(5 of 11)
The delegates listened to a parade of pleas for platform planks by homosexuals, advocates of abortion, and welfare organizers. Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris, wearing a button reading TAKE THE RICH OFF WELFARE, argued for radical tax reform—a plank the convention rejected. Hour after hour, the session ground on, with the delegates resisting pleas for adjournment. When they were finished, they had adopted a very liberal, semi-populist platform. The order in which the disputes were handled served party unity and party image: Wallace's package was considered first, and the more controversial items such as abortion and gay liberation were taken up well after midnight, when most of the nation slept.
The delegates—80% of them were attending their first convention—displayed a perseverance that astonished convention veterans. They paid attention to issues, argued them, voted and moved on. When the session ended at 6:24 a.m., it was the longest in the nation's convention history.
The delegates' week was falling into a pattern—interminable night sessions, sleep, afternoons of caucuses. Although Miami Beach is designed for leisure and indolence, it was put to remarkably industrious use. Some delegates plunged into swimming pools and the Fontaine-bleau's Boom Boom Room, some took in the Eden Roc's "Love Machine" erotica or listened to Pearl Williams, a road-company Sophie Tucker, at the Place Pigalle. But mostly they talked earnestly among themselves, taking endless notes. They seemed to treat Miami Beach as a curious rococo phenomenon, something beside the point.
In years past, stars like Shirley MacLaine and Mario Thomas would have been coveted decorations at a Mesta-style reception. This year Delegate MacLaine was enmeshed in party reform, and Mario Thomas, Patty Duke and other celebrities worked the long nights at the convention hall. Two McGovern workers, Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, stayed mostly out of sight at McGovern headquarters. The big-party syndrome seemed gone for the most part, a vestige of another kind of politics. Noted Eleanor McGovern's press secretary, Mary Hoyt: "I looked for invitations and you know, there weren't any. If there were, what would people think? That we were down here for a party?"
The only hospitality suite in town guarded by armed, uniformed detectives was operated by the Committee for the Re-Election of the President on the sixth floor of the Fontainebleau's new south wing. There, in three adjoining rooms, the G.O.P. set up an observation post with seven telephone lines, an A.P. ticker, a supply of liquor, hors d'oeuvres, and 18 uniformed "Nixonettes." Interior Secretary Rogers Morton and Colorado Governor John Love came by to keep tab on the opposition. So did some Democrats, mostly Wallace supporters. After two days of operation, the hired guards changed into more casual clothes, giving the area less of an armed-camp atmosphere.
McGovern remained ensconced in his suite at the Doral, surrounded by his five children, two sons-in-law and two grandsons. Assorted other sisters, a brother-in-law, aunts, nieces and nephews were scattered around the hotel—a