MM#342--Pivotal Tuesdays series: The Election of 1968, part 1

0:07 Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, david Kaiser, flourishing life. Now here's your host, david Kaiser. Hello, I am David, and welcome back to another Mojo Minute and welcome back to another episode in what we're calling the Pivotal Tuesdays series. And in case you haven't been keeping up with us, a couple of weeks ago we introduced this very Pivotal Tuesdays framework and series where we are covering the pivotal elections in the 20th century, namely the elections of 1912, 1932, 1968, and 1980.

0:59 Now, two weeks ago we covered the 1912 election and the legacy of Woodrow Wilson and the radical that he was. Just last week we covered the 1932 election in detail, and that's when certainly was a pivotal election and that's when the federal government expansion became permanent. Now this week we are covering the volatile election of 1968, certainly one of our most pivotal elections, for sure, and I always make this disclaimer. But it is important to absolutely make all of this worth your time.

1:41 We will not give you just the conventional liberal reading of history. This will not be your regular high school reading of history. We've all suffered through too much of that indoctrination of our American story. But to make this worth your time, we will compare the conventional liberal take and its after effects and then get a conservative's take on the same election and its legacy. Stephen Hayward has been our resident conservative historian with his book the Politically Incorrect Book of the Presidents, part Two. And Margaret O'Meara is our conventional and liberal historian with her book Pivotal Tuesdays.

2:27 And, lastly, we're going to break up this Pivotal Tuesday episode into two parts because we have a lot to cover and there's a lot of important events, a lot of moving parts and pieces, and this election still continues to shape the collective, the American collective, memory to this day. So, with that reintroduction of our weekly Pivotal Tuesday series, let's now begin our journey with the question that we always do what happened in the 1968 election? Well, to start out, let's put down some context and some facts and I guess, for starters, to answer that question, we should start with what didn't happen Holy smokes, was 1968 a crazy year?

3:19 And doing some research for this podcast episode, the folks over at studyfindsorg they just have an amazing page of facts that happened in 1968. And I just thought this was the best, the very best collection. So let me grab this sheet and I'm just going to rip through all of these events in timeline fashion, because it is so good to give you the context of what we're going to try and tackle here. So what happened in 1968? Let's start it off.

4:01 January 23rd 1968, north Korea captures the Navy ship USS Pueblo. January 30, north Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launch the Tet Offensive, undermining claims that the US is winning the war in Vietnam. February 8, alabama Governor George Wallace, a segregationist, announces his third-party presidential bid. That will become more important later. March 10th US Commander in Vietnam, general William Westmoreland, requests 200,000 more troops, astonishing the US public. March 12th Minnesota Eugene McCarthy nearly upsets the sitting president Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire primary.

4:55 March 16th New York Senator Robert F Kennedy announces his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. March 31st, johnson agrees to a partial halt in the bombing of North Vietnam in order to negotiate an end to the war. In the same speech he also announces that he will not seek reelection, astonishing and surprising almost everybody. April 4th Martin Luther King Jr is assassinated in Memphis, tennessee. Major riots break out across a lot of American cities. May 10th Vietnam War peace talks begin in Paris.

5:37 June 5th Robert F Kennedy, the senator, is shot in Los Angeles after winning the California primary. He dies the next day. On August 6th, the Republican National Convention nominates Richard Nixon for president. August 20th Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces move into Czechoslovakia, crushing the Prague Spring liberalization movement. On August 26th through 29th, a bitterly divided Democratic convention nominates Vice President Hubert Humphrey for president. Outside the convention, chicago police unleash a wave of violence against peaceful protesters.

6:22 We'll cover more of this. On Thursday, september 30th, humphrey announces support for halting bombing in Vietnam and negotiating a peace. On November 5th, nixon wins a narrow victory, perhaps one of the most narrowest in presidential history. Holy smokes, what a year that was and what a pivotal election that was. Now, to recap the election itself, we have three major candidates Richard Nixon for the Republicans he's the former vice president under Dwight D Eisenhower. Nixon campaigned on a platform promising to restore, restore law and order and to end the Vietnam War, although he was vague about his plans.

7:09 He aimed to appeal to what he called the silent majority, who were disillusioned with by all the protests and the social changes of the time. He secured the nomination in Miami, florida, after defeating several challengers, including New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Now Hubert Humphrey eventually gets the Democratic nomination. He was the incumbent vice president under Lyndon Johnson. Humphrey entered the race after Johnson announced he would not seek re-election. His campaign struggled mightily to distance itself from Johnson and the unpopular Vietnam policies, and Humphrey faced challenges from anti-war factions within the Democratic Party.

