You’ve written a fascinating book about 1968, especially for those who weren’t there. I was 14 and remember some of this, but not in the detail you cover. Your subtitle is “1968 and the politics of division” which seems all too relevant. Is it fair to see parallels between then and now, or were times too different?
The America of 1968 and the America of 2016, in many ways, could not be more different. Back in 1968 you had 500,000 troops fighting in Vietnam; crime rates were steadily rising; there were major riots in American cities practically every summer and the country was experiencing an extraordinary period of social and cultural change. But in one important way, there are distinct similarities between the two periods—white backlash. Back in 1968 you had a lot of white working- and middle-class Americans who were concerned about the larger changes happening in American society, particularly around the civil rights movement. This was particularly acute in the South, but there was certainly evidence of the backlash in Northern industrial states. As black Americans saw opportunities increase for them and as institutionalized discrimination began to be torn down, whites became fearful of how it would impact their neighborhoods, their schools and their workplaces. They were legitimately worried about crime and saw the issue through a distinctly racial prism.
I think we’re seeing a similar situation today, even if the context is completely different. Back in the 1960s, the civil rights did upend a whole host of white privileges. That’s not happening today, but there certainly seems to be a perception that it is happening to white America—and that the malaise in lower class white communities is perceived as being related to the improved status of non-white Americans. The narrative that came out of 1968—of a Democratic Party focused on using the resources of the federal government to help black and poor Americans and being at the vanguard of larger social changes in American society—has, over 48 years, become somewhat normalized. In a lot of ways I think that’s the best explanation for Trump. Granted he’s more ostentatiously racist and nativist than other Republicans, but he’s pushing on an open door of white grievance and sense of white victimization. And that process really did begin in 1968.
If Hubert Humphrey was a happy warrior by temperament, Gene McCarthy was a reluctant one. There are things he would not do on the campaign trail and he approached the antiwar movement more as a philosopher than a candidate all out to win. Was he an early version of Bernie Sanders in any way?
McCarthy was a very different figure than Sanders. His issue was the war in Vietnam, rather than the economy. And the nature of his rhetorical appeal, which was focused more on reason and debate, could not be more different than Sanders talk of revolution. McCarthy, I think, would have been aghast at the idea of political revolution. His run for office was, in many ways, about showing Democrats that change was possible within the political system and was focused on trying to prevent revolution, not incite it.
But there are important similarities too. McCarthy was, at this core, an anti-establishment figure. He ran to challenge Johnson on Vietnam, but he also wanted to give anti-war Democrats an outlet for making their frustrations known. He was a protest, anti-establishment candidate, which is what I think Sanders was at the beginning of his run. By trying to create a political outlet for dissent within the party he made Sanders possible. It was McCarthy and his supporters who pushed for reforming the process of choosing a presidential nominee—and taking it out of the hands of Democratic power brokers and putting it in the hands of voters. The modern primary system, in which voters choose the nominee of their party in primaries and caucuses, came out of a decision made at the 1968 Democratic National Convention to create a reform commission. So to my mind there’s a pretty direct link between McCarthy’s insurgent campaign and Sanders presidential run this year. The latter wouldn’t exist without the former, but beyond that McCarthy’s run really did create a strong anti-establishment element within the Democratic Party and that’s one that Sanders coasted on in challenging Clinton.
The most interesting figure for me of many in your book was Robert F. Kennedy, but he was not exactly the character I remembered from my youth. What surprised you most in your research about him?
It’s funny, but I came into researching this book with a somewhat cynical view of Kennedy. My mother, who is a lifelong Democrat, always used to tell me she never trusted Bobby Kennedy and when I started working on the book I kind of saw why—he was a wonderful evangelist for improved race relations in America, but he was also a ruthless, pragmatic and often slippery political figure. To me one of the striking elements about RFK was how much his public reputation faltered during the campaign. His favorabilities went down so much that a week or two before his death after the California primary he was running third in public polling to Humphrey and McCarthy among Democrats. A lot of the hagiography around Bobby has elided over the fact that until McCarthy almost won the New Hampshire primary, Kennedy was largely willing to acquiesce to Johnson being the Democratic nominee in 1968. He certainly faced greater challenges in taking on Johnson than McCarthy did, but it simply has to be said that he didn’t demonstrate a great deal of political courage that year. Then there’s also the fact that Kennedy, during the California primary, accused McCarthy of wanting to send tens of thousands of black families to Orange County, which wasn’t true, but also was a pretty clear example of racial dog whistling.
But having said all that, I also came away from the book viewing Kennedy as a truly fascinating political figure—and one who I think would have made a great president. To a large extent what you saw out of Kennedy in that 1968 race was a politician wrestling with his own political ideology and beliefs. In some ways, his politics were a moving target. He was willing to challenge liberal orthodoxies in a way that most Democrats were not willing to do. He made an effort to reach out to alienated white voters—often unsuccessfully, it should be said. But he understood why it was important. Pragmatism played a role here, but I do think Kennedy had a more iconoclastic view of liberalism than most Democrats at the time. It’s one of the great tragedies of modern American politics that we never get to see Kennedy fully flowered as a politician.
Barry Goldwater lost but Goldwater loyalists were fierce in their defense of the movement, something that Richard Nixon managed masterfully in winning over conservatives that did not trust him, or so it seemed. How do you rate Nixon as a politician?
Richard Nixon was a great politician. Disciplined, focused, tireless strategically brilliant—he understood politics at a truly higher level. The way that he navigated a very polarized political party in winning the Republican nomination is fascinating. He really did play both sides of the fence. He used the fear of the moderate wing prevailing in 1968 (and particularly Nelson Rockefeller) to keep conservatives in line and deny their favorite candidate, Ronald Reagan, from getting the nomination. He understood better than most other Republicans about the ascendent South in GOP politics and made sure, early on, that they were in his corner. Yet at the same time he resisted the urge to embrace their more toxic racism in order to give racial liberals content enough to vote for him. He’d seen Romney in 1964 and knew that he was a weak politician and so he let him take the lead in 1967 and crash and burn in the process as Nixon hung back. And then as president, he figured out how to keep the South happy and also reach out to disaffected white working class Democrats. Of course, he was deeply paranoid and he self-destructed as president, but as a politician he is one of the best we’ve ever seen.
What about George Wallace do you think is most relevant for today?
To me Wallace is the most important figure in the 1968 campaign. He basically creates the narrative of conservative, anti-government populism that emerges out of 1968. And he does it by not being a conservative on every issue except for race. He was a basically a New Deal liberal and while Trump spouts conservative dogma occasionally, it’s certainly not the focal point of his appeal. When you think about the anti-elitist rhetoric of Republican politicians, which is dismissive of liberals, college professors, bureaucrats, the news media etc, it really did begin with Wallace and his constant complaints that the liberal do-gooders and theoreticians were looking down their noses at ordinary Americans. The parallels between him and Trump are so striking. These were two openly racist and populist figures who prospered precisely because they were willing to say things that no one else would say and push buttons that no one else would push. When I finished working on the book and Trump began to emerge I saw him as a Wallace-like figure—but the last one. He was running a similar campaign to Wallace and using similar appeals, which Republicans had adopted and been using for 48 years. He just took it a step further. And I did believe that like Wallace he would crash and burn. Of course that didn’t happen and one of the sad outcomes of this election is that one might have imagined that with the country’s larger demographic and social changes, the politics of Wallace would become an anachronism. Tragically, however, we’re not there yet.
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