Deja Vu--All Over Again!

by Keli Wed Jan 02, 2008 8:13 am

Remembering 1968:40 Years Ago Today (Presidential Candidates)

Today, we are on the verge of the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire Primary, but 40 years ago today the campaigns were just beginning.

The Democrat who had dared to challenge incumbent president Lyndon Johnson, Eugene McCarthy, was just opening a campaign office in New Hampshire.

That's where voters would go to the polls in the first primary on March 12, 1968.

There were only a handful of primaries back then.

Only 7 had real meaning and were seriously contested by any prospective candidates.(New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Indiana, Nebraska, Oregon, South Dakota and California)

California's primary was the last one and it wasn't scheduled unti June 4th.

In most states party political machines and insiders held caucuses, conventions, etc. in the background.

There they picked delegations usually loyal to incumbents or "favorite son" state and local politicians.

The objective was to bargain support for big name national candidates in the "smoke filled rooms" of the national conventions.

Among the Republicans there was an incumbency consensus around Richard Nixon, who said you wouldn't have him to kick around anymore after he lost the California governor's election in 1962.

Nixon sat out the 1964 presidential race after losing to JFK in 1960. The official insider media-political line was that 1964 was a disaster with Barry Goldwater's landslide defeat.

But it provided signs of a new conservative movement-majority that would emerge in later years.

One of the signs was the recently elected Governor of California, Ronald Reagan (1966). He had made a good speech for Barry Goldwater in 1964.

The ex-actor was not the first one the GOP ran for statewide office there. George Murphy had left show biz to win a U.S. Senate seat in 1964 (that inspite of traditional top down voting that elected Lyndon Johnson with 60 percent of the vote).

Reagan was testing presidential waters in 1968 by making speeches around the country and would have a "favorite son" delegation to the GOP convention.

Also in the GOP mix, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who ran in 1964 but was politically damaged by outrage over his divorce followed by a quick remarriage to a younger woman.

Rockefeller was the "darling" of liberals in the GOP.

Another name talked about in GOP circles was the Governor of Michigan, George Romney.

Romney had a "moderate" reputation for getting elected in the labor union influenced state of Michigan and he also was a vocal opponent of Barry Goldwater in 1964.

He announced his candidacy in November 1967, but comments made in a TV interview back in August of that year haunted him.

Romney had spoken of a "brainwashing" he had received from generals when he visited Vietnam.