American History Hit - The Election That Changed Politics: 1968

Episode Date: January 11, 2024

Chaos, collusion and the Chennault Affair. What made the election of 1968 so unusual?Luke Nichter joins Don to talk about the election race that made Richard Nixon president. With political intrigue, baptist ministers, secret messages and boycotts, this contest paved the way for the elections we see today.Luke is the author of 'The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968' and Professor of History at Chapman University.Produced and edited by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.Don’t miss out on the best offer in history! Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORYHIT1 sign up now for your 14-day free trial https://historyhit/subscription/You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Rioting in the streets has sparked outcries for law and order. A former vice president claims it's his time to clean house and refurnish the future. Culture issues are on the table amidst a geopolitical geometry of wartime struggle. The whole campaign has become a referendum on national identity, a pivot point on what sort of country the United States is and will become. But I'm not talking about 2016, or 2020, or even our present presidential contest. Hey Jude's playing on the radio. Otis Redding sits on the dock of the bay.

In 2001, a space odyssey carries us to the frontiers of our galaxy as Richard Milhouse Nixon launches his second campaign for the highest office in the land against an unexpectedly chaotic, democratic opposition. The year is 1968, and this is an election that will change everything. Hello, listeners, I'm Don Wildman, and welcome to another episode of American History Hit. Thanks for joining us. 1968 is a year frequently spoken of in modern American history. An unpopular war was being fought overseas in Vietnam.

Life on the domestic front was undergoing a cultural upheaval. There were tragic assassinations of major figures, and resulting riots that lit America's cities ablaze. It is a time, an era, still vividly recalled by so many Americans alive today, and thus its consequences are still felt, still so relevant. As we will now discuss with the author of a new book, The Year That Broke Politics, Collusion and Chaos, in the presidential election of 1968. Luke Nictor is a professor of history and the James Kavanaugh-endowed chair in Presidential Studies at Chapman University.

Luke, welcome, and congratulations on the new book. Well, thanks. It's an honor. Thanks for having me on. We met back in 2018 before the whole world changed. How are you? Well, hopefully not changed too much since then. We survived. I mean, so there's a lesson here of optimism. Exactly. 1968, monumental year, so often discussed in terms of the sad events, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and only months later, Bobby Kennedy. The Tet offensive was being fought in Vietnam, anti-war protests, the riots, the Soviets crushing the Prague Spring.

those of us, as I say, of a certain age, recall it all unfolding on television. But it was also a tipping point of presidential politics, and particularly the election of Richard Nixon, and that's what we're discussing today. We'll start with LBJ and what happens to him over the previous years, 1967 in particular. How did a man who won his first term in a gigantic landslide, 1964, suddenly find himself in such a political quagmire? Was it all Vietnam? Well, you know, it's a great question. And, you know, it's complex, like a lot of the year.

some of the new evidence in the book, especially Lady Bird's diary, is one. You know, Johnson wasn't a writer, so he didn't keep a diary as far as we know, but she did, and oftentimes her thoughts includes his, he interrupts her sometimes, you can hear his voice, she dictates a lot of her diary, so in a way it becomes kind of a joint record of this time period, and they talk a lot about the decision, run again, when do you announce you're going to run, not run, how does this work? And my take in the book is a little different. I think for decades, almost every book said that Johnson's withdrews,

on television on March 31st, 1968, was a response either to the Tet Offensive, this simultaneous coordinated attack against American and our allied forces at a time when Americans were being told the war was going better. And if it was going better, then how could an attack like this be possible? Or Johnson's poor performance in the New Hampshire primary, where he still squeaked out a win just by a whisker. But Senator Eugene McCarthy challenging him the kind of anti-war dove wing of the Democratic Party, really, you know, showed how vulnerable Johnson was. I acknowledge those two events, but I think recent records that have come to the surface suggest that Johnson was really more concerned about his personal health.

He had had a major heart attack. He had health problems, two or three major surgeries while president that I think we didn't know a lot about at the time. His health records haven't been opened, but you can kind of insinuate that health was a factor. His own father died when he was 60 years old of health problems. Johnson believed that Johnson men died young. Johnson would turn 60 years old, you know, later that year, since 1968. But more importantly, two of his Democratic heroes were Woodrow Wilson and FDR presidencies that he remembered as someone born in 1908. And Wilson, I think most experts would agree was sort of semi-crippled, you know, his last couple of years in the White House.

