[This is the eighth in a series of posts, going back
several years now, on the topic of losing presidential candidates since 1960.
I’ve actually had this one in the works for a couple of years, but these are
supposed to be funny, that’s what I write, and it’s easy to run into roadblocks
trying to do that when the subject is 1968. If you lived through it, and maybe
even if you didn’t, you should be aware of one stark fact: 1968 simply wasn’t
funny. It started bad, mostly ended bad except for the cool bit with the
astronauts circling the moon on Christmas eve, and in between was some
seriously fucked up shit. I will give it a go regardless; I like to write about
history, and with 2016 being such a historic year now, I’m feeling inspired. In
a year that saw such a momentous event, with Hillary Clinton becoming the first
woman in history to accidentally e-mail the presidency to a cartoon
billionaire, it’s time to get back to work. As always, most of what you will
read is documented historical fact; some, though, is shit I made up whilst
sitting alone in my room chain-smoking joints. I trust you will be able to tell
the difference.]
The Man
Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr., was born on May 27, 1911 in
Wallace, South Dakota. Yup, Hubert Horatio Humphrey. I’ve made fun of his
cartoonish name in the past, but I’m not going to do that here. I will not. No
more “Oompa-Loompa” jokes; nope, the man was Vice-President of the United
States of America, after all, and deserves his dignity.
 |
| Hubert Horatio Humphrey Hornblower Honk Honk Honk |
Hubert studied pharmacy in college (hey, so did I!) and ran
the family drugstore before entering politics; he was elected mayor of
Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1945 and senator from Minnesota in 1948. Known as a
strong anti-Communist in his early political days, he became more known as a
senator for his work in passing civil rights legislation and involvement in the
creation of Medicare and the Peace Corps.
Chosen by President Lyndon B. Johnson to be his running mate in 1964, he
spent the next four years as understudy to a man who became less and less
popular seemingly by the minute after 1965.
The Setting
One more time: 1968 was a fucked up year in American
history. Among other fucked up shit, there was this thing going on called the
Vietnam War. While this is far too large a topic in its own right to be covered
here, let’s just say that as the year dawned American combat soldiers had been
engaged there for nearly three years, young people being conscripted and sent
to fight and possibly die in a country most Americans still struggled to locate
on a map. It may have begun as a well-meaning attempt to help the people of
South Vietnam resist the evil encroachment of communism, but it was getting costly
in lives and materials, and...three years? Vietnam was such a dink country, and we won World War II, goddammit. Now we can’t beat Vietnam? Fire the
coach, already. Plus, as the first
of our wars to be televised, it didn’t help the cause when we kept seeing shit
like this:
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| American tax dollars at work. |
Aaaaaaaaaand...this:
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| Hint: the guy with the gun was on our side. |
Added to this unrest were increasing racial tensions; the
country was only a few years removed from the spectacle of the governor of an
American state standing in the doorway of a state university, denying entry to
African-Americans with a cry of “segregation forever!” (More on George Wallace
later.) Inner cities were periodically erupting in violence.
Ah, but 1968 wasn’t all shit, was it? Surely something
uplifting must have occurred during that long, brutal year to take our minds off things and bring
us together? Well, let’s see...there was O.J. Simpson, dazzling us all on his
way to a Heisman Trophy-winning season as the best college football player in
the land. There was that.
 |
| (Cue uplifting orchestral theme) |
So......yeah. Violence in the cities, unrest on college
campuses, disturbing images on our TV screens, and, to top it off, many of the
more privileged young people were “dropping out” of society, rejecting
mainstream lifestyles, and taking strange psychedelic drugs that made them act
weird and enjoy sitar music and other nonsense. It also made them want to have
sex a lot, which was simply unheard of before 1968.
 |
| Known then as “hippies,” you 20-somethings know them today as “Grandpa” and “Grandma.” |
As so often happens, the world was trying to die and many
wanted to just let it. Setting the stage for...
