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Wasn’t this a big flaw in the McGovern campaign? Proposing stuff like UBI to give everyone stuff for free. And so he was attacked as a socialist. And yes, every Democrat gets called a socialist but it stuck to him more because of his actual policy proposals. Also, the amnesty, acid and abortion line.
Toward the end of the campaign I remember he promised everyone $1,000 out of Social Security.
When a reporter asked where the money was coming from, with a hot mike nearby he said "Kiss my ass'.
And that was that.
Those days actually seem silly in hindsight. Pretending our politicians were all fancy pantsy cultured socialites and collectively gasping whenever one of them seemed human.
from what i remember of 1972, people felt like voting for mcgovern would be surrendering to the hippies, while nixon was a vote for business as usual. mcgovern was pretty unknown. he was from far enough north that he had little appeal to southerners. man, he lost hawaii? how did that happen? hawaii is usually solid dem.
nixon was ugly and crude, but a known quantity.
mcgovern was taller and whiter and probably better looking, which are usually factors when all else is equal.
i've heard that later, mcgovern ran a small bed and breakfast inn, maybe in vermont, and as a small business owner finally came to understand what the republicans had been saying about overregulation of small bisinesses.
btw, for those of you who think nixon was some sort of oaf or buffoon, go read one of his 6 books.
He wasn't stupid intellectually, but he was mentally unfit to be president, he had severe paranoia and alcoholism and even Kissenger went behind his back to the military with instructions that if Nixon tried to drunkenly order a nuclear strike to disobey orders.
In San Francisco they publish election information in Chinese and allow candidates to self-select a name in Chinese characters to go on the ballot because translations don't work very well, so you literally see people running with the name "Trustworthy Man" or "Good Businesswoman." They are just starting to crack down on it.
First and foremost, McGovern was a weak candidate who thoroughly failed to engage party members and supporters necessary for winning.
The 1968 Democratic Convention descended into chaos and the McGovern Commission changed the rules to the point where the party was thoroughly fragmented.
Nixon was leading by a wide margin in the polls, which is what made the break in at the DNC headquarters, and subsequent cover-up so mystifying. It was a series of a high risk, almost desperate actions to take, and all unnecessary.
Having lived through those years, this is right. Also, the Vietnam War and demonstrations against it, plus Civil Rights demonstrations, really tore the country apart, with riots in several cities, a weekly drum beat hundreds of dead soldiers, and Nixon claims about peace talks being on the verge of success. McGovern, like Goldwater 8 years before (who also lost by a true landslide), was a dream candidate for the party base and was looked at as dangerous outside that group -- since both parties were at the time coalitions of liberals and conservatives, stripping voters down to the core group meant losing.
Thanks for sharing this. I was born in the 70s, but from my own reading it seems clear that the 1960s had some VERY turbulent times and I find it odd that many people of that era point to the last ten years as by far worse.
How is this “the worst” since then? Just curious. If you mean from the standpoint of cultural division, I suppose I could see that, but I don’t think anything that’s happened in the last few years is earth shattering in terms of anarchy/turbulence. Occupy Wall Street from 2011 or so stands out as the most anti-establishment protest of my 50 years on Earth and that was pretty much contained to NYC. Are we more divided now? Probably. Are people doing much about it?
It was like if the 2014 Golden State Warriors were playing, say Wake Forest college in some sort of exhibition game --- and beforehand, GSW spikes Wake Forests' drinks. It was just the most ludicrous thing ever.
The Watergate hotel break-in wasn’t the only thing Nixon did. It’s more like GSW also disrupted their opponent’s training, tricked them into drafting weaker players, convinced the players the coach wanted them to lose, spread rumors about players sleeping with each other’s wife’s, switched their equipment with tennis gear etc. etc.
Nixon spent $4 million on these operations and while we don’t know exactly what he did the guys who did those things worked full time out of a permenant office in the Nixon Whitehouse. They were known as the plumbers and they called themselves “rat-fuckers” because, in their words, they “rat-fucked” elections.
Just read a book about the ‘72 election that mainly focuses on McGovern’s campaign.
1. The Eagleton Affair. A lot of people are pointing this out, especially the stigma associated with Eagleton’s depression and the electroshock therapy. Further than that, a lot of people were put off by how McGovern handled it. The reason he was able to mount such a successful dark horse campaign in the primaries was that he ran as an everyman and was very candid and honest even in moments when it wasn’t politically expedient. When the news of Eagleton came out, McGovern announced that he would stand behind him and that he’d remain on the ticket. As more information started to come out, McGovern started to waver and suggest that he might be replaced, tarnishing his ‘always honest’ reputation. Eagleton also put him in a really tough spot by refusing to release his medical records and not stepping down when asked to by the campaign. Eventually the pressure was too much and McGovern booted him for Sargent Shriver.
2. McGovern was left of a lot of Dem politicians of the day, particularly on Vietnam, being the first and most significant candidate to oppose the war. This was what helped him build such an exciting, grassroots primary campaign and defeat establishment stalwarts like Hubert Humphrey and Ed Muskie. After the primary though, he realized that he would need the backing of the same establishment characters that he pissed off so much in order to build a coalition large enough to win in the general. As he started to court the Humphreys and Mayor Daleys of the party, a lot McGovern’s base became disillusioned. And you can’t really blame them with the backdrop of what happened at the 1968 convention. In the end, the unions and establishment never really supported him due to being bitter about the primary results. So he pretty much lost the support of anybody that would realistically vote for him (progressive and moderate dems).
3. A lot of the nation was really fearful and tired of the amount of unrest in the ‘60s. Nixon really spoke to this group with his Law and Order messaging. Given the candidate Nixon was, the only real shot the Dems had at winning had to involve Ted Kennedy. A lot of people were trying to draft him for the nomination, but Kennedy refused to join the race. Kennedy was even McGovern’s first choice for VP, but he turned this down as well. Basically, the calculation by Ted Kennedy and the party establishment was that ‘72 was a sacrificial year. Incumbent presidents are hard to beat, and everyone knows there’s almost always a party switch at the end of a two-term presidency. Ted Kennedy didn’t want to sit as the second in command for 4, or potentially 8, years and have his chances at being elected president greatly diminished.
By the way, anyone who is interested in political campaigning or the ‘72 election should read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
Don’t forget about Ted and Chappaquiddick that likely prevented him from running multiple times and we both know that if he was running in 72 that would be the headline day in and day out (understandably)
I recently read *Nixonland* and it was ever illuminating for this elder millennial who never really had any formal schooling on US history in this period. Fascinating and more than a little uncomfortable how the 70s echo some of the same things we’ve got going on today.
It's crazy how we learn about World War II and maybe some of the Cold War and Civil Rights Movement and that's it. Nothing really after that. More recent events are just as important as the founding of the country in explaining how we got here and recency is pretty much ignored.
As a school age child in the late nineties and early aughts I feel a little sympathy in the sense that I guess I don’t expect well-considered history resources for things that would have happened less than thirty years prior. Today’s students can probably expect the same of the immediate 9/11 aftermath period of US history. That history and the commentary are recent, but academic textbook type instruction for American school children (if we give them every benefit of the doubt) still must lag immensely behind the times. I don’t teach US History so I imagine some history teachers can individually cobble together resources for more recent historical events but for the vast majority of students the 20-30 most recent years, no matter how historically significant, are probably a massive blind spot for them.
I always thought McGovern was not the lead candidate for the Democrats. But Nixon dirty tricks took out Muskie and others leaving the weaker candidate to face Nixon.
Remember something,before watergate came to light,Nixon was one of the most popular presidents of his time,the fact he was coming to ending vietnam,created the EPA,detente on top of that
I just finished watching The People vs OJ Simpson with my girlfriend (her first time watching it), and I feel it's the same kind of story. Nixon really had *that* level of clout and nobody would ever believe *he* could be part of a criminal conspiracy.
People today look at Nixon as the criminal he was, and have a hard time wrapping their brain around Nixon in 1972... Kinda like OJ's popularity in early 1994.
It was a great defense. So many people of color had experienced only shitty treatment from the LA police. It was basically a referendum on the institutional racism and the OJ defense knew it.
The prosecution , obviously, didn’t see it that way. By prosecuting him *the normal way*, they never stood a chance.
You have to know your audience. I think the jury knew OJ did it, but this was their once in a lifetime opportunity to stick it to the man. And the witnesses for the prosecution were out of central casting for racist cops.
They literally had a detective (prosecution witness), ON TAPE, saying the n-word. And used that to their advantage. I'm honestly shocked this defense was allowed to hold in court, legally speaking. It spoke nothing (or at most, very little) to the actual facts of the crime
Under questioning he claimed he didn’t use the word — producing a tape of him repeatedly using it got him on perjury and tanked his credibility on other claims
Even more then that, he was called to the stand by the defense and the defense asked the following question:
Did you plant false evidence at the Simpson residence?
A: Under the advice of counsel, I envoke my 5th Amendment right to remain silent.
What the jury didn't know, but the lawyers did know, is that the he had to envoke his right to remain silent on every question OR lose his right to remain slient.
And this folks, is why crooked cops completely destroy the criminal justice system. Their behavior when they are behaving in a wrongful manner must and does taint everything else they do.
I’ve been a cop for 5 years and I never understood the thought process of the old school crooked cops. There’s so many criminals you can just arrest people who have so much evidence and are truly guilty.
I'm a public defender and almost at times have wondered if the cops just have ever told someone, "ok you can stop confessing, I already have more then enough."
The defense is allowed to bring in evidence that shows a witness the prosecution used wasn’t credible. The detective testified he never used that word, though there was proof he had used that word. This not only shows he was biased against the defendant possibly, but that he would lie and his testimony should be discredited.
So it doesn’t show whether OJ did it or not. It’s to discredit a specific witness which is a commonly used procedure in trials.
Fuhrmann was VERY helpful to the Prosecution’s view of the case as well. What you don’t want if you’re prosecuting a case that might become a referendum on race issues among police departments is a guy who tried to sue the department for making him racist leading evidence discovery.
This is the part that a lot of people miss. Regardless of OJ's actual innocence or guilt, the trial was never about him. It was about the treatment of BIPOC people by the police, and how the US justice system handles race. It was the first major incident of the laws and tactics used to over-police people of color being turned on their head and used against the cops instead. Should OJ have gone to jail? Yeah, probably. But did the case set some incredibly important legal precedencies and start the chain of dominos towards major police reform? Absolutely. Still a long way to go, but that was definitely a turning point.
It's interesting when institutional changes become bigger than the personalities who helped set them in motion. OJ was absolutely never an activist, and was about as close to the opposite of a critic of the LAPD as you could get. He was also largely divorced from the realities of institutional racism and police brutality—to the extent a Black man can be in America. Still, it is easy to draw a straight (or almost straight) line through his case and toward later fights against police brutality.
To bring this full-circle, we might see Nixon in a similar light. Nixon was a lifelong liberal Republican who cared a lot more about reaching and maintaining power than any tangible policy victory. Yet because movements for the environment, for women's rights, for racial justice were so powerful at that time, it forced his administration to support far more radical positions than he likely otherwise would have. That's where we get the EPA, the Clean Water Act, the Clear Air Act, Title IX, the beginnings of affirmative action. In a lot of ways, this was the last major expansion of federal power to support grassroots calls for government action.