FDR, of course, was killed, you know, in the spring of 1945 after just being re-elected in 1944. Johnson wanted to go out on top. He didn't want to go out on a stretcher. And so I think they think his health was a much bigger factor in his decision not to run. That didn't mean a withdrawal from politics. He still wanted to shift and influence the choice of his successor. And he cared a lot about his own personal legacy, but it was a shift from the ballot to legacy. Sure. We did a show about LBJ's political career, which is remarkable. And people analyzing this year are often too young to realize or don't think. think about how long that man had been in Washington, you know, in every capacity, from the House of Representatives to the Senate to the White House. It was a lifelong procedure for him. And then when you realize he dies in 1973, I mean, you can reverse engineer to 68. The man was not doing well. You know, that heart was already acting out. He was a big time smoker. I mean, it was, you know, he's living a Texas lifestyle. Well, he was. And, you know, I interviewed, I think every living person

who knew Johnson and had worked for Johnson. And one of them, Nash, Capp, Castro, who had, Jackie Kennedy had asked Nash to start the White House Historical Association. He worked on beautification issues for Lady Bird. He's gone now. But he said, I said, well, describe Lyndon Johnson's short post-presidency. And, you know, he took his hand and he sort of patted the back of Johnson's hair to indicate that he'd grown his hair out. Oh, yeah. I noticed that. He noticed that. He's not. And then he also kind of patted his stomach area, and meaning that he, Johnson had put on the 40 pounds that he always stood. struggled to keep off. He's always on a diet in the White House. And I think of that short post

presidency, he wanted to remain a relevant figure, but that was his time. It was his time on the ranch where he could spend time with his cattle and his family and the Texas terrain there on the edge of the hill country. And he was checked out. Sure. Maybe not a fair comparison, but so did Washington want that at the end of his presidency. Same kind of thing. So it's LVJ's announcement that he won't run, March 68, which sets everything in motion. Let's sketch out the political landscape at this moment. This will be the emergence of a definite primary season, which in 72 gets totally baked into the presidential process. Sixty-eight campaign tees all that up. How so? What are the candidates discussing what's happening at this time, the general take?

Well, and first the process, since you mentioned it, it was a different era. I mean, this was a time when you could dodge the primaries. They weren't binding on the choice in the convention. They weren't binding on the delegates. And you didn't need a debate. There were no major presidential debates that year. So you couldn't avoid that kind of scrutiny, you know, running for president today or anytime recently, but to sort of set it up on the Democratic side of the aisle. So you have Johnson deciding not to run and that throws the race wide open. Parties were different then. You had kind of a fuller continuum of political thought. You know, there were conservatives in both parties. There were liberals in both parties. And so to the left of Johnson, you had kind of Eugene McCarthy

running as kind of an anti-war candidate. After New Hampshire showed that Johnson was vulnerable, Senator Bobby Kennedy, who had hesitated, jumps in. And so he and McCarthy are kind of dividing the liberal vote in the party. And then you have Humphrey, effectively, who had been kind of a liberal all of his career since 1948, when he declared civil rights as the nation's great national challenge at the convention in 48, Philadelphia, effectively running as a stand-in for Johnson. So he inherits all of Johnson's delegate strength. He inherit, you know, every state and county chairman from coast to coast would have owed their loyalty to Lyndon Johnson. And so Hubert Humphrey immediately inherited an overwhelming amount of strength.

And so I think that kind of sets the landscape on the Democratic side, but of course it's not static. And these candidates, just like many Americans, are reacting to events each month at home and around the world, completely unpredicted. just the month before, whether Vietnam, whether violence at home, assassinations, et cetera. So there's really very little static about that year. It's fascinating. I think it's worth pointing out to a lot of people in this audience that primaries did not always exist. I know it's a simple idea, but for most of American history conventions shows your presidential candidates. It was a more recent development, 60s onward, when all of what we hear about so much nowadays was incessing.

stated. And it wasn't until 72. As I said that, it was officially made the way that you chose the election. It's really the way you choose the delegates who go to the election who eventually vote for the nominee. In those days, it became a much more Democratic supposedly process. It's arguable that that was a questionable choice these days. Anyway, on the Democratic side, you have three majors, Humphrey, McCarthy, Kennedy, eventually. Humphrey weirdly does not get Johnson's endorsement immediately. How come? Why did LBJ want to do this? Why was he stepping aside? So, you know, I spend a lot of time in the classroom teaching kind of traditional college age students, 18, 19, 20, 21. And I would say, you know, set aside 68. If you're looking at any election, if there is a candidate running who's the current vice president or was very close to the outgoing president, that's the candidate to watch because I think they have the hardest time of any candidate organizing around a meaningful theme. You know, we haven't seen this very often. You know, I remember Al Gore in 2000. And it's always a challenge. You certainly want the approval, the endorsement of the president. The president can be a powerful asset in parts of

