Resilient America: Electing Nixon in 1968, Channeling Dissent, and Dividing Government

American Presidential Elections

by Michael Nelson

To look at the partisan polarization that paralyzes Washington today is to see what first took shape with the presidential election of 1968. This book explains why. Urban riots and the Tet Offensive, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the politics of outrage and race—all pointed to a reordering of party coalitions, of groups and regions, a hardening and widening of an ideological divide—and to the historical importance of the 1968 election as a watershed event. Resilient America captures this extraordinary time in all its drama—the personalities, the politics, the parties, the events and the circumstances, from the shadow of 1964 through the primaries to the general election that pitted Richard Nixon against Hubert Humphrey, with George Wallace and Eugene McCarthy as the interlopers. Where most accounts of this pivotal year—and the decade that followed—emphasize the coming apart of the nation, this book focuses on the fact that because of measures taken after the election the country actually held together. An esteemed scholar of the American presidency, Michael Nelson turns our attention to how, in spite of increasing (and increasingly vehement) differences, the parties of the time managed to make divided government work. Conventional political processes—peaceful demonstrations, congressional legislation, executive initiatives, Supreme Court decisions, party reforms, and presidential politics—were flexible enough to absorb most of the dissent that tore America deeply in 1968 and might otherwise have torn it apart. This fraught time, as Nelson's work clearly demonstrates, produced unity as well as results well worth noting in our current predicament.

Genres: Politics, American History, History, Nonfiction

361 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 26, 2014

About the author

Michael Nelson is the Fulmer Professor of Political Science at Rhodes College. He has published multiple books, the most recent of which is Resilient America: Electing Nixon, Channeling Dissent, and Dividing Government (2014). Other recent books are The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776–2014, with Sidney Milkis (2015); The Presidency and the Political System, 10th ed. (2014); and The Elections of 2012 (2013). He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals such as the Journal of Politics and Political Science Quarterly and in periodicals such as Virginia Quarterly Review, the Claremont Review of Books, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Although most of his articles have been about American politics and government, he also has written about C. S. Lewis, Frank Sinatra, Charles Dickens, Garrison Keillor, football, and baseball. More than 50 of these articles have been reprinted in anthologies of political science, history, and English composition. He is editor of the American Presidential Elections book series for the University Press of Kansas and is currently writing a book about the 1992 election.

Librarian's note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just how resilient is the American political system? It’s a question that a growing number of people have wondered about in the light of recent events, but it is hardly the first time in American history that it has been asked. Throughout American history there have been points when the system has been stressed to the point when people feared that it might break over the pressures it faced from events. One such point was the 1968 presidential election, one that took place amidst protests, riots, assassinations, and an effort to engineer a contested result that would force Congress to decide the outcome.

That the nation overcame all of this to provide a clear outcome is evidence in Michael Nelson’s view of its fundamental resiliency. That it did so is all the more remarkable for the discord he chronicles in his book. With the country grappling with racial protests and an increasingly divisive war in Vietnam, it appeared to many contemporary observers that the country was on the verge of unraveling. As Nelson argues, though, it was a testament to the system’s resiliency that this dissent was channeled into mainstream politics in ways that relieved this tension and created a new pattern of divided government that has persisted down to the present day.

Such an outcome seemed impossible just four years before. As Nelson details, Lyndon Johnson’s massive victory over Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election produced a seemingly definitive confirmation of the Democratic Party’s dominance in American politics. Not only did Johnson dominate Goldwater in the national vote and his party increase their already considerable majorities in Congress, but the Republicans were left leaderless and demoralized by their ideologically divisive primary. Because of this, it was widely expected that the Democrats would continue to dominate national politics for the rest of the decade, and that Johnson would be their candidate again in 1968.

Events soon challenged such expectations. The outbreak of riots in many American cities from 1965 onward changed the issue of “law and order” from one that favored Democrats to one where Republicans held the advantage. The mounting toll of casualties in South Vietnam created fractures in the Democratic Party as a small but growing segment spoke out against Johnson’s handling of the war. Buoyed by this growing discontent, Republicans bounced back in the 1966 midterm elections, aided by a revitalized party organization and millions of right-wing grassroots activists drawn to the GOP by Goldwater’s campaign. This contrasted with Johnson’s centralization of party operations within the White House, which left local and state organizations moribund and the party tied to an increasingly unpopular president. Nevertheless, Johnson’s advantages were such that he was still the party’s likely nominee at the start of 1968.

The Tet Offensive changed all of this. Though the massive offensive in South Vietnam in January was a defeat militarily for the Vietcong, politically it was disastrous for the Johnson administration. Much of the newly energized dissent was channeled into the campaign of Eugene McCarthy, the aloof Minnesota senator who had launched a seemingly quixotic campaign against Johnson in the New Hampshire primary on the issue of the war. Though Johnson won, his surprisingly narrow margin of victory prompted Robert Kennedy, Johnson’s political nemesis, to enter the race. Though the president’s advantages remained considerable, Johnson chose to withdraw from the race rather than battle through a primary that would have left him too weakened to win in November.

That Johnson likely would have won the nomination regardless was demonstrated by subsequent events. His departure triggered a free-for-all, with Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, entering the race in the wake of it. Though Kennedy and McCarthy battled each other in the primaries, only a small fraction of delegates were chosen via this method. Most were named by state party leaders, and Nelson argues that their opposition, along with that of Democratic Party’s other power bases, labor and the South, would have kept Kennedy from the nomination even if he had not been assassinated in the aftermath of his victory in the California primary. Though the antiwar contingent were unable to coalesce behind another candidate, their protests at the infamous convention in Chicago ensured that the nomination Humphrey inherited was poisoned with rancor.

