If You Think 2020 Is Bad, Try 1968

 Another in a series of posts about Presidential Elections in my life time.

 

You had to be alive in 1968 to understand what a hot dumpster fire 1968 was-it makes 2020 look like a day at a non-socially distance beach.  In fact, you can take all of 2020 and it would be just like one week of 1968.

One influential historian (Dave Barry) argues that the 1968 Presidential election was the culmination of a long series of "bummers".

First, President Kennedy was murdered in a motorcade in Dallas on November 22, 1963 by either a lone gunman, twenty gunmen, the CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, Cuba, Russian, or The South. The Kennedy Assassination started a new cottage industry:  The Conspiracy Theory Industry.

Lyndon "Baines" Johnson became President. As stylish, handsome, and charismatic as Kennedy was, Johnson was the exact opposite. His wife was named (this is true) Lady Bird.

While Johnson accomplished a truck load of things Kennedy didn't even dream of doing, he got the country bogged down in Vietnam. You may have heard about the Vietnam War. It was in all of the papers.

Vietnam tore the country apart. The servicemen of World War II came home and their wives boomed out a generation of kids that wouldn't go. They burned their drafts cards, had sex with anything that moved, took drugs, and wrote some really bad songs. (Example:  "The sign said you got to have a membership card to get inside. Ugh")*

Add to that the racial tension which was exacerbated by the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Sprinkle on top the changing role of women (they got their own cigarettes, "Virginia Slims" which Steve Martin said had breasts), the sexual revolution, "that old long hair" (boys started to grow their hair out long which my dad thought was the root of all evil) and color TV.  Everything was changing, fast, and not for the better.

Finally,  something called "Yoko Ono" started hanging around one of The Beatles.

The 1968 Presidential election started out being the re-election campaign of President Johnson. To cut to the historical chase, Johnson dropped out of the race.  This caused Bobby Kennedy to jump into the race for the Democratic nomination. With 1968 being 1968, of course, Bobby Kennedy was murdered.

The nominee of the Democratic Party in 1968 was Vice President Hubert Humphrey.  He did not run in a single primary.

How to describe Hubert Humphrey?  Imagine if Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig had a baby. That is Hubert Humphrey.   He talked extremely fast and said "pleased as punch" a lot.

The biggest problem for The Democrats came at their convention in Chicago. Hippies and Yippies (think of an even more annoying brand of hippie) descended on downtown Chicago and the police opened up a can of whoop-ass on them.  It was captured on TV and we had to suffer through a couple of more years of bad songs about it.  Democrats were practically shooting double birds at each other and the mayor of Chicago dropped on F-bomb on the Senator from Connecticut (which is something you didn't hear on "Gilligan's Island") during live convention coverage**.

The Republicans were a little calmer. They nominated former Vice President Richard Nixon because "Nixon's The One".  At the time it seemed like a good idea  Nixon's running mate was something called "Spiro Agnew".  Again, it seemed like a good idea.

With the nation coming apart of the seams, one key element was missing: Rednecks!  George Wallace ran on the American Independent Party.  He was a goober lipped dog breath guy, but he could coin a phrase like "Pointy-headed bureaucrats" and there was not a "dime's worth of difference between the Republican and Democratic parties".   He definitely would be canceled now days.

Nixon said he had a "plan" to end The Vietnam War. He wouldn't reveal his big plan because if he did, then everybody would know his plan. Duh! How hard is that.

Humphrey had an image as being a lap dog for Johnson, mainly because he was one, but towards the end of the campaign, Humphrey broke with President Johnson. Humphrey had a plan too but he spoke so fast nobody understood it.

The race was Nixon's to win, but with this being Nixon, it began to tighten around election day.  To show you how divided the nation was, my fourth grade teacher wore a sombrero on election day and said "Viva Nixon", while my dad voted for Hubert Humphrey. This was despite Humphrey's lack of clarity of the "old long hair" issue 

Nixon won. Barely.  George Wallace got a lot of votes that probably would have voted for Nixon. Wallace won a couple of states too.  The nation breathed a sigh of relief knowing a smart, competent, and honest man was going to become President.

 Well, two out of three ain't bad. 

FOOTNOTES:

 

* "Signs" by the Five Man Electrical Band. It came out in 1971. So sue me.

**The above Time Magazine cover shows Chicago mayor Richard Daley swearing.