Waving fists, carrying signs, shouting filth and obscenities, demonstrators made life miserable for me as well as for Pat, Tricia, and Julie when they made campaign appearances on my behalf.
These episodes were the saddest aspect of the 1968 campaign. They were symbolic of the things that were wrong with America that year. To this day I cannot understand the twisted logic that escalates the right of free speech into a license for hysteria and mob violence.
Encouraged by the reaction to his Salt Lake City speech, Humphrey began issuing challenges to me to debate him. I was determined not to be lured into a confrontation, since Humphrey was still far behind me in the polls, and would therefore be the beneficiary of any debate. Besides, as Humphrey knew, there was no way that he and I could have a debate without including George Wallace. Wallace’s candidacy was depriving me of a substantial number of votes, and anything I did to elevate Wallace would be self-destructive. It was not fear but self-interest that determined my decision on the debates. Naturally my unwillingness to debate gave Humphrey a major campaign issue. On October 15, he told an audience that I was “Richard the Silent” and “Richard the Chicken-Hearted.”
Polls taken after the election indicated that if George Wallace had not run for President in 1968, I might have received the same overwhelming mandate then that Eisenhower had received in 1952. But Wallace was a spoiler. He would siphon off the protest votes of people who were fed up with the policies of the Great Society. I had to try my best to hold down the Wallace vote, but I had to do it in a responsible manner. Humphrey and his advisers saw that Wallace could be used as a blockade against me. As Tom Wicker put it, “As for Wallace, without his heavy-breathing presence in the race Humphrey might as well go home to Waverly and raise turkeys.”
If Humphrey could not get enough electoral votes to become President, he could still end up in the White House by making sure that I didn’t get enough either. Under the Constitution, if no candidate received a majority of electoral votes, the election would be decided in the House of Representatives. Since the Democrats controlled the House, it was almost certain that Humphrey would make a deal with Wallace and thus emerge as the thirty-seventh President. Toward the end of the campaign I challenged Humphrey to agree that the winner of the popular vote should get the support of the loser, but he avoided the issue and refused to agree.
Having failed to make measurable inroads on my lead, Humphrey—and the media—began concentrating on Agnew. Because of his total lack of previous experience in national campaigning, it did not take long to catch him in a slip and magnify it into a cause célèbre. He naïvely used inflammatory codewords when he referred to Humphrey as “soft on crime” and “soft on communism,” and he jokingly called reporter Gene Oishi “the fat Jap.”
No one felt worse than Agnew about such embarrassing misjudgments, and I admired him for the way he stood up to the vicious onslaught of national political exposure—the cruel cartoons, the slashing attacks, the stinging commentaries. I tried to reassure him, telling him that these efforts were mainly a way of using him to get at me.
In contrast to their treatment of Agnew, the news media gave Muskie such encomiums as James Reston’s “The most refreshing figure in the American campaign is Ed Muskie of Maine.” A headline proclaimed in the Washington Post: “Abe Lincoln Quality” Seen as Muskie Campaign Surges. Muskie emerged from the campaign the favorite of the media—clearly presidential timber for 1972. This infatuation with Muskie could not have pleased Humphrey, but he had to acknowledge and use it. By the end of September he was telling audiences, “If you have any doubts about the top of the ticket, please settle it on the basis of No. 2.”
During the two weeks before Election Day I was campaigning eighteen and twenty hours a day. At each appearance I tried to have some new ammunition to fire at Humphrey. In Cincinnati I quoted a statement he had made two years earlier, when riots were convulsing the country: that if he were living in a slum, he could “lead a mighty good revolt” himself. I said that this kind of talk was “adult delinquency” and “not worthy of a Vice President.”
