The 1968 Democratic primaries
Early 1968 was a bad time to be Lyndon B. Johnson.
It didn’t have to be this way. After all, Johnson had been the president who had the great luck of being in office as the United States economy had accelerated from prosperity to an outright economic boom, and he had overseen an enviable record of domestic programs and legislation that had included civil rights, Medicaid, the Great Society and the War on Poverty. Any other figure with such a background would be considered unbeatable.
They certainly would have been a world away from the cowed, weakened figure who hid in the White House, confined by an inability to travel anywhere without being cornered by numerous protesters. Johnson might have done his best to keep up both appearances and his standard gruelling work hours, but it seemed that two years of agonizing decisions and frustration with Vietnam, crystallised into three months of foreign humiliations, would be enough to destroy all the lofty ambitions and tireless work that Johnson had done in his entire term. The Tet Offensive, USS Pueblo, execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém and the massacres at Ha My and My Lai had succeeded in reducing Johnson to an exhausted, vulnerable man in less than ideal health, dogged by public mistrust and anger.
As the Democratic Party fell away from Johnson’s control and split into separate factions, the combined toll of foreign disasters and the still-bleeding wound that was Vietnam wreaked havoc with the previous expectations of what would be the presidential primaries, and Johnson could do little but sit in the White House and dejectedly witness the spectacle of the man who had previously earned the largest ever popular vote margin in a presidential election only win the New Hampshire primary by 49% on 12 March 1968. Internal polling that suggested Johnson was headed for a drubbing in Wisconsin certainly did not make the situation any better, and neither did the 16 March announcement that Senator Robert F. Kennedy entered the race for the nomination as well.
Johnson has since admitted in both his post-presidential autobiography The Vantage Point and subsequent interviews that he came awfully close to abandoning any ambitions of winning a second term in office. “It seemed impossible”, he wrote, pointing to the candidacies of Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy, the split within the Democratic Party, and the fact that in March he possessed a 36% approval rating and 52% disapproval rating. “I thought there was no way I could possibly win.”
An interview with Hubert Humphrey, 1975.
Interviewer: Mr. Humphrey, you fully supported the Johnson administration during your term as Vice President. How do you feel about this decision in retrospect?
Humphrey: Well, I understand the people who were disappointed in my loyalty, but you have to realize that I didn’t really have a choice in the matter. Lyndon and I didn’t exactly have an equal relationship, all things considered. It was either toe the line or get excluded from the inner circle and have my chances of being nominated in ’68 torpedoed.
Interviewer: You’re saying that you weren’t given any chance to have your views heard?
Humphrey: Only the ones that differed from Lyndon’s, and those happened to be on Vietnam. What can I say, Lyndon didn’t give me much to work with as Vice President. Even though we got along well at the time and I agreed with most of his policies, looking back on it... it’s odd to realise how afraid Lyndon was of me having my own opinion on things. I’d at least assume there was a sufficient level of trust between us, but apparently he disagreed!
Interviewer: What do you mean?
Humphrey: It went beyond ostracising me for saying that trying to solve Vietnam with the military would take years – believe me, I was not happy to have been proven right on this matter. Lyndon wasn’t a very open man in general. I was quite frequently shut out or marginalised from decision-making, which was the first thing that strained our relationship... you’re probably familiar with the rest of the story by now. You can see how this isn’t exactly the environment best suited for developing trust between two individuals.
Interviewer: Are there any specific cases of President Johnson’s behaviour towards you that stick to mind?
Humphrey: I still remember when after using the ’68 election as both a carrot and stick for so long to force me into line, I suddenly got told out of the blue that it wouldn’t be in consideration anymore. Though I guess you could say I was one of the first to witness the fondness for U-turns the administration acquired that year. [laughs] Lyndon didn’t even tell me why this was the case, on top of everything! I had to piece together his motivation from rumours I heard over the grapevine, from people who were closer to him than me, even his daughters and Mrs. Johnson. Sure, I wasn’t given the treatment as much as other people, but... still, some way to treat the man you chose to be Vice President...
An excerpt from the forthcoming memoirs of Bill Moyers.
I was at home in Long Island, when on Sunday morning [17 March 1968], the telephone began to ring. I answered it, and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing from the other end of the line.
“Bill, it’s Lyndon.”
It’d been two years since I resigned as White House Press Secretary, and only in October last year had I admitted to an audience that the Vietnam quagmire had left me no choice but to wish for his defeat. Not a single word from Lyndon Johnson for two years, and suddenly he calls out of the blue? I responded in annoyance: “Yeah, what do you want.” I tried to make sure that he could hear the eye-rolling irritation as clearly as possible.
“I need to talk to you, Bill.”
The nerve of that man! I’d known about his less than satisfactory personal qualities from working with him and complaints I’d heard from around the office, especially from Vice President Humphrey, so I was under no illusions about his habits. But still, I couldn’t help but be outraged at the gall of the man, to throw me under the bus over Vietnam and then think he could suddenly start talking again as if nothing had happened.
