follow on different lines. a split in can see washington's cabinet between jefferson and hamilton. madison was firmly on jefferson's side of that split. no more questions. thank you, everybody. [ applause ] >> you're watching american istory tv, 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span 3. c-span s on twitter at history for information on our schedule, upcoming programs, and to keep up with the latest history news. . on american history tv, political science professor explains how or why nixon's victory in 1968 election came in a pivotal time in

politics. that year was marked by the of robert f. kennedy and martin luther king jr. methodistthe southern university center for history, this event is about 50 minutes. >> the first thing a speaker wants to know when they're speak to smu is who's going be in the audience? the 20-year-olds for whom 1968 election is as remote an event as the 1920 election was a college i was student? or is it go doing be people with a living memory of that election? it's not anyone at all. it allows me to pitch this talk, if you will. hat's to make some general remarks about the election and specific remarks about the

election. but also to give you this a kind of menu and i don't have in my prepared remarks. i'm going to give you a summary to my book. i try to hit high points and ely on you to decide what you want to hear more about. merica coming apart has been the theme of most commentary of 1968, both at the in the last half century of that year. leading books about this

period, the period in which the occurred conveyed theme. a book titled america divided, the civil war of the 1960s. titled, "the unraveling of america." book titled the '60s, years of with hope of rage morphing into rage as the decade unfolded. the theme of my book is not america coming apart. but america coming apart. coming apart, america holding together. i'll return to that theme later in my talk. most, let me acknowledge acknowledge just how great the on this country in that year. think of some of the events that starting in the end of january with the tet

offensive in vietnam which undermined public confidence in president lyndon the war.n's conduct of war thatn vietnam is a president johnson inherited from president kennedy. but continued. escalated and in late 1967 in which of the year the election i'm talking about took place, johnson and other in his figures administration went around the called the hat they success offensive making the case we have finally turned the vietnam, that success was near. new year in vietnam is like thanksgiving in our country. in 1968 varies from year to year. happened to fall on

january 30. because it was a holiday and a among read understanding the south vietnamese that a fire would be in place in de facto basis, the soldiers went back to their home villages with ighborhoods to be their families. the north vietnamese with the the vietcong, a ommunist force took that occasion in an attack they never had before, the major cities of including saigon, including for a few years of the g portions american embassy in saigon. studied the tet offensive militarily has concluded it ended up being a military victory for the united states and the south allies.se the facts could not compare with

psychological effect of the tet offensive that they were out leg, and the last that the war was drawn to a close. 1968, by march, the opular challenges to president johnson's renomination within a first the party, by anti-war senator eugene mccarthy and then senator robert f. kennedy of new york the ended up triggering president's withdrawal from that election. been persuaded to run against johnson to challenge johnson for the democratic 1967.tion in fall of he wasn't getting anywhere until the tet offensive and the new primary which took place in mid march of that year. call themfor me, i'll

bac back. ? mid march in which mccarthy like the tet vietnam in offensive didn't beat him in new to shire but came so close defeating him, it was a psychological victory. senator robert of new york enters the contest as well which johnson's worst nightmare. n incredible dislike between kennedy and johnson. dislike.al and johnson spent the entire presidency thinking senator waiting for an opportunity to drive him from office. was his worst nightmare. he had nightmares about the prospect. this was coming true. by the end of march in 1968, ome of you remember watching this speech, prime tim network television. these are the days when there only three networks, and if

a president gave the speech in rime time, that's all that was on. so the nation was watching on the eveningon of march 30 giving this speech bout vietnam that ended with the statement that he would not eek nor would he accept the nomination of his party, which entirely by try surprise. in april, a few days after withdraw and my city of memphis tennessee occurred civil assination of luther kinger martin in the aftermath of that assassination rioting in over cities.ican humphrey that hubert in new york at the time the riots broke out was told by the secret service we can't take you to your office on the senate side of the u.s. capitol, take you back to your office in the executive

