Dems' Math: 2024-1968=x
LBJ and Joe Biden both abandoned their re-election. That did not end well for the Democrats in '68. They're hoping for better luck this time with going to the backup.
THE WHITE HOUSE — A Democratic Party president occupies the White House, deciding not to pursue another term. In less than two weeks his party, convening in Chicago, will anoint his vice president — who did not compete in the primaries — to carry the torch for the election battle against a divisive Republican Party nominee. Is it August 1968 or August 2024? It could be either.
Rewinding 56 years, there was one significant difference back then for the Democrats — they were not united going into their convention.
“Dump the Hump” was the cry of young demonstrators, primarily protesting against the Vietnam War, in the streets of Chicago in their futile quest to stop the Democratic Party from nominating Vice President Hubert Humphrey. The city’s strongman mayor, Democrat Richard Daley, unleashed his police force on the protestors, arresting more than 650 and injuring about 1,100.
No one in Chicago this month is going to be chanting “Halt Harris,” although some protestors will be in Illinois to pressure the vice president to take a more forceful stance to protect Palestinian civilians and oppose Israel’s harsh military retaliation against Hamas in Gaza. It is inconceivable Brandon Johnson will order Chicago PD to riot.
Nearly 60,000 mostly young American men died in Vietnam over the course of the un-winnable war against the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong. (Several million Vietnamese civilians and fighters likely died).
In Gaza, the Israelis have probably killed 35,000 Palestinians, according to the U.N. (including Hamas militiamen — all deemed terrorists by the Israeli government) in retaliation for the Oct. 7, 2023 shock invasion that left 1,200 people dead, citizens and soldiers. Hamas also abducted 250 people and gang-raped and mutilated women.
The 2024 Democratic National Convention will be tightly organized to minimize party differences over global and domestic issues, including the war in Gaza, to ensure a Kamala coronation. The lesson has been learned from 1968 when the chaos spilled over onto the convention floor where reporters were assaulted. Dan Rather’s reporting while being manhandled live on television remains a journalistic lesson in aplomb and prompted perhaps the only on-air display of anger by that generation’s quintessential anchorman, Walter Cronkite of CBS.
If you follow my reporting, you’ve certainly inferred passion for presidential history (a thread throughout my latest book, Behind the White House Curtain: A Senior Journalist’s Story of Covering the President — and Why It Matters.)
With the encouragement of VOA’s national editor, Scott Stearns, I pulled together a story comparing and contrasting Lyndon Johnson’s lame duck end to his presidency with that of the current commander-in-chief, titled: Biden set to share legacy with LBJ. In both the expanded web story and the TV report, I felt compelled to mention four other U.S. presidents who put themselves into the same terminal situation.
None of those president, however, resigned. The only was Richard Nixon, enmeshed in the Watergate scandal that would be fatal to his presidency if he did not depart. It was a huge fall from grace after squeaking past Humphrey in the popular vote in ‘68 and obliterating George McGovern in a landslide in ‘72.
Nixon quit 50 years ago today.
Sometimes, in the classroom or after delivering a speech about covering the White House , I am asked who is my “favorite” of the 46 presidents. I appreciate the query but will point out we’re not talking about ice cream flavors here (with my very boring preference for vanilla.) The legacies of presidencies are nuanced and continually being re-evaluated by historians. Pressed to answer, I will profess to Dwight Eisenhower, who was president when this baby boomer was born.
Ike, I’ll explain, made the job look easy. Ask my father about the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers who became a mere mortal politician and he’ll quip Eisenhower mostly played golf. Ike usually concealed in his pocket the ‘hidden hand’ of his presidency, nonchalant and in good humor in public while quietly making consequential decisions to quell world crises. The Republican, without fanfare, got a lot done and likely prevented one or two atomic wars.
My predilection is to assess highly the leaders who ensured bad things didn’t happen on their watch, rather than their overt accomplishments (which are really the result of the under-appreciated toiling of West Wing staff, the counsel of wise Cabinet members and sage advisors, a compliant Congress, perhaps favorable judicial rulings and a big dose of positive press.)
It is the bombs not dropped, the missiles not fired, the young men — and now women — not sent into combat; that self-restraint commanding the world’s most powerful military we overlook in the evaluations. Don’t worry — I’m not about to join the Cato or Quincy institutes. After decades of study of our country’s history, I do not second guess Lincoln’s response to the first shots fired at Fort Sumter; Wilson’s actions after the sinking of the Lusitania and the Zimmerman telegram; FDR’s ‘Day of Infamy’ declaration of war against the Empire of Japan. In other words, don’t mistake me for a pacifist or isolationist.
More complex: How would any of us have wrestled with Truman’s agonizing choice between sacrificing the lives of tens of thousands of GIs who would have to invade Okinawa or the unprecedented act of dropping atomic bombs on two Japanese cities, killing and irradiating hundreds of thousands of children and other civilians?; JFK’s greenlighting Cuban exiles to invade via the Bay of Pigs?; LBJ’s Americanizing the war in Vietnam?
I pondered these types of decisions when I visited both Eisenhower’s farmhouse at Gettysburg, to which he and Mamie peacefully retired, and the locus of Johnson’s fitful post-presidency in Austin, in which he built a replica Oval Office and purchased a limousine fitting of a president who continued to be chauffeured by the Secret Service (both on display at the LBJ Presidential Library).
Touring the multi-story building on the University of Texas campus that is a living museum and a testament to the tall Texan’s life, my mind was restless.
By contrast, I was blanketed in calm walking through the Eisenhower residence in Gettysburg. Tranquility permeated the living room where the couple ate their Swanson TV dinners, prepared by Mamie, and served on trays in front of the television. I could feel the late president’s restful spirit in the wood-paneled den with its built-in bookshelves and the burnt orange chair with geese-adorned throw pillows.
While Eisenhower may be my ‘favorite,’ it is Johnson I find the most fascinating, not only because he was a fixture — in tandem with grainy moving images of combat in Southeast Asia — that dominated the evening newscasts of most of my childhood. I now realize, thanks to the books of Robert Caro and others, Johnson was a complex man facing a myriad of troubles, including serious physical and mental maladies. LBJ wrestled with demons. Unlike Ike, who compartmentalized and golfed, Johnson’s angst was apparent to the reporters who covered him and probably also evident to astute TV viewers across America.
What Ike and LBJ had in common were their devotion to duty and resulting heart attacks.
Mamie, in 1956, pushed aside family concern about her husband’s health, encouraging a second run, worried an idle Ike would lose purpose and die. Lady Bird, in 1968, discouraged her husband from seeking another term, fearing it might kill him.
First lady Jill Biden, in 2024, certainly was pivotal in Joe’s decision not to formally accept re-nomination. In all likelihood, she concurred with top Democrats who feared not for the health of her husband, but for the survival of democracy — conversely the same warning sounded by Donald Trump if the Democrats prevail in November.
When the current president looked straight into the unblinking eye of the camera in the Oval Office, the comparisons were inevitable to Lyndon Johnson making the announcement to ensure his name was not again on the ballot at a time “of division in the American house.”
In the same vein, Joe Biden told the nation ”the best way to unite our nation” was for him to make way for new, fresh and younger voices.
“History is in your hands. The power is in your hands. The idea of America lies in your hands,” he concluded.