the country, but not all of the country. So it's kind of knowing how to utilize them. And that was Humphrey's challenge. You know, Nixon had just done this in 60 with outgoing President Eisenhower when he lost narrowly to John F. Kennedy. And the challenge is this, is if you are a candidate, basically you have to say, you know, everything we did for the last four or eight years was perfect. yet somehow it's unfinished. Then the first question is, well, if you have more ideas, why don't you do them already? And so it becomes a logical knot that you tie yourself into. And so I would argue that we really never saw Humphrey at his peak in 68 at any point

because it's so difficult to organize. And so I think I give a slight edge to Nixon in that respect because I think he sympathized with Humphrey and understood how difficult it was to do that, having just done that eight years before. Humphrey was a masterful politician, wasn't he? Well respected. I would say that a lot of campaigns, we might remember the winner. You know, sometimes we remember the main challenger, but then we also had the also rounds.

Yeah. I would say Humphrey was more than an also ran. He was someone, I think, who could have been president. And in the book, I kind of, you know, historians aren't supposed to engage in what if history and counterfactuals. But I wonder if maybe his best year would have been in 60 when he ran. Absent the Vietnam War, absent the kind of turmoil internationally, he could have focused on is bread and butter, really domestic prosperity, the economy, job, social security, right in line

from FDR and Truman and draw a line right to 60. But of course, he was wiped out in the 60 primaries, especially in West Virginia against a Kennedy machine. So I wonder whether it was tragic, he might have missed his window. In 68, he was just mismatched. Hmm, interesting. LBHA's non-support for Hubert Hover, it's a conundrum, because on one hand, we've discussed him stepping aside and going to the fields and all that. sort of thing. But he actually cares about still being relevant, doesn't he? I mean, he's a political animal. He does. And again, he's not static. The way I interpreted in the book is that he first wanted Nelson Rockefeller, kind of liberal Republican governor of New York, to run in his place,

seeing their politics as being relatively compatible, potential policies. But Rockefeller, I think Johnson made two or three attempts, and he just couldn't interest him. And by May, Rockefeller, whose foreign policy advisor was hard. Harvard professor Henry Kissinger, writing some fairly critical Vietnam speeches, critical of the Johnson administration. And so that didn't work out. And then the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and then Senator Kennedy in that spring, ultimately throwing the nomination to Humphrey, effectively, because Humphrey inherits all of Johnson's political assets at that point. I think what the story I tell in the book is that Johnson gradually shifts surprisingly into the Nixon column. And not because

I think he liked Nixon. I mean, that's unknowable to me, but because he found him ultimately to be a better successor for Johnson's own political legacy. Well, that's the thing. They had spent so much time in Congress. I mean, they were friends. And interestingly, down the road, Nixon does nothing to all of Johnson's Great Society programs. He actually adds to it. Well, that's the thing. I would argue, and it said in the book, that ultimately a President Nixon no more end of the great society than Eisenhower did FDR's New Deal. Yeah, exactly. The size of the government didn't shrink

under a Nixon presidency. It grew, I mean, much to the consternation of a lot of conservatives. And effectively, this theme we're talking about prompts me to potentially revisit the entire Nixon presidency that there might have only been one voter, one constituent of Nixon's

that really mattered the most, and it was someone down on a ranch in Texas, Lyndon Johnson. Because you look at modern politics, and I think it's difficult to find kind of two presidencies that intersect more than Johnson and Nixon. I mean, Nixon's is largely a continuation of Johnson's. Certainly the war was still going on. The domestic policy is surprisingly progressive for a Republican. You know, we give credit for Nixon for going to China, for ending the

war, going to Moscow, and doing all these domestic things. And all those things actually got started under Johnson. He simply ran out of time or political capital. Right. It's fascinating to consider most of the 20th centuries, certainly after the Great Depression, the powerful party is the Democrats right up into the 60s. I'm right up to Nixon, really. There's a brief time of Eisenhower and all that, but it's this enormous legacy of the New Deal and FDR that carries us through. It affected my life. You know, I mean, certainly my parents were big-time FDR guys. But then everything changes later on. But it's really important to understand that the year you're identifying in your book is the change point when that edifice is chipped away at.

Well, it's in the midst of a big political shift. And I try not to get ahead of the reader yet, because this is 68, not what comes after. And honestly, much of the history of even the 1970s really hasn't been written yet because just archives are beginning to release records on mass. But you look at it, you know, my own background, which I guess is probably blue collar, lower middle class. We were Catholic, all union members throughout, you know, industrial northwest, a lot like Hubert Humphrey territory. Growing up in northwest Ohio, grandparents who are had pictures of FDR on the wall or John F. Kennedy. And, you know, you look, the last president to win those voters in a block was Lyndon Johnson in 1964. I think Eisenhower temporarily got their support, or at least a chunk of it. They weren't sure what to do in 68. I think they largely put Nixon over the top in 72, and many of them became Reagan Democrats. Ultimately, the kind of silent majority, the center, the kind of Democratic center plus the Republican center is kind of this big center in politics. Yeah, exactly.