office building adjacent to the hite house because the rioters are so close to the capital and to the ers are so close white house that we can't assure vice presidenthe of the united states. april, in june of 1968, the assassination of senator the night of the greatest victory in the california primary. story is 245 kennedy celebrates victory in that deciding to do something different from what he usually did. usually when kennedy made that kind of appearance, he would exit the hall through the craft. his security people had through aring a path the crowd. he decided that night, he was going to go talk to the assembled press. quickest way to get there was to go out, not through

through , but rather awaded ahen where there young palestinian immigrant sirhan with a .22 pistol in his hand who shot and kennedy that night. of course in august of 1968 when democratic convention gathered in chicago, the worst ioting ever to attend a national party convention in american history, rioting that, carried to the entire the network broadca roadcast extraordinary violence, turbulence, extraordinary sense that if major political figures were the hands of assassins, if a major political party could not hold this convention in peace, surely america was coming seams.t the and, of course, all year long

simmering 8, the anger that attended the third former ndidacy of alabama governor george c. wallace which always seemed to of breaking eshold violence, 1968 was by any reckoning a turbulent year. now, i talked about the democratic side of this. the republicans, meanwhile, were conducting a fairly conventional party's or their nomination in which the three ajor don'teders ended up being governor nelson rockefeller of new york. unlikely character he was. third generation rockefeller. born, his birth was announced on the front page of "the new york times" but who a career in ding public service. and at some point in the 1950s go out and anted to ask people for their votes.

ran for governor of new york and turned out the have a wonderful sort of common touch. seeing a y of rockefeller eating a hot dog on a street corner in new york city was arresting and rockefeller elected governor in 1954 -- 1958, re-elected in 1962, 1966.cted in played a kind of hamlet role in the first few months of 1968. contest et in to the for the republican nomination? or will he stay out? initially, he threw his support behind someone whose but name you may recognize, whose first name may come anew to you. that's governor george romney of michigan. rockefeller sort of anointed forey to be is it candidate the republican nomination who moderateed his sort of

liberal northern wind of the party. and romney, much to his confessed early in the campaign, confessed to the local television interviewer been to vietnam in and received the greatest anybody ing that generals rom the there. instead of regained wisdom, he view of to realize his the war was hopeless. instead, the brainwashing remark taken as a synonym for a ack of intelligence to begin with. the serious criticism was how ong does it take to get over brainwashing. romney out, rockefeller in. meanwhile, over there in -- i your i should indicate right, the right wing of the party, was this new figure on political scene.

he was fairly well along in year, the former screen actor, successful screen actor, by the way. people tend to write off ronald reagan's screen career as if it amateurish. i remember reading there was a "new york times" review of the n back when he was fifth leading box office store in hollywood. one year by bosley crowder, the movie critic for "the new york wrote, he had a nice way of looking at a dame. that was ronald reagan in terms made his living through most of his career. ronald reagan after his film had r came to an end, started working for a company you all heard of, general electric, which had plants and facilities d other in 38 out of the then 48 states. nd reagan was hired to go around from plant-to-plant and address the workers and the expectation, i think, was when hired he would tell sort

of inside hollywood stories. a instead, he adopted in serious way the kind of pro ideology onservative of his employer and started to speeches.ous political and ended up being the republican candidate of governor 1966.ifornia in and enormously successful. in that role. the 1964 presidential election, he conservative wing of the republican party had had its way in choosing the nominee that barry goldwater of arizona. he was defeated overwhelmingly johnson.ent o conservatives were looking for somebody who could carry that message but in a more appealing way. person became ronald reagan, elected governor of 1966 and for conservatives in the republican wing of the party

rather than as we've come to see, virtually the whole party day, reagan became the champion. well who else with there is in 1968 on the republican side? former ongressman, senator, former vice president, former defeated presidential defeated former candidate for governor of california, richard nixon. ow people have experiences and some of us learn from those sof of us don't. nixon talks about this in more detail later on. experiences. from in 1960s, he had run against kennedy and lost. to use nixon happened come think of television as a kind of gimmick that had worn off and inrefore when he participate the nationally televised debates that year, he didn't take the aspect of those debates seriously. he also ran his own campaign in

