wight on the role of the union army in abraham lincoln's 1864 reelection. sunday afternoon at 8:00 p.m. eastern, author and that dunlap explores the evolution of first lady fashion. find our television schedule at www.c-span.org and let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. call us, e-mail us, or send us a .weet join the c-span conversation. like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. on american history tv, political science professor michael nelson explains how and why richard nixon's victory came at a pivotal time in american politics. that year was marked by the assassinations of robert f kennedy and martin luther king jr. nelson describes how nixon won over and alienated electorate. to unite a country in turmoil. hosted by the southern methodist

university center of presidential history, this event is about 50 minutes. >> the first thing the speaker wants to know when he is invited to speak at a different institution like smu, who will be in the audience? will it be 20-year-olds? or will it be people with a memory of that election? the answer was, it'll be a mix of people which were no use at all. that is to make some general remarks about the election and specific remarks and give you this handout which is a kind of the menu, if i do not talk about them in my prepared remarks and you have an interest about pursuing, you will have the

opportunity to do that and the question and answer. i would not try to give you a comprehensive summary of my book which is not only about the 1968 election but the years leading up and following the election. rather, i will try to give you a high point and rely on you to decide what you want to hear. america coming apart, america coming apart has been the theme of most commentary of america in 1968 and the nearly half-century since that year. the titles of the leading the books about this period in which the 1968 election occurs includes america coming apart. for example, a book titled "america divided." a book titled "the unraveling of america."

"the 1960's: days, rage." the theme of my book is different. not america coming apart but america holding together. not coming apart but holding together. i will return to that theme later in my talk. for the moment, let me acknowledge how great the strains on this comp -- on this country were in that year. think about some of the events that occurred in 1968 starting at the end of january with the tet offensive in vietnam was severely undermined public confidence in president lyndon b. johnson's conduct of the war. it was a war that president johnson inherited from president kennedy but continued and escalated.

in late 1967 on the eve of the election i am talking about, they went around the country on a success of defensive making the case was finally turned the corner. that success was near. on january 30, which in vietnam that year was the start of a new year, new years in vietnam as life thanksgiving and our country, the specific year varies from year to year. it happened on january 30 and because it was a holiday and was a widespread understanding among at least the south vietnamese that a cease-fire would be in place a lease on a de facto base, a lot of south vietnamese soldiers went to their home villages and neighborhoods to be with their families.

the north vietnamese with the assistance of the viet cong attacked in a way that had never attacked before including occupying portion of the american embassy inside of saigon. almost everyone who studied the tet offensive has concluded it into being a major military victory for the united states and the south vietnamese allies but the facts on the ground cannot compare with a psychological effect of the tet offensive which was undermining the idea that communists were out of gas and on the last leg and the warmth was drawing to a close.

by march of 1968, the popular challenges to president johnson's a renomination within the democratic party but first the antiwar senator, maccarthy and then senator robert f kennedy of new york which ended up triggering the president's withdrawal from that election. maccarthy had been persuaded to run against johnson, to challenge johnson for the democratic nomination and in the fall of 1967. he was not getting anywhere. until be tet offensive and until the new hampshire primary that took place in amid march of that year and if that is for me i will call them back. in which maccarthy like the offensive but came so close to defeating him it was a psychological victory and a few days later senator robert f kennedy enters the nominating contests as well which was johnson's worst nightmare.

there was an incredible dislike between kennedy and johnson. a visceral dislike. a chemical dislike. johnson spent his entire presidency thinking that senator kennedy was just waiting for an opportunity to drive him from office. this was his worst nightmare. he even had nightmares about this process. now it was coming true. by the end of march 1968, some of you remember watching the speech, primetime, network television. these were the days there were only three networks and at the president gave a speech in prime time, that was all that was on. the nation was watching president johnson on the evening of march 30 giving the speech about vietnam which ended with the statement he would not seek nor would he accept the nomination of his party which

took the country entirely by surprise. in april, just a few days after johnson's withdrawal, in memphis, tennessee, the assassination of civil rights leader martin luther king and the aftermath of that assassination, rioting in over 100 american cities. so much so that the vice president hubert humphrey which was in new york when the riots broke out was told by the secret service, with cannot take you back to your office on the senate side of the u.s. capitol and with cannot take you back to your office and the executive office building adjacent to the white house because the rioters are so close to the capital and the right -- rioters are so close we cannot ensure the safety of the vice president of the united states.