Throughout the primaries, the big news is whether this upstart candidacy of Eugene McCarthy, who has so much support among college students and anti-war protesters, can unseat the so-called establishment candidates. He will eventually tangle with Kennedy for this same constituency, but all that ends in June 1968, tragically, as I say, when RFK wins the primary there in California and is killed. How did Kennedy's assassination change the election? Oh, I think it changed the election. dramatically, but it changed especially coming on the heels of assassination in early April, Dr. Martin Luther King

in Memphis. I think Memphis in many ways kind of shook the nation because, you know, King was widely seen on both sides of the aisle as the most respected civil rights leader, kind of a true moderate. You know, he was chosen to be pastor at his church in Montgomery because he was a moderate and thinking he could bring all sides together with his emphasis on nonviolence. But the Kennedy assassination, I argue, really shook the political class. at that point. It affected a different set of the population. In a year when not just the nation was divided, but both political parties were divided in terms of where to go. I think similar to today, voters in both political parties in 1968 weren't happy with the options they had. We also had

cultural differences in terms of the younger generation being divided against an older generation. So I think in a moment, you know, Hubert Humphrey wrote in his own memoirs that the bullet that killed Kennedy also wounded him. Almost this idea somehow could Democrats possibly be blamed for the chaos of that year? And I think that was part of the reason why so many voters were driven back to the totally unexciting candidacy of Richard Nixon, who ran kind of on confidence and on calm, not exciting themes at all, but I think by November, I think so many Americans had just had it and returning to some sense of normalcy or calm to a candidate who predate, hated the chaos in terms of political rise was appealing.

Exactly. It was a general tumult. I mean, you watch things today and you want to sit back and say, guys, you have no idea. I mean, we used to shoot people in the streets. You know, it was bad. And it can get that bad, which is why there are, you know, real calls for, hey, you know, be careful what you ask for.

1968 can happen again. Yeah, Nixon's longtime speechwriter, Ray Price always said, you know, the 1860s was an actual Civil War. the 1960s was a kind of proxy civil war. And even though I think more and more people say something similar about our era today, and here we are 55 years later, trying to really make sense of 68, I would say for the first time in a kind of more dispassionate way, and it might take us that long to make sense of our own era,

I would argue that, well, we're mainly talking about similarities and themes that resonate. A key difference is, as you say, the draft, you know, tearing apart the country at home and an unpopular war in Vietnam. And I think the country was born in violence, has always been violent to a degree. But assassinations of key figures, of political leaders is a place that I hope we don't go ever again. And certainly we're not at that degree yet.

And unless someone lived through that time period, I think it's hard to understand that it's not that bad yet. And I hope we don't get there. Sure. No, it was really, really scary. Certainly as a little child, see it. And to see your parents trying to figure out what they're going to tell you about this stuff.

I remember that. Let's talk about Nixon's challenges. I mean, he did not cruise into this. There was real opposition, especially from the beginning, of course, against George Romney of Michigan, and none other than Ronald Reagan. I mean, this is the beginning of the divisions in the Republican Party that are going to fight over the next few decades. Talk about his time securing this nomination. Yeah. So just as we set up the kind of Democratic side of the aisle, I mean, going into this election cycle, Nixon was a loser. He lost narrowly to Kennedy and Johnson in 60. He lost more decisively for the California governorship in 1962, and then spent several years in what was known as his wilderness. He had time to think for the first time in his career. He traveled and studied. And I think his political

career probably was over. But being away from the action, away from the orbit of politics, he was eventually kind of drawn back into that. But at the beginning, I think Republicans, it was kind of like an anybody but Nixon scenario. Romney was one of those also rands to me who looked like a president, good looking, money, successful. From then, a very important state, Michigan had had business success. I mean, he checked all the boxes. But I think he peaked too early. And when you peeked too early in politics, you shine a spotlight on yourself and it allows, you know, the scrutiny will nibble away at you after a while. You can't peak too soon, almost like in sports. And so that was part of Romney's problem. Nixon really didn't fear a challenger on his left

