also arriving at the white house in for a conference with the president was minnesota's senator eugene mccarthy. one of the issues that received top priority during these briefings had been the necessity for a tax increase. after much delay, the long-awaited bill was finally cleared by congress on june 21st as past it called for a 10% surcharge on corporate and individual income taxes and a 6 billion dollar reduction in federal expenditures. given america's needs the large spending cut was a difficult trade-off to make but the tax increase was an economic necessity. and on june 28th in the rose garden where he often has lunch and works the president without formal ceremony signed the measure into law. there was a different rose garden event in june that involved another type of increase patrick lindon nugent. the president's grandson had reached his first plateau the magic age of one. here later in the day. there was a party in the white house oval room for president johnson's vice president in charge of happiness. just all right, we take you out here. in june the first lady traveled to portlan

he was facing eugene mccarthy, . dwas facing eugene mccarthy, he was afraid he wasn't goinger to win the nomination and then he had jimmy carter write in who who got a challenge from from ted kennedy. ted kennedyke won 12 contests ik that primary and took it all a the way to the convention, which is the last time that wee had a contested convention. carter and lbj both had approval ratings around biden's where biden was. obviously carter had inflation numbers, gas lines, rationing all that. l soot a lot of similarities ther, but there's no question aboutef it. biden is definitely weak and he throw on top of it his age being the oldest president currently and would be way older than any one to run again. and he's in, a very, very weak spot. i think you see that why democrats are positioning themselveses and looking for hoping that he's not going to run again. but but privately plotting foroe for a plan bs if he does decidee to try and run monica, the paint metric is really quite shocking given what a goofball he is .

running in a single primary and he was the last candidate to do that and a lot of the backers of eugene mccarthy and robert kennedy were pretty upset that he did that and so they started a movement in the democratic party and eventually nationally to have more emphasis on primaries and caucuses and so the democrats essentially rewrote the rules between 1968 and 1972 as a direct result of humphrey's nomination and they gave more power to primaries and caucuses before that. i mean starting between 1912 and 1968 candidates would run in primaries, but it was mostly to prove their medal to prove that they could get votes, but the decisions were still made by party leaders for the for the most part on the convention floor after 1968. that was no longer the case and so 72 with mcgovern. he was the first nominee who one his nomination entirely on the basis of primaries and caucuses and and on and i think we we don't often appreciate how much that has changed american politics. we've we took away political parties as gatekeepers, you know, there's no longer this filter there and it i mean television alre