that is april and june of 1968. the assassination of robert kennedy on the night of his greatest victory in the california primary. the story about that is kennedy having appeared on national television to celebrate victory in that primary decided to do something different from what he usually did. usually when kennedy would make that kind of appearance, he would exit the hall and has security people had begun clearing a path through the cloud -- crowd. he decided he would talk to the assembled press and the quickest way to get there was to not go through the crowd but through the kitchen where there awaited a young immigrant named sirhan sirhan with a 22 pistol who shot and killed senator kennedy that night.

when the democratic national convention gathered, the worst rioting at a national convention and american history. it was carried to america over the national broadcasts. extraordinary violence and turmoil. the sense if political figures were dying at the hands of assassins, is a major political party could not hold this convention in peace, surely america was coming apart at the seams. all year long through 1968, the simmering anger that attended the third-party candidacy of former alabama governor, george c. wallace, which always seemed on the threshold of breaking out into actual violence. 1968 was by any reckoning, a

turbulent year. i talked about the democratic side of this. the republicans were conducting a fairly conventional contest for their party's nomination. there were three major contenders. governor nelson rockefeller of new york. an unlikely character he was. third-generation rockefeller, when he was born, his birth was announced on the front page of the "new york times." he ended up in public service. in the 1950's, he decided he wanted to go out and ask people for their votes and ran for governor of new york and turned out to have a wonderful sort of civility. he ate a hotdog on a street corner in new york city and it was arresting if he was elected governor in 1954.

1958 and reelected in 1962 and 1966. and played a kind of hamlet role through the first few months of 1968, will he get in to the contest for republican nomination or will he stay out? initially, he threw his support by somebody's last name you may recognize about the first time maybe a new. george romney. rockefeller anointed romney to be the candidate for the republican nomination who represented his sort of moderate/liberal northern wind of the party. romney, much to his embarrassment, confessed early in the campaign, confessed to a local television interviewer that he had been to vietnam in 1965 and received the greatest brainwashing that anybody had ever received through the

generals there. instead of being taken as sort of a confession of wisdom, he came to realize that the war was hopeless. instead of the brainwashing remark got taken as sort of a synonym for a lack of intelligence to begin with and serious criticism was how long does it take somebody to get over a brainwashing? romney was out and rockefeller was in. meanwhile, the right wing of the party was a new figure in the national political scene even though he was fairly well along in years. this former screen actor, very successful screen actor, people tend to write off ronald reagan's career as if it was amateurish.

i was reading "new york times" review of reagan when he was a box office star in hollywood. the movie critics wrote he has a nice way of looking. that was ronald reagan in terms of how he was through most of his career. ronald reagan after his film career came to an end started working for a company, general electric, which have facilities in 48 states. reagan was hired to go around from plant to plant and address workers and to the expectation was when they were fired, tell inside hollywood stories. instead, he adopted a pro-business, conservative ideology and started giving very serious political speeches. he ended up being a republican candidate for governor of

california in 1966. he was enormously successful in that role. in the 1964 presidential election, the conservative party had had its way in choosing the nominee, senator barry goldwater of arizona. he was defeated overwhelmingly by president johnson. the service were looking for somebody who could carry -- conservatives were looking for somebody who can carry that message of but in a more appealing away. that person became a ronald reagan, elected governor of california in 1966 and for conservatives who were a wing of the party instead of the whole party in our day. reagan became the new champion. who else was there in 1968 on the republican side? former congressman, senator,

vice president, presidential candidate, defeated candidate for the opener of california, richard nixon. people have experiences and some of us learn from those experiences and some do not. nixon, he would talk about in detail later on, and he was somebody who learned from experience. he had run against john f. kennedy and he had lost. in part because nixon in 1960 had come to think of television as a gimmick that have worn off and therefore i'm a when he participated and nationally televised debates in that year, he did not take the television aspect of the debate seriously. he also ran his own campaign. he did not delegate or trust. what is the saying about lawyers? a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.