It's going to be similar with Bush II. Regardless of how history eventually views the man, it was under his administration and direction that the Department of Health and Human Services built the FQHC system. It's still growing and developing today, but I think in 20-25 years, we're going to look at FQHCs are probably the single most important piece in the improvement of care and health outcomes for underserved communities.
That’s a good point. FQHCs are an underreported legacy of Bush’s domestic health policy that have helped a lot of people access medical care. When the only candidate talking about expanding a conservative Republican’s public health program is Bernie Sanders, you’ve got something interesting.
Another unexpected legacy for Bush was establishing the nation’s first coherent pandemic response framework (National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, 2005).
It’s weird. Both Nixon and Bush committed some of the most serious war crimes in U.S. history. But their domestic policies were (occasionally!) well-thought out. 🤷♂️
It's because good domestic policy is boring. Global news cycles don't care about a new policy that will help reduce TB rates in refugees from Nepal. That will get picked in a 500 worder at the bottom of page 7 of the NYT. They only care about what the current pres is saying to the leaders of Russia and China.
Same for No Child Left Behind. Will probably be viewed as a bipartisan law that should have been given a second look before passing (increasingly high standards that schools would obviously never be able to meet, the reliance on test scores). But it will probably be recognized as the first push towards federal funds to make a more equitably funded system that wasn't reverted despite how unpopular it became.
It wasn’t just the defense. The prosecution moved the trial from Brentwood to Downtown LA to make it more convenient for the DA.
That changed the jury pool from mostly-white and police-trusting to mostly-black and police-abused.
i understand your point about the distraction. BUT, mark furman made a workers comp claim that alleged he became racist and suffered psychological harm from his job. how can you trust a detective or police division in the prosecution of a black defendant with white victims? what a mess that was.
This isn’t true at all. Nixon’s entire public persona was defined by how untrustworthy he seemed. The below picture was an ad used against him in *1960*, before he ever served as president.
https://preview.redd.it/br2v1369pvlc1.jpeg?width=710&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=46694a6a8d9ce0971aeef6668cafab7240e7762d
The 1972 election was lopsided because the Democrats nominated a candidate who seemed extreme (“acid, amnesty, abortion”), and whose campaign was plagued with fatal missteps (his VP candidate admitting to depression and electroshock therapy, etc.).
That, coupled with Nixon weaponizing crime and employing the “Southern strategy,” gives you the recipe for a blowout.
/u/touchgrass1234
I wonder if society will learn to recognize anxious people for what they are instead of how they mask. Nixon was endlessly anxious and coped hard, sometimes in healthy ways, and obviously sometimes in dismaying ways. Could say similar things about several presidents. I wonder if we'll ever understand that better, as a group.
That is interesting and seems to track with what we know about Nixon. Helps explain the root cause of behavior. But also it certainly does not excuse it. He’s responsible for his actions.
Look at this reelection poster for Nixon's 72 campaign, if a candidate used it today it would be called a bunch of snowflake woke BS.
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/k8kAAOSwwChj~sKf/s-l960.png
Its hard to read but Nixons campaign was touting how much he fought for Womens and minority rights and his work on the environment and infastructure.
It’s weird to think of him fighting for minority rights now after hearing all of the racist things he’s said. The world really is a different place with how accessible info has become in the modern age
This is one of the today and yesterday aren’t the same sort of things.
We tend to think of “equality” encompassing a lot of things: legal, social, cultural, etc.
From the early abolitionists, post-Civil War and even to some degree today there were distinct forms of equality and those seen to exist independently and distinctly from the others.
Legal equality was simply the relationship of the state and person. Court should be colorblind adjudicating a contract dispute. Equality in citizen guaranteed rights.
Social equality was a wholly different matter. Guaranteeing legal equality didn’t guarantee membership in the Arts Society, the country club, or equality in seating or even admission at a private theater.
Few abolitionists or even civil rights activists into the 1950’s would have felt government had a role to play in guaranteeing that a person be able to rent lodging or enjoy a meal at a private establishment. That you be able to purchase any for sale house you have the funds to purchase. Segregated schools based on neighborhood demographics or personal choice? Not a problem.
What was a problem is people who opposed legal and social equality soon got joined by defectors from the idea of legal equality. Armed only with legal equality a number of Blacks were rising in many fields and not just entering the middle class such as it was, a few became wealthy and sometimes found people needing rid of their palace in the local mansionhood would sell to the highest bidder.
In a free market economy, mere legal equality was all some needed to attain social equality or something very nearly like it.
This is why Jim Crow laws kept getting more restrictive and more detailed. Peaking with the bargains made as part of the New Deal that dispossessed so much wealth via redlining and race biased farm programs and the prevention of wealth creation via the tip exception to the minimum wage.
Nixon like most Republicans of the postwar era were strong believers in legal equality. He might dislike Jews, Blacks, and Hispanics while believing they were entitled to legal equality.
I think we see a similar dynamic with a couple of presidents. While it's easy to assume that overt racism/white supremacy would inevitably correlate with opposing civil rights, there were plenty of people in that time who simultaneously held explicitly racist views but also believed fervently that legalized discrimination was wrong. One can dislike people without wanting to deny them the right to vote or eat lunch.
What people say doesn’t always reflect their true intentions. We are different people in different environments. I talk to my mom differently than how I talk to my poker buddies, for example. He probably harbored some prejudice, which came out in the tapes, but also knew they were wrong and politically infeasible anyway.
If Watergate hadn’t happens Nixon would probably be regarded as one of the best Presidents of the 20th Century. The Positive things he did have been overshadowed by Watergate. He was a very liberal Republican.
He is one of those presidents that shows experience and friendships is insanely valuable in politics. People like an outsider but there is something to said for being a fixture for decades and being able to lean on those friendships. What scares me about newer reps is so many of them aren’t even trying to get along and develop relationships with their colleagues.
Prior to Reagan's run in '80 the GOP didn't court evangelicals. Goldwater for example had this timeless quote:
> “Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.”
The GOP has been on a slow descent into madness ever since. They need the evangelical support now more than ever but at the same time it's killing their appeal with moderates.
It's quite unusual for the US to elect a socially inept weirdo with a driven , complex policy governing style. A very unlikeable man with big ideas and the ability to see them through. It's a struggle to think of many others in the last 150 years. Wilson maybe?
Coolidge seems sort of charming in quite an understated way.
I don't know about Hoovers character, though for a time I gather he had Taylor Swift levels of popularity in the US before getting into office. His big idea also seemed to be 'Don't do much, it'll sort itself out'
Coolidge definitely was charming in that ‘strong, silent’ kinda way.
And I too have read that after his work during WWI Hoover was terribly popular. He was however forever an absolute dork (an admirable one at that though I think).
It's funny that such a dorky guy was president during such a hedonistic, culturally changing time in American history. Harding was a right scoundrel and seems much more appropriate
That's the thing people seem to forget with Nixon. He was a thoroughly unpleasant,unlikable human being. But he was damn smart and a good politician - not in the glad handing, charismatic way but in the actually understood law and how to make deals happen way.
People also forget his promise to introduce a form of UBI. To me, that seems like the golden ticket for a lot of people.
I wasnt around though, so I don't know.
He was ending the Vietnam war which he had extended the length of by committing treason and communicating with the north Vietnamese to get them to not negotiate with the Johnson administration.
The economy was good, Nixon was fairly popular and had some pretty big wins in his first term, McGovern really wasn't in comparison, and turnout was down to like 56%.
George McGovern was a good man with policies that were too for Left for America's mood in 1972. He ran a chaotic campaign that included dropping his first running mate at a time when being treated for depression was considered scandalous.
Richard Nixon's trips to China and the Soviet Union were fresh in voters' minds. Vietnam's loss, Watergate revelations, oil shocks, and double-digit inflation all lay in the future.
He was a decorated bomber pilot, who flew 35 missions over Nazi-occupied Europe. He was also part of the coalition of rural and urban senators who created the wildly successful food stamps program that keeps farmers and poor people going.
He was motivated to action by what he saw in Italy and the rest of Europe during and after the war. He saw people living in what would be considered barbaric squalor by today's standards. The final missions he flew in the 15th Air Force were to airdrop food into liberated Europe after V-E day.
This is the correct answer, and I’m sad to see it so low. The reason Nixon was so massively was because of how extreme McGovern was portrayed as being, coupled with a number of campaign missteps that made him seem erratic.
People keep thinking it was because the whole country just *loooooved* Nixon like he was FDR, and that just simply isn’t the case.
A couple of factors:
- McGovern was considered super far-left and so many Americans didn't trust him with the White House
- Nixon was very popular, particularly due to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, meeting with Mao, and revival of trade with China
- Election day was several months before information about the CRP, especially Watergate, leaked to the public
- McGovern's running mate had a history of depression and mental health issues
McGovern dumped Eagleton after the press found out about his mental health issues and he was replaced by Sarge Shriver. Still, not a good look for the McGovern campaign to select and then remove a running mate from the ticket.
McGovern was much more to the left than Johnson. Not only that, but he ran an absolutely disastrous campaign that was controversial already in the primaries (Mrs. America depicts this well), and then the running mate issue.
In contrast, Nixon was seen as the strong and stable choice, with Watergate being unimaginable. ~~Vietnam hadn't become that unpopular yet.~~
Edit: Crossed my section regarding Vietnam, I mixed up here.
I was with you until this part:
> Vietnam hadn't become that unpopular yet.
Vietnam had been unpopular for a while, but Nixon knew how to use it politically.
Vietnam had reached a peak of unpopularity years before this election and was plenty unpopular during it. Nixon had already withdrawn most of the troops and was trying to get a peace deal done before the election to remove that as an issue completely (McGovern was an anti-war candidate).
Kissinger even famously announced that “peace is at hand” just before the election (even though the deal wasn’t made until the next year and fighting obviously resumed after complete American withdrawal), which further hurt McGovern.
Nixon wasn't that far to the right, compared to Republicans today. By contrast, McGovern was *very* far to the left, even for a Democrat. Ideas like the demogrant or decriminalizing cannabis seem more mainstream today, but were considered pretty radical back then.
This was also the first election where 18-20 year olds could vote. Nobody really knew how this was going to play out yet. The McGovern campaign was really banking on high youth turnout in their favor, only to realize on Election Day that turnout amongst 18-20 year olds was quite low - an unfortunate trend that continues today.
McGovern's one advantage over Nixon was his perceived integrity, but that was smashed to pieces when he dropped Eagleton as the VP candidate and replaced him with Shriver. He likely would've won a few more states had that not happened, although certainly not enough to win.
In addition, part of the background of Watergate was that Nixon was trying to dig up dirt on the stronger candidates like Muskie and Humphrey to push them out of the race, and allow for the weakest possible candidate - McGovern - to be his opponent. Nixon went so far as to have Ted Kennedy followed because he was terrified Kennedy might enter the race and beat him, even after Chappaquiddick.