of Romney or a Rockefeller. You know, Rockefeller was kind of in and out at different points that year, also kind of the liberal wing of the party. What Nixon really feared was somebody on the right who could seem like a softer Wallace, and we'll get to Wallace, who could really connect on nerve issues with voters. The one that Nixon really feared was California Governor Ronald Reagan. And, you know, the Billy Graham diary is so important in this entire book because it shows you the relationships that these people had. Graham worked as a messenger, a liaison between all the major figures of the book. And this was the first book to really feature a lot of this evidence. And I wasn't allowed to see all of his diary. But, you know, for example, Reagan, Nixon really feared Reagan. And the diary shows

that the agreement they had between Reagan and Nixon was that if Nixon didn't have it wrapped up by Oregon, by the primary, then Reagan was free to move in and kind of take over. And kind of take over the convention. And ultimately Nixon did. So Reagan largely stayed on the sidelines. But I think those were the major figures in the Republican Party. Nixon trying to sit right over the center lane, Reagan to his right, and Romney a little to his left, and Rockefeller a little further than that to his left. Well, you bring up the emergence of the evangelical vote vis-a-vis Billy Graham and this amazing rise of this contingent in America. Tell me about that block of voters and how he he energizes and how he sort of imposed himself on the political process.

You know, Graham is a fascinating figure. So in late 60s, he's reaching really the peak of his own career, his own profession. I think I calculated he knew all of the political figures we've discussed about 20 years. He knew Hubert Humphrey since he was mayor of Minneapolis, because his ministry was located there. He knew Dwight Eisenhower, who's still with us in retirement and influential. He knew Johnson was his favorite because Johnson and Graham were both kind of moderate southerners, pro-civil rights, southern but kind of on the fringe of the South, representing this kind of rise of the New South. And lo and behold, you know, I remember late 2017, I met with former Vice President Walter Mondale, who I didn't think he really would

have much to say about 68. At the time, he was Senator Mondale. He had Humphrey's old seat in the Senate. He was co-chair of Humphrey's campaign, which is sometimes more of an honorary role than really substantive. But he told me, you know, Humphrey and I became close. during the 1970s, and we discussed 68 many times. And without, I didn't expect this, because I didn't, I never read, it wasn't in his memoir. He said, Lyndon Johnson absolutely did not want Humphrey to win. And he said that twice. And I said, well, what could that mean?

Then who's left? And I said, well, do you really think he wanted Nixon to win? And he kind of looked, this is at his law firm in Minneapolis. And he looked back at me and he said, maybe, maybe. And so that really, for me, was a challenge that identifying the mindset, of Lyndon Johnson is really important because wherever he shifts his weight, Humphrey or Nixon, it's probably you're going to show me the winner. And then two months later, Billy Graham dies. In February of 2018, age 99. And since then, even today, his records are gradually being opened.

And so I was allowed to see the very first part of his diary, which begins in 1950 with Harry Truman and goes all the way to 2014 with Barack Obama. It's over 50 volumes, documented. in conversations with presidents, first families, top staff. In the late 1960s, for example, it shows that, you know, Graham brought Eisenhower and Nixon together. He brought Johnson and Nixon together for them to realize they needed each other because their presidencies were going to be so connected. And really, the peak of this activity is just after Labor Day, the traditional kickoff back then of campaigns. When Graham carries a message from Nixon to Johnson in the Oval Office, and he says,

a future President Nixon will never criticize you by name, we'll give you credit for Vietnam when it's all over, we'll consult with you in retirement, and we'll do everything that President Nixon can to give you a great place in history. And I think, wow, I mean, I imagine if this was leaked out in the heart of a campaign. I'm not sure we keep secrets like that anymore.

But I think that it was an incredible act of political marksmanship that I think was exactly what Lyndon Johnson wanted to hear at that moment, when many in his own party were criticizing him. It's a chicken and egg question for me with Billy Graham. How much was he energetically pursuing a political role on the presidential level? Or how much was he used by those presidential candidates as a conduit to that voting block? Well, that's a great question.

Of course, Graham always maintained, you know, he did nothing political. He was not political. He always maintained he was a lifelong Democrat, but that didn't mean he didn't split-ticket vote. he never endorsed, but he would say things that came right up against the edge of an endorsement. So I would say that it's going to be left to other historians. This new records could spawn numerous books about religion and politics, the intersection of the two figures like Graham, and certainly we're getting in, we're talking about 68, we're getting into the kind of religious right, moral majority era, era, where Graham's not the only one operating in the space. So I think there's a lot of fodder here. I mean, I leave a lot on the table for future books and just kind of tease this idea that, at least my interpretation of it, to your point, is Graham was clearly doing political things. I mean, in his own mind, he might not have. But I give you one example at the chaotic convention in Chicago for the Democrats. I think people sometimes say, what could have Humphrey have done differently to have won in 68? An example I give is if he'd gotten outgoing Texas governor, John,

