Introduction
RICHARD NIXON DEAD
CAR ACCIDENT KILLS FORMER VICE PRESIDENT
--The New York Times headline, March 29th, 1967
CAR ACCIDENT KILLS FORMER VICE PRESIDENT
--The New York Times headline, March 29th, 1967
The 1968 presidential election and the following several months, known in our modern day as the Winter of Loathing, has gained something of an air of an inevitability in our typical historical texts these days. If you were to read a typical book by my colleagues on the topic--no disrespect to them, of course--you would think that the original system was so bad that something had to give, that it was stupid and could only lead to disaster.
But such an approach to history is never good. Such a reductionist attitude towards one of the most fascinating moments in American history dulls us to just what a perfect storm it was, how every little thing fell into place to bring about the Winter and the collapse of the Electoral College system. If 1968 had been even slightly more normal, slightly more definitive, it would have simply been a close election.
The 26th Amendment and the end of the Electoral College was a positive change that ended an undemocratic system, but it came only after a truly disastrous election. Sometimes, for change to happen, a blood sacrifice is needed.
On that note, I ask you to open your textbooks to page 84, where you will find the 1968 electoral map. I'll also have it up here on the chalkboard, but I want you to bookmark that page so you can refer back to it later. We will use this map as a baseline from which to figure out what happened, and to move our lesson forward.
So, there's obviously a lot to talk about here. Let's get started.
--Professor Robert Carlson speaks to his students at the Ohio State University in 2016
But such an approach to history is never good. Such a reductionist attitude towards one of the most fascinating moments in American history dulls us to just what a perfect storm it was, how every little thing fell into place to bring about the Winter and the collapse of the Electoral College system. If 1968 had been even slightly more normal, slightly more definitive, it would have simply been a close election.
The 26th Amendment and the end of the Electoral College was a positive change that ended an undemocratic system, but it came only after a truly disastrous election. Sometimes, for change to happen, a blood sacrifice is needed.
On that note, I ask you to open your textbooks to page 84, where you will find the 1968 electoral map. I'll also have it up here on the chalkboard, but I want you to bookmark that page so you can refer back to it later. We will use this map as a baseline from which to figure out what happened, and to move our lesson forward.
So, there's obviously a lot to talk about here. Let's get started.
--Professor Robert Carlson speaks to his students at the Ohio State University in 2016
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I've had an interest in electoral politics recently, as well as the 1968 election, which could be argued to have created the political paradigm we live in today. With Old Soldiers Never Die having stalled indefinitely, I felt I should try a timeline with a more limited scope and based in my area of expertise. I went for Nixon dying in a car crash as my PoD so as to leave the Republicans without an obvious candidate. Simply killing inconvenient historical figures might be a tad cliche, but it's not a big focus of the timeline in any case, so hopefully it works.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy this timeline!
(Crossposted from SV)
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