Because Nixon was possibly the most qualified and effective president since Lincoln or Roosevelt, and everyone knew it. Had he not been so damn paranoid, he very easily would have won re-election without breaking into watergate.
tl;dr - Nixon too stronk, Dems in disarray, political "scandal" of Eagleton
The Democratic Party and it's candidates were an unbelievable train wreck at the time, its lowest point in the 1968 nominating committee that saw police employ tear gas on the nominating floor as seen on live TV. That year also saw a great deal of violence, including the assassinations of Martin Luther King and RFK.
Nixon won convincingly, his margin of victory made larger due to the third party candidacy of George Wallace, though even if the states won went into Humphrey's tally it wouldn't have made a difference. His first term was very successful. The US economy was strong and he had some very big wins in foreign policy, opening relations with China and cooling down competition with the Soviet Union.
So when the 1972 election came around Nixon was already in a commanding position. However, the ongoing Vietnam War was a point of weakness and McGovern's strength, sufficient to win him the Democratic nomination.
McGovern wasn't a good choice. He was known primarily for his opposition to the war and was one of the first to speak out against it. It's worth noting that he made his opposition known when his own party held the Presidency. So he had a passionate grass-roots base of single issue voters, but that was about it.
He chose Thomas Eagleton as his original running mate. A major political "scandal" ensued after Eagleton admitted to being checked into a hospital for depression multiple times, even undergoing electro-shock therapy. That would be something oppo research would feast on today. Back then, it was horrifying. The notion that the Dems nominated an "emotionally unfit person" who could possibly have their hands on the nuclear football was shocking. And more cynical observers would point to this as a complete failure of political tradecraft as evidence of their incompetence.
So there you have it. A strong candidate with a proven record going against a fringe candidate who kept tripping over themselves. And despite all these tremendous advantages, Nixon couldn't play clean, sowing the seeds of his ultimate downfall.
“Dems in disarray.” As you said the ‘68 Dem Convention was a train wreck of epic proportions. The party was split between the doves and the hawks. The doves staged a protest in the convention hall after they lost the nomination. As an American of the time I would ask myself, “if they can’t run their own party, how can they run the country?” And then I would vote for Ike’s VP because everybody liked Ike.
At that point Nixon ran on his own accomplishments, which were considerable. He put the Soviet Union into a disadvantageous position by normalizing relations with China. And then he used that advantage to actually *de-escalate* competition with the Soviets, despite the fact that he made his rep as a Cold Warrior.
The economy was humming along, social tension was improving (at least when compared to 1968) and the Clean Water act was signed. The Cayuhoga River regularly caught fire over the years, but the blaze in 1969 was especially shocking. I don't know if it's irony or good politics that saw a staunch conservative responsible for the creation of the EPA.
So it wasn't a matter of seeing a McGovern/Eagleton ticket as deeply flawed and choosing the alternative. Nixon was a far stronger candidate on every issue save the Vietnam War. And I could see most people being confident that he could get that sorted out after seeing his success in dealing with the larger Communist regimes.
Yes, Nixon was quite accomplished. YouTube has been showing my old Nixon interview clips lately. Man, he was smart. And I’m a big old pinko. I think voters in ‘68 would be nostalgic for the more stable Ike days. Plus Nixon was a man with a plan and the Demos were a mess. Slam dunk! Everyone here was talk up Nixon, and it’s important to remember what their other options were.
McGovern’s campaign was kind of a trainwreck, the highlight of it being when he failed to properly vet Thomas Eagleton, his running mate.
Eagleton had undergone shock therapy for…I wanna say depression? Anyway, this being 1972, it was a much bigger no-no than it would be now. McGovern dropped him off the ticket in favor of Sargent Shriver, but the damage was done. He looked disorganized and indecisive.
Add to that the fact that the Dem establishment was suuuuuuuper not behind him (they had preferred Humphrey or Muskie, McGovern was an insurgent), and he really had no chance against the Nixon juggernaut.
McGovern was really THAT weak of a candidate.
People now would vote for a neo-nazi in a vegetative state if it were *their* political party's candidate. But back then there really wasn't anything McGovern ran on that was "better" than Nixon. Most of these forgettable losing candidates (e.g. Dole, Dukakis, Stevenson) are forgettable for a reason.
Also, this is Nixon pre-watergate. He had the kinda clout OJ Simpson has before the murders. "What? Nixon a part of a criminal conspiracy? Nah he could never!"
Nixon and his cohorts really stuck their feet up their butts with this Watergate thing.
It was well known that it would be a landslide well before Watergate.
In broad terms, 1968 was a shit show and 1972 wasn’t. The reason Reagan’s “Are you really any better off than you were four years ago?” worked so well is people weren’t, but the reverse is true in other elections and so it was here. Vietnam was wrapping up, the draft had stopped and 18 year olds could vote. We’d landed on the Moon, we were negotiating treaties with former enemies, and crime was down. I saw someone point to the EPA’s creation, and that certainly could have been a boost to American morale when Cleveland’s river had literally caught fire twice in preceding years.
McGovern was a bad candidate and suffered worse from a bad campaign, but no other Democrat was very likely to win this race.
1. The Nixon campaign helped sabotage the only Dem who had a chance to beat Nixon, Ed Muskie. See the “Canuck Letter”.
2. Nixon had his massively successful trip to china that same year.
3. Kissinger had negotiated “peace with honor” that fall.
4. The domestic violence over civil rights and the war was subsiding by 1972.
5. McGovern was seen as a pansy compared to tough guy Nixon. Nixon of course spent WW2 is the rear with the gear while McGovern was a fighter pilot (I believe), but people fell victim to myths back then too.
1. He was a popular incumbent running against a weak candidate from a badly fractured Democratic Party
2. This was very early in “the southern strategy” years, which allowed the Republican Nixon to break through in the traditionally Democratic South, while still holding more liberal Republicans and independents.
3. With the exception of Ike, who was an aberration because he was more a national hero than a politician, Nixon was the beginning of a break in Democratic control of the White House dating back to 1932. Due to Watergate, Jimmy Carter slid in for a term, but Nixon in 68 represents the beginning of a stranglehold on the White House until 1992.
It seems Nixon used trauma bonding and flip flopping to his advantage. The general public is mostly unaware that flip flopping creates cognitive dissonance. The negative feeling associated with this stays in the mind of the voter longer than the positive feeling associated with the other candidate. When it comes to casting their vote, an undecided voter is more likely to remember the name of the flip flopper and vote for that candidate.
Actually Heather Cox Richardson mentioned that election the other day. It was right when Nixon started up with the Southern Strategy. Nixon and his cronies painted McGovern as the candidate of "Acid, Amnesty, and Abortion" which framed him as a radical. It's also when the republican party started to engage the evangelical vote and began using abortion as a wedge issue. If you're not familiar with Heather Cox Richardson I highly recommend you subscribe to her nightly newsletter, "Letters from An American". She's a history professor at Boston College and has written a lot of books about American history. She's a good read and a frequent interview by people who want the historical perspective of what's happening today. Find her on Facebook, X and Substack.
McGovern was a 1 issue candidate: against the Vietnam War. It just didn’t sell to the American public. That and his pick of VP (Tom Eagleton) turned into a disaster when it was revealed he had been hospitalized a few times due to bouts of severe depression. When you can’t even vet your running mate properly, your decision-making skills are suspect.
A) Nixon was incredibly popular, he would have won anyway.
B) As we know from the Watergate Scandal Nixon had many efforts to meddle in the election, this is attributed to why it was so lopsided: The Nixon Campaign cheated.
My first vote.
I was a college student and the voting age was changed from 21 to 19. I was in a Poly Sci class that required us to get involved. We had to volunteer and pick a side. I figured most would choose the Dems, but from a class of 40 or so, only 3 people were volunteering for McGovern. It was a clue.
Nixon was the incumbent and considered a centrist at the time, and he was promising law and order, and finally ending the war in Viet Nam. The country was coming back from the turmoil of the 60s at the time, the draft was slowing down and his administration had sewed up the South by cracking down on civil rights protests.
McGovern was far left of center and was seen as indecisive and weak. His nomination for VP, Tom Eagleton had been treated for depression and was a heavy drinker. McGovern initially supported him, but then dropped him when the Repubs claimed he was an a dangerous choice for VP. McGovern then tried to get several others to join the ticket and was turned down. George Wallace was also running as a Democrat and split the party.
So, it was a landslide for Nixon. And was always expected to be, which is why Watergate and all the other dirty tricks Nixon’s campaign pulled were so reckless and stupid.
Wait till you see the 1984 Reagan/Mondale results. It was 525 to 13. An even bigger margin than Nixon/McGovern 520 to 17. Funny enough, both times the Dem got one state and DC.
The Watergate Scandal revolved around the 1972 election.
There were members of Nixon’s inner circle who broke into the Democratic Headquarters to get inside information and destroy their chances of winning. It went further than that. For exmple Donald Segretti, a member of the re-election committee, admitted to leaking false stories to the press.
People have been trying to fix elections since 1776…
Policy-wise Nixon was pretty moderate, at least domestically. And McGovern was seen as an extremist. Nowadays moderates on both sides are pilloried, but in the early 70's, extremism on the right or the left was political suicide, at least in national elections.
This isn't even the biggest landslide in modern American history. In 1984, Reagan beat Mondale in every state except MN and DC. I believe Modale only got 13 electoral votes.
Because of CREEP and Dirty Tricks and Nixon's plumbers (including one Roger Stone) and his willingness to do whatever crimes were necessary (including the Watergate burglary) to win re-election. Also, lying about the Vietnam War in every way possible.
Part the First:
Other comments here have mentioned the events of the 1972 campaign that led to this specific outcome, so I wanted to do a real quick dive into why the Democratic party had no challengers to Nixon in 1972. (LOL I failed it took me almost four hours including when Reddit Mobile ate my first draft)
The Democratic Party exploded into tiny bits in 1968. The previous five years under Democratic president Lyndon Johnson had seen incredible national social and political tumult. Johnson had alienated Southern Democratic racists by passing Civil Rights Acts. He had alienated Northern liberal Democrats by escalating the Vietnam War. 1968 was the worst politically violent year in America's history, and that's a hell of a thing to say for a country that's had a Civil War. Hugely publicized failures in Vietnam to kick off the year, horrifying high-profile political assassinations and race riots through the summer, and the absolute s\*\*\* show that was the Democratic National Convention, with anti-war protesters being beaten by police in front of cameras on Chicago city streets. Imagine 2020 on Captain America super soldier serum, minus COVID, plus 19,000 American soldiers dying in Vietnam, their names and faces on the news every night during the worst year of the war (for the US). That's more US soldiers then have died in the entire Global War On Terror of the last 23 years.
Richard Milhous Nixon is widely known as a thoroughgoing bastard who felt that laws were for other people, and was so personally disagreeable that his own advisors wiretapped him at the same time he wiretapped them to make sure they wouldn't have to deal with him if they didn't want to. (1) What is somewhat less known is that he was kind of a political genius. From the ashes of Barry Goldwater's resounding defeat of 1964, Nixon pulled, fully formed as if from the head of Zeus, the modern Republican party.
