crawling through the candidate's suite

A political journalist named Richard Reeves wrote a flock of books in the mid-1970s.  (And the flock later became a herd, perhaps even a stampede....He's prolific.)

A Ford, Not a Lincoln (in the era of President Gerald Ford).
Old Faces of 1976
and then
Convention.

Convention is about the Democrats' nominating convention held in the summer of 1976 in NYC, where Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter was named the party's presidential candidate, to run in the fall election.

The book is not a standard recounting of history -- it's more sort of a "happening."  A "you are there" sort of style, and the author involved a wide variety of people in his coverage.

[excerpts]---------------------
Clare Smith arrived at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport at 6:40 on Sunday morning, July 11.  She had gotten out of bed at 3:50 A.M. to make American Airlines flight 38 from Cleveland at 5:20 A.M., saving $40 by flying night coach rate.

"Hey, excuse me," a young man called to her in the terminal.  "Aren't you the youngest delegate to the Convention?  I saw your picture in People magazine."
"Yeah."

--------------- Jimmy Carter had come to town the day before landing in his chartered Boeing 727 at the isolated Marine Air Terminal on the far side of La Guardia Airport.  It was 3:30 in the afternoon, and he was early, as usual. 

After walking down the ramp carrying his own suitcase, as usual,

and waving to television cameras, Carter was led into an empty operations office to kill ten minutes so that he would not arrive too early at a 4:00 P.M. rally in front of the Americana Hotel.  In the office, Carter took off his shirt, and Secret Service agents helped him into a bulletproof vest for the rally.  It was the first time the candidate had ever worn one, but the Secret Service had convinced him that he was beginning the most dangerous week of his political life.

There were 4,000 people waiting for Carter around the entrance of the Americana, a shiny 50-story piece of Miami Beach plunked down on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, between 51st and 52nd Streets.  Inside the hotel, a technician named Richard Wilker was crawling through the candidate's suite, using a small mirror to check under doors for electronic listening devices -- Carter's staff was convinced that reporters would try to bug his rooms.

----------------------- Floor fights!  Robert Schwarz Strauss had dedicated three and a half years of his life to figuring out how the Democratic party could meet in

unified convention,

quiet convention. 

He had become Democratic national chairman on December 9, 1972, determined that, while he was in charge, his party would not meet in riot, as it did in Chicago, nominating Hubert H. Humphrey for president in 1968, or in fiasco, as it did in Miami, nominating George McGovern in 1972. 

"I'm not going to deliver a candidate to the party," he said that December.  "I'm going to deliver a party to the candidate."

------------ Representative Morris Udall of Arizona was applauded warmly, sometimes tearfully, as he appeared at his last rally before 1,000 people at the Roosevelt Hotel on East 45th Street near Grand Central Station.  He reminded his faithful, including most of the 330 or so delegates he had won in primary elections and precinct caucuses, that he had been an announced candidate for president for 20 months, traveling to every part of the country, entering 22 primaries -- and losing every one of them.

"The people have spoken -- the bastards!"

It was an old line but a good one, and the audience laughed appreciatively, as Udall's crowds often did -- he was a nice man, for a politician, and his image had been softened by nine heartbreaking second-place finishes to Jimmy Carter.  The man who had first used the line was in the crowd, wearing a floppy Panama hat and a grin wider and warmer than Carter's -- Dick Tuck had defined the electorate as bastards 20 years earlier after losing a State Senate race in Los Angeles. ...
-------------------- [end excerpts]

{Convention -- Richard Reeves -- Copyright, 1977 -- Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York and London}

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