Donald Trump is thrilled with how the 2016 Republican National Convention went this week. It was, he said at a campaign event in Cleveland on Friday, “one of the best conventions ever.” The four days were “incredible.” The speakers were “groundsetting.” And the “unity” was “amazing.”

That’s one way to put it. Many other observers have focused on what went wrong, from the delegate walk-outs, floor chants and a plagiarism controversy on Monday, to a conspicuous non-endorsement on Wednesday to a leaked speech on Thursday. And then there were the wild “lock her up” chants throughout, and, of course, the bewildering foreign policy interview in the middle of the whole thing. Before long onlookers were calling it “the worst convention I’ve ever seen” and speculating whether it was the “worst political convention ever.”


Politico Magazine decided to find out. We asked a group of political historians to tell us: What was the worst convention in history—and how does this one stack up?

The agreement was: This one was pretty bad. Whether you measure it by disorganization, by harm to the party or by sheer distastefulness of the message, it ends up on most of our historians' shortlists, if not right at the top. “This Republican convention could certainly be a plausible candidate for, say, the three-to-five worst conventions in American political history,” writes Jack Rakove, though he doesn’t think it will have the lasting negative consequences that, say,1968’s riot-plagued DNC had. And David Greenberg calls it a “hot mess,” though it falls short of Miami’s 1972 DNC in terms of sheer fiasco factor, where “punchy delegates mocked the process, nominating Martha Mitchell (the deranged wife of Nixon’s attorney general), Archie Bunker, the Berrigan Brothers, Mao Tse-tung and other absurdities” and “the circus delayed McGovern’s acceptance speech until almost 3 a.m.—memorably described as ‘prime time in Guam.’”

Others do think that this year’s RNC marks a genuine new low for American politics. It “barely edged out the 1868 Democratic National Convention as the worst in American history” for its “disorganization, infighting, racism and apocalyptic language,” writes Heather Cox Richardson. (In 1868, the delegates appropriated “This is a white man’s country. Let a white man rule” as their slogan.) “The 2016 Republican Convention,” writes Jason Sokols, “was remarkable not for its bumbling shows of discord—culminating in Ted Cruz’s non-endorsement—but for the ways in which it illuminated a consistent message: hatred.” And Federico Finchelstein saw the same hatred, as well as its global reach: “For global historians of fascism such as myself, the convention was something entirely new. … It signaled, at the top of the Republican ticket, the new American preeminence—in line with a strain of xenophobic right-wing populism that is developing around the world.”

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‘Cleveland convention was a hot mess, but it wasn’t a fiasco.’

David Greenberg, a contributing editor at Politico Magazine, is a professor of history and of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University.

The Republicans’ Cleveland convention was a hot mess, but it wasn’t a fiasco. Our history boasts some far more catastrophic conventions—where whole factions of a party walked out to launch third-party bids, where balloting dragged on for days amid irreconcilable conflicts or where violence broke out in the streets or the convention hall itself.

One of the more comical fiascos was the 1972 convention in Miami at which George McGovern was chosen to lead the Democrats. Thanks to new party rules handed down by a committee that McGovern had himself chaired, the South Dakota Senator parlayed victories in the spring primaries and caucuses—and benefitted from the Nixon White House’s dirty tricks against formidable rivals like Ed Muskie—to sew up the nomination. Like today’s NeverTrumpers, however, a “Stop McGovern” movement (of which Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter was a leader) tried to derail the senator’s bid. Even at the roll call vote, 40 percent of the delegates voted for other candidates, including Henry “Scoop” Jackson, George Wallace and Shirley Chisolm.

Platform fights had sown much acrimony and combativeness, but the convention really went awry during the vice presidential balloting. Party panjandrums wanted someone who spoke for the traditional Democratic rank and file; they needed to shore up support from the blue-collar, urban and Irish Catholic Democrats who were suspicious of the far-left, wine-track McGovern. But a series of credible contenders, including Ted Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, declined offers, leading to the selection of Missouri’s Thomas Eagleton. During the roll call, punchy delegates mocked the process, nominating Martha Mitchell (the deranged wife of Nixon’s attorney general), Archie Bunker, the Berrigan Brothers, Mao Tse-tung and other absurdities. Extending late into the night, the circus delayed McGovern’s acceptance speech until almost 3 a.m.—memorably described as “prime time in Guam.” Ratings, needless to say, suffered.

News soon emerged that Eagleton had undergone electro-shock therapy for depression. McGovern insisted he would stand by his running-mate “1000 percent”—only to drop him unceremoniously from the ticket days later in favor of Sargent Shriver.