1960. delegate. he didn't trust. just like no -- what's the saying about lawyers? a lawyer who represents himself fool for a client. a candidate who has himself for has a fool anager for a campaign manager. in 1968, nixon digested the to his ces that led defeats. team, ether a very good good campaign organization. mastered television in that year. there was a book written about he nixon campaign called the selling of the president which was meant to be an expose say, as a tribute to had come toly nixon master the medium of political communication called television. ended up winning his party's nomination that year. in 1968 was, as i said by any

reckoning a turbulent year. is where the america holding together theme comes in. the year culminate in a peaceful candidate tween the most favored by republican voters, nixon, and the candidate favored by democratic voters, incumbent vice president hubert humphrey. voter turnout in that election more than 60%. nominees worked hard during the election to loudest dissident elements of their parties. far enough right to conservatives whose loyalties lie with the nominee, ns 1967 senator governor and the recently selected governor of california, ronald reagan. humphrey moved far enough left

o win back the support of many anti-war democrats. to be sure, the largest issident element in the electorate was further to the and , at least on racial cultural issues. humphrey xon nor wanted to move in that direction votersure the 14% of the who constituted the core of wallace's support. wallace was -- george wallace the time former governor of california. he spent his entire life running for office. earlier political career had been known in alabama one ics as, according to press account, the number one do gooder in the legislature. voice in iberal alabama politics. until he ran for governor in defeated by an opponent who stressed racial

main issue.as the famously in that election, i to to say an ugly word quote him accurately. e said i'm never going to be out-niggered again. candidate of racial segregation and was elected. hen famously stood in the schoolhouse door if you will of university of alabama in a symbolic integration. nd then in 1964 entered democratic primaries against president johnson in the north, e. lee taking the pennsylvania. wallace took the campaign to the 30% or 40%964 and won in three northern primaries. in 1968, he was term limited. so he couldn't run for another

term as governor of alifornia -- governor of alabama. was a major liability. governor of alabama and most places you could raise money highway builders and others that do business with the state. he was not going to be governor when he wanted to run again. his wife elected governor of alabama in 1966 from, of a page course, the state of texas where a ferguson was succeeded by ma ferguson back in the day. so wallace decided to run as an candidate.t most historical rating about the 1968 election focuses on anger dissent on the left, it was this culturally -- in

term, culturally conservative can't date that got votes.ion just as significant for the country's healings as the events election, e peaceful the high voter turnout, the effort by both major party out to the reach dissident elements in their own significant as those events was the aftermath election. nixon, the democratic congress and both major parties work actively after the election the most part successfully to woo the sectors f the electorate that were alien ated from the normal channels of constitutional and government. nixon was ultimately driven from for the crimes and other abuses of power he committed as president. ut during the first years in the white house, he surprised

his diplomatic opening to the leading enemy, union, as he soviet well as the act with yes, sir sense of a wide range of feminist, civil dmomestic d other reforms by reducing draft calls and eliminating the draft, nixon much of the wind out of the campus-based anti-war movement. same time, nixon corded wallace's supporters by honoring the cultural to fears and concern. in other words, if you think of the 1968 who in left out on the left or on the right, nixon and congress spent much of the first and bringing out them back to -- giving them a sense that the processes of could ent and politics

work for them. on capitol hill, democrats policy ixon leftward on and became a vehicle through which opponents in the war in ietnam could advance their cause. the democratic and soon after the republican parties opened up presidential nominating process so that most of those 1968 felt ut out in -- emboldenened to pursue the goals in the system.y it's for these reasons that america holding together, not america coming apart, is my in this book. the resilience of a political system that enduring great recovered from them. the tiding of my book is america. it's a term that originates in

the science of metallurgy. s to the ability of a metal, a piece of metal that's subjected to great stress its shape.to regain is that interesting in you go to and type in resilience, what you'll find is alone, aboutection 4,000 titles that in some way resilience and most of them about business books, or self-help books. but the basic concept which i applyies to the election aftermath to the political system and a nation that was and cted to great stress train, that pulled apart elements of the constitutional system of government politics, and after election

that election, the system much of its shape. and it's an extraordinary thing t over the last 46 speak tonight, it's that long since we've witnessed the assassination of a political leader. years, last 40 plus national party conventions now openly ng of delegates caucuses primaries and have gathered every four years without threat of violence and disruption. to me, the most extraordinary thing which i telling ke a point of my students at rhodes college, you know, the most extraordinary about our political system is the thing that we never think about because we get to take it for granted.

