Ball of Confusion

If you lived through 1968,  you can’t forget it – even if you want to.

It was the worst of times, a year from hell, marked by savage warfare in Vietnam, political assassinations, urban riots and militancy of all sorts. People talked seriously about whether America would hold together.

“Ball of Confusion,” a popular song written and produced by Norman Whitfield for Motown Records (and made famous by The Temptations), captured the exhausting, puzzling tenor of the era:

Ball of confusion. That’s what the world is today …

The cities ablaze in the summertime … 

Evolution, revolution, gun control, sound of soul.

Shooting rockets to the moon, kids growing up too soon …

Where the world’s headed, nobody knows …

Fear in the air, tension everywhere …

Eve of destruction … People all over the world

are shouting, “End the war.”

THE WAR WAS ANYTHING BUT ALL BUT WON

All presidential election years are chaotic by nature, but from the start, 1968’s conditions were ominous. President Lyndon B. Johnson, elected by the largest popular-vote landslide in modern history in 1964, was deeply unpopular as he tried to prevail in Vietnam – in a war he had escalated on a massive scale.

Nonetheless, as the year dawned, no one believed Johnson would voluntarily give up the office he had long craved and the power he enjoyed exercising. Yet events took hold and convinced even LBJ that, at best, he could win another term only narrowly and only after further dividing the country.

For years Johnson and his lieutenants had been proclaiming “light at the end of the tunnel” in Vietnam. After four long years of war, the president had committed an astounding 536,000 troops to fight the war. Extensive bombing of North Vietnam, the country was told, had weakened the enemy and would drive the Communists to the peace table.

And then came Jan. 30, 1968, when North Vietnamese troops and their allied Viet Cong launched a massive assault in more than 100 locations throughout South Vietnam. Even though, militarily, the attacks were repulsed by U.S. and South Vietnamese troops and the Communists suffered heavy losses, the shock of this widespread well-coordinated effort belied the claims that the war was all but won.

An Associated Press reporter took an iconic photograph during the offensive on Feb. 1. General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnam’s chief of national police, executed a handcuffed prisoner who was a suspected Viet Cong. It was wartime, of course, but the visual brutality caught on film stirred anti-war sentiments in the United States. (After the fall of Saigon, Loan and his family emigrated to Burke, Va., where he ran a pizzeria until 1991, when his identity became widely known and business declined as a result. He died in 1998.)

CBS anchor Walter Cronkite went to Vietnam and delivered a devastating on-air assessment: “To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.” LBJ and his advisers understood the implications: They had lost middle-class America – and what- ever credibility remained in their pronouncements of impending victory.

‘CLEAN GENE’ AND RFK FORCE OUT LBJ

Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-Minn.) had entered the race for president with a vigorous anti-war message. On primary night, March 12, Johnson’s forces were shocked by the president’s relatively narrow 49.6-percent-to-41.9-percent victory over McCarthy.

Just four days later, an even more formidable foe, LBJ’s longtime antagonist U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.), launched his White House bid. The McCarthy campaign was enraged by “ruthless Bobby” and his attempt to interrupt McCarthy’s momentum. Yet unlike McCarthy, RFK was a front-running contender who might have been able to beat Johnson (though that was far from certain at a boss-controlled convention) and win the general election against his brother John F. Kennedy’s old foe, Richard Nixon.

Robert Kennedy’s campaign had barely begun when President Johnson threw in the towel. On March 31, at the end of a televised national address on Vietnam, LBJ stunned the nation and the world as he intoned, “I shall not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”

Johnson insisted he had made the sacrifice in order to pursue peace full time, and privately he reminded supporters that the males in his family died young. (LBJ was correct, and he would die at the age of 64 – just four years and two days after he departed the White House.) Still, there was no denying that if the Vietnam War had been going well, Johnson would very probably have sought re-election.

Kennedy and McCarthy began contesting the primaries, and RFK won the lion’s share. In 1968, though, the system was far different than today. There were only 15 primaries, and some were already claimed by so-called “favorite sons” or slates of unpledged delegates that kept their states above the fray until the convention.

While Kennedy and McCarthy shadow-boxed their way across the country, LBJ’s logical successor, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, went to work behind the scenes to claim the prize – and did not enter a single primary. The August national party convention in Chicago would be run not by delegates elected in primaries but by party bosses such as the Windy City’s longtime mayor, Richard J. Daley Sr.

TWO ASSASSINATIONS

The nomination campaign was interrupted twice by tragedy. On April 4, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., where he had been supporting black sanitation workers in their strike for higher wages and better conditions. James Earl Ray was apprehended two months later in England and convicted of the assassination. While he was apparently the lone gunman, suspicions remain to this day that Ray was backed financially by others.

King was the Nobel Peace Prize-winning apostle of nonviolence whose leadership was irreplaceable. Americans of all stripes were deeply shaken, and unfortunately the shock turned to violence in many communities.