I began to give him the usual spiel of “Look, Lyndon, I’m busy. A magazine won’t run itself, in case you forgot.”, hoping to get off the phone as quickly as possible. I didn’t even care what he wanted from me – there was no question in my mind that he wanted something from me –, I just felt too angry to want to talk to him anymore. But he interrupted me and said, “Bill, I need to talk to you.”
I’d usually have gone on, but the way he said that last sentence made me pause. It wasn’t the usual, confident treatment he would subject people to. It sounded more... weakened. Quite uncertain. A longer than usual pause ensued as I tried to decipher whether there was actually a twinge of regret in that statement or I was merely imagining it, and trying to puzzle out what he was playing at. I’d never really heard him talk like this before, so I figured that if it was enough to break his façade, it was probably more important than the usual harangues about the commies in the press I’d sometimes overhear or get wind of.
“Okay, Lyndon, I gather this is quite important. I’ll be on my way to the White House.”
Lyndon then thanked me, and I swear I’d heard probably more gratitude from him in that small sentence than the nearly two years I’d worked under him. This only served to stoke my curiosity further, so I went to get my car and drive to DC.
Little did I know what was in store for me...
A New York Times review of the latest volume of Robert Caro’s “The Years of Lyndon Johnson” (Alfred A. Knopf, New York).
Much later after President Johnson’s death, a combination of insider knowledge, rumours and recollections by close advisors and family members managed to create a fairly accurate picture of the process through which Johnson made his famous decision to remain in the Democratic primaries instead of declaring that he would not seek another term. The consistently similar testimonies roughly indicate that Johnson made his decision to stay in the race after having spent hours contemplating a portrait of former President Harry S. Truman in the Oval Office, though it is still unclear whether this happened on the 16th or 17th of March.
His widow, Lady Bird Johnson, was one of the first persons to be informed of her husband’s decision and rationale. “He described it as if it was a kind of epiphany”, she recounts. “I still remember the way he said it: ‘God damn it, it can’t end like this. I won’t let it end like this.’ Lyndon was dead set on not leaving the race like a coward. He was very steadfast about it; if he had to lose, he told me, he would rather go down fighting and lose fairly than just be a quitter.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So this is my first attempt at making an alternate history thread. I hope it won't succumb to amateur blundering or turn out too bad.
I have to thank everybody who expressed an interest in it, Plumber for putting up with me asking for beta-reading on too many versions, and Norsklow and Alien Space Bats from the NationStates forums for providing extra help, information, and ideas.
Early 1968 was a bad time to be Lyndon B. Johnson.
It didn’t have to be this way. After all, Johnson had been the president who had the great luck of being in office as the United States economy had accelerated from prosperity to an outright economic boom, and he had overseen an enviable record of domestic programs and legislation that had included civil rights, Medicaid, the Great Society and the War on Poverty. Any other figure with such a background would be considered unbeatable.
They certainly would have been a world away from the cowed, weakened figure who hid in the White House, confined by an inability to travel anywhere without being cornered by numerous protesters. Johnson might have done his best to keep up both appearances and his standard gruelling work hours, but it seemed that two years of agonizing decisions and frustration with Vietnam, crystallised into three months of foreign humiliations, would be enough to destroy all the lofty ambitions and tireless work that Johnson had done in his entire term. The Tet Offensive, USS Pueblo, execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém and the massacres at Ha My and My Lai had succeeded in reducing Johnson to an exhausted, vulnerable man in less than ideal health, dogged by public mistrust and anger.
As the Democratic Party fell away from Johnson’s control and split into separate factions, the combined toll of foreign disasters and the still-bleeding wound that was Vietnam wreaked havoc with the previous expectations of what would be the presidential primaries, and Johnson could do little but sit in the White House and dejectedly witness the spectacle of the man who had previously earned the largest ever popular vote margin in a presidential election only win the New Hampshire primary by 49% on 12 March 1968. Internal polling that suggested Johnson was headed for a drubbing in Wisconsin certainly did not make the situation any better, and neither did the 16 March announcement that Senator Robert F. Kennedy entered the race for the nomination as well.
Johnson has since admitted in both his post-presidential autobiography The Vantage Point and subsequent interviews that he came awfully close to abandoning any ambitions of winning a second term in office. “It seemed impossible”, he wrote, pointing to the candidacies of Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy, the split within the Democratic Party, and the fact that in March he possessed a 36% approval rating and 52% disapproval rating. “I thought there was no way I could possibly win.”
An interview with Hubert Humphrey, 1975.
Interviewer: Mr. Humphrey, you fully supported the Johnson administration during your term as Vice President. How do you feel about this decision in retrospect?
Humphrey: Well, I understand the people who were disappointed in my loyalty, but you have to realize that I didn’t really have a choice in the matter. Lyndon and I didn’t exactly have an equal relationship, all things considered. It was either toe the line or get excluded from the inner circle and have my chances of being nominated in ’68 torpedoed.
