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From CBS News Election Headquarters in Washington, D.C., this is the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. Tonight, a special report, as we look back on the presidential election campaign that was.

Good evening.

In Washington today, the 538 members of the Electoral College assembled for the first ballot in the presidential election. Elected four weeks ago by the people of their respective states, it is these men who will have the final say in who becomes our nation’s chief executive.

In accordance with tradition, it was the incumbent Vice President who chaired the proceedings. Mr. Rhodes addressed the assembled electors on the task ahead of them.

“It is vitally important as we go into this election that the sanctity of the democratic process is respected. The American nation was founded on the principle of sound, democratic government, and the idea that the nation’s most respected men can come together as one to provide for strong leadership. Remember as you vote today that your vote shapes the next four years of our history – for better or for worse – and that as electors, you have a solemn democratic obligation to take these matters into consideration. The people placed you here, now it’s your responsibility to place a man in the White House.”

Following this, there were declarations of purpose by the leaders of the major electoral delegations. Only Sargent Shriver of the Liberal Union openly voiced his party’s intent to vote against the President.

“It has been said in the course of the campaign that we can’t afford both guns – guns for Vietnam – and butter – domestic economic prosperity. We in the Liberal Union are of the opinion that that’s wrong, that we can’t win the war in Vietnam, or any other country, and lose the war in Harlem and Watts. We believe this administration is fighting the wrong war, in the wrong place, with the wrong weapons, against the wrong enemy.”

After the declarations, voting began. It was a slow process, with each elector called to the podium and orally casting their vote for their preferred candidate. After all 538 votes had been cast, the tally stood as follows:

[Title card – Vote numbers]​

“Nixon – 258
Lindsay – 96
Wallace – 68
Daley – 59
Others – 57”​

With the President having failed to secure an overall majority, the election will continue to a second round, which will be held this Wednesday. In the meantime, the President’s staff is expected to be sounding out concessions with the Southern Democrat and Labor leaderships.

With the election likely to be over, we would like to present a special feature, in which we look back on the campaign, from the conventions to the election proper last month.

It was a cold Monday in Washington, January 17th, when President Nixon’s re-election campaign was officially launched. At the event, organized by the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, the President’s speech was short but to the point – we must, he said, ensure stable government for the future of our children. A significantly more exhaustive outline of the presidential platform was given by Mr. John Newton Mitchell, the Committee’s chairman, while Governor Spiro Agnew of Maryland took a more confrontational approach.

“For this administration, there is only one America. It is an America whose citizens hold a common belief in the principles of equal treatment and fair play for all human beings. And those principles are ill-served by those who would divide this nation into parties and blocs, each one fighting only for its own self-centered and limited ends. No, that is not the way. We must work instead for justice for all, for good education for all, for a decent standard of living for all. We must work, and we must work hard for the continued progress of One America.”

Meanwhile, the opposition may have had high hopes going into the election season, but its disunity continued as it has for the last several election cycles. The first opposition group to launch its campaign was the Liberal Union, which nominated John Lindsay for President on a platform of “Democratic Resistance”. The California Progressive Party voted to support Lindsay on a fusion ticket soon after, lending the ex-New York mayor significant momentum as the principal candidate of the opposition.

The mass movements followed in the spring. The Labor Representation Committee held its National Congress in March at the Chicago Stadium, on the theme of “Liberty and Justice for All”. The congress was dominated by embittered conflict between the “Meany” and “Reuther” factions. Mr. Reuther spoke on the need for a united front against the incumbent administration.

“Today, the promise of democratic government assured us by the Founding Fathers and succeeding generations of political thinkers is imperiled as it never previously has been in the history of our country. This monopoly on political power exercised by Mr. Nixon and his party has left the working men and women of America with no ability to have their voice heard in Washington, and I believe the present state of our economy and our foreign policy is directly the result of this disconnect. If the Labor Representation Committee wants to be a truly representative body, it must oppose these developments and stand for a new alternative for all Americans.”

After lengthy deliberations, Meany’s proposal against nominating a candidate came to win out by a narrow floor vote. Consequently, the LRC went into the election with unpledged slates of electors, as it had in the three previous elections, and whether this cost or won votes we will likely never know.

The National Grange held its convention the next month in Kansas City. It voted by a sizeable margin to endorse President Nixon for another term in office, and adopted a platform for the Congressional elections that called for supporting the side whose agricultural policies were “best geared to provide prosperity for the American farmer”.

A number of small parties followed, with the Utah People’s Party, the Christian Action Party, the Good Government Coalition, and the Concerned Citizens’ Group all backing Nixon, the Democratic Alternative (the front organization of the Communist Party) and the New England Progressives backing Lindsay, and the Black Panthers, the Youth International Party, Texas Independence and the Constitution Party each nominated their own candidates.

Finally, the Southern Democratic Convention was held in Montgomery, Alabama on July 10th-12th. George Wallace, Governor of Alabama and chairman of the Convention for this year, spoke of the need for “a Union of equal but distinct cultures, where the values and traditions of every part of the nation is recognized in equal measure”. He affirmed his party’s support for continued segregation of public facilities, and the continued development of an industrial “New South”. The Convention adjourned having chosen to nominate unpledged slates, in accordance with party tradition.

The campaign began to shift into high gear in late August, with the release of the first Nixon campaign broadcast.