7:56 Now, despite these challenges, he did secure the nomination in a very tumultuous convention, probably one of the most tumultuous, one of the most volatile in US political convention history. It took place in Chicago in 1968. Protests erupted in and outside of the convention, leading to violent clashes with police. And then our final major candidate of the 1968 election was George Wallace of the American Independent Party, the former governor of Alabama. Wallace ran a third party campaign that appealed to segregationist sentiments, mostly in the South, and it is a desire for law and order as well.

8:46 He garnered significant support in the South. He won actual electoral votes and he demonstrated the fragmentation of the traditional democratic base. This is where the old liberal order falls. This is the old New Deal coalition that FDR started. It is splintering and fragmenting and it will continue to do so from 1968 all the way to 1972, when Nixon wins in a landslide against George McGovern. The election results that happened in 1968. On November 5th, nixon won the presidency with 301 electoral votes, compared to Humphrey's 191 and Wallace's 46.

9:34 The popular vote was extremely close, though, nixon receiving only approximately 31.8%, humphrey 31.3% and Wallace 13.5%. And this is the election that marked the first time since 1889 that a newly elected president and his party did not control either House of Congress, as the Democrats retained majorities in both the house and the Senate. And that's an important nugget right there Now, as a side note, historically split ticket voting had been less prevalent, uh, in earlier decades.

10:20 For instance, it was relatively uncommon in the 1940s for voters to split their ticket, meaning they vote for president for one party and they vote for House members and senators from a different party. That is what a split ticket vote is, but by the time the 1968 election occurs, it is much more pronounced. This election saw a notable increase in ticket splitting instances, particularly in the South, where voters supported George Wallace for president while re-electing Democratic candidates for Senate and other offices. This trend was indicative of a growing complexity in voter behavior, reflecting regional loyalties and dissatisfaction with the dominant party and their candidates.

11:11 The 1968 election is often cited as a significant point in history of split-ticket voting, as it pronounced the most split-ticket contest of any cycle in the post-war era. The shift was partly due to political landscape changing as Richard Nixon made inroads nationally. While main Democratic congressmen maintained strong support in their own districts, maintain strong support in their own districts. Now the 1968 election is often viewed as a realigning election that, like we talked about, disrupted the New Deal coalition that dominated American politics for the last three decades.

11:59 And it did shift, signify a shift, in the political landscape. And it did shift, signify a shift in the political landscape. Republican Party gained traction in the South, especially among conservative voters, and the election also highlighted the deep divisions within American society regarding race, civil rights and the Vietnam War, issues that continue to influence US politics for the years to come. Now, overall, the 1968 presidential election was just not a contest for the presidency, but really a reflection on a nation that was grappling with profound changes in its culture and challenges to its traditions. So with that quick overview of what happened, let's now hear from our conventional historian, margaret O'Meara, going to her book Pivotal Tuesdays.

12:55 The 1964 election results seemed to prove that the rest of the country agreed. Goldwater was not the right person to have his finger on the nuclear button. Johnson won 44 states. The six that went for Goldwater, however, were bellwethers of things to come In his home state of Arizona, in five deep south states that had gone for Democrats since the Civil War. On the one hand, the tale of 1964 versus 1968 is a testament to how quickly things can turn in politics. On the other hand, the Johnson-Goldwater contest sent out many signals of the coming fracture in American politics and American culture that exploded in 1968.

13:44 Republicans took Goldwater's defeat as a definitive rejection of American voters of the kind of sharply conservative politics espoused by the Arizona senator. They were wrong. Americans may have rejected Goldwater the candidate, but his conservative ideas resonated more deeply and widely than the party elders appreciated. The New Deal coalition that Franklin Roosevelt had built in 1932 endured and strengthened, turning the Democrats into the largest and most nationally dominant political party of the post-war years. Yet at the same time, a conservative wing of the Republican Party had grown steadily stronger, building an alternative economic vision to Keynesian liberalism and arguing that the federal government's growth was imperiling free markets and individual rights.

14:40 Now, actually, I think this is very good analysis from Margaret. It's almost spot on for what was happening. Many people took Goldwater's loss in 1964 as a repudiation of conservative principles, forgetting that most likely the Johnson victory was more of a sympathy vote for President John Kennedy getting killed just one year before than it was an endorsement of LBJ and his liberal policies. Americans from that era weren't used to their presidents getting killed, most especially on television. That was a shock to the system. It was a shock to their values, a shock to their worldview.