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‘I would still hold out for the big Democratic shebang in Chicago 1968’

Jack Rakove is professor of history and political science at Stanford University.

This Republican convention could certainly be a plausible candidate for, say, the three-to-five worst conventions in American political history. But as a native Cook County Democrat, and proud of it, I would still hold out for the big Democratic shebang in Chicago 1968 (which, alas, I missed, because I was called up to military service the week before it started). We will only know the significance of the 2016 GOP convention when we can measure its short- and long-term fallout, in terms of its effects on polls, the ensuing campaign, etc. Mostly it seemed to confirm the existing criticisms, both within the Republican Party and from without, of the underlying, potentially fatal defects of the Trump campaign. The convention was a nice illustration of all that—fourth-rate celebrities, discussions of avocados and Trumpian viticulture, a wholesale reliance on Trump’s status as a breeding male—but how much did it add to the existing story? Jane Mayer’s New Yorker article about the drafting of The Art of the Deal, in its own way, was just as interesting!

By contrast, the 1968 convention, per se, did have lasting implications for the Democratic Party that continued to reverberate well into the next decade. While there is no question that the challenge of dealing with “hippies, flippies and dippies,” as Mayor Richard J. Daley once described his antagonists, overwhelmed the administrative talents of the Chicago machine, the specter of wanton police brutality in Grant Park and the occasional chaos on the convention floor, including the famous outburst of Connecticut Senator Abe Ribicoff, did contribute to the fissures that haunted Hubert Humphrey’s campaign thereafter and vexed the party for a longer period.

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‘A strong contender would be the Republicans in 1932’

Margaret O’Mara, associate professor of history at the University of Washington.

The 1932 Republican National Convention in Chicago. | AP Photo

Worst convention in history? A strong contender would be the Republicans in 1932. It wasn’t a moment of party implosion like the Democrats’ Chicago inferno in 1968 or the GOP’s Goldwater vs. Rockefeller throwdown in 1964. Nor was there much controversy about who’d be the nominee. Incumbent President Herbert Hoover got the nod on the first ballot (it took the Dems four votes to choose FDR that same year). But it was a failure both in substance and style. Having been in charge of the executive branch during the worst economic crisis in the nation’s history, GOP leaders decided that the best approach to the economy during the convention was to talk about it as little as possible. Instead, all the convention drama focused on the repeal of Prohibition—a hot issue within the Republican Party but one of considerably less importance to Americans standing in bread lines. Even worse, in an era when conventions were turning into major media events—both conventions that year were broadcast on national radio—the RNC was an utter snooze. Reporters pronounced it “singularly colorless.” One dispirited Republican delegate lamented that the convention was so dull that “even the nuts don’t seem to care what goes into the platform.”

With a vague economic program, a stay-the-course message, and not much drama about who’d win the nomination, the convention reinforced the narrative that the party and its president were low-energy and out of touch. People may remember that “Happy Days Are Here Again” became the campaign theme song for Franklin Roosevelt. What they may not know is that the song played first at the GOP convention that year (both events happened in the Chicago Stadium, and the house organist played the song during both). At the RNC, it sounded like a funeral march; at the DNC, it fit the upbeat message. Roosevelt used it in every election afterwards.

How does the 2016 RNC stack up? It didn’t change the story, it didn’t heal party fractures, and I’d be surprised if it changed many minds. However, it is too soon to tell whether Trump’s doubling-down on his message is going to be his key to victory or the fatal step toward defeat. We’ll have to wait for the next generation of historians to assess that one.

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‘The worst that the country has seen since the Democratic National Convention of 1868’

Josh Zeitz has taught American history and politics at Cambridge University and Princeton University.

If by “worst” we mean the worst-organized or worst-executed convention, the GOP gathering in Cleveland is a strong contender. But who’s to say whether a plagiarized speech, a half-empty hall and the Ted Cruz imbroglio are worse than, say, the 1972 Democratic Convention, which was so poorly run that the nominee delivered his acceptance speech at 3:00 a.m.? Or the 1924 Democratic convention, which required over 100 ballots to select a candidate? Or the 1964 Republican convention, which resembled a barroom fight?