In the cauldron that was 1968, violence seemed to breed violence. Robert Kennedy thought he had a reasonable chance to capture the nomination, especially after a crucial victory over McCarthy in California on June 4. A triumphant RFK shouted to the surging crowd at Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel, “Now it’s on to Chicago and let’s win there!”

Those were the last public words spoken by Robert Francis Kennedy. Leaving the scene through a pantry behind the stage, Kennedy was shot in the head by Palestinian supporter Sirhan B. Sirhan, just 42 years old and the father of 10 children – with an eleventh on the way. Kennedy died June 6. Americans could not believe that the nightmare of Nov. 22, 1963, had returned. Yet another Kennedy had been struck down by bullets in the prime of life.

NIXON’S RISE FROM THE ASHES

By this point, most people were somewhere between despair and depression. Nonetheless, one American saw opportunity for redemption in the midst of misery: Richard Milhous Nixon.

Most political observers had long since written off Nixon. Following his close defeat for president in 1960, Nixon lost decisively for governor of California in 1962. Right after that election, Nixon held his “last press conference” in which he said to the reporters he hated, “Just think about what you’ll be missing. You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore!”

Nixon’s resurrection began in earnest during the 1966 midterm elections, when he traveled constantly to campaign for any Republican on the ballot. The GOP picked up 47 U.S. House seats and many other offices, and Nixon had earned a fistful of political chits. The disaster of Vietnam was just as responsible for Nixon’s rise. Even his enemies admitted that former Vice President Nixon had broad experience in, and understanding of, foreign policy, thanks to his international travels during President Dwight Eisenhower’s administration.

From New Hampshire onward, Nixon had marched through the primaries, winning all of the important contested ones. However, Nixon still had many in his own party who doubted his electability. The more liberal Republicans rallied to New York Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, but the real threat came from the new California governor, Ronald Reagan. Nixon smartly conceded the Golden State primary to Reagan; even though Nixon was from the state, too, he might well have lost to Reagan or had a close call.

THE CONVENTIONS: A STUDY IN CONTRASTS

When the Republicans gathered in Miami Beach during the week of Aug. 5, they smelled victory and didn’t want to make a mistake by choosing the wrong ticket. Reagan might actually have won the nomination if the South had backed him, but Nixon forged a “Southern strategy” with U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond from South Carolina. It was understood that Nixon would appoint conservative Supreme Court justices and stress “law and order” issues favored by whites. Nixon, who had received about 30 percent of the votes of African-Americans in 1960, all but conceded the black vote to the Democrats in exchange for critical white votes.

Nixon easily won the GOP nomination on the first ballot and selected the nearly unknown new governor of Maryland, Spiro “Ted” Agnew, as his running mate. At the time, Agnew offended no one – though this pick would haunt Nixon in the campaign and again, years later, when the Watergate scandal was destroying his presidency. (In 1973 Agnew was shown to have taken bribes. He pled no contest to a charge of tax evasion and was forced to resign the vice presidency.)

The relative calm of the Republican convention gave way to a storm never seen before or since. Democrats gathered in Chicago in late August. So did many thousands of anti-war demonstrators determined to “Dump the Hump.”

Even though LBJ did not make an appearance at the convention, he and his political lieutenants controlled a majority of delegates. President Johnson was determined to make Humphrey toe the line on Vietnam and prod the delegates to approve a platform supportive of the administration’s war. Mayor Daley kept the convention in his iron grip and tried to do the same outside on the streets.

With the strong backing of traditional party leaders and constituencies, it was relatively easy for Humphrey to defeat McCarthy and a late entry, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota (who claimed he was a way station for grieving RFK delegates). HHH picked Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine as his running mate. The moderate former governor would prove to be the most liked candidate on either ticket, a useful contrast to Agnew.

However, the public barely noticed Humphrey’s acceptance address because of the mayhem in the host city. Chicago was convulsed with large-scale riots and police beatings of demonstrators. The smell of tear gas was everywhere, even in the convention hall, where Daley “thugs” – the word used by CBS anchor Cronkite – hustled allegedly unruly reporters and delegates right out of the building.

WALLACE POPULISM PLAYS TO ANGRY WHITES

The Chicago meltdown sent HHH into the polling basement. Post-convention Labor Day surveys had Humphrey trailing Nixon by more than 20 percentage points. Amazingly, it looked as though Nixon couldn’t lose.

Yet there was a complicating candidate that made the election both deeply divisive and thoroughly unpredictable. His name was George C. Wallace, former governor of Alabama, whose inaugural catchphrase, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” encapsulated and encouraged white anger. Wallace’s approach was populist, and he told voters to “send them a message” about busing to achieve desegregation, rising crime and anti-Americanism.

