THOUSANDS of furious demonstrators protesting against an increasingly unpopular war on the far side of the world, a police force bristling with armour and steely intent and a presidential convention.
That was the recipe for days of running battles on the streets of Chicago in 1968 when bloody chaos tarred Democrats as they nominated Hubert Humphrey, helping to deliver the White House to Richard Nixon.
They are also the ingredients thrown into the melting pot of New York next week when Republicans meet to anoint President Bush as their candidate for the November 2 election. Already tens of thousands of demonstrators have begun converging on the city for the biggest protests at a party convention in 36 years.
Even in cooler times New York is to Republicans what Fallujah is to US Marines, and arriving delegates will be under no illusion about the “welcome” being cooked up for them. Brooklynites who live on the flight path to La Guardia airport have draped vast tarpaulins over their roofs with slogans such as “RE-DEFEAT BUSH”.
A liberal think-tank has unveiled a giant digital clock in Times Square showing the estimated cost of the Iraq war, arguing the money could be better spent at home. The clock began ticking at $134.5 billion and is adding $122,820 a minute.
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A group protesting over US policies on Third World debt has brought traffic to a standstill by stripping in the middle of a busy intersection.Another abseiled down the Plaza Hotel to unfurl a banner with the words “Truth” and “Bush” pointing in opposite directions. Already more than 20 protesters have been arrested, more than three times the number during the entire week of the Democratic convention in Boston.
In Chicago in 1968, passions were also running high. The previous months had seen the murders of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. Vietnam protests had mushroomed during a long hot summer and an aggressively uncompromising police force was ready for trouble, letting their billy clubs do the talking and their teargas cannisters the dispersing.
The New York City police department boasts a high-tech arsenal to confront protesters. It includes high-speed small saws, powered by compressed air, that can slice through padlocks and chains, and an acoustic speaker developed for the military that can blare 150-decibel commands for 400 yards.
Ten thousand police officers — more than a quarter of the city’s force — will flood the area around Madison Square Garden in midtown Manhattan, the convention venue. The small grid of streets around it will be closed for the week and has been dubbed the “Green Zone” after the heavily fortified coalition headquarters in Baghdad.
The city’s heavily armed “Hercules” counter-terror squads, sharpshooters, radiation detectors and 181 bomb-sniffing dogs will protect the venue as a surveillance blimp hovers overhead. Agents from the Federal Protective Service will wear helmet-mounted cameras that feed back to headquarters pictures from the front lines of protests.
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Anyone with a beef against Mr Bush has an intoxicating menu of protest possibilities from which to choose. There will be marches, demonstrations sit-ins, vigils, rallies and a die-in, occasions to be against war and for the environment, for peace and against unemployment. They will be held in the name of Christians, veterans, women, Greens, the poor and the disabled, fire fighters and the police, not to mention dogs. Or anarchy.
A group of women, Axis of Eve, is promising a mass flash of what are described as anti-Bush thongs. There will be raging noise and solemn silence.
When Mr Bush and his strategists picked New York to be their convention city 18 months ago, they foresaw none of this. Then, the presidential race looked to be a very different contest, and the selection of New York appeared clever politics.
New York may be enemy territory for Republicans, yet Mr Bush was ready to march into town and plant his banner in the heart of Manhattan.
The script read as follows: on the basis of his widely popular response to the September 11 attacks the President had just defied history by leading Republicans to victory in the 2002 congressional mid-term elections. He looked politically unassailable and was preparing to initiate a short and sweet war to topple one of America’s leading bogeymen.
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Moreover, by delaying the Republican convention from traditional August to irregular September, Mr Bush would also be able to capitalise on the third anniversary of 9/11.
All this offered an apparent open goal for a president who found his post-9/11 voice through a loud-hailer at Ground Zero, perched on its smouldering rubble and in the embrace of a firefighter.