15:22 But as we've come to know, there was going to be more shocks to that system and to those American values and to those worldviews coming very shortly, in 1968. Things were going to get real bumpy and civilization in the country would seem to be breaking apart by 1968. Let's go back to the book. From Tet to global counter-cultural, to the assassinations of King and Kennedy, television had not only delivered the news of the year but also shaped how people understood it.

16:05 Television had been the stage on which presidential elections played since the medium's infancy, on which presidential elections played. Since the medium's infancy, networks covered the convention starting in 1948, and the first political ads appeared in 1952. In 1960, the televised debates between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon had proved to be a pivotal moment in a tight election. The bright studio lights framing a starkly contrasting pair of candidates A sweaty and shifty-eyed Nixon and a smooth and telegenic, newly tanned Kennedy. Those who heard the first debate on the radio concluded that Nixon had won.

16:46 Those who saw it on television considered the event a big win for Kennedy. Television considered the event a big win for Kennedy. By 1968, television had become the beating heart of a massive and technologically sophisticated political machine of media polling and professional campaign management. That reporter, james Perry, termed the new politics. In a book of the same name published at the start of 1968, perry gave a dour assessment of what this new approach meant, fearing it would dehumanize politics by allowing candidates to appeal directly to the people rather than through their partisan machinery.

17:29 Perry argued the new politics destabilized the party system to a dangerous extent, bestowed great advantages on candidates with the most money. Some of Perry's insights were prophetic, including the rising importance of polling and engagement of media professionals to sell candidates to the American public, of media professionals to sell candidates to the American public using the same techniques used to sell cars or ketchup, and the use of increasingly more refined tools to slice and dice and measure public interest, all fed into candidates' ability to use the medium of television to reach out to different blocks of voters, as well as to reach millions of them all at once.

18:15 Although presidential contenders had been on television for two decades, political advertising lagged far behind Madison Avenue in its skill in crafting persuasive and sophisticated campaigns. 1968 was the year that politics caught up and 1968 is also the year that politics no longer gets scripted. And what I mean by that is before 1968, there was no real primary system for either party. After the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968, all party elders on both sides of the aisle will want to have their convention scripted and nailed down.

19:08 So there will not be a convention fight live on television. There will not be a convention fight live on television. The Democrats would first execute their primary system in the 1972 presidential run. They will have almost created a flawless system until 1980 when Ted Kennedy challenges the incumbent Jimmy Carter and they actually have a floor fight live on television yet again. Certainly not like 1968, but it was still a floor fight. The Republicans they have a meager floor fight in 1976 with Ronald Reagan challenging Gerald Ford for the then incumbent president.

19:58 But their floor fights were more arguing in very heated manners on rules where there was no pushing or shoving and certainly no protest. Pushing or shoving and certainly no protest. Now we will go more in depth on our next podcast on Thursday of all, about the democratic convention in 1968. We'll devote a whole episode to that. Let's go back to the Mary Margaret O'Mara's pivotal Tuesdays for one last quote on the 1968 election. One last quote on the 1968 election.

20:39 So, ultimately, the story of 1968 doesn't just explain 1968. It explains what comes afterward. In 1972, the wounds of the last election were still visible throughout the Democratic Party. In the post-civil rights era, the party had become a much bigger tent and much more open to new voices. African Americans, women, gays, lesbians and other minority groups had prominent roles in the Democratic Party than they ever had before. Yet the Democrats had lost the establishment power they enjoyed from the New Deal. Through the Johnson years they faced increasing dissident from the ranks of white working class voters who had been the bedrock of the National Party since the 1930s.

21:23 George McGovern tried to be the glue that could bind these different factions together, but he couldn't pull it off. Meanwhile, the Republican Party had found a new way to talk to voters and made inroads in critical parts of the old Democratic base. The real end point of the 1968 election, then, is not November 5th 1968, but November 4th 1980. Ronald Reagan's landslide victory over Democrat incumbent Jimmy Carter was a triumph of all politics tested by Richard Nixon in 1968. Reagan had extraordinary powers of communication and the ability to persuade and inspire voters.

22:06 He picked up the Democratic voters disaffected by civil rights and cultural change. He added Democrats in blue-collar manufacturing regions who had been devastated by the economic malaise of the 1970s. Today, these voting blocs made the Reagan Revolution happen. The outlines of the 21st century's red, state-blue state map started to emerge in 1968. They solidified in 1980. Of all the elections that Margaret O'Meara covered in this book, I thought the 1968 election is the one she got almost right.

