There has never been a campaign like the one that preceded the presidential election of 1968. As dramatic changes convulsed American society on a number of levels, an embattled incumbent president surprised the nation by withdrawing from the race, a former vice president that many believed was out of politics made a stunning comeback, a youthful presidential candidate who inspired multitudes was assassinated, rioting broke out at a national nominating convention, a potent segregationist third party formed to drain electoral votes away from the main parties, and the general mood of the country was rocked by tragedy, anger, disaffection, disappointment, fragmentation, and grief. The Vietnam War, which had now involved Americans for three administrations, was widely protested. The civil rights movement, in spite of the significant legislative victories of 1964 and 1965, was beleaguered by a sense of frustration that in some instances turned toward bitterness, and the peaceful methods that defined the movement in the 1950s and early 1960s were now undercut by an increase in blind violence. In April of that year, the most prominent leader of the movement, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., was gunned down by an assassin, fueling the despair and confusion that seemed to mark those times. The 1960s were both hopeful and disorienting, promising an uplifting cultural transformation while often delivering social disillusionment. Against this backdrop, the presidential campaign of 1968 remains a singular moment in American political history.
Incumbent president Johnson had enjoyed a staggering electoral victory in 1964, and the early months of his first full term as president (he had earlier succeeded to the presidency on the death of President John F. Kennedy, who was struck down by an assassin’s bullet, a far too frequent event in the 1960s) were characterized by a series of legislative triumphs. But to his eventual downfall, the ambitious president did the very thing that he promised he would not do during the Campaign of 1964. Critical of his campaign opponent of that year, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, for his bellicose attitudes regarding foreign policy, and especially with regard to Vietnam, President Johnson had pledged that he would not send “American boys” to fight a war that should be fought by “Asian boys.” But early in his term, LBJ, in an effort to seize control of the situation, escalated the American presence in Indochina, and the Vietnam War turned far more controversial, a controversy that severely divided the country and stained what had otherwise been, at least by many accounts, a successful presidency.
In February 1964, just three months after the death of President Kennedy, Johnson’s approval rating peaked at 79 percent, but by the spring of 1965, it dipped below 50 percent, dropping to below 40 percent before the end of 1966 and swinging widely back and forth throughout 1967. Even so, LBJ was considered the party’s clear front-runner going into the 1968 campaign. His lowest approval rating had not dropped as low as President Truman’s had prior to the campaign season of 1948 (Truman had also ascended to the White House upon the death of a president), and Truman somehow managed reelection against what were then seen as long odds. In the initial days of the 1968 campaign, no one would directly challenge Johnson, even though the war had severely compromised his popularity and had caused visible divisions within his own party. Incumbent presidents are seldom denied their party’s renomination; the last time this occurred was in 1884, when the Republicans chose not to nominate the incumbent president Arthur (yet another vice president to have ascended to the presidency upon the death of a president, and in this case, an assassination as well). Within the party, if there were to be a challenge, the obvious choice was New York senator Robert F. Kennedy, the younger brother and most trusted adviser of the late President Kennedy, as well as former attorney general in both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Kennedy, no friend of Johnson’s, had become over the past few months increasingly disenchanted with the war and, by the latter part of 1967, more vocal in his criticism. Friends and close associates were prodding Kennedy to oppose Johnson, but Kennedy held back, fully aware of the divisiveness that would ensue in the wake of such an intraparty challenge. But as he became more critical of the war, it was difficult for Kennedy to remain out of the race; by February 1968, he had privately decided to enter the race, but he was advised to withhold announcing the decision until later.
