If it hadn’t brought back memories of the Democratic convention of 1924 in Madison Square Garden (“Alabama casts twenty-four votes for Underwood!”), Senator Goldwater’s suggestion for shorter and unfunnier party platforms might not have rung such a clamorous bell with me. That convention is famous with most people because it took almost a month not to nominate Al Smith and finally came up with John W. Davis, as near to a throw-away candidate as you could find, barring Landon.
However, the day . I sat in with the sweating delegates, the debate which had everybody up and screaming was not the candidate, but the platform. And the issue was about as silly as issues can get, even in a pre-air-conditioning convention hall. It was: Should the platform mention the Ku Klux Klan by name, or content itself with a plank endorsing freedom of religion, etc.? As I recall it, the platform committee had approved the second alternative and the matter was taken to the floor, where it went to the mat repeatedly for most of a whole day, winding up with an impassioned speech by William Jennings Bryan which few could hear because of the noise machines in the Tammany-packed galleries. Even the band got into the act by playing “Marching Through Georgia,” thus forcing the Georgia delegation to leave the premises. And now, darned if I can remember whether the platform named the Klan or not!
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