Taking a Side
In our current “A.D.D.”, twenty-four hour news cycle age, this story is already out of date. Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the Presidential race is truly old news (was it really only last week?). We are now onto Harris versus Trump, a whole new “vibe” for the 2024 Presidential election. But, before we eulogize the still alive and kicking Biden into the oblivion of “lame duckness”, there is one issue we still need to deal explore.
There are plenty of comparisons between our present era and 1968. They are the two times in my lifetime when America seemed totally divided by insurmountable differences. In American history, the term “complete polarization” is often applied to three eras: 1860, 1968, and today in 2024. It’s not a coincidence that all three were Presidential election years. The ballot decision crystallizes the extreme choice for voters. They were/are forced to take a side: for or against slavery and secession; for or against the Vietnam War, or for or against authoritarian leaders.
In 1860 Lincoln was elected with a minority of the popular vote (less than 40%) and on a platform to restrict slavery to the states that already allowed it. Between the November election and the March inauguration, seven states seceded from the union. Secessionist Edmund Ruffin fired a shell at Ft. Sumter on April 10th: the Civil War began.
But 1968 isn’t quite as clear. For many today, that year wasn’t taught as “history”. It was current events, subject to all of the emotion and “skin in the game” analysis without an historic perspective. So here is the “1968 story”, hidden in the “weeds” of history.
Johnson
Democratic President Lyndon Johnson ascended to the Presidency with the assassination of John Kennedy. Johnson in many ways was the diametric opposite of Kennedy. He was a coarse Texan versus the erudite New England Kennedy, and a master of legislative politics versus Kennedy’s mastery of media image. He could have been the perfect balance for the President, but instead, the Kennedy’s shoved him to the side once the 1960 election was over.
When Johnson took office he kept Kennedy’s “Best and Brightest” cabinet. He used Kennedy’s death to pass civil and voting rights legislation, something that Kennedy himself wasn’t able to do. Johnson went on to have one of the greatest “legislative” Presidencies in history, second only to Franklin Roosevelt (and now maybe Joe Biden). But he also maintained Kennedy’s growing intervention into the Vietnam War, expanding American forces to almost half a million troops.
Meanwhile, passing civil rights legislation did not bring racial social equality. Black Americans were frustrated to the point that there were summer riots: from Watts in Los Angeles to Detroit to even smaller towns like Cincinnati and Tampa. In 1967, there were more than 150 urban riots. At the same time, there was a growing movement against the Vietnam War. American troops were supplied by a universal draft, but the draft was “slanted”, allowing some with more education or financial resources to remain out of the military.
Getting Clean
The US military was unable to show “progress” on the ground in Vietnam. Like the more recent war in Afghanistan, US forces had to “take” the same territory over and over again. The metric of success became the “body count”; subject to falsification, and unending. Many American students demonstrated, and college campuses were rocked by violence against the war.
The Democratic Party split, with some legislators calling for an end to the American involvement. (The Republican Party was “all in” for the Vietnam War). Additionally, the Southern faction of the Party were incensed over Johnson’s civil rights successes. In the spring of 1968, Senator Gene McCarthy of Minnesota ran as an “insurgent” for the Presidency against Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. His campaign staff had many college students, who cut their hair and gave up “Hippie-ness” to make a better impression on voters: they “got clean for Gene”. It also included many of President Kennedy supporters who felt that Johnson betrayed their leader’s vision.
Assassin
Johnson won the New Hampshire primary, but by less than 50%. The strength of McCarthy’s movement pushed Senator Robert Kennedy, the President’s younger brother, who was also against the war. He entered the race, splitting the anti-war vote between the two Senators. Johnson recognized that he was unlikely to win the nomination of his own Party for a second full term, and even if he did, would be fatally damaged in the general election. So he withdrew, encouraging his Vice President, the former Senator from Minnesota Hubert Humphrey, to run.
An ugly three-way race ensued, with some anti-war voters jumping to Kennedy, and some bitter that he didn’t get in the race sooner. Humphrey was unable to do much more than echo Johnson’s pro-war views. Through the last primary in California the race was close, but Kennedy won and seemed to have momentum going into the convention . But an assassin intervened, killing Kennedy immediately after his victory speech in Los Angeles.
Chicago
That left the convention in Chicago to Humphrey. Anti-war protestors, denied what looked like a sure convention win, marched in protest. The Mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, used the police to not only control demonstrations, put to punish protestors with beatings, arrests, and tear gassing. And all of that action was “live and in color”, televised to the American public. It was a convention in total disarray, and left the nominee, Humphrey, with little hope of winning the election.
But the November count was still very close. Republican Richard Nixon won by less than one percent of the vote. Humphrey was hamstrung by the third party candidacy of George Wallace in the south, that gained almost 13% of what normally would have been Democratic votes. And many “anti-war” Americans had no one to vote for at all.
Genesis
America was splintered. The War in Vietnam would continue for six more years. Even the Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City (held in October) didn’t unite the country. Some Black athletes used the medal ceremony as a moment to silently protest. Tommy Smith and John Carlos raised black gloved fists in salute during the national anthem. They were immediately removed from the US Team and sent home.
The one event that pulled the country together was on Christmas Eve, when Apollo VIII orbited the moon. They showed the world what Earth looked like from a moon orbit for the first time. Astronauts Lovell, Anders and Borman read from the Bible’s book of Genesis as earth “rose” above the lunar landscape. Nealy a billion people on earth watched, and it captivated the nation. Seven months later, Apollo XI actually landed on the moon.
Biden
The similarities of Biden with Johnson are apparent. Biden was a successful legislator, made Vice President to a master of media presence, Barack Obama. However, Obama used Biden to help achieve his legislative goals. And Biden became President in a crisis situation like Johnson, after the first Insurrection to overturn a Presidential election. Biden was able to use his legislative prowess to pass a number of legislative plans to improve America.
It wasn’t a war that stopped Biden from running for a second term, it was his age. As the oldest President to ever serve, his physical appearance and actions made it difficult for voters to visualize him at the end of his second term, at eighty-six. And his performance in a June debate against Trump confirmed what folks instinctively knew; Biden is old.
So Biden, like Johnson, withdrew. But he didn’t saddle his successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, with an unsuccessful war. The Democratic Party quickly (two days!!!) rallied around Harris as the new candidate for President. The Democratic Convention in two weeks will be a coronation of her as candidate, not a divisive morass punctuated with clouds of tear gas.
Harris taking the mantle doesn’t change the existential consequences of a Trump victory in November. Those that Trump would bring to power have made it clear that they want to change the essential fairness of the American experiment. (Look at the current Supreme Court majority, or the Heritage Foundation’s plan for the second Trump administration, Project 2025, to see that).
It’s not 1968. Let’s hope it’s not 1860 either.