The Primaries
Hubert Humphrey began the year, not as a candidate for
president, but as the vice-president to an incumbent president who, having
taken office in 1963 and winning re-election the following year, was eligible
to run again in 1968. As the year began,
Lyndon Johnson was presumed to have control of the party machinery and thus a
stranglehold on the nomination. His only announced competition was coming from
one Eugene McCarthy, a senator from Minnesota running an anti-war campaign
The high-minded McCarthy and his idealistic young followers
were elated; that elation, born of having risked a challenge to a sitting
president where others (cough Kennedy cough
cough) dared not, lasted roughly seven minutes. That very night, Robert F.
Kennedy issued a statement that he was “re-assessing” his position in the race
for the highest office in the land. As one of McCarthy’s student workers put
it, “we woke up after the New Hampshire primary like it was Christmas Day. And
when we went down to the tree, we found Bobby Kennedy had stolen our Christmas
presents.”
Bobby Kennedy: A Wedgie Waiting To Happen
Robert F. Kennedy was the third son of Joseph P. Kennedy,
who himself was a Harvard graduate, very wealthy businessman and former
ambassador to Great Britain. Unlike some other wealthy businessmen in American
history, Joseph decided that rather than buy the presidency for himself, he
would buy it for each of his sons in turn. Eldest son Joseph, Jr., was
unfortunately killed in World War II, becoming ineligible for the presidency, whereupon
John F. Kennedy assumed the mantle of family expectations and was elected
President of the United States in 1960. Younger brother Robert served as
Attorney General and All-Purpose Lightning Rod until after John’s assassination
in 1963. Controversial from the beginning, he was known for zealous and
occasionally extra-legal pursuit of mobsters and others with mob connections
and acquired a reputation for ruthlessness. Nevertheless, he benefited from the
overly romanticized legacy of his brother and the family money, and, having won
a seat in the U.S. Senate representing New York in 1964, could lay claim to a
substantial base of support merely by announcing his candidacy. Like many who
were close to John Kennedy, Bobby could never shake the feeling that Lyndon
Johnson was a usurper and that it was he, not Lyndon, that was the true heir to
the unfulfilled promise of JFK. Still, he hesitated, even as the Johnson
administration thrashed about in the tarpit that was the Vietnam War and 1968
began to shape up as the clusterfucked mega-downer it was to become. Already
branded a ruthless opportunist, the risk of causing disunity and possible
destruction of his own party was too heavy a burden for his conscience to bear.
If all he had to do was sneak in and swipe somebody else’s Christmas presents,
on the other hand, well, that’s a different matter.
Johnson Sticks a Fork In Himself
On March 31, less than three weeks after his “victory” in
the New Hampshire primary, President Lyndon Baines Johnson announced he would
not be a candidate for anything in 1968. Burdened by Vietnam, concerned for his
health (he barely lived another four years even without the stress of the
presidency) and realizing he would actually have to fight for re-nomination,
Johnson had no taste for the battles ahead. It was time to retire to the ranch
in Texas, and let others take the mantle of responsibility in these difficult
times. Of course, none of this affected his right to control the Democratic
party, choose the convention site, give out patronage jobs, reward loyalty, and
all the other hallmarks of old-style party politics. This more or less added up
to choosing his successor, his vice-president, as the party’s next nominee for
president, primaries be damned.
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| Typical Texas jerkwad. |
Thus Hubert H. Humphrey, loyal soldier of the administration
and party stalwart, became the choice of the inner circle of the party, with
Eugene McCarthy and, Bobby Kennedy, finally in the race, battling it out in a
series of primary contests that may or may not have made a difference in the
end. With party bosses still controlling the majority of convention delegates,
Humphrey could contend for the nomination without contesting the primaries.
Then, four days after Johnson’s abdication, the next shock
came.
It Gets Ugly
From the Supreme Court decision in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954 to
the passing of the Civil Rights Acts in 1964 and 1965, the legal barriers
against integration of black and white people and the granting of equal rights
to minorities had pretty much all come down. While some southern states were
still fighting for segregation, the power of the federal government to enforce
federal law couldn’t be resisted forever. But they were trying. And,
unfortunately, economic conditions in black neighborhoods in northern cities
meant the people living there weren’t too happy, either. So, from 1965 into
1968, the roster of cities that saw racial violence, riots and looting kept
growing: Los Angeles, Washington, Cleveland, Omaha, Des Moines, Chicago,
Detroit, Cleveland (again), Minneapolis...