However, another challenger had announced—Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, part poet, part scholar, and fully resolute in his strong and vocal opposition to the war. McCarthy held considerable appeal for young Americans, who were referred to as the “McCarthy Million” and who made a point of abandoning the countercultural fashions of the day that encouraged long hair and unconventional dress to go “Clean for Gene” while canvassing neighborhoods throughout the nation for votes. The McCarthy Million—a number of whom were actually Kennedy loyalists looking for a surrogate—were a devoted, enthusiastic, disciplined, and focused cohort, determined to bring McCarthy’s antiwar message to the American public. McCarthy understood the quixotic nature of challenging an incumbent president within one’s own party, and particularly one as politically savvy as Lyndon Johnson, but his primary goal was, at least initially, to challenge the war itself more than to unseat LBJ. The first round occured in the New Hampshire primary in March, where McCarthy’s strong performance against the president stunned the media and sent shockwaves through the party. In the primary, LBJ tallied the most votes, taking 49 percent; but McCarthy won 42 percent, an unheard-of figure against a sitting president; and more importantly, twenty of the twenty-four New Hampshire delegates pledged for Senator McCarthy, boosting the senator’s confidence and prompting him to publicly predict that he would beat Johnson and win the nomination. It was now no longer a campaign to force the party in power to reconsider its policies in Vietnam; it was now a real contest to dislodge President Johnson from within his own party.
Shortly after, Senator Kennedy announced he was joining the race. Even though most insiders testify that prior to New Hampshire, Kennedy had already decided to announce, McCarthy and his followers took offense at the timing of RFK’s announcement coming so close to McCarthy’s triumph. McCarthy harbored feelings of resentment against Bobby Kennedy, whom he saw as having waited behind the lines for him to do the dirty work in weakening the president, and was now suiting up to ride in for the kill. Kennedy announced that his campaign was “not in opposition to McCarthy’s candidacy, but in harmony” with it. But a breach had been opened between Kennedy and McCarthy; throughout the campaign, the latter took umbrage at the appearance of opportunism on the part of the former. Whether or not that assessment is fair remains beyond anyone’s perception, but it is clear that not only was there a fissure between the president and the liberal wing of the party over Vietnam, but now there was also a serious division between the McCarthy and Kennedy factions of that wing. The Democratic Party was fragmenting.
With McCarthy and Kennedy marshaled against him, and in the wake of the Tet Offensive—a comparatively extensive and coordinated assault throughout South Vietnam committed by the forces of North Vietnam in combination with the Viet Cong rebels, an assault that was in reality soundly defeated by U.S. military forces but that had nonetheless illustrated the full resolve of the enemy and, in the judgment of the media, the strategic mistakes of the administration—President Johnson stunned the nation when he announced on national television that he “would not seek [or] accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President.” The president explained that he was withdrawing from the election in order to devote all his efforts to bringing the war to a swift resolution. With the exception of those closest to the president, the announcement came as a complete surprise, one that threw the campaign wide open and initiated one of the most chaotic episodes in American political history.
With President Johnson now out, it initially came down to McCarthy and Kennedy; but they were quickly joined by Vice President Hubert Humphrey, another liberal Democrat but with a much longer public record of progressivism, reaching back to the Truman administration. Owing to Humphrey’s stature as vice president, he was immediately regarded the front-runner and likely heir apparent by the party leadership. But both McCarthy and Kennedy enjoyed enthusiastic groundswells of popular support, and as the campaign moved into the spring, it was apparent that Humphrey’s advantage was vulnerable. Kennedy toured the country at a frenzied pace, energizing crowds and, in turn, being energized by them. Kennedy spoke brilliantly and courageously, and while McCarthy was more than capable of matching Kennedy on the level of intellect and in the promotion of ideas, Kennedy’s passion and the power of his message, which called for a just, compassionate, and ennobled America, in many ways eclipsed McCarthy’s more cerebral style. McCarthy, while sincere in his beliefs, seemed personally detached, and observers would often note that he gave the impression that he really did not want the presidency that much. By contrast, Kennedy was driven; he carried the much-touted mystique of his family’s name and the legacy and promise of his brother’s lost presidency, as well as his own emerging voice, which had become a powerful clarion call on behalf of the poor and marginalized:
We must recognize peace in the world means little to us unless we can preserve it at home. We cannot continue to deny and postpone the demands of our people while spending billions in the name of freedom for others. No country can lead the fight for social justice of its own capital. No government can sustain international law and order unless it can do so at home. No country can lead the fight for social justice unless its commitment to its own people is credible and determined—unless it seeks jobs and not the dole for its men, unless it feels anguish as long as any of its children are hungry, unless it believes in opportunity for all its citizens. Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not beyond our control. Alfred Lord Tennyson once wrote: “The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks/The long day wanes/the low moon climbs/the deep moans round with many voices/Come, my friends, ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.”