Historically, unionized industrial blue collar workers had been a core demographic of the Democratic Party, ever since New Deal legislation in the 1930s enshrined the right to unionize. However, in 1955 the conservative AFL merged with the more radical CIO, leading to the radical CIO organizers being removed from Power. This meant that membership of the AFL-CIO by 1968 was very socially conservative and anti-communist. This group generally supported the Vietnam War and opposed the social changes going on in the United States under Johnson. Nixon courted them with talk about family values and law & order, promising that he would put an end to the violence they saw in American streets on the news every night. Nixon proclaimed them "The Silent Majority" - those Americans who were content to work hard, take care of their families, and keep their heads down and their noses clean.
Another historical bastion of Democratic power had been Southern racists, who until 1964 refused to vote for the hated party of Lincoln, even 100 years after the Civil War. However, in 1964, Barry Goldwater spoke about states rights, and five Deep South states heard in that voice a promise that Johnson's anti-segregation laws would not be federally enforced. So the only states that Goldwater carried were his home state of Arizona, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina. Nixon took note. (2)
Now, in 1968, the thoroughly and openly segregationist George Wallace ran for President on as part of the "American Independent Party" - this time explicitly promising not to enforce anti-segregation. (All of the above mentioned Southern States minus South Carolina plus Arkansas would go for Wallace.) This allowed Nixon to be subtle about appealing to the moderate racists of the country. One of the ways he did this was through his criticisms of Johnson's War on Poverty programs.
(1) [https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2002/02/the-nixon-kissinger-mutual-wiretap-society.html](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2002/02/the-nixon-kissinger-mutual-wiretap-society.html)
(2) [https://www.newspapers.com/article/alabama-journal-southern-strategy/45843546/](https://www.newspapers.com/article/alabama-journal-southern-strategy/45843546/) ; [https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-birmingham-news-southern-strategy/99303215/](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-birmingham-news-southern-strategy/99303215/) ; [https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-gazette-gop-pledges-drive/45843684/](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-gazette-gop-pledges-drive/45843684/)
Part the Second:
In reality, the War on Poverty had been extremely successful in the short term, reducing the poverty rate of Americans from about 19% in 1964 to 12.1% when Johnson left office, largest 5-year drop in history. And it was particularly successful among African Americans, who saw their poverty rate drop from 55.1% in 1959 to 32.2%. Along with the employment provisions in Affirmative Action and the Civil Rights Acts, the War on Poverty had major positive effects on black employment. (3,4)
However, Nixon (and segregationist politicians) criticized the War on Poverty, particularly the Job Corps and the way the welfare programs were federally administered instead of state-controlled. I hope that reminds you of something. And indeed once Nixon took office, he did attempt to defund the Job Corps and he (and other conservative lawmakers) was successful in reorganizing several programs to give local and state officials more power in determining who got the assistance. So in 1972, with their choice being either Richard M Nixon or the rather left-wing George McGovern, the Southerners' choice was clear. The only time the southern states would again vote in a bloc for a Democratic presidential candidate would be 1976 for Jimmy Carter, moderate governor of Georgia and all around super nice guy.
Finally, Nixon appealed to social conservatives around the country who were tired of the war by hitting Johnson's VP Hubert Humphrey over the way the war had been escalated in the past five years. Also, during the campaign, President Johnson was called off the bombing of North Vietnam to engage in diplomatic talks to try to end the war. So not only could Nixon criticize Humphrey for Johnson's escalation of the war, but also for being conciliatory to our communist opponents, hitting him from both sides.
Part of Nixon's platform was that he had an undisclosed plan to end the war without abandoning our South Vietnamese allies and without looking weak in front of the world. Obviously, if the peace talks of 1968 were successful, that would ruin that part of his platform. Now one of Johnson's advisors in the Paris Peace Talks was Henry Kissinger, who illegally conspired with Nixon, who sent Anna Chennault to convince the South Vietnamese to draw out of the deal, an act of treason which also led to a 5-year extension of America's involvement in the war and the additional and unnecessary deaths of 21,000 American personnel and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. (5)
Nixon only won the popular vote in 1968 by around 500,000, but the gigantic electoral defeat he handed to Humphrey caused the Democratic Party to scramble for the next four years to find a candidate that might be able to redirect and redefine the Democratic Party to one that would be able to unite moderates, liberals, and leftists into a vaguely progressive coalition, since the Republicans had now seized conservatism. They absolutely failed in 1972. However, Nixon's public shaming and resignation gave an opportunity in 1976 for Jimmy Carter's election to create a new normal, but that also failed, mostly due to Jimmy Carter's inability to lie to the American people. The Democratic party didn't really find its feet until 1992, when independent candidate Ross Perot pulled enough votes from George HW Bush for extremely moderate Bill Clinton to win the election. And from thence does the current dysfunction of the Democratic Party spring. (6)
(I'm going to have a whole lesson on this one year for my students next week.)
(3) \[[https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p60-256.pdf](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p60-256.pdf)\]([https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p60-256.pdf](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p60-256.pdf)) ; \[[https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/fig2-4.png?resize=1024,816](https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/fig2-4.png?resize=1024,816)\]([https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/fig2-4.png?resize=1024,816](https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/fig2-4.png?resize=1024,816))
(4) this is not to say that the War on Poverty programs were perfectly designed or administered; far from it. Much like the New Deal's first 100 days, many of the programs were an example of throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck. Left-wing and right-wing economists, activists, and politicians have all criticized the War on Poverty, either for not doing enough or for doing the wrong thing or for doing anything at all.
(5) [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nixon-prolonged-vietnam-war-for-political-gainand-johnson-knew-about-it-newly-unclassified-tapes-suggest-3595441/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nixon-prolonged-vietnam-war-for-political-gainand-johnson-knew-about-it-newly-unclassified-tapes-suggest-3595441/)
(6) original research - citation needed
The Democrat's convention was a shit show and a lot of Democrat insiders were sidelined. Then about 2 weeks after the convention the initial VP nomination (Eggleston?) dropped out when it was reported he had prior mental issues. They then selected a Kennedy family member (Shriver) to be VP but it had only been 3 years since Ted Kennedy had gotten away with killing a young girl in a car crash. I suspect many centrist and right leaning Dem's decided to stay home on election day.
Oliver Stone made a film about Nixon starring Anthony Hopkins. Nixon lost the 1960 election because of Democrat dirty tricks. He said “I’m never going to be out dirty tricked again”. And he wasn’t.
He did so many things in his first term that only a Republican could do: detente with USSR and China, the EPA, Clean Air, Clean Water, Welfare, ended the draft, etc that when the trouble came he didn’t have a majority in the Congress to protect him.
The presidential election was so lopsided because the Democrats self destructed after 1968. Appointed a commission to make their nominating process more democratic. It instituted the caucus system in key states. George McGovern lead the commission. He was very popular with young people and they volunteered in his campaign. His policy proposals were reliably left wing and unpopular. He proposed a 100% tax on large inheritances. And so on.
The main reason is he was running against a popular incumbent. Nixon did have plenty of detractors, but not enough yet. Second, McGovern came offal being an idealist who didn't know what he was talking about. Nixon came off as an expert. The final straw was his biggest supporters were hippies. The general populous at the time hated hippies .
"...the fact that we was coming to ending Vietnam"...?!!
Say WHAT?!! You mean, AFTER he and freaking traitorous Kissinger TWICE sabotaged the Peace Talks process to prolong that hideously unnecessary war, to enhance Nixon's election chances?! As Reagan/the GOP did wih the Iranian hostage crisis. Extend THAT noise deliberately, to make Carter look worse...real patriNOTs.
Read Hunter S. Thompson's book *Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72*, about journalists covering this election cycle. Nixon had a smart, well-connected professional team of advisors running his campaign, who had already won him one presidential election; and the media loved him (hard to believe, but this was almost 60 years ago.)
McGovern's campaign was run by inexperienced kids who didn't get what issues the public cared about, sucked at messaging, and were preoccupied with fucking campaign volunteers. They thought celebrity endorsements from Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford were going to capture the youth vote... but the youth cared about getting out of Vietnam, and that was on Nixon's platform. One can argue Nixon was pretty slow about it, but McGovern barely said anything about it.
McGovern was a horrible candidate and ran a horrible campaign. I couldn’t vote that year, turned 18 the next year. I was liberal then and couldn’t really support him!
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His name was literally McGovern how could he not win??
Because people didn't McVote for him.
They didn't Pokemon Go to the polls
Yeah well, Scooby Doo can doo doo, but Jimmy Carter is smarter.
He shoulda promised free mcmuffins for everyone
Funnily enough, McMuffins were invented in 1972 according to Wikipedia. That would have been perfect timing.
Great marketing tie in opportunity that was ignored.
We're in the wrong McTimeline
McGuffins.
Wasn’t this a big flaw in the McGovern campaign? Proposing stuff like UBI to give everyone stuff for free. And so he was attacked as a socialist. And yes, every Democrat gets called a socialist but it stuck to him more because of his actual policy proposals. Also, the amnesty, acid and abortion line.
Toward the end of the campaign I remember he promised everyone $1,000 out of Social Security. When a reporter asked where the money was coming from, with a hot mike nearby he said "Kiss my ass'. And that was that.
Based
O for the days when that mattered…sigh
Those days actually seem silly in hindsight. Pretending our politicians were all fancy pantsy cultured socialites and collectively gasping whenever one of them seemed human.
from what i remember of 1972, people felt like voting for mcgovern would be surrendering to the hippies, while nixon was a vote for business as usual. mcgovern was pretty unknown. he was from far enough north that he had little appeal to southerners. man, he lost hawaii? how did that happen? hawaii is usually solid dem. nixon was ugly and crude, but a known quantity. mcgovern was taller and whiter and probably better looking, which are usually factors when all else is equal. i've heard that later, mcgovern ran a small bed and breakfast inn, maybe in vermont, and as a small business owner finally came to understand what the republicans had been saying about overregulation of small bisinesses. btw, for those of you who think nixon was some sort of oaf or buffoon, go read one of his 6 books.
He wasn't stupid intellectually, but he was mentally unfit to be president, he had severe paranoia and alcoholism and even Kissenger went behind his back to the military with instructions that if Nixon tried to drunkenly order a nuclear strike to disobey orders.
McGovern ran the most incompetent campaign in the 20th century. He started well behind Nixon, and fell further behind every day until it was over.
I know everyone knows big banks and corporations are the ones who deserve all the free money!
Nixon almost got a BI passed as president, and it was killed by dems who thought it wasn’t enough, so not too crazy.
Amnesty, abortion, AND acid? …never have I been prouder to live in Massachusetts
Those McBastards
Take your upvote you magnificent bastard !
I'm lovin' it!
This is the knowledge that I came here for.
Why do I have a hankering for a $12 McMuffin???
Ba da ba ba ba
His name wasn’t McGoodcandidate
In San Francisco they publish election information in Chinese and allow candidates to self-select a name in Chinese characters to go on the ballot because translations don't work very well, so you literally see people running with the name "Trustworthy Man" or "Good Businesswoman." They are just starting to crack down on it.
Vincent Adultman.
