1968: The Comeback of Richard Nixon

A little personal background...

Son of middle-class Quaker shopkeepers in California After older brother’s illness, he had to give up Harvard for

local Whittier College “Tackling dummy” for college football team, student body

President World War II Navy veteran Intense hatred of wealthy and privileged people: “eastern

liberal establishment” Incredibly ambitious, but paranoid A loner: bitter, brooding, awkward, controlling, obsessed

with secrecy

A brief review of his political career....

Congressman: 1946-1950, Senator: 1950-1952, Eisenhower’s Vice President: 1952-1960

Loses to JFK in close 1960 election: feels that JFK stole the election

Ran for Governor of California in 1962 and lost Blamed “liberal media” for his loss, moves to NYC to

become a corporate lawyer “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore!”

The big comeback: 1968

Nixon promised to reunify the country and bring back “law and order” and bring “peace with honor” in the Vietnam War.

Nixon spoke to the "Silent Majority:” Americans who were fed up with racial violence, crime, war, and protests, hippies and the counterculture

Nixon: “Most Americans are people who do not break the law... people who pay their taxes and go to work, who go to their churches... who love their country.”

Running mate: Maryland Gov. Spiro Agnew

“The Emerging Republican Majority”

Concern with social issues: Fear of rising crime rates, racial tension, drugs, sexual permissiveness, lack of patriotism; desire for law and order

Opposition to the forced integration of schools (The Southern Strategy)

“The Southern Strategy”

After Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed by LBJ, the South became mostly Republican, conservative

Nixon promised to appoint federal judges who were tough on crime, against civil rights

Opposed to busing programs

Nixon: “Schools are for education, not integration.”

The other candidates in 1968...

Democratic Party candidate: Hubert Humphrey

The chaos at the 1968 Chicago convention hurt his chances

George Wallace: American Independence Party

Former Governor of Alabama

Against radicalism, school integration, and college professors- i.e. "pointy-headed intellectual morons”

Running mate was retired General Curtis LeMay, who favored bombing Vietnam "back into the Stone Age”

The end result (and the beginning of a new era)

Nixon: 301 electoral votes, 43.4% of the popular vote

Humphrey: 191, 42.7% Wallace: 46, 13.5% The 57% that voted for Nixon and

Wallace represented a major realignment in politics that would dominate U.S. politics into the 2000s: a new conservative majority

From 1968-2008, only two Democrats became President (Carter and Clinton) and only one Democrat won reelection (Bill Clinton)