Connolly, close to Lyndon Johnson, on that ticket, then it would have divided the conservative vote, denied a lot of votes to Nixon, and that could have been enough. Well, again, the Graham Diary shows that Graham intervened with Connolly in Chicago and said, if you stay off the Humphrey ticket, President Nixon will offer you a cabinet appointment. Wow. Which is exactly what happened in 71. So this diary of an evangelical leader goes way beyond just sort of religious history or something evangelical history. This is presidential history that we're talking about. Exactly. The subjects are so big, Luke. That's what makes this an incredible story because you just keep going down the line and one thing after another, you know, shakes the very foundation of the political process in this

country, never mind the culture. Third parties have always been a major and minor part of every election since parties were formed. But I mean, I'm thinking of the bull moose with Theodore Roosevelt. But in 68, this becomes an especially powerful factor. It sure does. You know, when I vote, usually I'm looking at the ballot and I'm seeing the major candidates, major parties in the top. And then my eye, usually, at least for a moment, I kind of pan down the ballot. Usually it's a lot of names and parties. I admit I haven't heard of in some case. Yeah, exactly. It's sort of reassuring that they're there, but you're not in a million years, are you going to support them? And as Americans, we don't see this very often in terms of a third party or no labels or a third candidate. That really makes a difference. Maybe once in a generation, I guess we'd have to go back to maybe Ross Perrault to it 92, 96 in terms of someone who really made a difference.

And I think that's what you have with Wallace, that Wallace is drawing from both parties. He gets on the ballot in all 50 states. I mean, it is no small achievement to navigate 50 sets of state laws. And I always joke, there are very few things today that will bring Republicans, Democrats, together more quickly than a third party challenge in a state. because you're immediately the enemy of each. And so, you know, even as we look to her 2024, I think everyone since Wallace, who's run kind of as a populist in both parties, more recently the Republicans, because of Trump, I think it borrowed from the Wallace playbook, that kind of anti-elite, anti-establishment. Sure.

You know, I don't think the phrase, Drain the Swamp ever occurred to George Wallace, but if it had, he would have used it for sure. And to me, looking at the 2024, any third party, no labels challenger, who could. one, get on the ballot in all 50 states is the one I'm watching, the ones who can go after this kind of, you know, blue-collar, lower-metal class voting block that hasn't been won, as I say, not in 1964. As a group, Trump has probably gone after them more aggressive than anybody, certainly as a Republican. So I think there's a lot of parallels, especially from Wallace to 2024.

Oh, of course. He lays the groundwork for that kind of that tenor of candidacy. I mean, he chooses Curtis LeMay for his vice president. Say no more. The man just, you know, dropped bombs on Japan. This is a tough, tough ticket. He's old iron pants. I love that phrase.

This marks a huge transition in how the South operates. Always the tipping point for so much in American history. Nixon comes up with what's called the Southern Strategy. Can you explain that term? Well, and certainly, anybody can Google kind of Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy. and there's volumes that are out there. But like a lot of other things in this book, I have a slightly different take.

And that's mainly because, you know, I would argue that with Wallace in the race, it dramatically changes both Nixon's and Humphrey's strategy in the South. You know, I would say if you show me a candidate who doesn't have a Southern strategy, who doesn't have a strategy to reach Southern voters, who in some cases are more motivated on issues of race and civil rights, I'll show you the loser in most elections.

So I would say if it had been a two-man race, Nixon and Humphrey, you know, forcing each of them to compete for the hearts of those voters, it would have been a very different look that year. You know, my take on Nixon's Southern Strategy, you go back to those blue and red political maps that we have for every election, and you go back to Eisenhower Nixon of 52 and 56. surprisingly, Eisenhower began to chip away kind of at the edges of that traditional Democratic South. He won Virginia twice. He won Louisiana in 1956. And I think Nixon's hope in 68 was simply to maintain that ground, you know, that Eisenhower had started to claw back at great effort. But with Wallace in the race, that just wasn't going to be possible. So Nixon and Humphrey basically could concede all the Deep South voters to Wallace and stay. And I don't think any of them made any of them. major appearances or rallies in the South. Did it kind of split? I mean, did the South split? Or did it go one way or the other strongly for Nixon? Well, this is interesting because I grew up reading books that I'll say, well, the conservative vote. So Wallace polled as high as 23 percent, but he still

only won about 10 million votes. So, you know, voters a few weeks before an election get a little less emotional. They sober up and get serious. Like, okay, who are we really going to vote for? Yeah. And Wallace lost millions in those final three weeks. And while many books, said, well, they must have gone to Nixon because conservative Wallace, conservative Nixon. And then right in the middle of this research, it was Humphrey's strategist, Vic Fingerhood, working on his first presidential campaign in 1968. Said, hold on. That's not right. I never thought it was right. I didn't think it was right at the time. That's not what happened. And he laid out all the evidence for me, including private memos,