The contrast with the Republicans could not have been greater. Their nominee, Richard Nixon, was chosen at a nomination which, from the public’s perspective, was a model of orchestrated efficiency. Yet as Nelson demonstrates this was a façade concealing the shallowness of Nixon’s support within his own party. For all of his tireless campaigning on the party’s behalf over the years, many right-wing delegates, particularly those from the southern states, yearned to nominate Ronald Reagan instead, despite the fact that Reagan had won the governorship of California only two years before. Here Nixon was aided by Nelson Rockefeller’s late entry into the race, as the prospect of the New York governor as the nominee helped to keep conservatives on board. In the end, Nixon was preferable to a choice between Rockefeller and Humphrey.

And Nixon seemed the odds-on favorite to win in 1968. With a commanding lead in the polls, Nixon played not to lose, running a cautious campaign that offered little more than vague declarations of what he would accomplish when in office. With Humphrey trapped in a cycle of poor polling, low fundraising, and weak campaign infrastructure, potentially the greater challenge to Nixon’s prospects was George Wallace, the former Alabama governor who was running an aggressive third-party campaign focused on the Southern states, all of whose electoral votes would be won at Nixon’s expense. Frustrated by Johnson’s lack of support, Humphrey gambled at the end of September on a speech in which he declared that as president he would halt the bombing of North Vietnam as a step towards peace. Though modest, this announcement energized the antiwar wing of his party and improved his fundraising, with which the vice president began closing the gap on Nixon. This coupled with Wallace’s inept choice of Curtis LeMay, a United States Air Force general with no experience in elected politics, as his running mate caused Wallace’s support to shrink, as many of his supporters switched to Nixon rather than depriving him of the votes needed to defeat Humphrey.

Though the national popular vote was the closest that it had been in over half a century, Nelson concludes that Nixon won a national victory based on a “negative landslide” against the Democrats. The result reflected a striking change in the traditional electoral bases of both parties, and presaged a shift that would be complete by the end of the century. What mattered more, in Nelson’s view, is how the election contributed to the defusing of much of the dissent that defined national politics at that time. He notes that both parties worked successfully over the next few years to draw voters back into the system, even though many of those voters ended up in different parties from the ones with which they would have been expected to align just a decade before. Yet while he argues that the divided government that resulted is not necessarily negative, particularly from the point of the view of the voters who have perpetuated it ever since, his concluding observation that “no one has woken up on the morning of a single presidential inauguration wondering even for an instant whether troops and tanks would be called upon to overturn the verdict of an election,” is one that raises the question of whether, in light of developments since that optimistic judgment was written, the era inaugurated by the election of 1968 may be coming to an end.

[Bryan Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since it is the 50th anniversary of the election this year, I thought I would grab this one off my shelf. Mike Nelson gives a good overview of the election, starting before the primaries. As a political scientist, he presents a straight-forward and well-written account, a bit different than, say, Theodore White. His theme of resiliency certainly stands since we came out of this, but he does talk about the results of divided government that is now the rule.

[Earl Ecklund III · Rating 5 out of 5]

1968 is often remembered as a year of immerse chaos and upheaval, this was especially true in U.S. Politics as the year began with an incumbent President who was increasingly losing popularity due to the Vietnam war, a challenger who was seeking to resurrect himself from the political graveyard and others who were dissatisfied and that choice.

By the time the year was over the Incumbent President has shocked many with his sudden withdrawal, his Vice President nearly overcame a divided party to claim victory, a third party candidate had lodged a popular protest vote and Richard Nixon had held off challenges from both the left and right within his own party and well as from from outside the party to successfully achieve victory in November.

in this book well known Political Scientist Michael Nelson navigates the tumultuous events from the aftermath of LBJ's 1964 landslide to the culmination in January 1969. along the way he examines the campaigns of George Romney, Nelson Rockefeller, Eugene McCarthy, Ronald Reagan, Hubert Humphrey, Bobby Kennedy, George Wallace and Richard Nixon.

His conclusion that one legacy of the 1968 election was decades of divided government is very thoughtfully presented as well as his theme that one of America's strengths is its resilience to survive any crisis.

I highly recommend this book for any student of American History & Politics.

[Julian Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 1968 election, accompanied by immense social unrest and which brought to an end Great Society liberalism of the 1960s, is surrounded by misconceptions: about Bobby Kennedy, about Humphrey and the DNC, and a supposed decisive win by Nixon. Nelson does a great job of chronicling the race and explaining its heartbreaking conclusion: discussing the pressure LBJ brought to bear that hobbled the Humphrey campaign, putting the Nixon camp's collusion with the South Vietnamese regime in proper context. He does important work in breaking down the myths about the Democratic primary, exposing Kennedy's hypocrisy and Eugene McCarthy's vacillation. What he writes about the 1968 campaign itself is great—and every attempt he makes to fit it into a larger political context is ridiculously ill-informed by comparison. The argument that forms the title of the book, that the 1968 campaign somehow expressed national resilience as frustration with the system was channeled through democratic means, is incredibly ill-developed. The conclusion discussing the aftereffects of the 68 campaign and how the Nixon administration governed is poorly-developed and poorly thought-out in general.

In summary, the parts chronicling the campaign itself are good, but his thesis and attempts to draw broader meaning from it are amateurish.

A dang shame about Hubert Humphrey, though. He would've made a great president.

[Bill Sleeman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good history of the election which changed politics and the election process inways that still have an impact. Interesting that some of the people involved in the GOP began their careers with this election but that most-if not all of the Democrats have moved on.