[Picture – Map of Vietnam]

[Picture – The face of a Vietnamese peasant]

[Picture – A hammer and sickle]

[Picture – A mushroom cloud]

“This November, are you sure of your children’s future?”

[Title card – “THIS BROADCAST WAS PAID FOR BY THE COMMITTEE TO RE-ELECT THE PRESIDENT”]​

The broadcast stoked an uproar in opposition circles, with Liberal Union spokesman George McGovern accusing the President of scaremongering and John Lindsay stating that “ironically, this proves more conclusively than anything we’ve seen before that the best thing for your children’s future is to have Richard Nixon removed from the White House”. Lindsay’s tone, however, was somewhat undercut by his own broadcast released the following week.

[Picture – The White House]

“When the decisions of one man can shape your family’s future for generations to come, wouldn’t it be wise to give the people a choice regarding what sort of man we want making those decisions? Richard Nixon has held the Presidency for twelve years, and in that time, we’ve seen…”

[Picture – A group of blue-collar workers with sullen expressions, overlaid with a downward line graph]

“…a decrease in wage growth…”

[Picture – A port with containers being loaded onto a ship, overlaid with a downward line graph]

“…a decrease in the balance of trade…”

[Picture – A rough-looking alley, overlaid with an upward line graph]

“…an increase in violent crime…”

[Picture – A napalm cloud with a UH-1 flying in front of it]

“…and the most disastrous foreign military expedition in the history of the United States. Is this the kind of leadership America needs?”

[Pictures – Crowds of people interspersed with John Lindsay at a podium]

“There is another kind of leadership. A kind that grows the economy for all of us, not just the rich and the military-industrial complex. A kind that leads by example, not by force. A kind that listens to the people, and makes decisions that benefit all of us. Vote for a new kind of leadership this November. Vote for John Lindsay.”

[Title card – “A POLITICAL BROADCAST BY LIBERALS FOR LINDSAY”]​

These first commercials would set the tone for the entire campaign, as the Presidential camp accused the opposition of threatening American stability, and the opposition accused the President of threatening American democracy. As has become emblematic of his political style, the President himself made very few public appearances, leaving the job of campaigning to a number of surrogates including John Mitchell, Spiro Agnew, Charles Colson, Jim Rhodes, and John Connally. As part of this, the one-on-one debates offered by CBS and the other major broadcast networks were declined by the White House.

John Lindsay, in contrast, campaigned energetically, visiting forty-three states, and took every opportunity to attack the President on both his domestic and foreign policy records. He spent most of his time speaking at rallies and to organizations of various kinds, and the tone remained much the same as it had begun: Nixon had failed, it was time for change. His sometimes confrontational tone – at one Massachusetts rally, he referred to the President by means of a Shakespearean analogy – made him easy for the Presidential camp to link to other forces on the left, and pro-administration surrogates frequently made reference to the “Gore-Meany-Lindsay axis”. The Presidential camp made an effort to recruit surrogates in traditionally left-wing areas such as the labor movement, where a notable convertee was Frank Fitzsimmons, President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, who called Lindsay an “upper-middle-class Dutch boy who never did an honest day’s work in his life and never understood the concerns of ordinary working men”.

This would be the source of the attack that would hurt Lindsay’s campaign most. In early October, an election broadcast was released credited to Nixon’s supporters in the labor movement, attacking Lindsay’s record as Mayor of New York.

[Picture – The Manhattan skyline]

“New York, New York, it’s a hell of a town…”

[Picture – A street scene from the South Bronx, with a destroyed car and a number of black men loitering around]

“…the Bronx is up, and the Battery’s down…”

[Picture – A rather shady subway car interior, the walls coated in graffiti and, again, mostly black men riding]

“…the people ride in a hole in the ground…”

[Picture – Another subway car creaks down a Brooklyn viaduct with the same Manhattan skyline in the background]

“…New York, New York, it’s a hell of a town!”

[Pictures – More general deprivation]

“When deciding whom to elect to the Presidency, it’s common sense to look at your candidate’s record in politics. And if you want to take a look at John Lindsay’s record in politics, you could do worse than look at New York City.”

[Picture – The White House]

“Richard Nixon has a tried and tested record in the White House. John Lindsay has a tried and tested record in New York City.”

[Title card – “THIS BROADCAST WAS PAID FOR BY LABOR FOR NIXON”]​

It was relatively easy for Lindsay to distance himself from claims of him being a Communist – he could simply point to his efforts against communism in New York. But this attack on his record as Mayor would haunt him for the remainder of the campaign. Nor was he helped when Gallup released approval figures that showed only 12 percent of New Yorkers had a favorable view of Lindsay as mayor. The President’s camp had found the jugular vein of the Lindsay campaign, and would continue to strike it until Election Day.

Come November 7, the result was clear. With 45 percent of the vote by itself, the Nixon coalition was all but guaranteed a majority in the Electoral College. The President would need only one out of the SDC and Labor to secure a comfortable return to the White House, and with Lindsay and Labor in continuing disagreement, it seems likely he will get both. For Lindsay, who secured only 17% of the vote for electors pledged to him, the path to power would be considerably steeper, and after today’s first-ballot electoral vote, it appears nigh-impossible for him to win through. With all certainty, we will see four more years of Nixon.

And that’s the way it is. I’m Walter Cronkite, reporting from CBS News Election Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Goodnight.
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