If, however, we mean angry, ugly and venemous, then this week’s convention is probably the worst that the country has seen since the Democratic National Convention of 1868. That year, Frank Blair, an erstwhile conservative antislavery man, issued a public letter on the eve of the convention, denouncing Republicans for enfranchising a “semi-barbarous race of blacks” that “subject the white women to their unbridled lust.” Blair’s letter established the tone for the convention, whose slogan read, “This is a white man’s country. Let a white man rule.” As one Democratic strategist unabashedly acknowledged, the party’s only path to victory was to excite “the aversion with which the masses contemplate the equality of the Negro.”

One can’t quite get away with that level of racial invective today (though in a convention-week panel, Congressman Steve King essentially tried). But the 2016 convention dripped with racially charged rhetoric of a variety that we have not experienced in well over 100 years. In their incitement against Latinos and Muslims, convention speakers, including Donald Trump, made clear that they believe this is a country for Christians of European descent, and that we should let those men rule.





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2016 ‘only barely edged out the 1868 Democratic National Convention’

Heather Cox Richardson is a professor of American history at Boston College.

The 2016 Republican National Convention was shocking for its disorganization, infighting,

racism, and apocalyptic language, but it only barely edged out the 1868 Democratic National Convention as the worst in American history. Curiously, the two were very similar.

In 1868, only three years after the end of the Civil War, the Democrats met in New York York City to write a platform and pick a presidential candidate. The Democrats hated the Republicans who had just defeated the Confederacy and freed the slaves, and they loathed the strong federal government that was enforcing racial equality. But their virulent opposition to the federal government did not mean unity. Party leaders had to balance the racism of white Democratic voters against the demands of eastern financiers who wanted to roll back taxes but who also wanted the new $5 billion national debt to be paid in full.

They couldn’t. The convention caved to southern whites. Delegates declared America “a white man’s country” and the platform attacked the Union government that had just won the Civil War. It called for an end to black rights, taxation and government bureaucracy. Crucially, it alienated wealthier voters by calling for the repayment of the national debt in depreciated currency. The factions fought over the nomination for 22 ballots. Then delegates, in desperation, cast votes for the convention’s chairman, a conservative New Yorker. He categorically refused to serve. But when he left the hall briefly, the convention nominated him anyway. Going into the election with a problematic candidate and little principle other than the destruction of the federal government and white supremacy, the Democrats lost.

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‘It still pales in comparison to the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago’

Kevin M. Kruse is a professor of history at Princeton.

Ideally, a political convention should bring a party together and broadcast a positive image to the general public. While this year’s RNC fell considerably short on both those goals, it still pales in comparison to the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The Democrats had been thrown into chaos over the previous year—with Eugene McCarthy’s antiwar insurgency, Lyndon Johnson’s stunning announcement that he wouldn’t run again, and the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy on the campaign trail—and the convention only made things worse. Antiwar activists came to Chicago not just to protest “the party of death” but to sow chaos in the streets. In response, Mayor Richard Daley overreacted considerably: All of Chicago’s 12,000 police were put on 12-hour shifts, 7,500 regular Army troops were flown in to suppress potential riots in black neighborhoods, and 6,000 National Guardsmen were armed with flamethrowers and bazookas, trained to fight mock battles with hippies. When the convention passed a plank supporting the war, the two sides clashed in the streets outside, turning into what an official report called “a police riot.” Scenes of the street fighting were broadcast live to the whole nation for 17 minutes, and the chaos spread into the convention itself. Senator Abraham Ribicoff denounced the “Gestapo tactics” of the police from the podium, and in response Mayor Daley screamed a stream of obscenities at him. All told, the convention showed a party badly divided and out of control.

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‘Trump-fest took [vitriol and character assassination] to … levels not seen since 1992’

Julian E. Zelizer is a political historian at Princeton University.

This was certainly one of the ugliest and angriest conventions in recent history. While vitriol and character assassination have always been part of party conventions, Trump-fest took this to new levels—or at least levels not seen since 1992, when Patrick Buchanan lit up the Republican convention with his call to arms for a culture war with the Democrats. A central focus of almost every speech was been to vilify and criminalize the Democratic nominee with barroom rhetoric. This is not to say the convention won’t be effective in mobilizing Trump supporters and partisan Republicans, but it has lowered the bar as to what kind of political rhetoric is permissible from the podium.

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‘The 1968 Democratic Convention has long stood as the worst … Until now’

Jason Sokol is an associate professor of History at the University of New Hampshire.

