1968: Vote Like Your Whole World Depended On It

 The national crime epidemic had become a national crisis. In June, Congress passed President Johnson’s last major piece of legislation: the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. It increased the federal presence in state and local crime prevention, and criminal justice efforts.

By 1968 increasing numbers of Americans were getting their news from television. They trusted what they saw on their TVs more than what they read in their newspapers. A study indicated that when there were conflicting or contradictory accounts of an event, 41% of Americans believed the TV; only 21% accepted the newspapers’ accounts.

Governor George Romney (MI) was a self-made man, a non-college graduate from the humblest of backgrounds who became Chief Executive of the American Motors Corporation. He had been a successful governor for three terms. The tall, silver-haired Romney had the advantage of “looking the part” of President.

Romney’s campaign was brief: He announced his candidacy on November 18th 1967, and withdrew from the race on February 28th 1968. 

In the 1968 presidential campaign, Senator Gene McCarthy (MN) became the champion of the anti-war movement, especially its idealistic and enthusiastic young supporters. These mostly long-haired and scruffy students demonstrated discipline by shaving and sprucing up (“Go Clean for Gene”) during the vital New Hampshire primary. 

On April 30th, Nelson Rockefeller, announced his candidacy at a press conference. His late and indecisive entry into the race, combined with the animosity of many Republicans, reduced Rockefeller to hoping that his high standing in the national opinion polls might convince the convention delegates to vote for him. 

 Hubert Humphrey, the incumbent vice president, was a noted civil rights leader and visionary. To many, even aside from his ties to President Johnson, he seemed to embody the old style of politics. 

 “On Sunday April 7, I flew to Atlanta to pay my respects to the King family…I told [Mrs. King] how impressed I had been by [MLK Jr.’s] insistence that the realization of his dream of equal opportunity for all should be accomplished by peaceful rather than violent means.

The idealism of Martin Luther King Jr., expressed in his words and actions was his unique contribution to the civil rights cause… Others were reasonably effective, but none could match his mystique and his ability to inspire people – white as well as black - and to move them.”  

Nixon wrote several drafts of his 1968 RNC Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech. Nixon focused on the Past, the Present, and the Future. The founders of the United States of America represent the strong voices of the American people and the incentive for a revolution, the “American Revolution.” Regarding the issues of the day, though different to that of the American Revolution, Nixon linked the spirit of the “American Revolution” with the spirit of the “student revolution,” and the Civil Rights “revolution.” The protection of the “right to dissent” was an element of reconciliation and uniting the nation. Finally, the future, as Nixon notes, is in the hand of the children and the next generation. 

When word spread that the Convention had voted down the platform’s Peace Plank, protesters ended up in front of the Conrad Hilton Hotel at 720 S. Michigan Avenue.

 

When the violence erupted in the street below, TV cameramen rushed to the windows.  Pointing their cameras down, they broadcast the violent and  brutal melee in which protesters, bystanders, medical helpers, reporters, and the Chicago police were quickly engulfed.  

Political cartoons have played a vital, colorful, and sometimes controversial, part in American elections since Ben Franklin published (and may have drawn) “Join or Die” in 1754. In the 1870s, Thomas Nast’s cartoons depicting Tammany Hall’s Boss Tweed gave editorial cartoonists new prestige and power.

With the emergence of the counterculture in the mid-1960s, political cartoons were no longer confined to the editorial pages of newspapers. There was suddenly a nationwide underground press, freed from the traditional constraints of polite taste, and hungry for provocative content. 

 Around 8 AM, NBC and ABC declared Nixon the winner in the vital states of California and Ohio.  Now he only needed one more state to win.  And Illinois was still out.

 

In his memoirs Nixon recalled how his young aide Dwight Chapin brought the news he had been waiting for all night. 

 

At 8:30 the door burst open and Dwight Chapin rushed in.  “ABC just declared you the winner!” he shouted.  “They’ve projected Illinois.  You got it.  You’ve won.”

 

 

In his memoirs, Nixon (now President-Elect Nixon) described what happened next:

 

Julie went to her room and then called me in.  She opened her briefcase and pulled out a piece of crewelwork she had done during campaign flights around the country. It was the Great Seal of the United States, with the inscription “To RN—JN” stitched at the bottom.  “Daddy, I never had any doubt you would win,” she said as she hugged me.  “I just wanted something to be ready right away to prove it.”