Assuming that the polls don’t change suddenly in the next few months and Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, I believe that 2008 will look a lot like 1968.
A few things are exactly the same, namely there’s an unpopular war raging, it’s being run by an unpopular president from Texas, and the Democrats are the anti-war party. But in almost every other case, things are the same but the roles are reversed.
First of all, in 1968 the president who started the war was a Democrat while in 2008 the country will be mired in a war begun by a Republican. Second, the candidates of both parties will be similar, except that Hillary will be playing the role of Richard Nixon while whoever the Republicans nominee is will be playing Hubert Humphrey. Let me elaborate.
In 1968, Nixon was a polarizing politician who didn’t exactly arouse a whole lot of passion on his side but definitely aroused the enmity of those on the other side. Nixon was also seen as calculating, secretive, duplicitous, and inauthentic. Yet he was chosen primarily because of his past proximity to the presidency (when he was vice president to Eisenhower) and his lengthy experience in the Congress. He was seen as the most capable of doing the job of president, and, importantly, he also claimed to have a "secret plan" to end the war.
Should Hillary be nominated, she, like Nixon, will be a polarizing figure who, we can all agree, doesn’t arouse a whole lot of passion from us liberals, but she sure gets the Republicans frothing at the mouth. Like Nixon, Hillary is seen as calculating, secretive, duplicitous, and inauthentic. Yet she is leading in the polls right now is because she is widely seen as the most competent and experienced Democratic candidate, in that she was an unusually powerful first lady and she has been in the Senate for almost 8 years. Lastly, like Nixon, Hillary says she wants to end the war, but given her hawkishness compared to her primary opponents, and given her statements that she would still keep a large residual force behind in Iraq, her exact plans for "ending" the war is, for lack of a better word, somewhat of a "secret".
As for comparisons between the Democratic candidate of 1968, Hubert Humphrey, and the Republican candidate of 2008, whoever the candidate next year will be will bear just one important resemblance to Humphrey: that as much as they claim to support the president and the war at this moment, in the general election, when they have to face an electorate overwhelmingly opposed to the war and the president, they will out of political necessity have to distance themselves from the sitting president from their own party.
If they don’t, they’ll be essentially committing political suicide (and I hope they do, hell I’d give them the hope and kick the chair). But my guess is that they are all too familiar with Hubert Humphrey’s fate. For most of the 1968 campaign, Humphrey declined to openly criticize President Johnson, probably because 1) Johnson, by making him vice-president, put him where he was, and 2) Humphrey was reluctant to criticize a sitting war president from his own party. As a result, Humphrey trailed badly for most of 1968, until the final weeks when he changed his mind and began criticizing President Johnson and the war. As a result, Humphrey almost pulled the election out and lost by just half a million votes. Whoever the Republican candidate is, if he wants to avoid Humphrey’s fate, will do well to turn his guns on President Bush the second after he seals up the nomination.
Another interesting comparison between 1968 and 2008 is the role that wackos and radicals will play. In 1968, the Democrats’ association with crazy acid-popping hippies, riots, and student revolutionaries turned off the electorate and pushed them to Nixon who oddly enough seemed normal by comparison. On the other hand, in 2008 the wackos are on the Republican side. This time it’s the Republicans’ association with wackos who still think Saddam was behind 9-11, that Iraq is such a success that we should bomb Iran, that Muslim and Mexican hordes are taking over western civilization, that the Earth is 6,000 years old, and that 47 million Americans choose to go without health insurance that will push people to the Democrats.
The last 1968-2008 comparison I will make is with regard to public opinion on the war. While Vietnam was unpopular, the war was not nearly as unpopular as we like to believe (in March 1969, polls showed 19% of Americans favored the war policy and 33% wanted all-out military victory) hence the "silent majority" who voted for Nixon. While many Americans were upset with how the war was being conducted, many sided with Nixon’s incremental "peace with honor" way of getting out. In 2008 there is also a silent majority, except this time it’s a much larger majority who are far more opposed to the war than Americans were to Vietnam and who want a far speedier withdrawal than what the candidates want.
So here’s my conclusion? 2008 will end up like 1968, with a close, polarizing election where getting our country out of an unpopular war will be the defining issue, ending in the election of an uncharismatic and polarizing president, elected nevertheless for her supposed competence. In short, Hillary will be the new Nixon.