The 1968 Democratic Convention has long stood as the worst convention in history. Until now. The 1968 convention showed the Democrats as a party hopelessly divided, torn in two by the Vietnam War. Inside the convention hall, Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago barked anti-Semitic epithets at Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff. Outside, in Grant Park, the Chicago police savagely beat protesters. There seemed to be no worse way to nominate a president. Today’s Republicans have found a worse way. The 2016 Republican Convention was remarkable not for its bumbling shows of discord—culminating in Ted Cruz’s non-endorsement—but for the ways in which it illuminated a consistent message: hatred. Most other conventions have attempted to offer hopeful visions of the candidate and the nation. Richard Nixon did indeed pledge “law-and-order” at the 1968 Republican convention in Miami, but he softened it with doses of sunny optimism.

This convention centered on a terrifying theme of anger. The thousands of attendees reveled in their hatred for Hillary Clinton, for immigrants, for Muslims, for African Americans. Rudy Giuliani raged at black protesters. Chris Christie fueled the crowd’s fury toward Clinton, apparently hoping that millions of Americans would forget how his own political team perpetrated the most vengeful scheme since the days of Watergate. Donald Trump presided ominously over it all. In the end, Trump presented himself just as he has throughout the campaign: he is the ultimate fear-monger, with nothing but enmity to offer.

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‘With [a wall] as the one concrete platform plank, literally, the Republican convention might indeed be the worst.’

Meg Jacobs, research scholar in the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University

It’s hard to call this the worst convention. The numbers who tuned in were up, the speakers unified members at the arena and at home around a central theme—anti-Hillary, and the race thus far shows that what the press sees as fumbles and gaffes does not hurt the GOP nominee and often helps him. So by those measures Trump had a good convention. He promised a good show and with the constant cheers like “lock her up” or “build a wall” or “send them home” he delivered.

The remaining question, though, is: Can a candidate sustain a race premised largely on hate and not on real policy? History suggests otherwise. Trump does offer a promise of greatness. But even that vision rests largely on targeting others. It’s hard to think of any other convention where the major party candidate has run so much on force of personality alone, promising to be the tough guy against undesirables. But targeting undesirables is not an economic platform. Trump may have been trying to channel Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972 with his appeal to forgotten and silent Americans. All he seems to be offering, though, is permission to speak up and say ugly “politically incorrect” things. Nixon too used racially coded messages and conservative messages. And like Trump he was an opportunist. But unlike trying to rally working class and middle class Americans through nativism, Nixon also offered concrete programs. To broaden his base, he supported EPA, OSHA and even price controls to protect struggling Americans. Reagan also promised to rid the country of Jimmy Carter’s malaise through a clear conservative fiscal agenda, as did the two Bushes.

To rally his base Trump, the real estate mogul, came back to where he started his campaign with a promise to build a wall. With this promise as the one concrete platform plank, literally, the Republican convention might indeed be the worst. And if his appeal premised largely on hatred works that will be a new low.

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‘This was the worst convention—if by “worst,” we mean the most fascist and populist in recent memory.’

Federico Finchelstein is professor of history at The New School in New York.

I agree that this was the worst convention—if by “worst,” we mean the most fascist and populist in recent memory. To be sure, Donald Trump’s extremism echoed that of Republicans past, like Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon. But for global historians of fascism such as myself, the convention was something entirely new, and clearly the worst from the perspective of undemocratic developments. It signaled, at the top of the Republican ticket, the new American preeminence—in line with a strain of xenophobic right-wing populism that is developing around the world.

Through Trump’s mix of racism, religious discrimination, anti-migration and anti-integration rhetoric, along with the new call for the imprisonment of his opponent, Hillary Clinton, (the “lock her up” chant was a prevailing theme at the convention), Trump presented himself on the global stage as a new dominant world leader for the populist pack. In his leadership style, a striking first at the GOP convention, Trump was less comparable to previous Republican candidates and more akin to the likes of Marine Le Pen in France, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. All these powerful leaders are reminiscent, in turn, of historical figures like General Juan Perón in Argentina and Getulio Vargas in Brazil, who converted fascist ideas into a form of electoral authoritarianism dubbed populism.

These leaders sent opponents to jail. Like we saw at the convention, they made a point of presenting those they did not like—whether political opponents, the media or the judiciary—as enemies rather than interlocutors or sectors of society entitled to different opinions. All populists claim to talk in the name of the masses and against the elites, just as Trump on Thursday declared, “I am your voice.” But in practice, they replace the voices of the citizens with their own singular voice. Decrying a diverse plurality of American voices, the Republican convention showed the world that America and Trumpism are writing a new chapter in the long global history of authoritarian challenges to democracy. That is a scarier outcome than any other presidential convention I can remember.