It was a remarkable nonpartisan keynote address in a year of tremendous social and political chaos. The times were tricky in Chicago. The incumbent president of the United States, a Democrat eligible for reelection, was not the party’s choice to serve another term.
As the Democratic National Convention convened in Chicago in 1968, the party’s establishment coalesced behind the incumbent vice president, Hubert Humphrey. Racial tensions and riots, political assassinations, and a deadlocked war overseas left a sense of powerlessness — and righteous anger — among people across the United States. Americans openly voiced their distrust of the institutions, leaders, and democratic processes.
Under these unfavorable circumstances, Daniel Inouye carried the honor of giving the convention’s keynote address to a broken Democratic Party and anxious country. In that season of chaos, few to none would ultimately project as constructive — or enduring — a vision as Daniel K. Inouye, the junior U.
S. senator from Hawaii. In eras beset with division, Inouye’s timeless saw civic engagement with republics and their institutions as a ready answer to periods of crisis and chaos.
Less than a month after the Democratic Party met once again at Chicago in 2024 to nominate Kamala Harris, Inouye’s message produces an enduring, cogent message for a universal, nonpartisan faith in civic virtue. The process for finding a speaker started in early 1968, months before the assassinations of ei.