Kennedy was particularly beloved within minority communities. In California, he joined activist Cesar Chavez in meeting migrant farm workers; he made a point of introducing himself to leaders of local African American communities wherever he went; and he campaigned hard in predominantly black neighborhoods, where he was embraced with genuine and reciprocated affection. African American voters, as a general population, still felt disaffected in spite of recent attempts to address the painful history of their disfranchisement; but in Kennedy, many African Americans found a kindred spirit. On the night of the murder of Reverend King, Bobby Kennedy appeared at a previously scheduled rally in downtown Indianapolis, a rally that was intended to be a simple campaign event; but the senator turned his attention to the tragedy, announcing the terrible news to the crowd that had gathered to hear him and then lingering to share his reflections and grief, an act that is widely recognized as the only explanation as to why rioting did not erupt in Indianapolis as it had in nearly every other American city over the next few days. Kennedy’s compassion for African Americans on that night, as well as his courage in calming what easily could have become an angry, destructive crowd, were well noted and long appreciated.
After Reverend King’s funeral, Kennedy continued to cross the country at a nearly frenzied pace, sharing his message of a gentle and just society for all, a theme that quickly eclipsed his criticism of the war. His concern for the poor was commended, but his own campaign staffers were upset by some of his campaign trail decisions. On one occasion, rather than attend a larger rally for more visible media exposure, Bobby devoted the better part of an entire day to visiting, away from the media spotlight, a Native American reservation and forming a friendship with a young child who resided there. This attention endeared him to the tribe, but his handlers were frustrated by the lack of press exposure and the remoteness of the location. Kennedy seemed to be indifferent to those frustrations; always empathetic toward the many injustices suffered by Native American tribes, RFK felt more comfortable spending time on a reservation rather than attending staged campaign events that would draw the big crowds. But when Kennedy did appear before those larger crowds, the response was always a spontaneous outpouring of a kind of fervor unseen even in American politics, the kind of crowd reaction usually accorded a rock star, not a politician. McCarthy, even though he possessed an intelligence and charisma of his own, was still no match for this; but his campaign carried forward, and he managed to win one primary against the steaming RFK juggernaut, the first time any Kennedy had lost an election of any kind. But for the most part, RFK’s momentum seemed unstoppable as the campaign moved toward what many regarded to be the decisive primary—California.
Meanwhile, with LBJ no longer a problem, the Republicans marshaled their forces. The Republican field consisted of Michigan governor George Romney, the former president of American Motors and the most prominent Mormon politician in the country; New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, the leader of the liberal wing of the Republican Party, who for a brief time had been considered a potential candidate in 1964; California governor Ronald Reagan, the new favorite of the conservatives and a rapidly rising force in the party; and former vice president and the party’s nominee in 1960, Richard M. Nixon. In 1962, after a campaign for governor of California, Nixon, resentful of his treatment in the press, curtly announced his retirement from politics, punctuated at his purported “last press conference” by his famous declaration, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” But by 1964, Nixon was back in. While he was not at that time positioned to challenge Barry Goldwater for the GOP nomination, he appeared at the convention to speak on Goldwater’s behalf, and he stumped for Goldwater after the convention.