At Springfield, Ohio, I hit another key issue, loss of respect for America. “We must gain respect for America in the world. A burned American library, a desecrated flag, a ship captured by international outlaws on the high seas—these are the events which in effect squeeze the trigger which fires the rifle which kills young Americans.” One reporter wrote, “There was speculation that the ‘old Nixon’ had broken through—the slashing campaigner of earlier campaigns who eventually hurt his reputation by his tough attacks.” But I felt it was essential to take the battle to Humphrey after his weeks of much harsher rhetorical assaults.
I was especially intent on getting across my stark differences with Humphrey on the issues of crime and justice. His statement about leading a “revolt” was the kind of rationalization many liberals produced to justify the riotous disorders of the 1960s. I charged that Humphrey had exaggerated and overemphasized poverty as a cause of crime and that contrary to what the administration believed and preached, the war on poverty was not a war on crime, and it was no substitute for a war on crime.
Though inflation was on the rise in 1968 and the economic storm signals were clear, the actual detrimental effects of Johnson’s guns-and-butter policy were not apparent until after I entered the White House. Consequently, Humphrey was able to campaign on a platform of prosperity while making the classic Democratic charge that every Republican since Herbert Hoover had a compulsion to make people unemployed.
For his part, Humphrey attacked me with characteristic gusto. He charged that I was “joining forces with the most reactionary elements in American society.” Variously, he characterized me as someone likely to “weasel” and as one who “has sacrificed national interest for political demagogy.”
On October 28 Humphrey claimed that I was about to unleash a “vicious final week of campaigning.” He warned: “Batten down the hatches for the most desperate and cynical display of political irresponsibility ever seen in America.” In the very same speech without missing a beat, Humphrey expressed his sense of political responsibility by charging that I was “urging a mad escalation of the nuclear arms race [and] advocating an increasing militarization of American life and American foreign policy.”
In fact, despite what Humphrey and other Democratic spokesmen were saying, both my rhetoric and actions were restrained in the 1968 campaign. Because of my lead, there was no need for overkill. And because national unity was so fragile that year, I didn’t want to enter the White House after a bitterly divisive campaign.
After the Democratic convention, I led Humphrey 43 percent to 31 percent, and a few weeks later 46 percent to 31 percent. During the last few weeks of the campaign, however, the gap narrowed dramatically, and the election turned out to be a cliff-hanger. The trend was reversed as traditional Democrats returned to the party of their fathers, and as the effects of George Wallace’s spoiler candidacy were felt. Additionally, toward the end of the campaign the antiwar liberals decided to bury the hatchet and vote for Humphrey. Less than two weeks before Election Day, Eugene McCarthy finally endorsed Humphrey.
More than anything else, Humphrey had Lyndon Johnson to thank for the eleventh-hour masterstroke that almost won him the election.
On October 31 I was to address a nationally televised rally at Madison Square Garden in New York. I set aside a couple of quiet hours in the afternoon, and I was sitting in my study at home making notes for the speech later that evening when the telephone rang. It was a White House operator: the President was placing a conference call to Humphrey, Wallace, and me. A moment later Lyndon Johnson was on the line.
He got right to the point. There had been a breakthrough in Paris, he said, and after wide consultations among his advisers, he had decided to call a total bombing halt over North Vietnam. He would make the announcement on television in two hours. As Johnson went on, I thought to myself that whatever this meant to North Vietnam, he had just d
ropped a pretty good bomb in the middle of my campaign.
Johnson said, rather defensively, “I’m not concerned with an election. You all are concerned with an election. I don’t think this concerns an election. I think all of you want the same thing. So I thought if I laid it on the line that way, and presented it to you, you would at least have a complete, full understanding of all the facts.”
Johnson explained that he had not been able to persuade Saigon to agree to the provisions of the bombing halt, so that South Vietnam would not be joining in the announcement.
When Johnson finished and we had asked some perfunctory questions, George Wallace said, “I’m praying for you.”
Humphrey said, “We’ll back you up, Mr. President.”
I thanked Johnson for making the call and seconded Humphrey’s pledge of support.
