The Presidency: 1968 Behind the Election Results, reel 1
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This seems to me to be on the whole a healthy situation to have candidates that
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represent real differences. But not of such a sort that when one of them
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gets defeated in the other you get selected. The country remains deeply split
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in a consensus situation. The country does not remain deeply split.
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Boston University radio presents the presidency 1968
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a series of four programs taken from lectures by the noted political scientist
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Max Lerner. Dr. Lerner is professor of American civilization and world
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politics at Brandeis University and is the author of several books
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including America as a civilization the unfinished country an
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anthology of his best newspaper columns and the age of overkill.
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His syndicated newspaper column is published nationwide and abroad. The
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Presidency 1968 was originally presented at Garland junior college
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Boston and was made possible by a grant from the Sperry and Hutchinson
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foundation. In this third program Dr. Lerner discusses the topic
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behind the election results. Now here is Dr. Max Lerner
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on the presidency 1968.
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I might say that I did have a pretty good idea
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what my task would be. I had a pretty good notion that it would
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be to try to explain how Mr
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Nixon won the presidency and why and how and
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why Mr Humphrey lost.
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A difference the only real difference from my original
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formulation was that the results came out much more closely than I had anticipated.
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Much more closely and that some of the reasons that I might have
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used a priori don't fit the actual
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concrete factual material. And I want to deal with that
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I think first you have to start with Chicago.
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Mr. Humphrey was given a tragically bad start
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with that bloody confrontation on the
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streets of Chicago. It's interesting by the way that
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his campaign really began and ended in Chicago. He
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started it after that episode on the
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Chicago streets and at the end the votes that were being counted the
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longest the greatest anxiety were the votes of
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Chicago and Illinois. Chicago seemed to stand at
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both ends of that campaign of Mr. Humphrey as
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a rather tragic symbol. In my end is my beginning.
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And that was very much true of Mr. Humphrey. He went off to an extremely bad start.
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No one quite knows what the campaign his campaign would have been like.
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If Chicago had had the same kind of results
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that Miami had if there had been the same absence of
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confrontation between the youngsters and the police.
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At Chicago that there wasn't Miami. My own feeling
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is that he would have got it started rolling earlier and that.
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He would have come in either very much closer or perhaps even as a
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victor. Because the last week the last week of
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that campaign was a week in which Mr Humphrey was making enormous gains.
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I think that it was important also that. Mr Humphrey was not able to
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get any of the Southern states all needed a deep
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South nor the border states unless you count Maryland a border
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state. Mr. Nixon did pull the border states it's not
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at all clear I think it will be discussed for a long time as to whether it was
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Mr. Agnew being on the ticket with him that enabled the ticket to
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pull these southern border states or whether Mr. Nixon would have done it on his own whether the
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having to take Mr. Agnew on as the price of getting those border
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states was a necessary price to pay.
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I think that Mr. Wallace's vote was over calculated at the beginning
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of the campaign. He turned out to have been not nearly as strong
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as he had expected and that as others had expected. And
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to the extent that those votes did not go to Mr. Wallace the chances are that the majority
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of those votes went to Mr. Nixon. Even given
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these these considerations
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Mr. Humphries I say came very very close. If the
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bombing pause had come what two or three days earlier Mr. Nixon's own
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camp now believes believed at the time that if it had come to his read days
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earlier the results would have been very very different.
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And in that sense there was a kind of a race between the
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negotiators for a bombing pause hold triangular
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negotiators Washington Hanoi Saigon a race
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between those negotiators and the election in that race.
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Saigon obviously was not over anxious. To get the bombing post to
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come early. Hanoi didn't do it very fast either but
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Hanoi I think felt rather differently about the two candidates and the way the
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Saigon felt. I think it's clear that the officials at Saigon did not want
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to come for a victory that they very much wanted a Nixon victory
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and were not anxious to give their even their
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qualified approval to the package that was offered
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for a bombing pause or not at all anxious if they'd been more
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anxious it's quite possible that the pause could have come earlier. One thing
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we're very clear about is that the timing of that pause was not Lyndon Johnson's timing.
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Not Lyndon Johnson's timing he could not have pulled it out of a hat.
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I'm sure he tried to hurry it as rapidly as he could and I'm also certain
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that when he got into an approximation of an agreement from Saigon he went ahead
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even though that agreement may not have been 100 percent it didn't have all the i's dotted
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and the T's crossed. He did go ahead but he could not have pulled it out of the hat.
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It was not his to choose when the timing of the bombing pause was to come.
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It was up to Hanoi primarily and to some extent it was up to Saigon
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Hanoi wanted I think to come. Before the election not too
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long for some reason not too long before the election I think they were holding out for the best
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possible terms. But there's very very little question that it was that
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bombing pause on which ultimately. The sin margin of the election
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turned one way or another and there was a moment
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during which Mr. Nixon evidently has confessed
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that he had some real anxiety as to how it was going to come out.