Interviewer: You’re saying that you weren’t given any chance to have your views heard?
Humphrey: Only the ones that differed from Lyndon’s, and those happened to be on Vietnam. What can I say, Lyndon didn’t give me much to work with as Vice President. Even though we got along well at the time and I agreed with most of his policies, looking back on it... it’s odd to realise how afraid Lyndon was of me having my own opinion on things. I’d at least assume there was a sufficient level of trust between us, but apparently he disagreed!
Interviewer: What do you mean?
Humphrey: It went beyond ostracising me for saying that trying to solve Vietnam with the military would take years – believe me, I was not happy to have been proven right on this matter. Lyndon wasn’t a very open man in general. I was quite frequently shut out or marginalised from decision-making, which was the first thing that strained our relationship... you’re probably familiar with the rest of the story by now. You can see how this isn’t exactly the environment best suited for developing trust between two individuals.
Interviewer: Are there any specific cases of President Johnson’s behaviour towards you that stick to mind?
Humphrey: I still remember when after using the ’68 election as both a carrot and stick for so long to force me into line, I suddenly got told out of the blue that it wouldn’t be in consideration anymore. Though I guess you could say I was one of the first to witness the fondness for U-turns the administration acquired that year. [laughs] Lyndon didn’t even tell me why this was the case, on top of everything! I had to piece together his motivation from rumours I heard over the grapevine, from people who were closer to him than me, even his daughters and Mrs. Johnson. Sure, I wasn’t given the treatment as much as other people, but... still, some way to treat the man you chose to be Vice President...
An excerpt from the forthcoming memoirs of Bill Moyers.
I was at home in Long Island, when on Sunday morning [17 March 1968], the telephone began to ring. I answered it, and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing from the other end of the line.
“Bill, it’s Lyndon.”
It’d been two years since I resigned as White House Press Secretary, and only in October last year had I admitted to an audience that the Vietnam quagmire had left me no choice but to wish for his defeat. Not a single word from Lyndon Johnson for two years, and suddenly he calls out of the blue? I responded in annoyance: “Yeah, what do you want.” I tried to make sure that he could hear the eye-rolling irritation as clearly as possible.
“I need to talk to you, Bill.”
The nerve of that man! I’d known about his less than satisfactory personal qualities from working with him and complaints I’d heard from around the office, especially from Vice President Humphrey, so I was under no illusions about his habits. But still, I couldn’t help but be outraged at the gall of the man, to throw me under the bus over Vietnam and then think he could suddenly start talking again as if nothing had happened.
I began to give him the usual spiel of “Look, Lyndon, I’m busy. A magazine won’t run itself, in case you forgot.”, hoping to get off the phone as quickly as possible. I didn’t even care what he wanted from me – there was no question in my mind that he wanted something from me –, I just felt too angry to want to talk to him anymore. But he interrupted me and said, “Bill, I need to talk to you.”
I’d usually have gone on, but the way he said that last sentence made me pause. It wasn’t the usual, confident treatment he would subject people to. It sounded more... weakened. Quite uncertain. A longer than usual pause ensued as I tried to decipher whether there was actually a twinge of regret in that statement or I was merely imagining it, and trying to puzzle out what he was playing at. I’d never really heard him talk like this before, so I figured that if it was enough to break his façade, it was probably more important than the usual harangues about the commies in the press I’d sometimes overhear or get wind of.
“Okay, Lyndon, I gather this is quite important. I’ll be on my way to the White House.”
Lyndon then thanked me, and I swear I’d heard probably more gratitude from him in that small sentence than the nearly two years I’d worked under him. This only served to stoke my curiosity further, so I went to get my car and drive to DC.
Little did I know what was in store for me...
A New York Times review of the latest volume of Robert Caro’s “The Years of Lyndon Johnson” (Alfred A. Knopf, New York).
Much later after President Johnson’s death, a combination of insider knowledge, rumours and recollections by close advisors and family members managed to create a fairly accurate picture of the process through which Johnson made his famous decision to remain in the Democratic primaries instead of declaring that he would not seek another term. The consistently similar testimonies roughly indicate that Johnson made his decision to stay in the race after having spent hours contemplating a portrait of former President Harry S. Truman in the Oval Office, though it is still unclear whether this happened on the 16th or 17th of March.
His widow, Lady Bird Johnson, was one of the first persons to be informed of her husband’s decision and rationale. “He described it as if it was a kind of epiphany”, she recounts. “I still remember the way he said it: ‘God damn it, it can’t end like this. I won’t let it end like this.’ Lyndon was dead set on not leaving the race like a coward. He was very steadfast about it; if he had to lose, he told me, he would rather go down fighting and lose fairly than just be a quitter.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So this is my first attempt at making an alternate history thread. I hope it won't succumb to amateur blundering or turn out too bad.
I have to thank everybody who expressed an interest in it, Plumber for putting up with me asking for beta-reading on too many versions, and Norsklow and Alien Space Bats from the NationStates forums for providing extra help, information, and ideas.