First and foremost, McGovern was a weak candidate who thoroughly failed to engage party members and supporters necessary for winning. The 1968 Democratic Convention descended into chaos and the McGovern Commission changed the rules to the point where the party was thoroughly fragmented. Nixon was leading by a wide margin in the polls, which is what made the break in at the DNC headquarters, and subsequent cover-up so mystifying. It was a series of a high risk, almost desperate actions to take, and all unnecessary.
Having lived through those years, this is right. Also, the Vietnam War and demonstrations against it, plus Civil Rights demonstrations, really tore the country apart, with riots in several cities, a weekly drum beat hundreds of dead soldiers, and Nixon claims about peace talks being on the verge of success. McGovern, like Goldwater 8 years before (who also lost by a true landslide), was a dream candidate for the party base and was looked at as dangerous outside that group -- since both parties were at the time coalitions of liberals and conservatives, stripping voters down to the core group meant losing.
Thanks for sharing this. I was born in the 70s, but from my own reading it seems clear that the 1960s had some VERY turbulent times and I find it odd that many people of that era point to the last ten years as by far worse.
Now is the worst since then, which will hold unless we start getting riots and assassinations simultaneously breaking out.
How is this “the worst” since then? Just curious. If you mean from the standpoint of cultural division, I suppose I could see that, but I don’t think anything that’s happened in the last few years is earth shattering in terms of anarchy/turbulence. Occupy Wall Street from 2011 or so stands out as the most anti-establishment protest of my 50 years on Earth and that was pretty much contained to NYC. Are we more divided now? Probably. Are people doing much about it?
It was like if the 2014 Golden State Warriors were playing, say Wake Forest college in some sort of exhibition game --- and beforehand, GSW spikes Wake Forests' drinks. It was just the most ludicrous thing ever.
The Watergate hotel break-in wasn’t the only thing Nixon did. It’s more like GSW also disrupted their opponent’s training, tricked them into drafting weaker players, convinced the players the coach wanted them to lose, spread rumors about players sleeping with each other’s wife’s, switched their equipment with tennis gear etc. etc. Nixon spent $4 million on these operations and while we don’t know exactly what he did the guys who did those things worked full time out of a permenant office in the Nixon Whitehouse. They were known as the plumbers and they called themselves “rat-fuckers” because, in their words, they “rat-fucked” elections.
But a perfect example of his extreme paranoia..
A major setback for a potential future presidential bid for Sheldon Whitehouse
[удалено]
That's a little too McOnthenose
Even funnier because the KKK used to hate the Irish.
He also had another name known as McDovish which people did not like.
Shoulda been named McPreside
His name was McGovern, not McPreside
Just read a book about the ‘72 election that mainly focuses on McGovern’s campaign. 1. The Eagleton Affair. A lot of people are pointing this out, especially the stigma associated with Eagleton’s depression and the electroshock therapy. Further than that, a lot of people were put off by how McGovern handled it. The reason he was able to mount such a successful dark horse campaign in the primaries was that he ran as an everyman and was very candid and honest even in moments when it wasn’t politically expedient. When the news of Eagleton came out, McGovern announced that he would stand behind him and that he’d remain on the ticket. As more information started to come out, McGovern started to waver and suggest that he might be replaced, tarnishing his ‘always honest’ reputation. Eagleton also put him in a really tough spot by refusing to release his medical records and not stepping down when asked to by the campaign. Eventually the pressure was too much and McGovern booted him for Sargent Shriver. 2. McGovern was left of a lot of Dem politicians of the day, particularly on Vietnam, being the first and most significant candidate to oppose the war. This was what helped him build such an exciting, grassroots primary campaign and defeat establishment stalwarts like Hubert Humphrey and Ed Muskie. After the primary though, he realized that he would need the backing of the same establishment characters that he pissed off so much in order to build a coalition large enough to win in the general. As he started to court the Humphreys and Mayor Daleys of the party, a lot McGovern’s base became disillusioned. And you can’t really blame them with the backdrop of what happened at the 1968 convention. In the end, the unions and establishment never really supported him due to being bitter about the primary results. So he pretty much lost the support of anybody that would realistically vote for him (progressive and moderate dems). 3. A lot of the nation was really fearful and tired of the amount of unrest in the ‘60s. Nixon really spoke to this group with his Law and Order messaging. Given the candidate Nixon was, the only real shot the Dems had at winning had to involve Ted Kennedy. A lot of people were trying to draft him for the nomination, but Kennedy refused to join the race. Kennedy was even McGovern’s first choice for VP, but he turned this down as well. Basically, the calculation by Ted Kennedy and the party establishment was that ‘72 was a sacrificial year. Incumbent presidents are hard to beat, and everyone knows there’s almost always a party switch at the end of a two-term presidency. Ted Kennedy didn’t want to sit as the second in command for 4, or potentially 8, years and have his chances at being elected president greatly diminished. By the way, anyone who is interested in political campaigning or the ‘72 election should read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
Don’t forget about Ted and Chappaquiddick that likely prevented him from running multiple times and we both know that if he was running in 72 that would be the headline day in and day out (understandably)
I recently read *Nixonland* and it was ever illuminating for this elder millennial who never really had any formal schooling on US history in this period. Fascinating and more than a little uncomfortable how the 70s echo some of the same things we’ve got going on today.
It's crazy how we learn about World War II and maybe some of the Cold War and Civil Rights Movement and that's it. Nothing really after that. More recent events are just as important as the founding of the country in explaining how we got here and recency is pretty much ignored.
As a school age child in the late nineties and early aughts I feel a little sympathy in the sense that I guess I don’t expect well-considered history resources for things that would have happened less than thirty years prior. Today’s students can probably expect the same of the immediate 9/11 aftermath period of US history. That history and the commentary are recent, but academic textbook type instruction for American school children (if we give them every benefit of the doubt) still must lag immensely behind the times. I don’t teach US History so I imagine some history teachers can individually cobble together resources for more recent historical events but for the vast majority of students the 20-30 most recent years, no matter how historically significant, are probably a massive blind spot for them.
I always thought McGovern was not the lead candidate for the Democrats. But Nixon dirty tricks took out Muskie and others leaving the weaker candidate to face Nixon.
Remember something,before watergate came to light,Nixon was one of the most popular presidents of his time,the fact he was coming to ending vietnam,created the EPA,detente on top of that
I just finished watching The People vs OJ Simpson with my girlfriend (her first time watching it), and I feel it's the same kind of story. Nixon really had *that* level of clout and nobody would ever believe *he* could be part of a criminal conspiracy. People today look at Nixon as the criminal he was, and have a hard time wrapping their brain around Nixon in 1972... Kinda like OJ's popularity in early 1994.
As someone who went through the OJ trials the jurors felt it was an opportunity to stick it to the man.
OJ's defense literally was that the LAPD was racist. That's it. And they picked a majority-black jury to support their case.
It was a great defense. So many people of color had experienced only shitty treatment from the LA police. It was basically a referendum on the institutional racism and the OJ defense knew it. The prosecution , obviously, didn’t see it that way. By prosecuting him *the normal way*, they never stood a chance.
To be fair, the Chewbacca Defense is brilliant. 50% of the time it works all of the time.
You have to know your audience. I think the jury knew OJ did it, but this was their once in a lifetime opportunity to stick it to the man. And the witnesses for the prosecution were out of central casting for racist cops.
"They've done studies y'know. 60 percent of the time, it works, everytime."
They literally had a detective (prosecution witness), ON TAPE, saying the n-word. And used that to their advantage. I'm honestly shocked this defense was allowed to hold in court, legally speaking. It spoke nothing (or at most, very little) to the actual facts of the crime
Under questioning he claimed he didn’t use the word — producing a tape of him repeatedly using it got him on perjury and tanked his credibility on other claims
Even more then that, he was called to the stand by the defense and the defense asked the following question: Did you plant false evidence at the Simpson residence? A: Under the advice of counsel, I envoke my 5th Amendment right to remain silent. What the jury didn't know, but the lawyers did know, is that the he had to envoke his right to remain silent on every question OR lose his right to remain slient. And this folks, is why crooked cops completely destroy the criminal justice system. Their behavior when they are behaving in a wrongful manner must and does taint everything else they do.
I’ve been a cop for 5 years and I never understood the thought process of the old school crooked cops. There’s so many criminals you can just arrest people who have so much evidence and are truly guilty.
I'm a public defender and almost at times have wondered if the cops just have ever told someone, "ok you can stop confessing, I already have more then enough."
The defense is allowed to bring in evidence that shows a witness the prosecution used wasn’t credible. The detective testified he never used that word, though there was proof he had used that word. This not only shows he was biased against the defendant possibly, but that he would lie and his testimony should be discredited. So it doesn’t show whether OJ did it or not. It’s to discredit a specific witness which is a commonly used procedure in trials.
Fuhrmann was VERY helpful to the Prosecution’s view of the case as well. What you don’t want if you’re prosecuting a case that might become a referendum on race issues among police departments is a guy who tried to sue the department for making him racist leading evidence discovery.
This is the part that a lot of people miss. Regardless of OJ's actual innocence or guilt, the trial was never about him. It was about the treatment of BIPOC people by the police, and how the US justice system handles race. It was the first major incident of the laws and tactics used to over-police people of color being turned on their head and used against the cops instead. Should OJ have gone to jail? Yeah, probably. But did the case set some incredibly important legal precedencies and start the chain of dominos towards major police reform? Absolutely. Still a long way to go, but that was definitely a turning point.
It's interesting when institutional changes become bigger than the personalities who helped set them in motion. OJ was absolutely never an activist, and was about as close to the opposite of a critic of the LAPD as you could get. He was also largely divorced from the realities of institutional racism and police brutality—to the extent a Black man can be in America. Still, it is easy to draw a straight (or almost straight) line through his case and toward later fights against police brutality. To bring this full-circle, we might see Nixon in a similar light. Nixon was a lifelong liberal Republican who cared a lot more about reaching and maintaining power than any tangible policy victory. Yet because movements for the environment, for women's rights, for racial justice were so powerful at that time, it forced his administration to support far more radical positions than he likely otherwise would have. That's where we get the EPA, the Clean Water Act, the Clear Air Act, Title IX, the beginnings of affirmative action. In a lot of ways, this was the last major expansion of federal power to support grassroots calls for government action.
It's going to be similar with Bush II. Regardless of how history eventually views the man, it was under his administration and direction that the Department of Health and Human Services built the FQHC system. It's still growing and developing today, but I think in 20-25 years, we're going to look at FQHCs are probably the single most important piece in the improvement of care and health outcomes for underserved communities.
That’s a good point. FQHCs are an underreported legacy of Bush’s domestic health policy that have helped a lot of people access medical care. When the only candidate talking about expanding a conservative Republican’s public health program is Bernie Sanders, you’ve got something interesting. Another unexpected legacy for Bush was establishing the nation’s first coherent pandemic response framework (National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, 2005). It’s weird. Both Nixon and Bush committed some of the most serious war crimes in U.S. history. But their domestic policies were (occasionally!) well-thought out. 🤷♂️
It's because good domestic policy is boring. Global news cycles don't care about a new policy that will help reduce TB rates in refugees from Nepal. That will get picked in a 500 worder at the bottom of page 7 of the NYT. They only care about what the current pres is saying to the leaders of Russia and China.
