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The 1968 Presidential Elections
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
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The electoral events of 1968 constitute a classical case of the vanity of political prediction. In 1964, in the wake of Mr Johnson's crowning mercy of November, political scientists were affirming the end of the Republican Party; the most that was to be looked for in the future was a one-and-a-half party system. In 1962 it was universally agreed amongst the politically sophisticated that Mr Nixon, by losing the California governor's race and, worse still, by publicly displaying his wounds and his chagrin, had wrecked all chances of a presidential nomination. In 1968, even after the New Hampshire primary, it was the conventional wisdom that Senator McCarthy's was, for all its gallantry, a children's crusade, of no serious significance for the course of American politics. Dis aliter visum. The two-party system fully reasserted itself, even in a three-party year; Mr Nixon easily won the nomination and, by a hair's breadth, the presidency; finally, Senator McCarthy, despite his failure to win either, decisively affected the course of American policy in Vietnam, was probably responsible in large degree for Mr Johnson's abdication and may, by his own autumnal aloofness, have tipped the electoral balance from Humphrey to Nixon.
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page 3 note 1 For which, however, Mr Humphrey himself did not vote.
page 4 note 1 A landmark here is undoubtedly Mr McGeorge Bundy's speech of 10 October.
page 5 note 1 Cf. the difficulties in which Mr Humphrey was involved when he attempted a modest opening to the left by hinting that as the South Vietnamese undertook more of the burden of the fighting next year, so more Americans might be able to return home. Scarcely was the ink dry on the reports of his speech than the President volunteered the pointed snub, ‘No man can predict the day when our men can come home.’
page 6 note 1 For the student of language there is a world of significance in the way in which this term has been more than half robbed of its derogatory, un-American connotation, and has become just a conveniently descriptive synonym for the central urban areas predominantly occupied by Negroes.
page 6 note 2 New York Times, 28 September 1968.
page 8 note 1 In fairness perhaps one ought also to add that this failure of the candidates to engage with each other contributed also to keeping the campaign temperature low and so to that calming of the public pulse which I have mentioned as one of the by-products of the election. There was very little trading of insults and no serious smear-spreading, with the single exception of Mr Nixon's characteristic acquittal of Mr Johnson from a charge which no one had publicly made, of having launched his efforts for peace in Vietnam in a ‘cynical’ attempt to aid Mr Humphrey. At the state and congressional levels, of course, there was some notably skilful in-fighting of a familiar kind.
page 9 note 1 Broder, David S. in Washington Post, 27 10 1968Google Scholar.
page 9 note 2 That Mr Muskie should have leapt into overnight fame by inviting a heckler to share his platform, one of the oldest gags, one would have thought, in the business, is indicative simultaneously of the drab routine of the other three principal nominees and of the rarity of heckling in the demure ritual of American political meetings.
page 10 note 1 By far the most conspicuous emblems of personal commitment were those faded flower symbols favoured by McCarthyite small car drivers which clung on to their owners' Volkswagens and Triumphs, like last roses of summer, long after the season of their relevance had passed.
page 10 note 2 Even Mr Nixon's organization was unable to spend sums comparable to those of the Kennedys on engaging hired help.
page 10 note 3 No one assessing the political significance of organized studentry should overlook the electoral value of such a unique reservoir of volunteer assistance in an age when the old-style precinct worker, living on the public payroll, is a vanishing figure.
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