The telephone call over, I could feel my anger and frustration welling up. Johnson was making the one move that I thought could determine the outcome of the election. Had I done all this work and come all this way only to be undermined by the powers of an incumbent who had decided against seeking re-election?
I remembered how categorical Johnson had been at our briefing earlier that summer. Then he had been contemptuous of those who wanted a bombing halt, and his arms had sliced the air as he insisted that he was not going to let one ammunition truck pass freely into South Vietnam carrying the weapons to kill American boys.
In fact, the bombing halt came as no real surprise to me. I had known for several weeks that plans were being made for such an action; the announcement was the other shoe that I had been waiting for Johnson to drop. What I found difficult to accept was the timing. Announcing the halt so close to the election was utterly callous if politically calculated, and utterly naïve if sincere.
I had learned of the plan through a highly unusual channel. It began on September 12, when Haldeman brought me a report from John Mitchell that Rockefeller’s foreign policy adviser, Henry Kissinger, was available to assist us with advice. In 1967 Kissinger had served Johnson as a secret emissary, passing Johnson’s offers for a bombing halt to the North Vietnamese via French intermediaries. At one point Johnson even recommended a direct meeting, but the North Vietnamese were recalcitrant, and the “Kissinger channel” came to an end in October 1967. Kissinger, however, retained the respect of Johnson and his national security advisers, and he continued to have entrée into the administration’s foreign policy inner circles.
I knew that Rockefeller had been offering Kissinger’s assistance and urging that I make use of it ever since the convention. I told Haldeman that Mitchell should continue as liaison with Kissinger and that we should honor his desire to keep his role completely confidential.
Two weeks after his first meeting with Mitchell, Kissinger called again. He said that he had just returned from Paris, where he had picked up word that something big was afoot regarding Vietnam. He advised that if I had to say anything about Vietnam during the following week, I should avoid any new ideas or proposals. Kissinger was completely circumspect in the advice he gave us during the campaign. If he was privy to the details of negotiations, he did not reveal them to us. He considered it proper and responsible, however, to warn me against making any statements that might be undercut by negotiations I was not aware of.
I asked Haldeman to have Bryce Harlow call the Republican Senate Minority Leader, Everett Dirksen. “Have Ev tell Lyndon that I have a message from Paris,” I suggested. “Leave the hint that I know what’s going on, and tell Ev to nail Lyndon hard to find out what’s happening.” I also told Haldeman to have Agnew ask Dean Rusk whether there was anything to “rumors” we had heard.
That same day I sent a memo to my key staff thinkers and writers ordering them to put the Vietnam monkey on Humphrey’s back, not Johnson’s. I wanted to make it clear that I thought it was Humphrey rather than the President who was playing politics with the war.
A few days later Haldeman sent me a memorandum with more information from Kissinger via Mitchell.
Our source feels that there is a better than even chance that Johnson will order a bombing halt at approximately mid-October. This will be tied in with a big flurry of diplomatic activity in Paris which will have no meaning but will be made to look important.
After covering other diplomatic matters, the memo continued:
Our source does not believe that it is practical to oppose a bombing halt but does feel thought should be given to the fact that it may happen—that we may want to anticipate it—and that we certainly will want to be ready at the time it does happen. . . .
Our source is extremely concerned about the moves Johnson may take and expects that he will take some action before the election.
That same day I learned that Dean Rusk had reassured Agnew that there were no new developments and that the administration would not “cut our legs off” with an announcement in October. If there were any change, he said, Johnson would call me right away. Rusk did say, however, that although there was nothing currently planned, the situation was “fast-changing.”
On October 9, the North Vietnamese in Paris publicly called on Johnson to stop the bombing while he still had the power to do so. Johnson, of course, knew what the public did not know: secret negotiations for a bombing halt were already taking place.
