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“You fasten all the triggers For the others to fire Then you set back and watch While the death count gets higher Then you hide in your mansion While the young people's blood Flows out of their bodies And is buried in the mud.” -Bob Dylan Humphrey swung through New Jersey, Delaware, Michigan, Louisiana, Texas, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and California, speaking as often as nine times a day—a sign of his energy and the lack of judgment on the part of his staff. Advance men served him poorly; crowds were small and tepid. In Philadelphia, Joey Bishop, the local boy accompanying Humphrey got more applause than the candidate. There were hecklers at every stop. In Boston an anti-war crowd booed Humphrey and Edward Kennedy off a platform. Humphrey, said one staffer, “went to Chicago with two albatrosses” meaning Lyndon Johnson and Kennedy, “and came out with three” meaning Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and Richard Daley. His treasury was all but empty. His rhetoric, which could soar, was laced with bromides. At one point he actually said, “Government of the people, by people, and for the people, is as American as apple pie.” It is easy, then, to understand the unease with which Humphrey invited Senator Kennedy to campaign for him. Robert Kennedy’s rhetoric not only could soar, but did. Where Humphrey campaigned in prose, Senator Kennedy campaigned in poetry. At colleges and at union halls across the country, Robert Kennedy found himself not only campaigning for Humphrey, but against efforts to make himself president by way of a write in campaign, adding insult to injury for Humphrey. However, Senator Kennedy’s efforts did mobilize those who had worked for his campaign, or at least those who had become sullen and apathetic, believing that “the Establishment” had cheated “Bobby.” Even President Johnson seemed to be sabotaging his Vice President. When in September Humphrey said that the withdrawal of US troops could begin at the end of the following year, the President was widely quoted as saying “No man can predict” when departure might safely start. Not counting Wallace voters, in august Gallup had Nixon leading by 14 points, and Harris put Nixon’s margin at 40 to 31. Even Humphrey was discouraged, “I have pursued impossible dreams before and maybe I am now.” Nixon’s campaign was all the other way. Flush with cash and exultant optimism, his party united. His schedule harmonized with deadlines of the network news programs, even allowing them plenty of time to develop their film. He dodged challenges for debate, and Republican senators filibustered a measure to allow public service TV debates without Wallace. He appealed to the “forgotten American”—the man who paid his taxes, didn’t riot or break the law, went to church and raised his children to be “good Americans.” Who would wear the country’s uniform with pride as “watchmen on the walls of freedom around the world.” At Spellman University in Atlanta Kennedy replied that Nixon had “forgotten too many Americans,” he seeks, instead, “to undo the strained bonds between us all.” That the American Dream means that “though we may separately strive towards individual success” we must “be knit together as one people. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our luxuries, for the supply of others’ necessities. We as a nation must make others’ conditions our own, labor and suffer together.” That sort of speech found purpose in the working class white communities and the union halls, and starry-eyed college students flooded the Peace Corps and other national service organizations, even as many more wandered away in a haze of drugs. Nothing more sharply divided the nation than the war in Vietnam; black, white, rich, poor, educated and uneducated, saw and felt a different sort of war—but the Tet Offensive had done much to further erode domestic support. Nixon had a plan to end the war; he couldn’t divulge it now because it might disturb the peace talks in Paris. He promised to restore law and order by appointing a new attorney general and assailed the Supreme Court for “being patently guilty” of freeing defendants on technicalities. He favored approval of nuclear non-proliferation, but not now, because of the Soviet treatment of the Czechs. Business would improve, he said, because he would give businessmen tax credits and other incentives to create jobs and reduce the number of people on welfare. America would be great “not because of what government did for the people but because of what people did for themselves.” Bobby struck again, from the tomato fields of California. “Mr. Nixon does not know what poverty is, or what it does. He does not understand that it is not a lack of opportunity that has kept the sharecroppers and the migrant workers poor, but a lack option. Mr. Nixon has forgotten the people in the ghettos and the tarpaper shacks of Appalachia