that the audience was in store for something special. Most Americans tuning in had no idea who this guy was. He was a candidate for Senate, not yet a senator, even. He had, as Obama likes to say about himself, this funny name. Who was this guy?

John Kerry had seen him and met him. John Kerry actually was the one who really tapped him to give that keynote address. It's a shame, at least in the version I'm hearing, you don't have the crowd noise in it because that's such an experiential part of rewatching or relistening to Obama's speech. He just tapped into something which I think is probably many times more acute now. In fact, Obama sounded some of these same themes in his speech last night.

Brian Lehrer: That's right. You say many times more acute but maybe one thing we learned from that 2004 clip is that while we sometimes talk about a polarized country today as if it's a unique time, the country was polarized in 2004, too, largely over the Iraq war and George W. Bush's response to 911 generally and there was Obama with a speech about one America.

David Greenberg: Yes. That was the beginnings of this polarization that has widened since. He has to explain to us because he and his team must have thought, "Hmm, maybe they won't know which are red states and which are blue states." He has to specify back then which is Democratic, which is Republican. Certainly, you saw those divisions emerging then. Obama quite admirably, was trying to bridge that, I think, much the way Joe Biden did.

In some ways, we have to acknowledge that that was unsuccessful. It was successful enough for Obama to be twice elected and have in many ways a successful presidency. Particularly the line about in the red states, they don't want federal agents in the libraries. You think about the book bans and what's going on, particularly in some of the red states and you wonder, "I hope that's still true." I hope there's still enough concern among conservatives about that kind of intrusion into our library.

Brian Lehrer: I want to acknowledge one caller, Peter, in Franklin Lakes, who's pointing out a speech that we definitely could have pulled the clip from pertaining to George W. Bush. I think this was in 2000 when Bush was running the first time against Al Gore and he was the Republican governor of Texas. The former Democratic governor of Texas, Ann Richards, gave a very funny, stinging speech that had the zinger that George W. Bush was born with a silver foot in his mouth.

David Greenberg: In my recollection, Brian, is that was about George Bush senior.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, really? Oh, maybe it was.

David Greenberg: People forget because the son was perhaps more inarticulate than the father but George Bush senior also was known for his gaffes and stumbles. I think that was in '88.

Brian Lehrer: How about that. You're right, 1988. My producer just looked it up and confirmed things get compressed. To complete the set, here's one more speech clip from someone other than the nominee, and it's from last night. It's from Senator Bernie Sanders, who, of course, tried for the nomination and didn't make it in 2016 and 2020. It did influence the party and the country. Last night he was sounding his perennial themes while not criticizing Kamala Harris in any way for not embracing every policy point in exactly his way.

Senator Bernie Sanders: These oligarchs tell us we shouldn't tax the rich. The oligarchs tell us we shouldn't take on price gouging, we shouldn't expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and vision, and we shouldn't increase Social Security benefits for struggling seniors. Well, I've got some bad news for them.

[applause]

That is precisely what we are going to do.

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: Bernie, last night. Thoughts briefly, because I want to get to the 1966 Bill Clinton clip you brought to our attention. Thoughts briefly on Bernie Sanders, who last I looked, maybe he did in the last few days, had not officially endorsed Kamala Harris, but got that primetime speaking slot anyway last night.

David Greenberg: Oh, that's interesting. I'm sure he will get on board. Sanders likes to stick to his guns and his message. He's not really anyone's idea of a classic team player, but he does at the end of the day get with the program. He did it with Biden after being the one hold out, remember, in the primaries in 2020. Look, he uses this kind of tinny language, oligarchs and stuff that I think has a limited appeal. The idea of government continuing to be a source of a strong social safety net, that I think does resonate with mainstream liberals and with Americans outside the Democratic Party, too.

Brian Lehrer: We could debate how limited, and he did say he would do everything he could to get Kamala Harris elected so he's certainly in that way endorsing her and did in that speech. One more clip to play outside the theme of this segment, which is non nominees from past conventions. You drew our attention to this as one that you think has relevance to the Harris campaign. It's Bill Clinton when he was running successfully for re election in 1996. This is from what came to be known as his bridge to the 21st century convention speech.

Bill Clinton: Tonight my fellow Americans, I ask all of our fellow citizens to join me and to join you in building that bridge to the 21st century four years now from now, just four years from now. Think of it, we begin a new century full of enormous possibilities. We have to give the American people the tools they need to make the most of their God given potential. We must make the basic bargain of opportunity and responsibility available to all Americans, not just a few. That is the promise of the Democratic party. That is the promise of America.

[applause]

I want to build a bridge to the 21st century in which we expand opportunity through education, where computers are as much a part of the classroom as blackboards, where highly trained teachers demand peak performance from our students, where every eight year old can point to a book and say, "I can read it myself."

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: Bill Clinton, '96. Now we're trying to get computers out of the classrooms. We've got about 30 seconds. David, why was that speech on your mind?

David Greenberg: For one thing, '96 was the first convention I attended, and I remember it vividly but more important, Clinton did something that is somewhat analogous to what Harris has to do as someone who's continuing the Biden agenda, as it were, which is he articulates a vision of the future. The first part of the speech is defending his record, what we've done so far, but it's that vision of the future that excites people. It's not at all backward looking. It's laying out there's more to be done and talking about education, technology, investment. All those things that make people have hope, put meat on the bones of this idea of hope.

Brian Lehrer: That has to be the last word from David Greenberg from Rutgers, author of Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency. Look for his new one coming out soon. That's a biography of John Lewis. That's our 100 Years of 100 Things segment for today. Thank you. This was great, David. Really appreciate it.

David Greenberg: My pleasure. Good to be with you.

 

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