our is no american in lifetimes has ever woken up on 1969 rning of january 20, that has january 20 occurred after that election, on a f us have woken up morning of a scheduled presidential inauguration, even inauguration involved ransferring power from one defeated president to his victorious challenger from a efeated incumbent political party to the other. none of us have woken up on any wondering, nings will this peaceful transition of power actually occur? those who are currently in power call out the tanks, the troops, lock up the opposition. we get to take that for granted. the most s

extraordinary thing about our we dotutional system that get to take it for granted. stop there.ng to the se i want to leave all remaining at we have for your questions and my efforts to respond to them, and ng at the handout noticing particularly sort of smaller arguments i made about the events and the characters of election or questions you i'm going n your own to open the floor and you get to menu or ord ala carte in terms of what you're going to ask about. thanks for listening so carefully. >> we have questions, please be patient. we would like for you to ask a so everyone he mic can hear and c-span which is able to hear be your question as well. let's start right here.

>> was there any worry on behalf thehe republican party that presence of wallace and his 10 million votes that as it turned out would throw the election to the democrat? was more of a concern -- there was that concern. most third party candidates like pero, for example, who i understand is from around here omewhere, ross pero got 19% of the in a national popular vote. n 1997, half again from what wallace got. he got 13% in 1968. but most third party candidates pero meaning their support is distributed throughout the country. o 19% of the popular vote equals zero electoral votes any se he didn't win state states. wallace had a regional space in

the deep south in particular. in the rest of the south, he and in the border states. wallace carried 15 states with 174 electoral votes. and, yes, these are votes that i for the most part republicans thought would come out of their hide. the even greater concern is would carry enough and could have been as few as three close the n how republican and democratic nominees were to deny nixon or majority of electoral votes. not enough to get more than get dy else, you have to more than half of the electoral votes or or else it goes to the state here every delegation in the house of vote.sentatives casts one that hasn't happened since 1834 unlikely prospect

than it was in 1968. that llace was relishing possibility. because he thought that that create a garoning situation which nixon or humphrey or both would come in what would it take for ell your electors to vote for me. while wallace was putting together a dear santa list of what he would ask for, that out not to happen. one of the reasons is that wallace had to choose just to law. state to get on the ballot. he had to have a vice presidential running mate. vice n't want a presidential running mate anymore than he wanted a party latform or a national convention. he was a freelance candidate. to choose a vice presidential running mate. and his inclination was to former governor of kentucky, former baseball commissioner happy chandler. agreed with wallace on verything except racial segregation. chandler as you may know was the

aseball commissioner when jackie robinson began playing. for that. if you do that, you're going to supporters.r core e ended up choosing one of the great generals of world war ii and the inventor of the air command but someone entirely ill suited for politics. when wallace announced the nomination for vice president, e held a press conference and reporters decided to poke him like -- and got him talking about sort of musing hilosophically about nuclear weapons and how they weren't that bad and if you went to the bikini you found out that the crabs were gigger than on and on.rt of

>> almost never works when the subject is controversial unless it's theafter math of the civil

war, for example, when, you know, one -- the political party in charge is able to exact the terms. so 2/3 of the house and 2/3 of the senate and then eventually 3/4 of the states have to agree before an amendment can be added to the constitution. at that point, here's where the opposition emerged. i don't think it's so much in the nixon administration. i don't think they really cared about this issue. but it emerged from small states which just because gets three electoral votes no matter how small they are. and think, oh, we'll lose that edge if our votes are just counted like everybody else's. big states that end up being the center of attention because the prize so great. some said we like the electoral

college too because candidates are courting us because we're big. you win a state, you get all of the electoral votes. now, the arguments over the electoral college are complicated and i think evenly matched. but think of where we are now. in 2012, how many states did romney and obama pay any attention to? 10, 12? texas wasn't one of them. the only reason any candidate came to texas was to raise money. i hear dallas is a good place for that. did they go to new york? no. did they go to california? three biggest states, candidates weren't there because both of them sort of conceded. romney going to carry texas, obama going to carry new york and california. the states that ended up being the object of the entire campaign were a sort of grab bag. large states like florida but