by 1968, nixon had digested the experience that had led to his defeat. put together a very good team, good campaign organization. mastered television in that year. there was a book written called "the selling of the presidency" which was meant to be an expose but reads as a tribute to how sterling -- nixon had came to television. he ended up winning the parties nomination that year. 1968 was by any reckoning a turbulent year. here is a where the america holding together theme comes in. the year culminated in a peaceful -- and the candidate most favored by democratic voters huber humphrey.

voter turnout and that election was more than 60%. both major party nominees work hard during the election to placate the loudest elements of their parties. nixon moved far enough right to keep on board conservatives whose loyalties lay with the republicans' 1964 nomination. humphrey eventually mold far enough left -- eventually moved far enough left to win antiwar democrats. to be sure among the largest

element of the electorate was even further to the right on racial and cultural issues and neither nixon nor humphrey was willing to move in that direction to capture the 14% of the voters who constituted the core of wallace's support. wallace was -- george wallace was a former governor of california. he has been essentially his whole life running for office. his early political career had been known in alabama politics as according to one press account "the number one do-gooder and the legislature." until he ran for governor in 1958 and was defeated by an opponent holster is racial segregation as the main issue and famously after that election and i have to say an ugly word to quote wallace accurately, he said "i will never be out-niggered again."

he was the candidate of racial segregation and elected. he stood in the schoolhouse door if you will of the university of alabama in symbolic resistance to integration of the university. in 1964, entered democratic primary against president johnson in the north who thought like robert e lee taking the offensive and to pennsylvania. wallace took his campaign and to the north in 1964 and won 30% or 40%. in 1968, he was term limited so he cannot run for governor of alabama. politically, it was a major liability. if you are the governor of alabama or most states, you can raise money easily from all the contractors and insurance companies and highway builders

and others who do business with the state. he was not the governor by 1968 when he wanted to run again. he got his wife elected governor of alabama in 1966. from the state of texas where pa ferguson was exceeded by ma ferguson. wallace decided to run in 1968 as an independent candidate. most historical records talk about anger and dissent on the left, it was wallace, and the kindest terms, who got 10 million votes. just as significant for the country's healing as events of 1968, the peaceful election. the high voter turnout.

both party nominees to reach out to the dissident elements of their parties. the aftermath of the election. president nixon, the democratic congress, and both major parties work actively after the election and for the most part successfully to will those sectors of the electorate that were still alienated from the normal channels of constitutional politics and government. nixon ultimately was driven from office partly through his second term for the crimes and other abuses of power he committed as president. during his first years in the white house, he surprised the left with his diplomatic openings to the country's leading enemies, china and the soviet union and the acquiescence to a wide range of environmental, feminist, civil rights, and other domestic reforms.

by reducing draft calls and eliminating the draft, nixon took much of the wind out of the campus-based antiwar movement. at the same time, he courted wallace's support by honoring their cultural fears and concerns. if you think of the people in the 90's and city election who felt left out by the choice between nixon and humphrey weather on the left or right, nixon and the democratic congress spent much of the first term reaching out and bringing them back and giving them a sense that the process of government and politics could work for them. on capitol hill and congressional democrats push

nixon leftward it on policies and became a vehicle of which opponents of the war in vietnam could advance their cause. the democratic and republican parties opened up the presidential process so most those who feel shut out in 1968. america holding together, not america coming apart is my theme in this book. the resilience of a political system that after enduring great strengths largely recovered from them. resilience is an interesting term. the title of my book is "resilience: america." resilience originates in -- it refers to the ability of a metal, a piece of metal that has been subjected to great stress and strain to regain its shape.