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I think of Mr. Humphrey had had been more positive in the
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attraction that he exerted on voters. The result would have been
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different. For that matter if Mr. Nixon had been more positive in his
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attraction he would have won by a very much larger margin than he did.
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The fact is that neither candidate was a loved candidate. I think I've said
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of all three candidates that they were relatively unloved men
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though as in none none of the three of them were charismatic in the sense of
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of evoking any kind of very deep affection not to speak of love.
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I think. The result might have been.
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Much a much larger margin also for Mr. Nixon if he'd had a
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different vice president running with him. I mean one of the reasons
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why Mr. Humphrey toward the end picked up the steam that he picked up.
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Was the recall that set in against Mr. Agnew. As a vice
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presidential running mate now here too. This is nothing that can be proved.
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And there are two schools on this. One is the school that it says that Mr.
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Agnew actually won the election for Mr. Nixon.
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Because A. 70 odd electoral votes that he that the
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ticket drew in the southern border states where the difference
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between a victory and having it go into the House of Representatives.
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But there's another school of thought and that is that it was not
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necessarily the southern border states that counted that Mr. Nixon might very easily
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have gotten those southern border states and lost some of the very big states
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particularly California and Illinois and Missouri the ones that were so doubtful at the
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end. And it was in these states that Mr. Agnew was not an
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advantage but a drag. My own feeling while I
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recognize the some of the strengths in the first position my own feeling goes
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on the whole toward the second position.
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In every presidential election there are things you're sorry for
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things you're rather glad about. There are two things that I am happiest
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about in this election perhaps three.
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One is the. The real psychological and moral
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defeat that Mr. Wallace suffered. It
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was a psychological and moral defeat despite 13 and a half percent
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of the popular vote. There had been a point
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when he had something like 20 percent and it looked as if he were rolling on even
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higher you'll recall that I talked about that. It
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started to roll back with his choice of General
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M-A as a vice presidential running mate which threw some consternation
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into the hearts of many because of general amazing views about the Vietnam
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War and about nuclear weapons.
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And yet that wasn't the whole story. Why Mr
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Wallace failed.
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For one thing I think he had maybe made it all too clear what his basic strategy
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was and the basic strategy of course was to throw
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the election into the House of Representatives by denying to either of
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the major candidates a majority of the Electoral College vote.
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And having thrown it into the House of Representatives then to be the arbiter
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of the presidential destinies of the nation. And you know some made it
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fairly clear he did not conceal this that in being the operator
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of these destinies his his calculated policy would
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be to try to strike some kind of a deal with the Nixon camp even
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before the vote was opened on January even before
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that time.
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I think a number of people who might otherwise have voted for him recoiled from this basic
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strategy from the openness of it from the cynicism of it
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and from the possible chaos that it might bring with
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it Mr. Wallace. Constantly as a
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candidate talked against chaos as if chaos were his
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chosen opponent. And yet the same candidate who talked
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against chaos who said in effect chaos belongs to the other side I'm against it.
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The same candidate was was in effect inviting a
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degree of chaos in this home and the inevitable you
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negative tension and friction and
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division and cleavage that would result both from
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having it thrown into the elections thrown into the Electoral College and that the discussion
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that would follow the kind of deal that I've just talked about.
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So that's one thing I'm happy about.
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Along with that. There's another aspect of Mr. Wallace's
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failure to get a real vote. And that is that evidently a number of
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people who thought of themselves as voting in a backlash way.
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When the final decision came felt that that was not as crucial as other matters.
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Considering the kind of fears we had about our country and about the psychology of
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a large number of the voters particularly of those whom we call the what the age an aged
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white collar workers blue collar workers lower middle class.
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Considering the feeling we had about them I think their failure to go along with
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him is a pretty good sign of health.
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No one can blame people after they have had some kind of contact with street
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violence. With the instability that has come from
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all riots and demonstrations no one can blame them for feeling deeply about this and no
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one can blame them I suppose for having it enter their heads that the way to resolve this problem is
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by crackdown.
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But the really interesting thing is that having thought of that as a many many of
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them must have thought of them who thought of it that didn't find the vote for Wallace. Having
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thought of that they did not allow this to be decisive. Which brings me to
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the second aspect of the vote that I regard as that I'm pretty
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happy about and that is that it was a consensus vote.
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A consensus vote in the sense that if you put the voters for
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This program has been transcribed using automated software tools, made possible through a collaboration between the American Archive of Public Broadcasting and Pop Up Archive. Please note that no automated transcription is perfect nor is it intended to replace human transcription labor. If you would like to contribute corrections to this transcript, please contact MITH at mith@umd.edu.