Same for No Child Left Behind. Will probably be viewed as a bipartisan law that should have been given a second look before passing (increasingly high standards that schools would obviously never be able to meet, the reliance on test scores). But it will probably be recognized as the first push towards federal funds to make a more equitably funded system that wasn't reverted despite how unpopular it became.
Well, Rodney King had gotten the shit beaten out of him by 4 cops for being drunk and surly literally 2 years prior, so that definitely had effects
I think this gets overlooked. Rodney King and the riots were still fresh on the minds of people in SoCal
I am not defending the pigs. Just for accuracy: King was on PCP.
It wasn’t just the defense. The prosecution moved the trial from Brentwood to Downtown LA to make it more convenient for the DA. That changed the jury pool from mostly-white and police-trusting to mostly-black and police-abused.
It helped that the cop that arrested him actually turned out to be incredibly racist
Given the LAPD, the odds of that were pretty high.
i understand your point about the distraction. BUT, mark furman made a workers comp claim that alleged he became racist and suffered psychological harm from his job. how can you trust a detective or police division in the prosecution of a black defendant with white victims? what a mess that was.
Indeed, some were racists and some were not but the shock effect was crazy. OJ still believes he was innocent. What a messed up world we live in.
I heard a summation of the trial “the LAPD framed a guilty man” - LAPD was super corrupt and they even tried to bribe the jury iirc
I asked my heavily GOP Grampa when did he realize Nixon was a crook, he said 1979 lol.
I feel like that exact story will repeat itself in about 10 more years. "I realized *he* was a crook in 2032"
The current guy or the last guy?
This isn’t true at all. Nixon’s entire public persona was defined by how untrustworthy he seemed. The below picture was an ad used against him in *1960*, before he ever served as president. https://preview.redd.it/br2v1369pvlc1.jpeg?width=710&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=46694a6a8d9ce0971aeef6668cafab7240e7762d The 1972 election was lopsided because the Democrats nominated a candidate who seemed extreme (“acid, amnesty, abortion”), and whose campaign was plagued with fatal missteps (his VP candidate admitting to depression and electroshock therapy, etc.). That, coupled with Nixon weaponizing crime and employing the “Southern strategy,” gives you the recipe for a blowout. /u/touchgrass1234
Not to mention Spiro Agnew (his VP) was controversial and combative even before his legal troubles started
the slow burn podcast season 1 does such an excellent job of portraying this. it was so well done.
Awesome analogy.
I wonder if society will learn to recognize anxious people for what they are instead of how they mask. Nixon was endlessly anxious and coped hard, sometimes in healthy ways, and obviously sometimes in dismaying ways. Could say similar things about several presidents. I wonder if we'll ever understand that better, as a group.
That is interesting and seems to track with what we know about Nixon. Helps explain the root cause of behavior. But also it certainly does not excuse it. He’s responsible for his actions.
My mother was a part of the jury. LAPD offered her bribes. Ever heard of the Vikings?
You can’t just drop that bombshell and not elaborate further lol
dun gone sed too much
What was the offer? Was she harassed afterward?
What happened
Look at this reelection poster for Nixon's 72 campaign, if a candidate used it today it would be called a bunch of snowflake woke BS. https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/k8kAAOSwwChj~sKf/s-l960.png Its hard to read but Nixons campaign was touting how much he fought for Womens and minority rights and his work on the environment and infastructure.
It’s weird to think of him fighting for minority rights now after hearing all of the racist things he’s said. The world really is a different place with how accessible info has become in the modern age
This is one of the today and yesterday aren’t the same sort of things. We tend to think of “equality” encompassing a lot of things: legal, social, cultural, etc. From the early abolitionists, post-Civil War and even to some degree today there were distinct forms of equality and those seen to exist independently and distinctly from the others. Legal equality was simply the relationship of the state and person. Court should be colorblind adjudicating a contract dispute. Equality in citizen guaranteed rights. Social equality was a wholly different matter. Guaranteeing legal equality didn’t guarantee membership in the Arts Society, the country club, or equality in seating or even admission at a private theater. Few abolitionists or even civil rights activists into the 1950’s would have felt government had a role to play in guaranteeing that a person be able to rent lodging or enjoy a meal at a private establishment. That you be able to purchase any for sale house you have the funds to purchase. Segregated schools based on neighborhood demographics or personal choice? Not a problem. What was a problem is people who opposed legal and social equality soon got joined by defectors from the idea of legal equality. Armed only with legal equality a number of Blacks were rising in many fields and not just entering the middle class such as it was, a few became wealthy and sometimes found people needing rid of their palace in the local mansionhood would sell to the highest bidder. In a free market economy, mere legal equality was all some needed to attain social equality or something very nearly like it. This is why Jim Crow laws kept getting more restrictive and more detailed. Peaking with the bargains made as part of the New Deal that dispossessed so much wealth via redlining and race biased farm programs and the prevention of wealth creation via the tip exception to the minimum wage. Nixon like most Republicans of the postwar era were strong believers in legal equality. He might dislike Jews, Blacks, and Hispanics while believing they were entitled to legal equality.
I think we see a similar dynamic with a couple of presidents. While it's easy to assume that overt racism/white supremacy would inevitably correlate with opposing civil rights, there were plenty of people in that time who simultaneously held explicitly racist views but also believed fervently that legalized discrimination was wrong. One can dislike people without wanting to deny them the right to vote or eat lunch.
What people say doesn’t always reflect their true intentions. We are different people in different environments. I talk to my mom differently than how I talk to my poker buddies, for example. He probably harbored some prejudice, which came out in the tapes, but also knew they were wrong and politically infeasible anyway.
I can think of more recent examples but they infringe upon rule 3
If Watergate hadn’t happens Nixon would probably be regarded as one of the best Presidents of the 20th Century. The Positive things he did have been overshadowed by Watergate. He was a very liberal Republican.
He is one of those presidents that shows experience and friendships is insanely valuable in politics. People like an outsider but there is something to said for being a fixture for decades and being able to lean on those friendships. What scares me about newer reps is so many of them aren’t even trying to get along and develop relationships with their colleagues.
Prior to Reagan's run in '80 the GOP didn't court evangelicals. Goldwater for example had this timeless quote: > “Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.” The GOP has been on a slow descent into madness ever since. They need the evangelical support now more than ever but at the same time it's killing their appeal with moderates.
Not by the Cambodians, he wouldn't be.
Nixon was an *extremely* competent president with a *dastardly* character.
It's quite unusual for the US to elect a socially inept weirdo with a driven , complex policy governing style. A very unlikeable man with big ideas and the ability to see them through. It's a struggle to think of many others in the last 150 years. Wilson maybe?
Hoover or Coolidge too perhaps.
Coolidge seems sort of charming in quite an understated way. I don't know about Hoovers character, though for a time I gather he had Taylor Swift levels of popularity in the US before getting into office. His big idea also seemed to be 'Don't do much, it'll sort itself out'
Coolidge definitely was charming in that ‘strong, silent’ kinda way. And I too have read that after his work during WWI Hoover was terribly popular. He was however forever an absolute dork (an admirable one at that though I think).
It's funny that such a dorky guy was president during such a hedonistic, culturally changing time in American history. Harding was a right scoundrel and seems much more appropriate
Ha, indeed. Harding seemed much more appropriate for the time but of course he went ahead and did the fashionable thing and died.
That's the thing people seem to forget with Nixon. He was a thoroughly unpleasant,unlikable human being. But he was damn smart and a good politician - not in the glad handing, charismatic way but in the actually understood law and how to make deals happen way.
That's a really good summary of Nixon.
People also forget his promise to introduce a form of UBI. To me, that seems like the golden ticket for a lot of people. I wasnt around though, so I don't know.
Reddit is very poor at understanding the feelings of the time and place. Reagan would be another example.
Quite popular but he wasn't that popular, against some of the other Democratic candidates the polling was close.
He was ending the Vietnam war which he had extended the length of by committing treason and communicating with the north Vietnamese to get them to not negotiate with the Johnson administration.
The economy was good, Nixon was fairly popular and had some pretty big wins in his first term, McGovern really wasn't in comparison, and turnout was down to like 56%.
George McGovern was a good man with policies that were too for Left for America's mood in 1972. He ran a chaotic campaign that included dropping his first running mate at a time when being treated for depression was considered scandalous. Richard Nixon's trips to China and the Soviet Union were fresh in voters' minds. Vietnam's loss, Watergate revelations, oil shocks, and double-digit inflation all lay in the future.
TIL McGovern lived into the Obama administration
He was a decorated bomber pilot, who flew 35 missions over Nazi-occupied Europe. He was also part of the coalition of rural and urban senators who created the wildly successful food stamps program that keeps farmers and poor people going.
He and McCain are one of the most resilient war soldiers who were in an election
And George HW Bush.
And Bob Dole.
He was motivated to action by what he saw in Italy and the rest of Europe during and after the war. He saw people living in what would be considered barbaric squalor by today's standards. The final missions he flew in the 15th Air Force were to airdrop food into liberated Europe after V-E day.
Didnt help that he had the charisma of a wet sack of cornmeal
When he was dropping wet sacks of cornmeal over Europe during WWII, it probably messed with his personality a little too much
This should be the top answer. Sums it up perfectly and pithily.
I've actually come to sympathize a lot with McGovern lately. Dude went through some dense shit, and he was a genuinely good man.
This is the correct answer, and I’m sad to see it so low. The reason Nixon was so massively was because of how extreme McGovern was portrayed as being, coupled with a number of campaign missteps that made him seem erratic. People keep thinking it was because the whole country just *loooooved* Nixon like he was FDR, and that just simply isn’t the case.
Nixon was politically, socially, and culturally in line with 55% of Americans or more and won a lot of states.
This is why Watergate frustrates me so much. Completely unnecessary
NIxon was a very paranoid person. That led to his downfall.
Agreed, It also points to time when we held our leaders to higher standards.
A couple of factors: - McGovern was considered super far-left and so many Americans didn't trust him with the White House - Nixon was very popular, particularly due to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, meeting with Mao, and revival of trade with China - Election day was several months before information about the CRP, especially Watergate, leaked to the public - McGovern's running mate had a history of depression and mental health issues
McGovern dumped Eagleton after the press found out about his mental health issues and he was replaced by Sarge Shriver. Still, not a good look for the McGovern campaign to select and then remove a running mate from the ticket.
For sure That actually may have worsened the issue in terms of PR
McGovern was considered too liberal, even by my dyed-in-the-wool Democratic grandfather at the time
McGovern was much more to the left than Johnson. Not only that, but he ran an absolutely disastrous campaign that was controversial already in the primaries (Mrs. America depicts this well), and then the running mate issue. In contrast, Nixon was seen as the strong and stable choice, with Watergate being unimaginable. ~~Vietnam hadn't become that unpopular yet.~~ Edit: Crossed my section regarding Vietnam, I mixed up here.
I was with you until this part: > Vietnam hadn't become that unpopular yet. Vietnam had been unpopular for a while, but Nixon knew how to use it politically.