because he cares for American business, not the American people.” Kennedy defended the Supreme Court as offering justice for / all/ Americans. The campaign appeared to be between Jack Kennedy’s “number one and a half” and the Republican Vice President he had vanquished. Humphrey despaired. But in October, he began to gain. He dismissed his mockers as “damned fools” introduced the clown Emmett Kelly as “Nixon’s economic advisor.” He accused Nixon of dodging issues. He loudly backed the Supreme Court and the nonproliferation treaty. Union audiences were reminded of what Democratic Administrations had done for them. Though their hearts belonged to Kennedy, they would vote for Humphrey. Nixon was “Richard the Chickenhearted;” Wallace and General LeMay were the “Bombsy twins.” Humphrey developed a technique of naming Democratic Presidential champions—and then, as the applause started to build, added in Lyndon Johnson. Meanwhile, his running mate savaged Agnew. Muskie would say, “Mr. Agnew tells us that we lack a sense of humor.” And added dryly: “I think he is doing his best to restore it.” The pivot was Salt Lake City. When Humphrey declared there that he would stop bombing in Vietnam as “an acceptable risk for peace,” the tide started to turn. On October 21 Gallup reported that Humphrey had cut Nixon’s lead in half. Fading memories of Chicago were part of it. The habit of voting Democratic for a generation was another part. That June Gallup poll found that 46% of people considered themselves Democrats, 27% considered themselves Independents, and 27% Republican. Robert Kennedy awakened the youth and liberals to the fact of the choice between Humphrey and Nixon, their bogeyman for the past twenty years. Meanwhile, McCarthy pouted on the Riviera, only announcing is support for the Democratic ticket belatedly, having seen what it did for Robert Kennedy. Finally, there was the difference between the two candidates. Humphrey was at the top of his form; Nixon had begun to sound uncannily like Thomas Dewey. On the afternoon before the election Gallup found 41% for Nixon, 41% for Humphrey, 14% for Wallace, and 4% undecided. Since September Humphrey had gained 13 points to Nixon’s 1, both at the expense of the fading Wallace—who Robert Kennedy freely assaulted by in a lacerating speech in Michigan, whose refrain: “America is not the home of the politics of fear and rage, but is home to the politics of hope and change.” Tuesday night was a spellbinder. Nixon had asked the electorate for a “mandate to govern.” What he got instead was a surge of Humphrey votes which, in the opinion of many analysts, would’ve won the election if the campaign had lasted another day or two—as it would have, had the Democrats not postponed their convention a week to match Lyndon Johnson’s birthday. The figures flashing on the networks’ electric scoreboards showed the lead changing hands several times. It seemed at one point that the two leaders were, as the Associated Press put it, “trading state for state.” Shortly after midnight, Humphrey led by 55,000 votes. At dawn it appeared that although he might not win the Electoral College, he might win in the popular vote, and there was a distinct possibility that he could thwart a Nixon majority in electoral votes, throwing thee election to the House of Representatives, where the Democrats held the majority. The final results were Nixon 276, Humphrey 217, and Wallace 45. The popular vote was 31,727,633 for Nixon (43.50%) 31,327,989 for Humphrey (42.93%) and 9,901,118 for Wallace (13.57%). There were some 200,000 write-in votes for Robert Kennedy. The distance between the two leaders was half of one percentage point. Moreover, the Democrats retained control of Congress, only losing one seat in the Senate. Nixon would be the first President in 120 years to begin his administration with opposition ruling both houses on the Hill. [1] Wednesday morning, the President-Elect looked down from his windows on the thirty-ninth floor of Manhattan’s Pierre Hotel across the wooded sweep of Central Park and saw America twinkling in the distance. Not since the pit of the Great Depression had the country been so torn. His lip curled back, “Bastards. Ungrateful, cock sucking bastards.” [2] [1] Humphrey carries union-heavy Ohio, but still falls short of the margin needed to win. In Ohio, Oregon and Pennsylvania, the Democratic candidates hang on by their fingernails (OTL: John Gilligan who carried 48.5%, Wayne Morse 49.8%, Joe Clark 45.8%). Their subsequent careers are as follows: John Gilligan stayed in the Senate through 1981, when he served as Robert F. Kennedy’s as USAID Director. His Senate seat was subsequently filled by John Glenn. Gilligan’s daughter, Kathleen, was elected to the House of Representatives from Kansas in 1984, serving as a Senator from 1992, replacing Bill Roy. Wayne Morse continued to represent Oregon in the United States
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