Even as Goldwater’s 1964 campaign was circling the drain, Nixon was thinking of ways to run in 1968, but he played it coy. Throughout 1967, he kept a low profile, taking time away from politics to write and travel, allowing Romney—who for a time was the more visible candidate and appeared to be shaping up as the front-runner—and the others plenty of room to advertise their names. Romney made himself known in the media, and his activities were clearly marked by the tenor of a presidential campaign. He did indeed begin to emerge as the GOP front-runner, with Nixon virtually out of sight. Like Bobby Kennedy, Nixon held back and allowed the rest in the field to make their respective plays. Many of Romney’s ideas were compelling and even later adopted by politicians in both parties, but he lacked the focus and discipline needed to speak clearly and consistently, and to avoid costly gaffes. The worst gaffe was when Romney stated that he had been “brainwashed” by the government and the military to accept the Vietnam War, a self-destructive, hyperbolic statement that he could not live down and that, more than anything else, killed his prospects. By the time of the New Hampshire primary, Romney’s campaign was out of steam, and sensing a lack of support, he withdrew. Nixon, who had deftly sustained low visibility on the campaign trail but, through his writings and well-selected appearances, was looking ever more presidential, easily won the New Hampshire primary, taking 78 percent of the votes, a victory that was followed by equally impressive wins in Wisconsin and Ohio. He was outpolled by Governor Rockefeller in a much more competitive field in the Massachusetts primary, but not by much, as Rockefeller and favorite son John Volpe took 30 percent each to Nixon’s 26 percent; but in the following two midwestern primaries in Indiana and Ohio, he made his statement, polling 100 percent of the vote. He won all but one of the remaining contested primaries, losing only to Governor Reagan in California, Reagan’s home turf. In total votes throughout all the primaries, Reagan actually won slightly more than Nixon, but that was accounted for by Reagan’s victory in California, where Nixon did not bother to campaign. In terms of delegates, it was Nixon who had the leverage.
Moving toward the convention, Nixon was clearly the indisputable GOP front-runner and likely nominee. For a brief moment, the conservative Reagan and the liberal Rockefeller seemed prepared to unite their efforts against Nixon, but they were unable to give each other their unqualified support. Thus Nixon took a commanding 692 delegates on the first ballot to 277 for Rockefeller and 182 for Reagan, with the remaining votes dispersed across a field of eight minor candidates. On the second round, over 1,200 delegates announced for Nixon, and for the second time in three election years, he was nominated as the standard-bearer for the Republican Party. For vice president, Nixon inexplicably picked Maryland governor Spiro Agnew, a virtual unknown outside his home state, in a move that disappointed many at the convention who were actually hoping to see Romney join the Nixon ticket. Agnew, who was really a Rockefeller man and was himself disappointed at Rockefeller’s withdrawal, found himself surprised at the opportunity. But now Agnew was suddenly Nixon’s man in spite of his lack of high visibility in the public arena. Even though Nixon had many rivals and even some enemies in his own party, he was able to accomplish what Goldwater could not four years earlier—to pull all factions of the party together.
Nixon’s acceptance speech was among his better rhetorical moments. He spoke lucidly and candidly of “forgotten Americans” who were frustrated by inflation, war, and violence on American streets:
Let us look at America, let us listen to America to find the answer to that question. As we look at America, we see cities enveloped in smoke and flame. We hear sirens in the night. We see Americans dying on distant battlefields abroad. We see Americans hating each other; fighting each other; killing each other at home. And as we see and hear these things, millions of Americans cry out in anguish. Did we come all this way for this? Did American boys die in Normandy, and Korea, and in Valley Forge for this? Listen to the answer to those questions. It is another voice. It is the quiet voice in the tumult and the shouting. It is the voice of the great majority of Americans, the forgotten Americans—the non-shouters; the non-demonstrators. They are not racists or sick; they are not guilty of the crime that plagues the land. They are black and they are white—they’re native born and foreign born—they’re young and they’re old. They work in America’s factories. They run America’s businesses. They serve in government. They provide most of the soldiers who died to keep us free. They give drive to the spirit of America. They give lift to the American Dream. They give steel to the backbone of America. They are good people, they are decent people; they work, and they save, and they pay their taxes, and they care. Like Theodore Roosevelt, they know that this country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless it is a good place for all of us to live in. This I say to you tonight is the real voice of America. In this year 1968, this is the message it will broadcast to America and to the world. Let’s never forget that despite her faults, America is a great nation. And America is great because her people are great.