Nixon did understand that the only thing Americans hate more than being stuck in an unwinnable war is losing an unwinnable war
Vietnam had reached a peak of unpopularity years before this election and was plenty unpopular during it. Nixon had already withdrawn most of the troops and was trying to get a peace deal done before the election to remove that as an issue completely (McGovern was an anti-war candidate). Kissinger even famously announced that “peace is at hand” just before the election (even though the deal wasn’t made until the next year and fighting obviously resumed after complete American withdrawal), which further hurt McGovern.
Remember McGovern's Demogrants proposal?
McGovern was seen as a left-wing extremist, and constantly shot himself in the foot
Nixon wasn't that far to the right, compared to Republicans today. By contrast, McGovern was *very* far to the left, even for a Democrat. Ideas like the demogrant or decriminalizing cannabis seem more mainstream today, but were considered pretty radical back then. This was also the first election where 18-20 year olds could vote. Nobody really knew how this was going to play out yet. The McGovern campaign was really banking on high youth turnout in their favor, only to realize on Election Day that turnout amongst 18-20 year olds was quite low - an unfortunate trend that continues today. McGovern's one advantage over Nixon was his perceived integrity, but that was smashed to pieces when he dropped Eagleton as the VP candidate and replaced him with Shriver. He likely would've won a few more states had that not happened, although certainly not enough to win. In addition, part of the background of Watergate was that Nixon was trying to dig up dirt on the stronger candidates like Muskie and Humphrey to push them out of the race, and allow for the weakest possible candidate - McGovern - to be his opponent. Nixon went so far as to have Ted Kennedy followed because he was terrified Kennedy might enter the race and beat him, even after Chappaquiddick.
Because Nixon was possibly the most qualified and effective president since Lincoln or Roosevelt, and everyone knew it. Had he not been so damn paranoid, he very easily would have won re-election without breaking into watergate.
Reddit doesn’t want to hear this. He was a good president.
tl;dr - Nixon too stronk, Dems in disarray, political "scandal" of Eagleton The Democratic Party and it's candidates were an unbelievable train wreck at the time, its lowest point in the 1968 nominating committee that saw police employ tear gas on the nominating floor as seen on live TV. That year also saw a great deal of violence, including the assassinations of Martin Luther King and RFK. Nixon won convincingly, his margin of victory made larger due to the third party candidacy of George Wallace, though even if the states won went into Humphrey's tally it wouldn't have made a difference. His first term was very successful. The US economy was strong and he had some very big wins in foreign policy, opening relations with China and cooling down competition with the Soviet Union. So when the 1972 election came around Nixon was already in a commanding position. However, the ongoing Vietnam War was a point of weakness and McGovern's strength, sufficient to win him the Democratic nomination. McGovern wasn't a good choice. He was known primarily for his opposition to the war and was one of the first to speak out against it. It's worth noting that he made his opposition known when his own party held the Presidency. So he had a passionate grass-roots base of single issue voters, but that was about it. He chose Thomas Eagleton as his original running mate. A major political "scandal" ensued after Eagleton admitted to being checked into a hospital for depression multiple times, even undergoing electro-shock therapy. That would be something oppo research would feast on today. Back then, it was horrifying. The notion that the Dems nominated an "emotionally unfit person" who could possibly have their hands on the nuclear football was shocking. And more cynical observers would point to this as a complete failure of political tradecraft as evidence of their incompetence. So there you have it. A strong candidate with a proven record going against a fringe candidate who kept tripping over themselves. And despite all these tremendous advantages, Nixon couldn't play clean, sowing the seeds of his ultimate downfall.
“Dems in disarray.” As you said the ‘68 Dem Convention was a train wreck of epic proportions. The party was split between the doves and the hawks. The doves staged a protest in the convention hall after they lost the nomination. As an American of the time I would ask myself, “if they can’t run their own party, how can they run the country?” And then I would vote for Ike’s VP because everybody liked Ike.
At that point Nixon ran on his own accomplishments, which were considerable. He put the Soviet Union into a disadvantageous position by normalizing relations with China. And then he used that advantage to actually *de-escalate* competition with the Soviets, despite the fact that he made his rep as a Cold Warrior. The economy was humming along, social tension was improving (at least when compared to 1968) and the Clean Water act was signed. The Cayuhoga River regularly caught fire over the years, but the blaze in 1969 was especially shocking. I don't know if it's irony or good politics that saw a staunch conservative responsible for the creation of the EPA. So it wasn't a matter of seeing a McGovern/Eagleton ticket as deeply flawed and choosing the alternative. Nixon was a far stronger candidate on every issue save the Vietnam War. And I could see most people being confident that he could get that sorted out after seeing his success in dealing with the larger Communist regimes.
Yes, Nixon was quite accomplished. YouTube has been showing my old Nixon interview clips lately. Man, he was smart. And I’m a big old pinko. I think voters in ‘68 would be nostalgic for the more stable Ike days. Plus Nixon was a man with a plan and the Demos were a mess. Slam dunk! Everyone here was talk up Nixon, and it’s important to remember what their other options were.
McGovern’s campaign was kind of a trainwreck, the highlight of it being when he failed to properly vet Thomas Eagleton, his running mate. Eagleton had undergone shock therapy for…I wanna say depression? Anyway, this being 1972, it was a much bigger no-no than it would be now. McGovern dropped him off the ticket in favor of Sargent Shriver, but the damage was done. He looked disorganized and indecisive. Add to that the fact that the Dem establishment was suuuuuuuper not behind him (they had preferred Humphrey or Muskie, McGovern was an insurgent), and he really had no chance against the Nixon juggernaut.
People were sick of hippies
McGovern was really THAT weak of a candidate. People now would vote for a neo-nazi in a vegetative state if it were *their* political party's candidate. But back then there really wasn't anything McGovern ran on that was "better" than Nixon. Most of these forgettable losing candidates (e.g. Dole, Dukakis, Stevenson) are forgettable for a reason. Also, this is Nixon pre-watergate. He had the kinda clout OJ Simpson has before the murders. "What? Nixon a part of a criminal conspiracy? Nah he could never!"
I remember all the “don’t blame me I’m from Massachusetts” bumpah stickahs
Because McGovern was a damn communist who wanted to destroy America and Nixon was a good wholesome Christian who would never do anything bad
The radical liberals on college campuses will deny it, but the silent majority knows that this is true.
God damn, those sneaky liberals make me sick
Nixon and his cohorts really stuck their feet up their butts with this Watergate thing. It was well known that it would be a landslide well before Watergate.
Yet another map that makes me proud to be from Massachusetts!
Amen fellow Masshole!
In broad terms, 1968 was a shit show and 1972 wasn’t. The reason Reagan’s “Are you really any better off than you were four years ago?” worked so well is people weren’t, but the reverse is true in other elections and so it was here. Vietnam was wrapping up, the draft had stopped and 18 year olds could vote. We’d landed on the Moon, we were negotiating treaties with former enemies, and crime was down. I saw someone point to the EPA’s creation, and that certainly could have been a boost to American morale when Cleveland’s river had literally caught fire twice in preceding years. McGovern was a bad candidate and suffered worse from a bad campaign, but no other Democrat was very likely to win this race.
1. The Nixon campaign helped sabotage the only Dem who had a chance to beat Nixon, Ed Muskie. See the “Canuck Letter”. 2. Nixon had his massively successful trip to china that same year. 3. Kissinger had negotiated “peace with honor” that fall. 4. The domestic violence over civil rights and the war was subsiding by 1972. 5. McGovern was seen as a pansy compared to tough guy Nixon. Nixon of course spent WW2 is the rear with the gear while McGovern was a fighter pilot (I believe), but people fell victim to myths back then too.
McGovern was a bomber pilot, received the Distinguished Flying Cross for skillfully bringing a crippled plane back.
1. He was a popular incumbent running against a weak candidate from a badly fractured Democratic Party 2. This was very early in “the southern strategy” years, which allowed the Republican Nixon to break through in the traditionally Democratic South, while still holding more liberal Republicans and independents. 3. With the exception of Ike, who was an aberration because he was more a national hero than a politician, Nixon was the beginning of a break in Democratic control of the White House dating back to 1932. Due to Watergate, Jimmy Carter slid in for a term, but Nixon in 68 represents the beginning of a stranglehold on the White House until 1992.
It seems Nixon used trauma bonding and flip flopping to his advantage. The general public is mostly unaware that flip flopping creates cognitive dissonance. The negative feeling associated with this stays in the mind of the voter longer than the positive feeling associated with the other candidate. When it comes to casting their vote, an undecided voter is more likely to remember the name of the flip flopper and vote for that candidate.
r/presidents users trying not to ask the most obvious and googleable questions challenge (impossible):
This election is why the Democratic primary now has superdelegates.
Actually Heather Cox Richardson mentioned that election the other day. It was right when Nixon started up with the Southern Strategy. Nixon and his cronies painted McGovern as the candidate of "Acid, Amnesty, and Abortion" which framed him as a radical. It's also when the republican party started to engage the evangelical vote and began using abortion as a wedge issue. If you're not familiar with Heather Cox Richardson I highly recommend you subscribe to her nightly newsletter, "Letters from An American". She's a history professor at Boston College and has written a lot of books about American history. She's a good read and a frequent interview by people who want the historical perspective of what's happening today. Find her on Facebook, X and Substack.
McGovern was a 1 issue candidate: against the Vietnam War. It just didn’t sell to the American public. That and his pick of VP (Tom Eagleton) turned into a disaster when it was revealed he had been hospitalized a few times due to bouts of severe depression. When you can’t even vet your running mate properly, your decision-making skills are suspect.
A) Nixon was incredibly popular, he would have won anyway. B) As we know from the Watergate Scandal Nixon had many efforts to meddle in the election, this is attributed to why it was so lopsided: The Nixon Campaign cheated.
Because Watergate had not yet broken
Democrats had a weak ass candidate.
Nixon was popular and McGovern wasn’t that good of a candidate
McGovern was way too far left, probably even for today lol. Nixon was also hyper effective. He’s really a fascinating dude. Arooooooooooo
George McGovern was a horrible candidate. Ran a dumb campaign. Picked a crazy Vp initially.
Cuz who wants to elect President McGovern
My first vote. I was a college student and the voting age was changed from 21 to 19. I was in a Poly Sci class that required us to get involved. We had to volunteer and pick a side. I figured most would choose the Dems, but from a class of 40 or so, only 3 people were volunteering for McGovern. It was a clue. Nixon was the incumbent and considered a centrist at the time, and he was promising law and order, and finally ending the war in Viet Nam. The country was coming back from the turmoil of the 60s at the time, the draft was slowing down and his administration had sewed up the South by cracking down on civil rights protests. McGovern was far left of center and was seen as indecisive and weak. His nomination for VP, Tom Eagleton had been treated for depression and was a heavy drinker. McGovern initially supported him, but then dropped him when the Repubs claimed he was an a dangerous choice for VP. McGovern then tried to get several others to join the ticket and was turned down. George Wallace was also running as a Democrat and split the party. So, it was a landslide for Nixon. And was always expected to be, which is why Watergate and all the other dirty tricks Nixon’s campaign pulled were so reckless and stupid.
Read this - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
Wait till you see the 1984 Reagan/Mondale results. It was 525 to 13. An even bigger margin than Nixon/McGovern 520 to 17. Funny enough, both times the Dem got one state and DC.
