Some questions to keep in mind:

1. What was the "Silent Majority" and what role did it play in the 1968 presidential election?
2. Compare and contrast Richard Nixon's economic policy with that of JFK and LBJ.
3. How did social issues help to define a new role for the Republican Party in the late '60s and for the Democratic Party in the early '70s?
4. How did the Cold War shape Nixon's presidency?

The 1968 Presidential Campaign

The Many Faces of Nixon:
Part One, The Harmonizer

"We see Americans hating each other, killing each other at home. And as we see and hear these things, millions of Americans cry out in anguish, did we come all the way for this?"

Nixon claimed that the "Silent Majority"--those Americans who were fed up with racial violence, crime, war, and protests--would support his policies. In his view, Americans who demonstrated against the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War were a  noisy minority. The Silent Majority, on the other hand, was concerned with "The  Social Issue," which consisted of the following points:

1. Fear of rising crime rates
2. Fear of social violence
3. Fear of widespread drug abuse
4. Concerns about sexual permissiveness
5. Concerns about disdain for patriotism
6. Fear of racial tensions
7. Desire for law and order

George Wallace and the American Independence Party

Governor George Wallace of Alabama made a third-party bid for the presidency in 1968. Wallace was anything but a harmonizer. He catered directly to the resentments of his supporters and attacked "pointy-headed intellectual morons," representatives of the counter-culture, and welfare mothers. Wallace's running mate was retired Air Force general Curtis LeMay, who spoke publicly in favor of using American military might in the Vietnam War to bomb the North Vietnamese "back into the Stone Age." This military rhetoric frightened many Americans.

The American Independence Party, however, was not the only political group represented by tone-deaf public speakers. Nixon, himself, had chosen Governor Spiro T. Agnew of Maryland, a compromise candidate acceptable to both northern and southern Republicans, to be his running mate in 1968. Agnew seemed to personify the stereotype of the "fat cat" Republican and he repeatedly alienated Americans with his shrill, controversial opinions. In speeches, for example, he repeatedly referred to himself and other politicians in power as "we, the establishment." He also echoed the red-baiting of McCarthyism when he called Hubert Humphrey "squishy-soft on Communism." In another instance, when asked to come to Harlem to examine first-hand the economic and social problems of the African-American ghetto, Agnew declined, saying

"If you've seen one city slum, you've seen 'em all."

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party was going through a difficult and divisive period. On March 31, 1968, in the wake of the Tet Offensive, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection. Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota entered the primary race, as did Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York. An assassin, however, killed Kennedy the same night that the he won the California Democratic primary. The Democratic National Committee eventually nominated Hubert Humphrey, Johnson's Vice President, at its tumultuous national convention in Chicago.

Hubert Humphrey (1911-1979)

Eugene McCarthy (1916-2005) Robert Kennedy (1925-1968)

Humphrey had two things in his favor:

1. The unrest of the day seemed to energize Roosevelt's original Democratic coalition.
2. Johnson had finally called off the bombing of North Vietnam.

However, the relatively late timing of Johnson's announcement to halt the aerial bombardment--October 31, 1968- as well as Humphrey's own belated pledge to end American involvement in Vietnam, meant that Humphrey was never able to close the electoral gap on Nixon before the November election. In the end, Nixon won the election by an extraordinarily narrow margin: 0.7%. He also received just 43% of the popular vote, the smallest margin of presidential victory since Woodrow Wilson.

The Emerging Republican Party

In 1969, Kevin Phillips, a young campaign aide to Nixon, published The Emerging Republican Majority, a book that became the blueprint for Nixon's attempt to remake the Republican Party and American politics. Phillips argued that many Americans, particularly in the South, had become increasingly restless about the civil rights movement and the near-constant protests that rippled through American society in the 1960s. Soon after Nixon entered office, the president set his sights on winning the support of this "New Majority" in the 1972 election. Nixon focused on attracting three groups of voters away from the Democratic Party:

1. Urban ethnic voters, especially Catholics of Italian, Irish, and Polish descent
2. Blue-collar working classes
3. Southern and suburban whites

In order to build this coalition, Nixon and his closest aides developed three strategies:

1. Appeal to the fears of blue collar workers
2. Exploit social issues that mattered to Roman Catholic voters
3. Demonstrate opposition to the forced integration of schools

The Many Faces of Nixon:
Part Two, The Liberal Patriotic Racist

Nixon as Patriotic Moderate appealed to Catholics and urban voters. This side of Nixon supported:

1. Aid to parochial schools
2. Strong anti-abortion stance
3. Opposition to pornography and obscenity

Nixon also came off as the Racist Right-winger, who took the following positions:

1. Opposed forced integration.
2. Called for an "open society" in which integration was not necessary.
3. Called for a moratorium on integrated busing. In March 1972, Congress passed a bill that enforced a moratorium on all government-ordered desegregation.
4. Used political appointments to swing the Supreme Court to the right.

Nixon managed to leave a lasting impact on the United States Supreme Court. The Senate, however, rejected his first two Supreme Court nominees, southerners Clement Haynesworth and G. Harold Carswell. He finally succeeded in appointing his third nominee, Harry Blackmun, who turned out to be more liberal than the President had anticipated, as well as Lewis Powell, Warren E. Burger, who served as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1969 until 1986, and William Rehnquist, who is Chief Justice today.

The Declining Democratic Party

Having formed a new coalition, Nixon looked forward to the 1972 presidential campaign certain that he would win easily. Changes within the governing structure of the Democratic Party helped Nixon's electoral chances. After the debacle of the 1968 Democratic Convention, the party underwent internal reforms that had important repercussions in the 1972 campaign. The traditional power brokers of the Democratic Party, such as big labor, lost representation in the 1972 convention, while women, minorities, and leaders of the peace movement gained greater influence in the party. This transformation angered many of the traditional supporters of the Democrats, including George Meany, the powerful leader of the AFL-CIO.