isn't that interesting? if you go to amazon.com and type in "resilience," what you will find in the book section alone, about 4000 titles in some way about resilience and most of them are business books or self-help books. but the basic concept which i think applies to this election and to the aftermath of a political system and a nation that was subjected to great stress and strain that pulled apart elements of his constitutional system of politics. during that election and after, the system regained much of its shape and it is an extraordinary thing to me that over the last 46 years as we speak tonight, it

has been that long since we have witnessed the assassination of a national political leader. in these last 40 plus years, national party conventions now consisting of delegates openly chosen in primaries and caucuses have gathered every four years without the threat of violence and disruption. the most extraordinary thing which i always make a point of telling my students at rhodes college, the extraordinary thing about our political system is the thing we never think about because we get to take it for granted. that is no american in our lifetime has ever woken up on the morning of january 20, 1969 or any january 20 have woken up on the morning of a scheduled

presidential inauguration even when the inauguration involved transfer of power from one defeated president to his victorious challenger. the defeated incumbent in party, none of us have woken up on any of those mornings wondering, will this peaceful transition of power actually occur? or will those currently in power call out the tanks? the troops? locked up the opposition? we get to take that for granted. to me, that is the most extraordinary thing about our constitutional system that we do get to take it for granted. i will stop there and because i really want to leave all of the time that we have remaining, your questions and my efforts to respond to them in some thoughtful way.

if you're looking down at the handout and noticing the particulars or its moment arguments i have made about events and to the characters of this election or questions you just have on your own, i will open the floor and you could order from this menu or a la cart of what you choose to ask about. thank you so much for listening so carefully. [applause] >> we like you to ask questions on your mic so everybody can hear and c-span who is recording can hear. >> was there any worry on the republican party that wallace and his 10 million votes as it turned out would go to the democrats?

>> there was that concern. wallace, most third-party candidates, like ross perot, who was around here -- who is from around here somewhere won a percentage of votes. most third-party candidates are like perot, their support is distributed throughout the party. 19% of the popular vote equals zero electoral votes because he did not win any states. wallace had a regional base in the deep south in particular in the rest of the south he hoped and the border states.

wallace at one time had a very good chance of carrying 15 states with 174 electoral votes. and yes, these were votes for the most part, republicans thought would come out of theirs. even greater concern was that wallace could carry electoral votes and it could be as few as three depending on how close of the republican and democratic nominees were. to deny nixon or humphrey a majority. you have to get more than half of the electoral votes or else the election goes to the house where every state delegation and in the house of representatives cast one vote. that does not happened since 1824. it has never been in a less -- unlikely prospect the 1968. wallace was relishing that possibility because he thought that would create a barter situation in which nixon or humphrey or both would come to him and say, what will it take to tell your people to vote for

me? wallace was putting together what he would ask for. it turned out not to happen. one of the reasons is wallace had to choose a new state law to get on the ballot. he had to have a vice presidential candidate. he did not want one. he was a freelance candidates. he had to choose a vice presidential running mate. his inclination was to choose former governor of kentucky, former baseball commissioner happy chandler, who agreed with wallace on everything except racial segregation. chandler, as you may know, was a baseball commissioner when jackie robinson began playing. he was all for that.

he ended up choosing general curtis lemay was that one of the great generals of world war ii. and the inventor of the strategic air command was somebody who was ill suited. when wallace announced lemay's nomination he held a press conference and decided to hook him a gotten amusing about nuclear weapons and how they were not that bad and if you go to an island and find out the crabs were bigger than ever and it went on and on. what that did was for many voters who would've liked to have voted for wallace and was planning to vote for wallace, it made them think, there's actually a consequence if we vote for this person.