Running as the nominee of his own “American Independent Party,” Wallace generated his strongest appeal in the South but also in blue-collar white precincts throughout the country. He was hurting Nixon disproportionately, especially in the Deep South. Wallace knew he couldn’t win the election, but he hoped to secure enough electoral votes to throw the choice of the next president to the U.S. House of Representatives – where he could play the broker, influencing the policies of the next administration.

For Humphrey and the Democrats, Wallace made the election winnable since he would not have to come close to 50 percent of the vote in order to prevail. The Nixon campaign understood this well and promoted the idea that “a vote for Wallace is a vote for Humphrey.”

VIETNAM BECOMES THE FOCUS

Nixon hoped to ride out the fall with his big opening lead; he didn’t rock the boat and stressed international experience with his TV slogan: “This time, vote like your whole world depended on it.” Underlying it all was the belief that voters would punish the incumbent party for Vietnam and elect a Republican who promised “peace with honor.”

Democrats capitalized on Ed Muskie’s public appeal by focusing their fire on Spiro Agnew, who made a number of embarrassing gaffes, such as declining to visit more urban ghettoes with the comment, “If you’ve seen one city slum, you’ve seen them all.”

Vice presidential candidates aren’t enough to win or lose most elections. Humphrey’s basic problem was that he needed to break with LBJ’s war policy in order to energize liberals – but Johnson insisted on obeisance. At last, still trailing and desperate, HHH gave a speech on Sept. 30 in which he argued for a ceasefire and an end to the bombing of North Vietnam. The response from anti-war Democrats was positive, and polls began to tighten.

President Johnson had his own October surprise in store, an Oct. 31 address to the nation in which he announced the bombing halt of North Vietnam and a promising initiative to start peace talks with the Communists. The Nixon camp had long feared such a stratagem and had been using a go-between, Anna Chennault, to urge the South Vietnamese president not to agree to peace talks and instead to hold out for a better deal under a President Nixon.

Thanks to wiretaps and other surveillance, LBJ was well aware of Nixon’s actions, which the infuriated president regarded as treasonous. Without revealing his sources, Johnson let Nixon know directly that he expected his cooperation on his peace initiative. Humphrey was aware of Nixon’s efforts but chose not to use the issue because the polls were essentially tied and he believed he would win. Employing an incendiary last-minute charge might have backfired.

THE LONG ELECTION NIGHT (THOUGH NOT IN VIRGINIA)

Nixon gathered his immediate family and warned them that he could lose again, and they should prepare themselves. Indeed, for much of a long Nov. 5 election night, Nixon’s high command feared a repeat of his 1960 defeat.

Early the next morning, though, even Illinois – one of the states that gave JFK his victory, with Mayor Daley’s help – fell into Nixon’s column by a tiny margin. The nationwide popular vote was a dead heat, with Nixon edging Humphrey by about 500,000 votes, 43.4 percent to 42.7 percent. In the all-important Electoral College, Nixon’s advantage was a substantial 301 to Humphrey’s 191. George Wallace had secured 13.5 percent of the vote and amassed 46 electoral votes by carrying Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.

With the exception of LBJ’s landslide election in 1964, Virginia had been voting Republican in presidential elections since 1952, so the ’68 matchup was one-sided in the Old Dominion. Nixon won 90 localities and 43 percent to Humphrey’s 26 cities and counties, and 33 percent. The surprise was Wallace; he grabbed 24 percent of the vote and 18 localities. The Alabaman ran strongly in conservative Southside Virginia, where white resistance to desegregation had been especially fierce, and blacks constituted a large proportion of the population.

A TRAGIC YEAR COMES TO A SERENE END

With a weak mandate and a thin plurality, President-elect Nixon faced daunting obstacles as he assembled his governing team. Sure enough, LBJ’s peace efforts fell apart – and the Vietnam War would grind on for another four years. Vietnam had claimed one president already, and eventually it would help to bring down Nixon, too. Much of the foundation of the Watergate scandal that would force Nixon’s resignation in 1974 could be traced to efforts to surveil, contain and disrupt the anti-war movement.

As a truly tragic year came to an end, there was far more appre- hension than hope throughout America. And then came a Christmas miracle. In December, NASA launched a manned mission, Apollo 8, to achieve the first circumnavigation of the Moon. This amazing feat was highlighted on Christmas Eve, as the three astronauts, Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders, read portions of Genesis to a wide-eyed, worldwide audience on Earth.

The first photograph ever taken of Earthrise from Moon orbit reminded all people of our tiny, fragile place in the universe. From almost every part of the globe came a fervent wish: Maybe, just maybe, human beings would recognize the need for peaceful efforts to preserve our shared planet.

There was hope for a better future after all, as cursed 1968 receded into history.

Larry J. Sabato is director of the U.Va. Center for Politics and author of the New York Times best-seller The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy. He has partnered with the Community Idea Stations (WCVE and WHTJ) to create several documentaries airing on Public Broadcasting Service stations, including two Emmy Award winners, Out of Order (2013) and The Kennedy Half-Century (2014).