In the end, the Republican convention produced a cohesive, focused ticket and entered the final push for the White House as a unified and confident force. The Democrats, on the other hand, met nothing but division, chaos, disaffection, despair, violence, and heartbreaking tragedy.
The United States in the 1960s was a violent, destructive place. Perhaps this can be said, with requisite qualifications, of any given era in American history; but in the 1960s, a decade often viewed as a touchstone of liberation and renewal, the prevalence of social turmoil and the frequency of violence seems, in retrospect, particularly incongruous. The war in Vietnam and persistent frustration in the civil rights movement fueled a roiling undercurrent of discontent that could not remain static; it had to discharge, and when it did, something was destroyed. Whether this destruction came in the shape of the many urban riots that marred the American landscape, or the assault on civil rights protesters, or the seizure of public buildings on campuses and, in some cases, acts of arson on those very campuses, it was jarringly dissonant with the potent countercultural aspirations for a more harmonious, peaceful, and loving human community. Peace and love were popular sentiments, but they were not popularly practiced. And few acts reminded the public of this more viscerally than the assassinations of their moral and political leadership.
President Kennedy was but the first to fall to such murderous acts. Others followed, and on June 5, 1968, the very night of his impressive and pivotal victory in the California primary, the late president’s younger brother Robert Francis Kennedy was mortally wounded by the bullet of a demented assassin; he would die the following day. It was a particularly senseless and demoralizing moment, one that ended the life of a beloved public figure and, simultaneously, killed what might have been the most morally compelling political campaign in modern American politics. Yet again, just two months after the murder of Reverend King, and not quite five years after the murder of a president, the nation was again thrown into mourning. The loss of Bobby Kennedy was every bit as bitter as the loss of his brother, a loss felt beyond the constraints of partisan politics. But if we are to look at the partisan effects that followed, the Democratic Party was utterly wrecked, and it would not be until the next decade that it could begin to recover. With two Kennedy brothers slain and the fall from grace of the once-indefatigable Lyndon Johnson, the Democrats were thrown into chaos, and this chaos erupted yet again into violence, at the national nominating convention in Chicago later that summer.
When Bobby Kennedy was slain, the contest for the nomination was reduced to two contenders: Humphrey and McCarthy. Other names were entertained, most notably South Dakota senator George McGovern, a close ally of RFK; and for a brief moment, the youngest and surviving Kennedy brother, Senator Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy, even was proposed as a write-in candidate, one who might have been able to rely on McCarthy’s delegates had he entered the race. By convention time, McCarthy had lost interest and focus, his campaign inconsistent since California. Ted Kennedy might have had a chance if McCarthy’s delegates threw in, but it was clear that Vice President Humphrey was the likely nominee. (An offer for the vice presidency was floated to Ted Kennedy from Humphrey, but the senator declined.) As the convention approached, rumors also circulated that President Johnson was preparing another surprise move, hinting that he was about to change his mind and enter the convention as a candidate for reelection, a prospect that to some now seemed, after the turbulent summer, a tolerable and maybe even safe fallback. But Johnson stood by his decision to retire; thus, in the end, it was either Humphrey, the favorite, or McCarthy, who was now the dark horse; the former had the support of the party leadership, while the latter still appealed to the antiwar element—one was seen as the candidate of “the Establishment,” the other as the wave of the future.
While the convention proceeded, antiwar protests erupted outside. At one point, Chicago police, in response to what was seen as an insult to the American flag, responded with force. The protesters reacted in kind, further provoking the police and escalating levels of violence leading to sheer mayhem. Young people were bludgeoned and brutalized, tear gas was deployed in such quantities that the fumes wafted into the hotel room where Senator Humphrey was lodged awaiting his nomination, and, equally important, the shameful debacle was broadcast on television, viewed by millions of utterly bewildered viewers. What was later called a “police riot” quickly divided the delegates on the convention floor; many supported the actions of the police against what was perceived to be nothing more than a savage, unpatriotic mob, but many others found the level of force used against the protesters excessive and reprehensible. A pugnacious, aggressive Mayor Richard Daley, the convention host, defended the Chicago police and the forces of the Illinois National Guard who were called in for support, and he was unapologetic for having ordered the crackdown.