And by this time, some (self-appointed) black leaders,
notably Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, were publicly calling for more
violence.
Fortunately, the civil rights movement had at least one calm
and sane voice: a man committed to fighting for social and racial justice,
fairness and equality, and freedom for all Americans, using peaceful
resistance, saintly patience, perseverance, and appealing to the consciences
and “better angels” of our nature. Of course, this being 1968, that meant he
had to die.
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| 1968: About as funny as a hole in this guy’s head. |
The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (you’ve
probably heard of him, he’s a Day now)
in April of 1968 during the primary campaign sparked a new wave of
violence, sparked calls for “Law and Order” across the nation, and certainly
required a response from the presidential candidates. The day after King’s
assassination, Kennedy talked about violence that was “slower but just as
deadly and destructive as the gun or the bomb in the night. This is the
violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the
violence that affects the poor, that poisons the relations between men because
their skin has different colors.”
Such sentiments coming from this recent victim of political
violence against his family, this recently announced presidential candidate
reaching out to minorities, dedicating himself to helping the underprivileged,
achieving peace in Vietnam and unity at home, could only mean one thing: it was
1968, and he had to die, too.
|
| 1968: About as funny as a submarine with screen doors--that lead to the kitchen, where this guy gets shot by some loser. |
On June 5, the night he won the California primary and
minutes after telling a crowd assembled at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles
that it was “on to Chicago, and let’s win there,” Bobby Kennedy was shot in the
kitchen by some loser, dying the following day. Another funeral, again with the
flag-draped coffin, here’s another grieving widow...didn’t we just see this
movie? Fucking 1968, already.
The Convention
So, in August of that fateful year, the survivors staggered
into Chicago for the Democratic National Convention: Hubert Humphrey, with enough
support from party bosses and party luminaries to have the nomination
essentially sewn up; Eugene McCarthy, still tilting at windmills and quoting
Voltaire; and George McGovern, trying to marshal the Kennedy forces but who
would need to wait four years for his own drubbing at the hands of Richard Nixon.
There was a brief movement to draft Edward M. Kennedy for
the nomination, but like all Ted Kennedy For President movements its attention
quickly waned and it drove off a bridge shortly after leaving the cottage
Also descending on Chicago for the convention were thousands
of anti-war protesters, disaffected youth, leftist radicals, and general
ne’er-do-wells. Already there waiting for them were the Chicago Police, soon to
be joined by the Illinois National Guard. Confrontations ensued,
misunderstandings were had, tempers flared, and things got a little out of
hand. Eventually, the police remembered they had billy clubs, riot gear and
tear gas, and television viewers were treated to the sight of young protesters
and sometimes members of the press being beaten senseless by Chicago law
enforcement under the direction of Mayor Richard Daley, a major player at the
convention.
 |
| “Convention’s going well, don’t you think?” |
Meanwhile, inside the convention center, the Democrats were
busy at work choosing their presidential candidate. This got some of the TV
coverage that week. And, in the end, as everyone knew would happen, the party
chose Hubert H. Humphrey to be its standard bearer in 1968. Humphrey, who
hadn’t entered a single primary that year, who excited no passions on the level
of Bobby Kennedy or Eugene McCarthy, whose support of Johnson’s Vietnam
policies fed the protests and violence at his nominating convention, was the nominee. After all the excitement,
after McCarthy’s youth movement, after Kennedy’s meteoric campaign, the
Democrats offered up what Hunter S. Thompson called a “withered booby prize.”