Three days later we received another secret report from Kissinger saying that there was a strong possibility that the administration would move before October 23. Kissinger strongly recommended that I avoid making any statements about Humphrey’s hurting the prospects of peace. Rather cryptically, Kissinger reported that there was “more to this than meets the eye.” I thought that this report from Kissinger was uncomfortably vague. Why was he trying to get me to avoid making statements about Vietnam and why was he so insistent about laying off Humphrey? One factor that had most convinced me of Kissinger’s credibility was the length to which he went to protect his secrecy. But what if Johnson’s people knew that he was passing information to me and were feeding him phony stories? In such a tense political and diplomatic atmosphere, I was no longer sure of anything.
Over the next few days rumors became rampant that something big was about to happen in Paris. Reporters demanded to know what was happening, and in response to their questions, the White House press office released a statement that there were no breakthroughs in Paris and no change in the situation.
I was campaigning in Missouri on October 16 when word arrived from the White House that Johnson wanted to clarify matters with a conference call to all three candidates. When the call came, I was in Kansas City’s Union Station, about to address a large rally in the main waiting room. I took his call in a tiny room behind the platform. The “room” was like a telephone booth with a glass door. Throughout our conversation people wandered by, staring quizzically at me jammed into this closet.
We had a bad connection, so that I had to strain to make out Johnson’s words. He told us to read his Press Secretary’s statement. There was no breakthrough in Paris. The rumors were wrong. He urged us not to say anything. He said that there had in fact been some movement by Hanoi, but that anything might jeopardize it. I asked for some assurance that he was still insisting on reciprocity from the Communists for any concessions on our part, and Johnson replied that he was maintaining that three points had to be met: (1) Prompt and serious talks must follow any bombing halt; (2) Hanoi must not violate the Demilitarized Zone; and (3) the Vietcong or the North Vietnamese would not carry out large-scale rocket or artillery attacks against South Vietnam’s major cities. If these conditions were fulfilled, of course, I would support whatever arrangements Johnson could work out.
When I saw Johnson that night at the annual Al Smith Dinner in New York, he gave me further assurances that he would not accept any arrangement without reciprocity, and again requested that I be careful about what I had to say on Vietnam. After the dinner I instructed Haldeman to pass the word that, in view of Johnson’s request, I would not be making any
major speeches criticizing the conduct of the war.
Speaking in Rochester the next day, I said, “If a bombing pause can be agreed to in Vietnam . . . one which will not endanger American lives, and one which will increase the chances for bringing a peaceful and honorable solution to the war, then we are for it.” I added, “We do not want to play politics with peace.” But, of course, that was inevitably what was happening.
Vietnam was becoming the hottest national issue no matter how much the candidates soft-pedaled it. If there was nothing I could do about Johnson’s motivations in this matter, I was determined to make absolutely sure that, if he did stop the bombing, it would at least be done according to the minimum safeguards that I insisted be met.
I was asked the next day about the rumors during a regionally broadcast question-and-answer session televised live from Boston. For the first time, while reiterating my position I suggested that something might be taking place. “There seems to be some movement,” I said. “We can’t be sure. I have been thoroughly briefed on this, but I won’t disclose those briefings.” It was a weak answer, but I didn’t know what more I could say.
On October 22, Bryce Harlow received information from a source whose credibility was beyond question. It was from someone in Johnson’s innermost circle, and, as events turned out, it was entirely accurate. I read Harlow’s memorandum several times, and with each reading I became angrier and more frustrated:
The President is driving exceedingly hard for a deal with North Vietnam. Expectation is that he is becoming almost pathologically eager for an excuse to order a bombing halt and will accept almost any arrangement. . . .
Clark Clifford, [Joseph] Califano, and Llewellyn Thompson are the main participants in this effort. [George] Ball is in also, though somewhat on the fringe.
Careful plans are being made to help HHH exploit whatever happens. White House staff liaison with HHH is close. Plan is for LBJ to make a nationwide TV announcement as quickly as possible after agreement; the object is to get this done as long before November 5 as they can. . . .
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