Miami and the Siege of Chicago Read Free Page A

favorite authors, but after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, it was Updike who had made the remark that God might have withdrawn His blessing from America. It was a thought which could not be forgotten for it gave insight to the perspectives of the Devil and his political pincers: Left-wing demons, white and Black, working to inflame the conservative heart of America, while Right-wing devils exacerbated Blacks and drove the mind of the New Left and liberal middle class into prides of hopeless position. And the country roaring like a bull in its wounds, coughing like a sick lung in the smog, turning over in sleep at the sound of motorcycles, shivering at its need for new phalanxes of order. Where were the new phalanxes one could trust? The reporter had seen the faces of too many police to balm his dreams with the sleep they promised. Even the drinks tasted bad in Miami in the fever and the chill.

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    His first afternoon in Miami Beach was spent by the reporter in Convention Hall. He stepped up on the speaker’s podium to see how it might feel, nosed into the jerrybuilt back room back of the podium where speakers would wait, and Press be excluded, once the convention was begun. A room unmatched for dreariness. Dull green daybeds and sofas, a nondescript powder-blue rug, open studding and therefore open wall-board color, brown and tan leatherette chairs, a dreary cloth throw on a table. Every quiet color clashed with every other quiet color—it was the sort of room which could have served for the bridge players in an old folks’ summer camp in some flat and inland state. In this room, while preparing to orate, would wait some of the more ambitious men in America, and some of the more famous; looking at their manuscripts might be John Wayne, Barry Goldwater, John Lindsay, Thomas E. Dewey, Ronald Reagan, Governor Rockefeller, George Romney, Richard Nixon himself—not to mention Billy Graham—they would pass through the splendors of this profoundly American anteroom. Examination completed, the reporter abruptly decided he would actually go out to the airport to greet the arrival of a baby elephant which was arriving on a Delta cargo plane as a gift to Richard Nixon from the people of Anaheim, California. That seemed an appropriate way to open coverage of the convention.

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    Unless one knows him well, or has done a sizable work of preparation, it is next to useless to interview a politician. He has a mind which is accustomed to political questions. By the time he decides to run for President, he may have answered a million. Or at least this is true if he has been in politics for twenty years and has replied to an average of one hundred-fifty such queries a day, no uncharacteristic amount. To surprise a skillful politician with a question is then approximately equal in difficulty to hitting a professional boxer with a barroom hook. One cannot therefore tell a great deal from interviews with a candidate. His teeth are bound to be white, his manner mild and pleasant, his presence attractive, and his ability to slide off the question and return with an answer is as implicit in the work of his jaws as the ability to bite a piece of meat. Interviewing a candidate is about as intimate as catching him on television Therefore it is sometimes easier to pick up the truth of his campaign by studying the outriggers of his activity. Therefore the reporter went to cover the elephant.
    It was, as expected, a modest story in a quiet corner of International Airport in Miami. Not more than ten reporters and a dozen photographers showed up. And a band, and a quorum of Nixonettes wearing blue dresses and white straw hats with a legend “N ixon’s the O ne .” A publicity puff was handed around which informed the Press that the beast was named Ana (for Anaheim, California) and was 52” high, 2½ years old, weighed 1,266 lbs. and had been given to Nixon by the happy citizens of the town—Ana!
    Ana came in on