his part of the ticket was clearly unsuited for civilian leadership of the united states. that was part of what you see wallace's support going down and down and down. he still ends up carrying five states, all of the deep south states of south carolina, arkansas, forces electoral votes. if he had been closer between nixon and humphrey, it would've thrown it to the house. because after the 1968 election and so many antiwar of the democrats delegate that had been denied an opportunity to vote for somebody in november who shared their opposition to the war, the democratic party and 1968 with a large antiwar element and the response of the party was to open up the process.

so that every delegate would be chosen as they are today in a primary or caucus in which any democratic voter could participate. what that told wallace was when he decided to run against the president in 1962 was the democratic party has opened up the process so instead of running as an independent month i will run for the democratic nomination. every vote will transition to that convention. the democrats open up the rules that bring back this fringe figure back into mainstream. wallace would not have gotten the nomination. but, what the parties did and they both ended up open another process and gave people a sense

if you do not like the way the system is opening you can change it. regaining the vitality of the system after the traumatic events of 1968. a very good question. >> i will have a senior moment. >> go ahead. >> i will let you comment. i thought it was 1968 in terms of the significance of that, the compact on 5th avenue. >> in 1960 on the eve of the republican convention and this was the convention that nominated and then vice president nixon for president

for the first time, rockefeller, governor of new york, was threatening he might get into the race at the end of the nomination and the price he exacted on nixon for not getting in. he would've lost but it could have created, he could've disrupted the party. the price rockefeller exacted for nixon was a series of concessions in the party platform. called by critics the compact of a 5th avenue because rockefeller summoned nixon from chicago to his 5th avenue mansion or whatever to hear these terms. nixon capitulated. let me tell you something about the republican party. nixon still have to worry about his major political problem within the party coming from the left. the last time a republican nominee for president has had to

worry about satisfying the left, liberal element of his party. certainly not by 1968 and not in the 21st century. >> i would like to follow-up on a question about george wallace and throwing the election into the house. there was a major effort in congress to pass a national popular vote amendment in the nixon administration and my understanding was nixon and john mitchell said pull the plug on it because the wall is voters, why do you think it happened? and why do you think we have not seen an effort to do anything about it cents? >> to choose the president with a popular vote?

there was a serious effort in 1968 to abolish the electoral college and replace it with a national vote by the people. if this happened because the country has just had a spare. what if wallace had gotten a few more votes? what if nixon and humphrey had been more equal? the problem is the only way to do that was through amending the constitution which is an incredibly arduous process in our country and almost never works when the subject is controversial. unless it is the civil war for example when the political party in charge was able to exact terms.

two thirds of the house and two thirds of the senate and eventually three fourths of the states have to agree before an amendment can be added to the constitution. this is where the opposition emerges. i do not think the administration really cared about the issue. small states just because the three electoral votes no matter how small they are and think, we will lose that edge with our votes are counted like everybody else's. big states that end up being the center of attention because the prize is so great. big states saying we will like the electoral college because we know candidates will, according to us because we are so big. you win the state and you get all of the votes. the arguments of the electoral college are complicated and i think evenly matched.

but think about where we are now, in 2012, how many states did romney and obama pay any attention to? 10? 12? texas was not one of them. they only came to texas to raise money. i heard dallas was a good place. did they go to new york? did they go to california? the three biggest states. both of them conceded that romney would carry texas and obama was carried new york and california. the state the object of the entire campaign was a grab bag. states like florida and also small states like colorado. in other words, we have a presidential system now where unless a state is purple, neither red nor blue, it may as well not exist.

that i think is certainly unhealthy consequence of the way complex political forces work on our time. get manifested in the electoral college. i am not arguing against it but that is a good argument for taking another look at that issue. >> a couple of what if you presented and i would appreciate if you could elaborate. one was that humphrey would've been nominated for even if robert kennedy had lived. the second is your contention that president johnson would have came very close to reconsidering or reneging on his statement that he would not run. could you elaborate?