Inside the convention, acrimony reigned and political debate gave way to angry outbursts as tempers rose and flared. Television journalists Mike Wallace and Dan Rather were physically manhandled by police on the convention floor, and a rancorous Daley loudly cursed anti-Semitic epithets at Connecticut senator Abraham Ribicoff when the latter accused the mayor’s police force of resembling the Nazi Gestapo. But in the end, and in spite of the emotional and even physical turmoil on the convention floor, Vice President Humphrey was nominated through the chaos on the first ballot, gaining 1,760 votes to McCarthy’s 601 and McGovern’s 146, with the District of Columbia nominating its favorite son, the Reverend Channing Philips, the first African American to receive nominating votes at a Democratic convention. Vice President Humphrey then tapped the able and respected Maine senator Edmund Muskie for the second spot on the ticket. Senator Muskie would become the second Roman Catholic to be nominated for the vice presidency by a major party, after William E. Miller, the GOP nominee for the vice presidency four years earlier (on the Goldwater ticket), and along with Al Smith and John Kennedy, who were both nominated for president, only the fourth Roman Catholic to be nominated to national elective office (which, in effect, is a set of two: the presidency and the vice presidency). As capable as Muskie was, his selection to join the ticket was almost lost in the turbulence around the candidates. In the front rooms of the United States, dismayed television viewers were treated to the specter of parallel images of political celebrations staged inside the convention as rioting raged outside the convention. The party was immediately divided, with many Democrats who had supported either Kennedy or McCarthy, and in the latter days McGovern, expressing their feelings with a new chant: “Dump the Hump!” It was an unmitigated disaster, and it was perhaps the inevitable final chapter of a campaign initiated by antiwar dissent and shattered by assassination.
However, Humphrey’s campaign was not a complete disappointment. In late October, President Johnson suspended bombing operations over North Vietnam, a move well received by the American public and which gave Humphrey’s campaign renewed support. At one point, he actually passed Nixon in the polls, leading him by around 3 percent just a few days away from Election Day, a surprising development given the recent fiasco at Chicago. Nixon responded by addressing the nation during a campaign telethon in which he claimed that the North Vietnamese were now able to move massive amounts of supplies and troops southbound along the Ho Chi Minh Trail without any resistance. Nixon personally felt that Johnson’s move in Vietnam was a cynical ploy to give Humphrey a late surge on the eve of Election Day, but he promised not to publicly question the president’s interior motivations. Vice President Humphrey, appearing before the nation during his own telethon, rejected Nixon’s claims regarding North Vietnam’s troop and supply movements. Recent evidence seems to support charges that Nixon may have privately interfered with President Johnson’s peace negotiations with North Vietnam, an alleged ploy that an infuriated Johnson kept quiet rather than cause further turmoil in an already tumultuous campaign season.
The smooth nomination of Nixon and the turmoil surrounding the nomination of Humphrey was not the whole story in 1968. In 1967, a conservative alternative party, the American Independent Party, was formed, and in the summer of 1968, the party nominated its own candidate for the presidency, the controversial governor from Alabama, George Wallace, a conservative Southern Democrat known for his zealous opposition to the civil rights movement, confrontational attitude toward the federal government during attempts to enforce segregation, and blunt statements such as one in which he expressed admiration for the Chicago police for their “restraint” in indiscriminately assaulting the protesters during the convention. Assuming the mantle of the “common man’s” candidate, he inveighed against the intellectuals, bureaucrats, dewy-eyed do-gooders, and “pointy-heads” who were, in Wallace’s estimation, social-engineering the United States into something entirely un-American. Wallace tapped as his running mate the vociferous Cold Warrior general Curtis LeMay, who in fact was uninterested in Wallace’s views on segregation and race, but rather was more concerned by what he deemed to be Nixon’s apparent softened views toward the Soviet Union, and thus he wanted to campaign to sustain and strengthen the United States’ nuclear first-strike advantage.