also small states like colorado in other words we've gotten a presidential campaign system now where unless the state is purple, right? neither red nor blue, it may as well not exist in the campaign. that i think is certainly an unhealthy consequence of the way that complex political forces at work in our time get manifested in the electoral college. so i'm not arguing against the electoral college, but i'm saying that's a good argument for at least taking another look at that issue. the notes. i appreciate you could elaborate to you. one is that humphrey would have been nominated for president even if robert kennedy had lived. the second what-if is your

contention that president johnson would have came very close to reconsidering or reneged on his statement that he would not run and would appreciate you elaborating. >> thank you. these are among the things that i sort of elaborate in the book. by the way, most of this book is a kind of narrative of characters and events and honestly, i would have to be awful not to make a book about the 1968 election interesting. because this was a time when political giants strode the earth and the events were astonishing. but two of the what ifs here. what if robert ken dip had lived? i think in hindsight, our view of robert kennedy has become romanticized and we think as

with his brother, if only he had lived, surely he would have been the democratic nominee for president. surely he would have been elected president and only good things would have happened afterwards. i'm not attributing that to you. but that's a sort of a cultural thing. the truth is that in 1968, because the nominating process for the political parties had not been opened up, conventions were controlled by state party leaders, big city bosses, union leaders, and southern governors. at that time, amazingly, all of whom were democrats. they were not going to nominate robert kennedy. the time of kennedy's death, his own campaign sort of state-by-state breakdown of where the delegates were and what he would have to accomplish in order to get a majority, it's essentially a unimaginable

scenario. humphrey, because the union leaders, the state party leaders, the big city bosses, the southern governors, were for him, and because a plurality of democrat inge voters manifested in the gallup poll were for him, almost surely would have been a democratic nominee anyway. now, what about humphrey who was vice president and his boss lyndon johnson, the president, who remember at the end of march had withdrawn from the election. well, john sson withdrew but at minimum hoped somehow he would be asked. remember, that convention was scheduled originally to coincide with johnson's birthday at the end of august. and johnson had this sort of lingering hope that he would be able to have a breakthrough in

the negotiations with north vietnam and somehow bring peace to that war, or, a breakthrough in negotiations with the soviet union and be able to go to that convention on the evening of his birthday and announce peace and have the convention stampede in his favor. now that was an unrealized dream. but i don't think it's one that johnson ever abandoned. and for that reason, until well after the convention, because it took him a while to get over the fact that it didn't happen. until well after the convention, he continued to treat humphrey as a kind of a staff sergeant would treat a private. it wasn't until the end of the campaign until the major appearance at the astrodome in an event that included jon and humphrey and frank sinatra and texas ended up being the one southern state that humphrey carried.

but it took that long for johnson to get over the fact that even though he had said i won't do it, that his party hasn't come to him, you know, on its knees and finally realized that if hump rooe lost, that would be taken by many people as a reflection on his leadership, which, in fact, it was. time for one more. i'll send it here to the middle. >> first of all, i enjoyed your presentation. i'm old enough to have lived through it and remember some of these things. you're pretty accurate. >> thank you. hubert humphrey, didn't he have

a wimp image that worked against him compared to the personality of johnson? and also in the 60 election, in reference to the television thing, it was a close election. but for west virginia and chicago and papa joe's money might have gone a different way. >> i'll stoic the humphrey thing.

and you can almost think of this as the abused child syndrome. lbj as vice president was the unhappiest man of the earth.

was not about to treat his vice president any differently. thank you very much. i've enjoyed this. [ applause ] thank you, indeed, i'll remind everybody. > today at 6:00 p.m. eastern, we explore an exhibit at the library of congress marking the 00th anniversary of the panama canal's opening. curators show how photographs, newspaper reports, and sheet document the canal's instruction between 1904 and 1914. artifacts, erican american history tv's weekly program that takes viewers to museums, and historic sites around the country. the u.s. coverage of house on c-span and the senate on c-span 2, here on c-span 3, by omplement that coverage showing you the most relevant congressional hearings and

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