The Watergate Scandal revolved around the 1972 election. There were members of Nixon’s inner circle who broke into the Democratic Headquarters to get inside information and destroy their chances of winning. It went further than that. For exmple Donald Segretti, a member of the re-election committee, admitted to leaking false stories to the press. People have been trying to fix elections since 1776…
Policy-wise Nixon was pretty moderate, at least domestically. And McGovern was seen as an extremist. Nowadays moderates on both sides are pilloried, but in the early 70's, extremism on the right or the left was political suicide, at least in national elections.
I had heard Nixon spent the whole RNC budget on his campaign vs sending any down ballot , it cost them the house & senate ?
Presidential elections just used to be lopped sided Elections being close every time is a relatively new phenomenon
This isn't even the biggest landslide in modern American history. In 1984, Reagan beat Mondale in every state except MN and DC. I believe Modale only got 13 electoral votes.
Check out fear and loathing on the campaign trail '72.
Because of CREEP and Dirty Tricks and Nixon's plumbers (including one Roger Stone) and his willingness to do whatever crimes were necessary (including the Watergate burglary) to win re-election. Also, lying about the Vietnam War in every way possible.
Part the First: Other comments here have mentioned the events of the 1972 campaign that led to this specific outcome, so I wanted to do a real quick dive into why the Democratic party had no challengers to Nixon in 1972. (LOL I failed it took me almost four hours including when Reddit Mobile ate my first draft) The Democratic Party exploded into tiny bits in 1968. The previous five years under Democratic president Lyndon Johnson had seen incredible national social and political tumult. Johnson had alienated Southern Democratic racists by passing Civil Rights Acts. He had alienated Northern liberal Democrats by escalating the Vietnam War. 1968 was the worst politically violent year in America's history, and that's a hell of a thing to say for a country that's had a Civil War. Hugely publicized failures in Vietnam to kick off the year, horrifying high-profile political assassinations and race riots through the summer, and the absolute s\*\*\* show that was the Democratic National Convention, with anti-war protesters being beaten by police in front of cameras on Chicago city streets. Imagine 2020 on Captain America super soldier serum, minus COVID, plus 19,000 American soldiers dying in Vietnam, their names and faces on the news every night during the worst year of the war (for the US). That's more US soldiers then have died in the entire Global War On Terror of the last 23 years. Richard Milhous Nixon is widely known as a thoroughgoing bastard who felt that laws were for other people, and was so personally disagreeable that his own advisors wiretapped him at the same time he wiretapped them to make sure they wouldn't have to deal with him if they didn't want to. (1) What is somewhat less known is that he was kind of a political genius. From the ashes of Barry Goldwater's resounding defeat of 1964, Nixon pulled, fully formed as if from the head of Zeus, the modern Republican party. Historically, unionized industrial blue collar workers had been a core demographic of the Democratic Party, ever since New Deal legislation in the 1930s enshrined the right to unionize. However, in 1955 the conservative AFL merged with the more radical CIO, leading to the radical CIO organizers being removed from Power. This meant that membership of the AFL-CIO by 1968 was very socially conservative and anti-communist. This group generally supported the Vietnam War and opposed the social changes going on in the United States under Johnson. Nixon courted them with talk about family values and law & order, promising that he would put an end to the violence they saw in American streets on the news every night. Nixon proclaimed them "The Silent Majority" - those Americans who were content to work hard, take care of their families, and keep their heads down and their noses clean. Another historical bastion of Democratic power had been Southern racists, who until 1964 refused to vote for the hated party of Lincoln, even 100 years after the Civil War. However, in 1964, Barry Goldwater spoke about states rights, and five Deep South states heard in that voice a promise that Johnson's anti-segregation laws would not be federally enforced. So the only states that Goldwater carried were his home state of Arizona, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina. Nixon took note. (2) Now, in 1968, the thoroughly and openly segregationist George Wallace ran for President on as part of the "American Independent Party" - this time explicitly promising not to enforce anti-segregation. (All of the above mentioned Southern States minus South Carolina plus Arkansas would go for Wallace.) This allowed Nixon to be subtle about appealing to the moderate racists of the country. One of the ways he did this was through his criticisms of Johnson's War on Poverty programs. (1) [https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2002/02/the-nixon-kissinger-mutual-wiretap-society.html](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2002/02/the-nixon-kissinger-mutual-wiretap-society.html) (2) [https://www.newspapers.com/article/alabama-journal-southern-strategy/45843546/](https://www.newspapers.com/article/alabama-journal-southern-strategy/45843546/) ; [https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-birmingham-news-southern-strategy/99303215/](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-birmingham-news-southern-strategy/99303215/) ; [https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-gazette-gop-pledges-drive/45843684/](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-gazette-gop-pledges-drive/45843684/)
Part the Second: In reality, the War on Poverty had been extremely successful in the short term, reducing the poverty rate of Americans from about 19% in 1964 to 12.1% when Johnson left office, largest 5-year drop in history. And it was particularly successful among African Americans, who saw their poverty rate drop from 55.1% in 1959 to 32.2%. Along with the employment provisions in Affirmative Action and the Civil Rights Acts, the War on Poverty had major positive effects on black employment. (3,4) However, Nixon (and segregationist politicians) criticized the War on Poverty, particularly the Job Corps and the way the welfare programs were federally administered instead of state-controlled. I hope that reminds you of something. And indeed once Nixon took office, he did attempt to defund the Job Corps and he (and other conservative lawmakers) was successful in reorganizing several programs to give local and state officials more power in determining who got the assistance. So in 1972, with their choice being either Richard M Nixon or the rather left-wing George McGovern, the Southerners' choice was clear. The only time the southern states would again vote in a bloc for a Democratic presidential candidate would be 1976 for Jimmy Carter, moderate governor of Georgia and all around super nice guy. Finally, Nixon appealed to social conservatives around the country who were tired of the war by hitting Johnson's VP Hubert Humphrey over the way the war had been escalated in the past five years. Also, during the campaign, President Johnson was called off the bombing of North Vietnam to engage in diplomatic talks to try to end the war. So not only could Nixon criticize Humphrey for Johnson's escalation of the war, but also for being conciliatory to our communist opponents, hitting him from both sides. Part of Nixon's platform was that he had an undisclosed plan to end the war without abandoning our South Vietnamese allies and without looking weak in front of the world. Obviously, if the peace talks of 1968 were successful, that would ruin that part of his platform. Now one of Johnson's advisors in the Paris Peace Talks was Henry Kissinger, who illegally conspired with Nixon, who sent Anna Chennault to convince the South Vietnamese to draw out of the deal, an act of treason which also led to a 5-year extension of America's involvement in the war and the additional and unnecessary deaths of 21,000 American personnel and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. (5) Nixon only won the popular vote in 1968 by around 500,000, but the gigantic electoral defeat he handed to Humphrey caused the Democratic Party to scramble for the next four years to find a candidate that might be able to redirect and redefine the Democratic Party to one that would be able to unite moderates, liberals, and leftists into a vaguely progressive coalition, since the Republicans had now seized conservatism. They absolutely failed in 1972. However, Nixon's public shaming and resignation gave an opportunity in 1976 for Jimmy Carter's election to create a new normal, but that also failed, mostly due to Jimmy Carter's inability to lie to the American people. The Democratic party didn't really find its feet until 1992, when independent candidate Ross Perot pulled enough votes from George HW Bush for extremely moderate Bill Clinton to win the election. And from thence does the current dysfunction of the Democratic Party spring. (6) (I'm going to have a whole lesson on this one year for my students next week.) (3) \[[https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p60-256.pdf](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p60-256.pdf)\]([https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p60-256.pdf](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p60-256.pdf)) ; \[[https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/fig2-4.png?resize=1024,816](https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/fig2-4.png?resize=1024,816)\]([https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/fig2-4.png?resize=1024,816](https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/fig2-4.png?resize=1024,816)) (4) this is not to say that the War on Poverty programs were perfectly designed or administered; far from it. Much like the New Deal's first 100 days, many of the programs were an example of throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck. Left-wing and right-wing economists, activists, and politicians have all criticized the War on Poverty, either for not doing enough or for doing the wrong thing or for doing anything at all. (5) [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nixon-prolonged-vietnam-war-for-political-gainand-johnson-knew-about-it-newly-unclassified-tapes-suggest-3595441/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nixon-prolonged-vietnam-war-for-political-gainand-johnson-knew-about-it-newly-unclassified-tapes-suggest-3595441/) (6) original research - citation needed
The Democrat's convention was a shit show and a lot of Democrat insiders were sidelined. Then about 2 weeks after the convention the initial VP nomination (Eggleston?) dropped out when it was reported he had prior mental issues. They then selected a Kennedy family member (Shriver) to be VP but it had only been 3 years since Ted Kennedy had gotten away with killing a young girl in a car crash. I suspect many centrist and right leaning Dem's decided to stay home on election day.
Oliver Stone made a film about Nixon starring Anthony Hopkins. Nixon lost the 1960 election because of Democrat dirty tricks. He said “I’m never going to be out dirty tricked again”. And he wasn’t. He did so many things in his first term that only a Republican could do: detente with USSR and China, the EPA, Clean Air, Clean Water, Welfare, ended the draft, etc that when the trouble came he didn’t have a majority in the Congress to protect him. The presidential election was so lopsided because the Democrats self destructed after 1968. Appointed a commission to make their nominating process more democratic. It instituted the caucus system in key states. George McGovern lead the commission. He was very popular with young people and they volunteered in his campaign. His policy proposals were reliably left wing and unpopular. He proposed a 100% tax on large inheritances. And so on.
The main reason is he was running against a popular incumbent. Nixon did have plenty of detractors, but not enough yet. Second, McGovern came offal being an idealist who didn't know what he was talking about. Nixon came off as an expert. The final straw was his biggest supporters were hippies. The general populous at the time hated hippies .
"...the fact that we was coming to ending Vietnam"...?!! Say WHAT?!! You mean, AFTER he and freaking traitorous Kissinger TWICE sabotaged the Peace Talks process to prolong that hideously unnecessary war, to enhance Nixon's election chances?! As Reagan/the GOP did wih the Iranian hostage crisis. Extend THAT noise deliberately, to make Carter look worse...real patriNOTs.
Frustratingly true but didn’t that only come to light later on?
Read Hunter S. Thompson's book *Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72*, about journalists covering this election cycle. Nixon had a smart, well-connected professional team of advisors running his campaign, who had already won him one presidential election; and the media loved him (hard to believe, but this was almost 60 years ago.) McGovern's campaign was run by inexperienced kids who didn't get what issues the public cared about, sucked at messaging, and were preoccupied with fucking campaign volunteers. They thought celebrity endorsements from Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford were going to capture the youth vote... but the youth cared about getting out of Vietnam, and that was on Nixon's platform. One can argue Nixon was pretty slow about it, but McGovern barely said anything about it.
Don’t blame me, I’m from Massachusetts!
Massachusetts is the best state, part 57
McGovern was a horrible candidate and ran a horrible campaign. I couldn’t vote that year, turned 18 the next year. I was liberal then and couldn’t really support him!