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The NewsHour's regular panel of historians look back at the last Democratic Convention in Chicago, the violent and divisive meeting in 1968.

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A RealAudio version of this NewsHour segment is available. Complete NewsHour coverage of the '96 elections. Complete NewsHour coverage of the Republican National Convention in San Diego.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And here to talk about that are presidential historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Beschloss, author/journalist Haynes Johnson, and Bill Kristol, editor and publisher of The Weekly Standard. Thanks for being with us. We've seen a show of unity tonight. You heard Harold Ickes, the presidential adviser and campaign strategist, say earlier although he's been a longtime liberal that it was all right for the President to sign this welfare bill. It's quite different from what we saw in 1968 in Chicago, isn't it? And you are a Chicagoan.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, Presidential Historian: I'm a Chicagoan and I was somewhat here, although I was only 12 years old. You know, you remember 1968, and--little time has changed for the Democrats and me. Go back to '68. Bitter divisions on that convention floor--you can make the argument that the Democrats were less divided in 1968 in certain ways than they are in 1996. In '68, they were absolutely in conflict over Vietnam, the central issue of the period, but if you look at domestic issues, for instance, whether government should be used actively to improve people's lives and expand fairness, virtually every Democratic delegate on that floor believed in big government, believed that what FDR, JFK, and LBJ had done was a very good thing. Then through the 1970's, the tide in this country for liberalism really began to run out. You get to a bellwether election like 1980. Ted Kennedy was arguing that Jimmy Carter had abandoned those old liberal traditions. He was able to make considerable in-roads, and in the early primaries threatened to topple an incumbent President. Now you get to the mid 1990s. Bill Clinton says the era of big government is over. He may believe that a lot of people on that floor really don't believe it, and you've got a party divided between people who feel that they have learned some lessons and perhaps feel that the era of big government is at least somewhat over, and others who are basically traditionally liberal and would love to have more big government programs if the time allowed and basically are willing to disguise those views this week in order to elect a Democratic President.

WILLIAM KRISTOL, The Weekly Standard: But there is this one stunning contrast with 1968, and Doris mentioned it earlier. Lyndon Johnson, Democratic President of the United States, could not come to his own convention, his farewell convention, also on his birthday, in 1968. He desperately wanted to come apparently. Thomas Boggs, the Majority Whip, head of the Platform Committee, had to call him, I gather, on the first day of the convention, and say, Mr. President, you can't come. I gather it was a difficult phone conversation. Umm, this is the opposite. This is a convention totally dominated by the incumbent Democratic President. Mayor Daley, the younger Mayor--the current Mayor Daley, Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, said today in really a striking statement that this is not the Democratic Party's convention, this is the President's convention. And it is dominated by President Clinton to a degree that I think--I can't remember--he's on the train, he's going to intervene in each night's proceedings, other elected officials are not featured very much, which raises the question of, I mean, this is Bill Clinton's convention but has he changed the character of the Democratic Party?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, Presidential Historian: In fact, it almost appears to be Clinton's convention without roots in the Democratic Party, and almost every other convention in the past, you would see great moments toward FDR, toward Harry Truman, toward John F. Kennedy. And in fact, what's so amazing about Chicago is these incredible conventions all took place here. Bryan's cross of gold was here. FDR made the New Deal alive here in 1932. Stevenson and John Kennedy ran for vice president in 1956, and his whole career started. It's almost as if this party doesn't want to talk about that past, that they want to recreate themselves anew. You don't see any previous Democratic candidates here. Is Dukakis going to be here? Is Mondale going to be here? Is Carter here? It somehow seems like Clinton wants to free himself from this past. And I think sometimes when you lose your root in the past, this party has an enormous legacy. You don't hear anyone here talking about the economic royalists. That powered the Democratic Party for a century. It's the Republicans that are the opposition this time, not these economic bad guys. They're all in it together somehow.

HAYNES JOHNSON, Author/Journalist: But there's a reason why what we're watching and hearing happens and why it's happening tonight. This is the Democrats are playing off historic disaster in 1968 that tore the party apart as the country's being torn, lessened their appeal to citizens across the country, and they're playing off the politics of defeat. When we saw those people on the platform just a minute ago, Tom Daschle from South Dakota is the minority leader of the U.S. Senate, Dick Gephardt is the minority leader of the House. That's only happened twice since 1932, when the Democrats were in the minority. And now they're having to try to redefine themselves and--Clinton was a winner at least, even--but only 43 percent. So now you're seeing this whole party coming up for grabs again, and they don't want to do anything that will jeopardize their chance to govern and to win.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Haynes, you were here in '68.

HAYNES JOHNSON: Yes.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You saw what happened. It would be hard to overestimate the importance of that and in the Democratic history since then.

HAYNES JOHNSON: It's not just a Democratic history. Nobody who was here or watched it ever came out of it the same. I mean, it did something psychically to people. It lost the--it lessened faith in politicians, in the country, and its institutions. It was one of those scarring, lacerating events that branded you. I mean, we all--Michael was 12 years old but was in Chicago, and Bill was--Bill was 12--14--

WILLIAM KRISTOL: Somewhere in-between.

HAYNES JOHNSON: But seriously, we all are--we all have a legacy of that period, and not one of us came out of--and that came out of that period.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: I think sometimes we overestimate that as the only example of 1968, that year was a tumultuous year. HAYNES JOHNSON: Yes.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: It started with the Tet Offensive. It started with McCarthy, this seemingly unknown person, challenging a sitting President, and Lyndon Johnson miraculously withdraws from the race. The Martin Luther King is killed, then Bobby Kennedy is killed. In Paris, France, the students were rioting. It was an extraordinary year, and Chicago was a piece of that. We can't just pretend that everything was great until Chicago.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: It was against that backdrop something fascinating happened, and that is the Democrats that had built the New Deal and the Fair Deal and had run the early Cold War against the Soviet Union very successfully because they ran one bad convention in Chicago Richard Nixon, the Republicans, were able to make this point that a party that cannot unite itself cannot govern America, and the Democrats suffered for more than a decade from this view that this was a party that could not get its act together was not suited for government.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. That's all the time we have. Thank you.

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