and he wrote Humphrey that are cited in the book, saying, no, in the mid-October, it was Humphrey's shift back to traditional democratic prosperity issues, remind voters all the Democrats have done for them historically, FDR New Deal, Truman Fair Deal, Social Security, jobs, the economy, etc. It was that shift back. He said, I would estimate eight out of ten votes that shifted away from Wallace, the late switchers, he called him. And those final three weeks came back to us, to Humphrey, the traditional home for a lot of that kind of blue-collar, lower middle-class vote. You know, union leaders had been for Humphrey the whole campaign, but Wallace had really infiltrated auto workers in Flint. People in Anahe, in Maryland, in Madison, Wisconsin, surprisingly, where I'm from, in south of Toledo, kind of auto industry,

and its suppliers. But they sobered up and they got serious, and they came back home in those final weeks to Humphrey. It's just so important and resonates right through to today that Democrats are so powerful in this country for those decades in the middle, largely due to their support in the South. That all goes away with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I don't think it was as simple as that, of course. But I mean, that was a major tipping point, and the Democrats lose that unquestionable support. And from that moment on, it's arguable a lot of the changes in American politics, certainly on the presidential level, begin and continue on. It's remarkable how that changed everything.

Yeah, the shift that you describe, you can kind of see in the evolution of George Wallace himself in the 1960s. At the beginning of the decade, he is focused on race. 62, when he wins the governorship, 63 in his inaugural address, declaring segregation today, tomorrow, and forever. I mean, he's not shy. He's going right after those voters. But then he gets a taste of national politics in 64. And by 68, I would say race is still there as a motivator, as a fear that motivates people. but it's folded into a bigger set of grievances. Government overreach, the Vietnam War, how unfair the draft is.

So if you're a Wallace supporter in 68, you don't need a reminder that he's your guy on race because you already know that. So Wallace's appeals, you don't hear race. You don't see race in 1968 for Wallace. It's a more sophisticated message that's about a broader set of grievances. Sure, yeah, yeah. It was a heck of an election. 1968 in the fall, I remember all the Life magazine pictures of the protests, the head-banging tactics of the Chicago police. It was so tumultuous for America.

The conventions were not normally a staging ground for violent demonstrations. How did this chaos outside in the streets influence events of the campaign? And was it advantageous to Nixon and the Republicans? I mean, of course, right? Well, you look at the, and hear the Democrats are going back to Chicago again next year with a candidate named Robert Kennedy, potentially on the ballot. But in 68, you know, again, the records come out later. So many in the country were just stirred up. And while it made good television for millions of Americans watching on their television sets in the living rooms,

the actions outside the convention, I would actually argue that what happened inside the international amphitheater in Chicago was fairly orderly. I mean, Humphrey inherited the majority of Johnson's support after Kennedy was killed. It would have been tough to see Kennedy. Kennedy was surging right at the right time. He certainly captured the hearts and minds and the primary. Hubert Humphrey didn't enter any primaries. And while Nixon didn't want to debate Humphrey,

Humphrey, I think, was actually pretty happy about that because there was no way Humphrey wanted to appear on stage with Wallace. So at that point, it was a mutually agreed ceasefire, and nobody wanted to debate. But I think what happened in the convention hall was fairly orderly in terms of, I wouldn't say it was enthusiasm for Humphrey, but in effect, he was kind of the last man standing. There were last minute rumbles from McCarthy,

but then he goes on vacation with the French Riviera. You know, McGovern is beginning to surge because those McCarthy-Kennedy supporters, they had nowhere to go. They weren't thrilled about Humphrey. I mean, I think eventually, just like a lot of Republicans who thought Nixon was a loser,

the left wing of the Democratic Party, held their nose and pulled the lever for Humphrey in November. Many of them did. But I think the convention itself, the process of nominating Humphrey was orderly. I think the big mistake of that convention was probably the choice Edmund Muskie of Maine. Because you look back now and Muskie did kind of balance the ticket

geographically. He brought calm in a year when we needed some calm after the whole year. But he really didn't help in the parts of the country where Humphrey needed help. And I think someone like a Connolly would have made Nixon's path to the White House a lot more difficult. I'm not sure Nixon could have done it. Interesting. Humphrey closes the gap at the end of this election. It becomes a very close election, right? Well, for decades, You know, we've always learned one of the closest elections in modern U.S. history, any U.S. history, about a half million votes. Of course, this loses its effect on younger people today for whom it seems like every election is even closer.