Of course, Thompson also once called Humphrey a “treacherous, brain-damaged old
vulture” who should be “put in a goddamn bottle and sent out with the Japanese
current,” so we might take his phrasing with a grain of salt. But the sense of
anti-climax and disappointment was palpable. There was a feeling that the
Democratic Party hadn’t so much chosen a presidential candidate as they had...coughed something up.
 |
| Ack. |
The General Election
Campaign: Richard Nixon
By 1968, Richard Milhous Nixon had been a national political
figure for 20 years. Elected to the U.S. Congress from California in 1946 and
the Senate in 1950, he was noted for his anti-Communist rhetoric and for
running two of the dirtiest campaigns in American history. Basically, the guy
was always a shit, and how he got on the ticket and became Vice-President under
someone as decent as Dwight D. Eisenhower is one of those odious accidents of
history that no one notices right away, like when the cat pees in the toaster.
I’ve written about Richard Nixon before, and all I
will say in his favor is that his campaign was well-run, well thought out, and
exactly the kind of boring and vague oatmeal barf that many people seemed to
need to calm the fuck down in 1968. The contrast in conventions, the chaos of
the Democrats vs. the order of the Republicans, was glaring. He pledged to
“bring us together,” and he may even have meant it. Still, Nixon was a shit, if
I haven’t mentioned that before.
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| Richard M. Nixon, our creepiest president since the white curly wig days. |
The General Election
Campaign: George Wallace
The 1968 general election had a third party candidate in the
race, one George C. Wallace, former governor of Alabama. He was a feisty little
lifer in the game of southern politics, a conservative who offered simple
solutions to complex problems, usually blaming “pointy-headed” intellectuals in
Washington for the nation’s problems. He was for states’ rights and local
control of government and schools. He had much appeal in the southern states,
and at least some support in some of the northern industrial states among
blue-collar working people. He was also racist as fuck.
This was the man who, as governor, stood in a doorway at the
University of Alabama in 1963, defying (at least symbolically) the federal
government’s orders to desegregate. He famously cried “segregation today,
segregation tomorrow...segregation forever!”
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| Yeah, Wallace was a shit, too. |
As the fall campaign got under way, Wallace was polling
above 20% nationally, and a real threat to win enough states to prevent either
Nixon or Humphrey from winning enough electoral votes to win the election.
What Went So Horribly,
Horribly Wrong
Essentially, what went wrong for Hubert H. Humphrey was
everything I’ve written about above. All those factors worked against him to
some extent; through happenstance, he became the frontman for the party in
power in a year when everything seemed to be falling apart. Or, rather, when
everything was falling apart. The
country was losing its collective shit and the Democratic Party, though
technically in power, was fractured. Humphrey failed to distance himself from
Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam policies until it was too late in the game, and Nixon
was allowed to get by with mumbling empty lawyer-ish phrases about not wanting
to undermine the ongoing peace negotiations by something so irresponsible as
outlining a position on the most important issue of the campaign.
Humphrey was, at bottom, an old-school liberal with populist
leanings, “fighting for the little man,” and, maybe above all, a career
politician. He got his big career break in a year when the shit was hitting the
fan. Some of that shit hit him square in the face, and he had to deal with that
first. He was seen, rightly, as the heir apparent to Lyndon Johnson, who
because of his Texas drawl and mishandling of the Vietnam War was seen by many
as a sort of President Cowpie, Killer of Children. The chaos and violence at
the Democratic National Convention suggested that the Democrats could not stop
the chaos and violence in the nation. Humphrey’s campaign had to stumble out of
the blocks chained to that pile of rocks, and began the fall trailing in the
polls by 15% or so. This discouraged money from coming in at the beginning,
when it was most needed. It was only through the efforts of organized labor,
notably the AFL/CIO, that the gap began to close, and eventually Humphrey was
able to establish his own identity and differentiate himself from President
Cowpie, Killer of Children.
But it was too little, too late, with Nixon holding on to
win 43.2% of the popular vote and 301 electoral votes against Humphrey's 42.6%
and 191. George Wallace won five southern states, with 12.9% of the vote
nationwide and 46 electoral votes.
Finish
So that ghastly year finally drew to a close. Martin Luther King
was dead, Bobby Kennedy was dead, the war dragged on, and Richard Nixon was
about to become President of the United States. Not the best of times, 1968. It
smelled of death and failure, pure and simple.
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| But we’ll always have Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. |
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