Wallace’s campaign drew interest and appealed to those white voters who were disenchanted, in some cases angry, with what they perceived to be dangerous social and cultural upheaval. Not unlike minority voters who had found a voice in Robert Kennedy, a minority of conservative white voters felt equally disaffected owing to the manner in which, at least in their eyes, the countercultural trends of the mid-to-late 1960s seemed to be on the verge of taking hold of the political process and forever altering society, and in their opinion, for worse. These fears were exaggerated, as the 1960s really were not what we remember them to be, thanks to pop culture’s tendency to glamorize the decade—even though there were significant cultural and social changes under way, most Americans were not grooving on a new wave of transcendent consciousness as it is often now depicted. But for this small group of traditionally oriented voters—mostly white and Southern—the cherished values of American culture were imperiled by subversive countercultural forces, and supporting Wallace seemed to be the first step in responding to this threat. At the extremes of this attitude, one can find a certain degree of palpable “white backlash” in response to irrational fears drawn, rightly or wrongly, about the meaning of the social changes under way. Cynically, certain (but not all) Republican strategists sharply tuned into this sentiment, and they began to develop a different approach to tapping into what they considered to be growing discontent among the white middle class, particularly in the South.
Developing what would later be called the “southern strategy,” the Nixon campaign began for the first time to stress states’ rights, a position that to this point had, at least historically, been assumed by Southern Democrats and either ignored or scarcely discussed by GOP candidates in the past. For example, this kind of thinking was largely foreign to Eisenhower’s campaigning in the 1950s; Barry Goldwater’s emphasis on state government in 1964 stemmed more from an attitude of small-scale government and the defense of individual liberties against the expanded powers of the modern state, rather than from the more shadowed impulses behind Nixon’s “southern strategy.” Now the Nixon camp was subtly appealing to those white voters who were most concerned about the overall social consequences of the civil rights movement. Recently, more visible and active militant elements within minority communities had fueled the backlash, and Nixon’s campaign strategists seized the opportunity to tap into the fears and suspicions of nervous white Southern voters as well as less political elements in the white middle class in general. Social unrest, urban riots, militant radicalism, and increased urban crime would be addressed, according to the Nixon campaign, by the restoration of “law and order,” another catchphrase that some consider to be a racially charged “code word” directed at minority discontent. While Nixon’s more reasoned appeal to the “forgotten Americans” resonated with many within the electorate who were anxious over the state of the nation, the unseen “southern strategy” stealthily established a potentially dangerous precedent for racial division within the course of mainstream politics. In a word, certain elements within the GOP seemed to have been willing to finally surrender the African American vote—which had been, prior to 1936, fiercely loyal to the Party of Lincoln—to the Democrats in return for a larger and more solid political base in the South.
In the end, the Nixon campaign proved to be far more organized, savvy, and capable of riding through the swells and storms of the rough political seas that churned the late 1960s. While the ebullient Hubert Humphrey—who attempted to tap into the cultural movements of the time by speaking of a “politics of joy,” and who had inherited from Al Smith the moniker of the “Happy Warrior”—ran a frustratingly ill-managed campaign, Nixon, as well as Wallace, charged forward with a sense of focus and resolve that the Democrats seemed to have left behind after their heady triumph in 1964. Humphrey’s efforts were partly hampered by his incumbency. As vice president, he could hardly denounce his president, the man who had supported him throughout his political career, and whose policies he had endorsed down the line. But as the candidate in a party fractured over the war, he could not further alienate the antiwar factions—the supporters of McCarthy, McGovern, and the late Bobby Kennedy. Humphrey had earned a reputation for decency and honesty, as well as for possessing some political skill of his own; but on this campaign, he seemed unable to inspire.