22:48 It was very good analysis. Maybe it was because that is when the liberal left and the radical left began to break ranks with each other, and the conventional historians and liberals have to have a real heart to heart on what was happening to their party and to the country in 1968. They had been in charge for the last four years but, more importantly, they had been in charge since the days of FDR in 1932. They had overwhelming majorities in the Congress, but for only two times. In the House there was only two times from 47 to 49 and 53 to 55, and in the Senate, the same two-year segments 47 to 49 and 53 to 55.

23:34 And in the Senate, the same two years two year segments 47 to 49 and 53 to 55. It was overwhelmingly Democratic policies that largely have been driving the direction of the ship of state for, by then, some 40 years. Nevertheless, margaret O'Meara was quite good on this particular election. Now, before we move on to hear from our conservative historian, I want to share a side story and it's one of the most important stories of the 1968 campaign, when Bobby Kennedy was challenging Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic nomination sorry, not Lyndon Johnson, lyndon Johnson had dropped out.

24:20 He said he would not seek reelection but challenging Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy. He was campaigning in the state of Indiana in the primary in the state of Indiana in the primary, and he got off a plane and was told the news of the assassination of Martin Luther King. That had just happened in Memphis, tennessee, and Bobby Kennedy exclaimed my God, not again, obviously a reference to his slain brother. Just five short years before His next campaign stop was in a largely African-American ghetto in downtown Indianapolis.

25:03 Again, it's April of 1968. Martin Luther King had just been shot. The local mayor asked Kennedy not to speak because he was concerned for the candidate's safety and feared a riot would break out. You have to keep in mind the year before in 1967, was dubbed the long, hot summer of 1967 because that year alone saw more than 150 riots erupting all across the United States for a variety of reasons. The city of Detroit, michigan, alone had what amounted to be the fourth or fifth bloodiest riot in American history, with 43 people losing their life.

25:48 So by April of 1968, the riots were continuing for various reasons, such as peace in Vietnam, for civil inequality, for discrimination, for poverty. So Kennedy, arriving at the rally site roughly after 9 pm, the sun had gone down, there was a makeshift stand, it was a flatbed truck and Kennedy would speak with just a couple of floodlights lighting the stage. There was almost no artificial lighting. Crowd estimates are unsure, but they range anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 people.

26:33 By all accounts, the crowd had not received news of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. Kennedy was told upon landing in Indianapolis on the death of King. So he had roughly about 25 minutes to gather his thoughts before addressing the crowd at the rally site. Minutes to gather his thoughts before addressing the crowd at the rally site. Kennedy signaled that he would indeed go and give a few remarks to the crowd that had been waiting for him for over an hour and a half. It would become one of the most courageous speeches in all of American politics. We're going to pick up that story with another book Robert F Kennedy in the 1968 Indiana Primary by Ray Boomhauer.

27:20 Let's go to the book. Once at the microphone, kennedy first told the crowd that he would only be talking for a few minutes because he had some sad news to impart. Asking those waving signs to lower them, he then said I have some bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight. That Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight. Kennedy's shocking news resulted in great cries of astonishment and gasps from the audience, with many crying no, no.

28:02 The noise reached such a level that a woman driving her car two blocks away, who had not heard about King's death, wondered what Kennedy had said to elicit such a response. I could hear the ooh, says the woman. It just filled the air. Mary Evans remembered thinking oh my God, I'm going to be killed. A wave of hostility and anger began to flow through the audience in its overwhelming grief. It was such an eerie scene, with the lights and the wailing in the background, walensky said as the noise gradually died down, kennedy continued with his remarks.

28:43 The quiet was partly due to the fact that everyone strained to hear Kennedy's words, said Altha Cravey, and that people were absorbing the terrible facts of his message. Kennedy glanced only briefly at an envelope he clutched in his hands throughout his extemporaneous talk, which lasted about six minutes, he continued martin luther king dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings and he died because of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of nation we are and what direction we want to move in.

29:29 For those of you who are black, considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible, you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country in great polarization, in that direction as a country in great polarization, black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, to comprehend, to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that had spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

30:17 The next few sentences in Kennedy's talk marked a first for him. Since November of 22nd 1963, he had not spoken in public about the assassination of his brother, president John F Kennedy. In the following years, robert Kennedy had attempted to assuage his great grief by looking for meaning in the works of the classical Greek dramatist and the writings of the French novelist and essayist Albert Camus, and the writings of the French novelist and essayist Albert Camus. He knew the Greeks, cold Greenfield said of Kennedy. From time to time Kennedy would cite a quotation from a Greek play and ask his young staffers if they knew it.

