PERSONALITY: O'Brien's Last Hurrah

• Share

On the morrow of the convention, Lawrence F. O'Brien stepped down as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, ending 21 remarkable years as the steward of his party. His last hurrah was to preside with panache over the proceedings in Miami Beach last week. TIME'S Washington Bureau Chief Hugh Sidey chronicles the event through the eyes of the Democrats' pro of pros:

They brought the reports from the floor to Larry O'Brien before the convention opened. Some of them were pretty scary. Beards, longhairs, nuts out there, filling up O'Brien's beloved party seats, ready to tear his whole political life to shreds. He puffed on his Kents and chortled, sitting in his trailer just outside the hall, outwardly calm but inside taut. He would have the whole monstrous affair to oversee.

He stubbed out a cigarette, put on his coat and thought to himself: Here we go—here's reform. He made the 100 crowded strides to the podium looking like what he has always been: a pol. Not young, not old, but plenty Irish and plenty seasoned. Odd that he represented in the minds of many of the new people the very bossism they hated; yet he had held the party together for a decade and sometimes, with men like Treasurer Robert Strauss, almost with his bare hands and certainly with bare wallets. Without O'Brien there would have been no reform.

Just before he took the final steps to view what lay before him, his deputy, Stanley Greigg, took his arm and said, "Keep your sense of humor." Good advice, and O'Brien's face crinkled. He felt pretty good. Then he saw them, and for an instant his internal radar swept the horizon and put them up against the Democrats of other times. Not that much difference, he told himself with relief, after only a few seconds. People keep forgetting that Democrats have always come out of the streets and back alleys. More blacks, thought O'Brien, more women, younger—yes, a beard here and there. Somewhere in the back of his mind lurked the pictures of the faces of those working men of Massachusetts who had listened to him in bars and grubby back rooms when, as a 16-year-old, he gave speeches for his father running for delegate. They wanted a society that worked. So do these people.

O'Brien picked up the huge gavel. Too heavy, he thought. Why not get an electric buzzer next time? He whacked it down, and the great spectacle of Miami Beach was on. He made an early decision. The noisy mass below him had to be managed, somehow led through four days of business, but more important were the millions and millions of Americans who were watching through those blinking red eyes directly in front of him. Talk to them, he told himself, wondering what the man in San Clemente would be seeing in a few hours.