Jack talks of Chicago's Mayor Daley and points out that until he got into town that morning he thought the Mayor was a good man. But as he got off the plane and picked up a newspaper he realized that Daley, in criticizing Cardinal Cody for his stand in favor of an anti-abortion amendment, was not committed to the right to life. "This is the most important decision since slavery," Jack, a lawyer says, comparing the 1973 Supreme Court decision on abortion to the infamous Dred Scott case in which a black slave was held to be the property of his owner. "This issue will be the rise and fall of many," Bernie says, because "abortion is a denial of the Judeo-Christian emphasis of the Founding Fathers. They assumed that those who interpreted the law would be of this ethic. The Human Life Amendment will be the last great document of Western Civilization--like God speaking the Abraham, the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Emancipation Proclamation."

There is no venom, just passion, and throughout the week we remain friends. Like others, Bernie and Jack leave the convention when Maddox is nominated.

***

GOD RIGHTS YOU CONSTITUTION GOVERNMENT

"It took two years for me to design that model," Arman Mohtz '62 tells me, asking that I pay careful attention to the fact that 'government' is in a box and at the bottom. Mohtz likes to think of himself as a 'constitutionalist' rather than a conservative. Like many other delegates, he totes several copies of the Constitution around with him at all times. He opens one. "Congress shall make no law abridging..." Mohtz, a squat little man, gets excited. "That limitation's not on you, not on me, it's on Congress." He tells me of his campaign for Congress in 1974 when he ran under the slogan: "Get the bureaucrat's hands out of your pocket and nose out of your business." But that part of his life is all over. Now he helps run the United States Taxpayers Union and plans for a tax strike.

Mohtz recalls that he first became disenchanted with Harvard when he took courses on the Far East from John Fairbank '29, Higginson: Professor of History. Fairbank attacked General Douglas MacArthur and Mohtz objected. "What I thought then was proved in the '50s, of course," Mohtz says, noting that Fairbank was cited as a Communist sympathizer.

Before leaving, I asked Mohtz if he had any contact with Harvard anymore. Not since he discovered that half Harvard's trustees were on 'The Council,' he said.

The discussion drifts to Harvard, where he graduated as a Biology major. He asks if I know anything about the politics of the department there and I tell him of the debate between those who believe behavioral traits are inherited and others who say such things are determined by one's environment. "You mean totalitarianism vs. liberty," Mohtz says. I dare not ask which is which but it soon becomes apparent he believes only totalitarians try to mold people contrary to the designs of their souls.

Thursday the convention opens. I secure a press pass but it doesn't mean much. No one guards the door to the convention hall itself and press conferences are punctured by partisan applause and arguments between non-media onlookers and the speaker. The press is amused for a time, but by week's end tires of the circus.

I move over to talk to the chairman of the Illinois delegation, Harold Wilber, a real estate subdivider. Wilber fills me in on the split in the Illinois movement between the American Independent and the American Independence Parties. Both are here together today, however, even though their combined petitions are not enough to get a candidate on the Illinois ballot. Wilber looks forward to a court ruling on a ballot suit brought by Gene McCarthy and hopes the decision will help them too. Later in the week, a decision is handed down in favor of McCarthy but does not apply directly to the AIP. Nonetheless, Illinois delegates and others have nothing but kind words for the third party efforts of their strange bedfellow, that pied piper of 1968.

As Wilber begins to tell me of his admiration for Calvin Coolidge (Herbert Hoover was another convention favorite), his wife appears and asks about a man who has just walked into the hotel and wants to be a delegate. Wilber instructs her to have him pay his money, sign in, and wait for some brief questioning. Convention officials make no secret of any of this. The next day, when the roll call for president reaches Maine, a debate between the state chairman and convention secretary ensues over whether Maine has paid $100 each for the number of delegates they claim.

But this is the first day of the convention and the delegates are excited: waving flags, crying "hear! hear!", reveling in a pale imitation of the pageantry of a real national convention. 'Register Kissinger not Firearms,' 'The Rock Owns a Piece of Me,' and 'Don't Re-elect Anybody' bumper stickers; dead-babies' ingarbage-cans armbands; plastic gold noose lapel pins (for 'Public Officials convicted for treason'); pistol tie clips, etc., etc.

The speeches contained few surprises. The anti-gun control, anti-busing, anti-abortion, anti-ERA, anti-homosexuality, anti-big government platform is predictable enough. Someone wants the telephone tax removed as an infringement of free speech; revenue sharing, foreign aid, and the graduated income tax get canned; the Maddox people condemn the 55 mph speed limit as unconstitutional--standard conservative fare in sum, but proof that the creative reactionary is still alive and well.

On this day, the gut issues are discussed. Woody Jenkins of Louisiana reminds the audience of the four great American protections: "the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box and the cartridge box. If you ever lose the cartridge box, the other three won't mean a thing." He recalls that the Japanese decided not to invade the West Coast in World War II because they knew the futility of doing battle with an armed citizenry.

Young Janine Hansen of Nevada decries ERA as a plot to destroy the family. Her family is a significant one at this convention--they make up five of the nine members of the Nevada delegation. Soon, it becomes apparent that this is representative of much of the convention--a gathering of family and friends active in this sort of thing since the Wallace crusade of 1968 and resentful of highbrow outsiders from the aborted Reagan campaign.