How one election five decades ago became a preview of our modern political mayhem
Worldwide, 1968 was quite a political year, but especially so here in the United States. With the country deeply divided much like it is today, there was discord everywhere you looked. The war in Vietnam was raging, the Civil Rights struggle was in full flower, civil unrest was the order of the day, and an all-important presidential election was on the horizon.
The book concentrates on four main characters: outgoing President Lyndon Johnson; vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey; former vice president and Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon; and, most interestingly, American Independent Party candidate George Wallace.
During all this, former Alabama Governor George Wallace proves to be a direct precursor to Donald Trump. A scrappy and effective campaigner running a third-party, populist campaign geared heavily toward the blue-collar, rural South, he eschewed his previous blatantly racist rhetoric and instead railed against Johnson's Great Society programs , public education, crime, and civil rights legislation. He would garner almost 10 million votes – 13.5% of all ballots cast.
Nixon was greatly disliked by the press, and Nichter seems to bend over backward to try and rehabilitate his image, especially in reexamining charges of treason leveled at Nixon for allegedly trying to undermine the Paris peace talks just days before the election.
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