Clinton-Obama Delegate Fight: A Repeat of 1968 Convention?

Democratic presidential hopefuls Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.

At the 1960 convention in Los Angeles, there were no mass protests in the streets. Thousands of people swept into the convention carrying Stevenson banners, and Eleanor Roosevelt pushed for a Stevenson-Kennedy ticket—with JFK on the bottom. "You had a real battle on the floor," says Suri. But ultimately, a compromise was reached.

That, historians say, is the real legacy of 1968. The chaos outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago was the exception, not the rule. And while the dogged nature of this year's campaign may seem to be pushing the candidates toward a convention hall showdown, the lesson of 1968, above all, is the necessity of compromise. "You don't have that gulf between two sides, where it really doesn't seem possible to negotiate," says Michael Kazin, a professor of history at Georgetown University. "Obama's people don't trust Clinton's, and Clinton's people don't trust Obama's. But they'll come up with a compromise before the convention. If not, then the Democratic Party is hopeless."