31:04 We didn't at all. I think he got some great delight out of that Greenfield recalled Now in the heart of the Indianapolis ghetto. Kennedy drew upon what he had learned during the awful years following his brother's death and used that knowledge to console an audience of hurt and angry people. For the first time he shared his great sense of loss with the crowd of strangers. That was something Bobby Kennedy never, ever did in public. He never talked about the murder of his brother, said Lewis. To do it that night was an incredibly powerful and connective and emotionally honest gesture.

31:51 He stripped himself down. He made it personal. He stripped himself down. He made it personal, he made it real. Some in the crowd remembered seeing tears in his eyes as Kennedy continued. For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distress at this injustice of such an act against all white people, distressed at this injustice of such an act against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States.

32:31 We have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times. My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote and our sleep, pain which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in its own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. What we need in the United States is not division. What we need in the United States is not hatred. What we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom and compassion toward one another and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or black.

33:17 So I shall ask you tonight to return home to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly, to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love, a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We have had difficult times in the past. We will have difficult times in the future. It's not the end of violence, it's not the end of lawlessness. It's not the end of violence, it's not the end of lawlessness, it's not the end of disorder.

33:58 But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our lives, want justice for all human beings who abide in our land. Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that and say a prayer for our country and for our people. As Kennedy climbed off the flatbed truck on which he had been speaking, people close to him stretched out their arms to try and touch him and you could see the awful magnetic power that he had the charismatic quality that he had.

34:48 Toland said there existed within the crowd a belief that Kennedy represented the last hope for the poor and the dispossessed. Kennedy was the only white politician at the time who enjoyed a degree of trust from the African-American community, said Michael Riley, chairman of Kennedy's Indiana Campaign Committee. He had a definite total affection for African Americans and they for him. He was just a genuine caring person. I think that came across as Lewis left the rally site. He felt devastated by King's death but consoled himself with the thought that at least we still have Senator Kennedy Now across the nation, the report of Kennedy's death resulted in an outbreak of violence in more than 100 American cities, including Boston, chicago, new York, baltimore, pittsburgh and Oakland.

35:55 President Johnson had to use more than 4,000 federal troops to quell the disturbance in the nation's capital. Nationwide, approximately 70 000 army and national guard troops attempted to restore some semblance of order. Nevertheless, thousands of people were injured and property damage soared into the millions of dollars. But in Indianapolis the streets were quiet. There had been some at the Indianapolis rally who were ready for violence. Man, there's going to be trouble. One militant recalled they killed Martin Luther. We was ready to move. Yet in just a matter of minutes the multitude that had come so close to exploding in anger had quietly dispersed and returned peacefully to their homes.

36:41 Both whites and blacks who witnessed the speech described what they experienced in religious terms. There was a common grief. Together they shared a common experience. He reminded them of that. He communicated, said Reverend Deere. One African-American woman compared Kennedy to a figure out of the New Testament, saying her life would not have been complete without standing in the presence of such a man. Another black woman who saw the speech on television said the feeling of the moment comes right through the TV when he speaks. Just like Mr Billy Graham, mary Evans said she had long held an emotional memory of Kennedy's remarks and remembered feeling as if the candidate had laid his hands upon the audience and healed them, deflating the powerful anger that surged throughout the packed audience.

37:38 It was worth the wait, evans said. And so, as we end this pivotal Tuesday episode about 1968 and the death of Martin Luther King Jr, perhaps we can remember those words from Bobby Kennedy about political violence, because we have just seen in the last month former President Donald Trump have an assassination attempt on his life. Perhaps we can recall Bobby Kennedy's words because, tragically, he would be killed by the same political violence just a short three months later in a Los Angeles ballroom in June of 1968.

38:22 Perhaps we can recall those words of Bobby Kennedy when he said let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago to tame the savageness of man and make general the life of this world. Let's dedicate ourselves to that and say a prayer for our country and for our people. Now, if you haven't seen that speech of Robert Kennedy, he's probably the most courageous ever given in US political history. If you haven't seen that speech, I will put a link in the show notes.

39:04 Be sure to check that out Now. Please come back tomorrow for part two of Pivotal Tuesdays and, as always, keep fighting the good fight. Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.