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

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RESILIENT AMERICA

American Presidential Elections

MICHAEL NELSON

JOHN M. MCCARDELL, JR.

RESILIENT AMERICA

ELECTING NIXON IN 1968,
CHANNELING DISSENT, AND
DIVIDING GOVERNMENT

MICHAEL NELSON

FOREWORD BY MARC J. HETHERINGTON

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KANSAS

2014 by the University Press of Kansas
All rights reserved

Published by the University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas 66045), which was organized by the Kansas Board of Regents and is operated and funded by Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University, Kansas State University, Pittsburg State University, the University of Kansas, and Wichita State University

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nelson, Michael, 1949
Resilient America : electing Nixon in 1968, channeling dissent, and
dividing government / Michael Nelson ; Foreword by Marc J. Hetherington.
p. cm. (American presidential elections)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7006-1963-4
ISBN 978-0-7006-2034-0 (ebook)
1. PresidentsUnited StatesElection1968. 2. Nixon, Richard M.
(Richard Milhous), 19131994. 3. Divided governmentUnited StatesHistory20th century. I. Title.
E 851. N 452014
324.97309046dc23
2013047051

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available.

Printed in the United States of America

10987654321

The paper used in this publication is recycled and contains 30 percent postconsumer waste. It is acid free and meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992.

To the lady chosen by God, and to her children, whom I love in the truth

2 John 1:1

Linda

Michael

Sam

McClain

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

What didnt happen in 1968? The Tet offensive occurred in January, turning Walter Cronkite and ultimately the American people against the war in Vietnam. In April, Martin Luther King was felled by an assassins bullet in Memphis, robbing the civil rights movement of its most effective leader. Two months later, Robert F. Kennedy was murdered after having won the California primary, eliminating the best chance that either party would nominate an antiwar presidential candidate. In September, the Democratic National Convention went off the rails in Chicago, ensuring the partys eventual nominee, Hubert H. Humphrey, an uphill climb in his quest for the presidency. Throughout the year, urban race riots in several cities rocked the country, causing scores of deaths and millions of dollars in damage. Among the few bright spots, I was born in June, making 1968 a subject of particular interest to me.

What makes understanding the election of 1968 so important is the political aftershocks that continued to rock the nation for decades. Most notably, the Republicans, often the losing party since 1932, became regular winners in presidential elections. Of the six elections starting in 1968, the Democrats won only one, and that was mostly the result of the fallout from Richard Nixons Watergate scandal. Moreover, three of these victories were landslides, two of historic proportions. In 1972 and 1984, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, respectively, won 49 of 50 states. And, in 1980, Reagan won 45 of 50 states from an incumbent, Jimmy Carter, an unprecedented feat. These victories owe, in part, to the new issue agenda set in motion by the politics of 1968.

Throughout the 1960s, and climaxing in 1968, race became the central issue dividing both the parties and ordinary Americans. When the race issue meant integrating public facilities, especially in the South, it benefited Democrats. Witness Lyndon B. Johnsons landslide victory in 1964 over Barry M. Goldwater. The events of the mid- to late 1960s, combined with the skill of Richard Nixons political operatives, transformed race into a Republican issue that would last decades. No longer was the race issue about odious things such as turning fire hoses on peaceful protesters and standing in the schoolhouse door to bar African American students from attending all-white schools. As Edward Carmines and James Stimson skill fully argue in their 1989 book Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics (Princeton University Press), it came to be about the degree to which the federal government should be involved in the struggle for civil rights. Later the issue evolved again to be about violence in inner cities. Racial conservatism, then, no longer required one to be a racist as was the case in preintegration days. The evolution of the race issue turned out to be bad news for liberals.

The politics spawned by 1968 reordered party coalitions. Conservative southern whites, once the Democratic Partys most stalwart supporters, have only cast a majority of their presidential votes for a Democrat once since 1968, and that was for native son Jimmy Carter of Georgia in 1976. Working-class whites, another bulwark of Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal coalition and a socially and racially conservative group, began to vote for Republicans on a regular basis as well. Less dramatically, but no less importantly, racially liberal northern and western cities began to pull these regions toward the Democratic Party over time.

This reordering of groups and regions is the basis for the partisan polarization that grips the country in the 2000s. Ideological diversity within the parties became a thing of the past. Before 1968, the Republican Party did well in some liberal parts of the country, such as the Northeast and Pacific West, and the Democratic Party did well in conservative parts of the country, such as the South. As a result, both parties had to balance liberal and conservative wings within them. The 1968 election set in motion a process in which that would no longer be the case. The GOP, the conservative party, came to dominate the conservative parts of the country where Democrats once thrived while its liberal wing shriveled. Democrats, the liberal party, came to dominate liberal parts of the country where the GOP once thrived while its conservative wing all but disappeared. The absence of intraparty differences allowed the parties to pursue much more ideological politics, creating the situation that weighs on the nation today. The election of 1968 is the root of all this change.

For all the divisiveness that ultimately followed and the lasting imprint it has left, 1968 goes down in history as a watershed election. Michael Nelsons book is extraordinary in capturing the relevant twists and turns. More than that, it also provides a fresh perspective on this tumultuous time. Given all that happened that year and in the decades that followed, most scholars tend to frame their focus on the periods coming apart. But, as Nelson demonstrates, that story is too simple and ultimately incorrect. The country did not, in fact, come apart as it might have given all the political stress that foreign and domestic events produced. In fact, leaders through this fraught time produced unity as well. The executive and legislative branches worked together to solve problems, despite the presence of divided government. Whereas divided government has caused a governing crisis in the present day, political leaders regularly came together to overcome it in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Nelsons concluding argument is compelling and well made, which is not surprising given his status as one of the political science professions most esteemed scholars of the American presidency.

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