The only advantage the Democrats seemed to have going for them was the presence of Muskie, who, in contrast to Agnew, seemed cool, composed, and strikingly competent. On the campaign trail in 1968, Muskie could not be rattled, even when raucously heckled, as was often the case during these times, while stumping for votes. One incident played well on the nightly news when Muskie, heckled mercilessly at one campaign event, invited one of the leaders of the dissenters to come to the microphone, and stepping aside, the candidate allowed a forum for the venting of the oppositional opinion. It was not the sort of thing that Agnew, or Nixon or Wallace, or even Humphrey, could have pulled off, and it was one of the few high points in the Democratic campaign. Still, the polls indicated a tight race, and a victory for Vice President Humphrey was certainly possible, a position all the more striking given the complete disarray within the Democratic Party since the death of Robert Kennedy and the tumultuous convention that followed.
On Election Night, the returns revealed just how close the race was, well reminding voters, at least initially, of another tight election that had previously involved Nixon, the election of President Kennedy eight years earlier; and as with that election, Americans retired for the night not knowing who had won, and they still did not know until noon the following day, when the Illinois returns had finally come in for Nixon. Nixon took a popular total of slightly over 31,780,000 (43.4%), Humphrey trailing with just under 31,280,000 (42.7%), and Wallace showing just over 9,900,000 votes—the highest absolute total of votes ever won by a third-party candidate and, at 13.5 percent, the fourth-highest percentage of popular votes won by a third-party candidate (following Theodore Roosevelt’s 27% in 1912, Millard Fillmore’s 21% in 1856, and Robert La Follette’s 16.7% in 1924); by contrast, Strom Thurmond’s pro-segregation Dixiecrat candidacy in 1948 garnered only 2.4 percent of the popular vote. President-elect Nixon’s 43 percent was the lowest percentage of the popular vote for the winning candidate since Woodrow Wilson’s 41.8 percent in 1912, and only two other presidents were elected with a lower percentage of popular votes—Abraham Lincoln in 1860 with just over 39 percent, and John Quincy Adams in 1824 with slightly under 31 percent. It was also the sixth-lowest total of the popular vote for any Republican candidate in the history of American political campaigns (only Taft in 1912, John C. Fremont—the Republicans’ first candidate—in 1856, Alfred Landon in 1936 and Herbert Hoover in 1932—both defeated by Franklin Roosevelt—and Lincoln, who won, in 1860, were lower) and, with the exception of Lincoln’s first election—which involved a four-way race—the lowest percentage of the popular vote ever enjoyed by a winning GOP candidate. However, Nixon’s win in the Electoral College was more convincing, taking 301 electoral votes to 191 for Humphrey, with Wallace taking five states carrying 46 electoral votes, all from the Deep South (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, and Arkansas). Nixon took 32 states to Humphrey’s 14; Humphrey did manage to win in New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Michigan, four states that claimed a high number of Electoral College votes, but Nixon countered with wins in California, Ohio, Illinois, and New Jersey, strengthened by a near sweep west of the Mississippi. The Wallace campaign made a difference; in taking a large segment of what was once the solid South for Democrats along with conservative Democrats in other parts of the country, Wallace was a factor in Nixon’s election. The Republicans drew most support from business, the various professions and white-collar workers, small farmers, and Protestants; Humphrey ran strongest among African Americans, Catholic and Jewish voters, and labor. In a word, the Democrats managed to keep most elements of the old New Deal coalition forged by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s; but they again lost the southern bloc, as they had in 1948 and the previous election of 1964, and it became apparent that the Roosevelt Coalition was unraveling. Nevertheless, the new president faced many difficulties from the first moments of his presidency. Even his inaugural procession was met with a barrage of rocks and other objects courtesy of angry antiwar protesters.
After what was the most traumatic election since 1860, Richard M. Nixon, out of politics just six years earlier, had ascended through sheer tenacity to the pinnacle of American political life; only the second Republican to be elected to the White House since the beginning of the Depression, he was now to become the thirty-seventh president of the United States.
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