New York, home of choice for America’s left-leaning intellectuals and with its own distinct brand of blue-collar brass, has almost always been an unhappy hunting ground for Republicans. Registered Republicans are outnumbered by more than eight to one by their opponents. Whereas Democrats and the city have stroked each other during five presidential conventions, the Republicans have never gathered there to pick a candidate. True, the current and former mayors, Michael Bloomberg and Rudolph Giuliani, are Republicans. But both are former Democrats.
Yet 18 months ago some Republicans were excited enough to believe that Mr Bush could become the first of their kind to win New York since Calvin Coolidge in 1924.
But Iraq and an uncertain economy have changed the climate so dramatically that Republican high command has had to tear up its script.
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There is no chance now that the beleaguered Mr Bush could indulge in a visit to the missing towers that have defined his presidency. A feisty New York public would not allow him to get away with co-opting its grief for electoral ends. Images from Ground Zero included in a campaign advert sparked criticism from 9/11 families.
Bob Beckwith, the retired firefighter whose shoulder Mr Bush leant on three days after 9/11, will not be at his side in this hour of need. Like many New Yorkers is planning to leave town. “He does not want to get caught up in the nonsense,” said a fireman friend. “Bob’s very unpolitical. He just happened to be at the right place at the right time.” Mr Bush’s handlers have been so spooked by the promised turbulence that the President is not even staying the night in Manhattan. After he makes his acceptance speech on Thursday evening there is a midnight rally in Pennsylvania for him to escape to.
In taking on the Big Apple, has Mr Bush bitten off more than he can chew? Violence could provide the graphic proof that he has been a divider, not the uniter that he promised to be in 2000, that the Iraq war is in danger of becoming as corrosive as Vietnam became and that it might be time for a change.
Reflecting on the Republicans’ choice of New York, Tom Schaller, a political scientist at the University of Maryland said: “Now you have to put it in the same category as landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln in a flight suit in front of a banner saying ‘Mission Accomplished’.”
A decision by the city authorities this week appears to play into the hands of anarchists who, according to internet gossip, are planning to hijack peaceful protests with the kind of violence that shocked Seattle when it hosted world trade talks in 1999.
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An anti-war march planned for tomorrow is expected to attract a crowd of 250,000. Yet a judge has refused to allow them to congregate at the Green Lawn in Central Park because the crowd would damage the grass. The marchers will go ahead. But with nowhere to go, the chances of frustration turning to trouble are increased.
In 1968 it was the Democratic Establishment, incumbent in the White House and pro-war, that was the target of the violence. Mr Humphrey paid the price, losing the election three months later.
Yet should violence break out, Mr Bush will not necessarily be the loser. City residents romanticise their home as comic-book Gotham, a city fit for super heroes, yet to much of middle America New York is closer to Gomorrah. For Mr Bush to receive a hostile reception by its residents is unlikely to harm him in rural Missouri.
Moreover, Republican high command is planning to stage two very different conventions inside Madison Square Garden. The party platform firmly endorses Mr Bush’s support for a ban on gay marrige and heavy restrictions on stem cell research.
But the face that the party will present to the outside world is one of studied moderation. The roster of speakers includes Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California; Rudolph Giuliani; and Zell Miller, a Democrat-turned-Republican.
They, along with John McCain, the independent-minded senator, are a long way from Mr Bush’s core support on the Christian right. But like four years ago when he surprised some with a cosmopolitan line-up of speakers and an inclusive-sounding agenda, they are part of a concerted drive to woo swing voters.
Republicans have already made clear that they will pin the blame for any signs of violence on Democrats. “If demonstrations fall into violence and aggressive forms of civil disobedience, then it allows the Republicans to charge the Democrats with being extremist and non-patriotic,” said Tom Mann, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think-tank. “It’s a fine line and both sides understand that.”
Democratic chiefs, only too aware of the dangers, have tried to get their defence in first. Ed Koch, the former mayor, beams down from billboards urging New Yorkers to “make nice” with their visitors. Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic national chairman, has urged protesters to let the Republicans get on with their convention.
But the irony is that the dynamic that has turned New York into such a threatening stage for Mr Bush could yet turn out to be his saving grace.