>> these are among the things i elaborate and the book. most of the book is kind of a narrative of characters and events. honestly, i would have to be awful not to make a book about the 1968 election interesting because it was a time when political giants strode the earth and to be events were astonishing. but 2 of the what else. what if robert kennedy had lived? in hindsight, our view of kennedy has a book, romanticized as with his brother. if only he had lived surely he would've been a democratic nominee for president. surely he would've been nominated for president and only good things would've happened.

i think that is a cultural thing. truth is, a cause the nominee process for the political parties had not been opened up, conventions were controlled by state party leaders, big-city bosses, union leaders, and a southern governors. at that time, all of whom were democrats. they were not going to nominate robert kennedy. at the time of kennedy's death, his own campaign state-by-state breakdown of what he would have to accomplish in order to get a majority, it is essentially an unimaginable scenario. humphrey because the union leaders, the state party leaders, big-city bosses were for him and because a plurality of democratic voters manifested

in the gallup poll were for him almost surely would've been the democratic nominee anyway. what about humphrey who was vice president and his boss, lyndon johnson? he had withdrawn from the election. well, johnson withdrew but he hoped somehow he would be asked and remember that convention was scheduled originally to coincide with the johnson's birthday at the end of august. johnson had this lingering hope that he would be able to have a breakthrough in negotiations with north vietnam and somehow bring peace to that war or a breakthrough in negotiations with the soviet union. and go to that convention on the evening of his birthday and announced peace and have the

convention stampeded in his favor. that was an unrealized dream but now one johnson ever abandoned. for that reason until well after the convention, it took him a while to get over the fact it did not happen. he continued to treat humphrey as a kind of a staff sergeant with treat a private. it was not until the end of the 1968 campaign. the houston astrodome at an event that included johnson and frank sinatra and humphrey and texas was one of southern state that humphrey carried. it took that long for johnson to get over the fact that even though he said i will not do it, his party had not come to him on its knees and finally realized that humphrey lost that will be taken by the people as a reflection of his leadership

which in fact it was. >> time for one more. >> first of all, i enjoyed your presentation. i am old enough to remember some of these things. they are pretty accurate. huber humphrey, did he not sort of have a wimp image that worked against him particularly compared to the personality of johnson? and also in the 1960 election, in addition to the television, it was a very close election. west virginia and chicago might've gone another way.

>> i will speak to the humphrey thing. number one, if you are vice president you are in a political position and that is wonderful and terrible at the same time. wonderful because if you are vice president, you are the number two leader of equality nationally. you get to go and speak to europe party and campaign for your party all over the country and accumulate the ious that in most cases make you the odds on favorite for your party's nomination. never mind joe biden. nixon, humphrey, elder george bush, al gore. at the same time, by being a loyal number two in an administration, you have to subsume your independent identity into the president's identity.

when you come before the voters and the general election and they are looking for a strong leader which is something voters are always looking for, the impression they formed of you is not a strong leader but a kind of lapdog or assistant to somebody else. humphrey faced that inherent disadvantage of being vice president. on top of that, keywords for particularly cruel president who was then a vice president himself. you could think about this of the abused child syndrome. lbj was the unhappiest man on the face of the earth as vice president. he was not about to treat his vice president any differently. thank you very much. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> this weekend on the c-span networks, tonight, at 8:00 p.m. eastern, and national town hall on the critical and historic impact of voting. sunday eastern -- sunday evening at 8:00, sally quinn. and tonight, pulitzer prize-winning reporter matt on the distractions of technology and its impact on society. sunday, the ninth annual brooklyn book festival. tonight at 10:00, on american , authortv on c-span3 jonathan white on the role of the union army in abraham lincoln's 1864 reelection. author annetten, dunlap explores the evolution of first lady fashion. find our television schedule a