And we even have the winners in the Electoral College who lost the popular vote. So that distinction has been lost a little bit. And when you look at the electoral college, it's more decisive, especially if you look at kind of Nixon plus Wallace as being a kind of protest vote, you know, against the status quo. It's a little more decisive. I think nationwide, it's extremely close, just kind of talking to your neighbors. People were so divided and unsure the direction that they were going. But I do think, you know, there are cycles in politics. And after four, eight, 12 years, in general, regardless of party ID, people are usually ready for a change. It's kind of like,

you know, throw the bums out. I remember that time, that shift. And while the presidential election was important and dynamic and in some ways very scary. The country, especially the town that I lived in, was ready to go back to a calmer place. That was the prime driver, in my opinion, at this point. It wasn't Nixon getting up and saying, calm down everybody. I'm your leader. It was the nation pushing in that direction as a whole, I would say. Well, and that's what I basically conclude in the book, is that I don't think people were Republicans were thrilled about Richard Nixon, but he was in effect a political time machine. I mean, he was a way to get out of of the chaos and return to the calmer Eisenhower days or something, but just kind of turn the noise

level down, even if they weren't sure what they were going to get in a Nixon presidency. Yeah. There's a fascinating aspect of this book having to do with Vietnam, obviously. The Chennault affair becomes a very famously, there's a lot of conspiracy theories about what happened having to do with this woman who LBJ knew and was, she was kind of an intermediary between for Nixon, as far as the negotiations that were going on in Paris go. I suggest we don't get into it, but I have to bill that this is really important to read about in your book because people today don't understand the machinations of what was happening with the Paris Peace Accords and everything that was going on behind the scenes.

It's a fascinating aspect of this and needs to be argued out for a long time. Well, I would say without getting into it, I think it, and a lot of what we're talking about is a lesson that, you know, every day we have newsfeeds, regardless of your politics, on the right, on the left. And I think the lesson of whether it's the Chanel affair or much of that went on in 68, is there's so much that we don't know that goes on behind the scenes. And here it's been 55 years later. And I think we're finally just starting pick it apart in a more kind of even-tempered way and figure out what really happened.

And so it's a reminder today that regardless of what story you just read, you know, that made you so mad, you know, you could throw your phone across the room. there's always more to the story, and sometimes it takes a very long time until we know the rest of the story. Luke, you're a living advertisement for why to go into the history business. It's really fascinating, you know, because we're, you know, of the same sort of generation. And as records become, you know, people die sadly and their estates are opened up and the records become available. History becomes a completely flexible and new changing subject matter. And it's amazing to see in our own lifetimes how much this story is changing right in front of our eyes, thanks to you.

I meet people all the time. I say, oh, you teach history. I wasn't good in history because I couldn't memorize people, places, and dates. And I try to gently say, that's not what history is at all. History is sort of this debate, this argument that never ends. And it's about who we are and how we got here and where we might be going in the future. And as we find new evidence, it's not static at all. You know, we're constantly, because we're reinterpreting not the event itself.

We know when the Battle of Gettysburg, took place. But we were reinterpreting the meaning and the context. And that's who we are today. Exactly. You're preaching to the choir here. The book's title, The Year that Broke Politics, is rather daunting. You think of 68 as a fracture. But in the 50 years since, do you think there was a healing to what happened in 68, or is the condition of things now a direct result and a continuing process of it? Well, you're right. The title is the year that broke politics. And I think certainly we could look to other years where politics seemed kind of of broken. And, you know, the way that I would answer it is, it's a year you look back at where the

political establishment on both sides doesn't really seem to have the answer, doesn't really seem to have the way out at a time when we're told we're historically divided, then, and I would say again now, we're hearing these same kind of themes. And I think these words are not ultimately in the book, but I think there also is a message of optimism in the sense that we got through 1968. We got through the 60s that we can probably get through this today that maybe we're not really is divided. I mean, you talk to your neighbor. I mean, we avoid politics. We avoid other subjects at family gatherings. But maybe in a lot of ways, there still is a lot that brings us together as Americans and that we'll get through this too. I agree with you. Here, here. Luke Nichter is a

professor of history at Chapman University in Southern California, the author of The Last Brahman, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. and The Making of the Cold War, also co-edited a book I found fascinating, The Nixon Tapes, 1973. It's about six inches thick, though, I warn you. But we've been discussing his newest, the year that broke politics, collusion and chaos in the presidential election of 1968. Nice to see you again, Luke. Thank you so much for joining us. Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Thank you for joining us on another episode of American History Hit. Please hit like and follow wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a nice review there.

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