Could Lyndon B Johnson Run for President Again in 1968

Fifty years ago, on March 31, 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson appeared on national television set and announced that he was partially halting the U.Southward. bombing of Vietnam, and that he had decided not to seek his political party'due south nomination for president. "There is segmentation in the American house now," Johnson alleged.

The news that the President had refused to seek re-ballot sent waves of shock and elation through a stunned electorate. At the same fourth dimension, his withdrawal from the race crystallized the nature of the conflicts that had split the country along ideological, racial, and grade lines so securely. Only within days it became all too credible that no single act of political sacrifice could repair the divisions in the country. Johnson's presidency was a symbol and a reflection of the nation's fissures, simply it was non ultimately its root cause.

Johnson himself alluded to the deep roots of the unraveling of America in his surprise announcement: "With America's sons in the fields far away, with America'due south future nether challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the earth'southward hopes for peace in the residual every day," he said, "I practice not believe that I should devote an 60 minutes or a day of my time to whatsoever personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this part—the Presidency of your country."

His refusal to run over again was, on some basic level, a recognition of political reality. For all his legislative achievements (the Civil Rights Deed of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare and Medicaid), LBJ had become the face of America's divisions. To those on the Right, Johnson had done besides much, too quickly, overloading the system with big-authorities programs that trampled on individual liberties. Much of the Left viewed Johnson equally the corrupt wheeler-dealer who had lied America into the disastrous, encarmine Vietnam quagmire.

LBJ faced long odds in November; his top aides feared that he might non even win re-nomination. With his public approval rating at effectually 36 per centum, LBJ had barely survived a surprisingly strong principal challenge from antiwar Sen. Eugene McCarthy in New Hampshire, who took 42 per centum of the vote to LBJ'southward 48 percent on March 12. 4 days afterwards, on March 16, New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, a long-time LBJ nemesis, declared that he, too, would challenge Johnson for the nomination.

View of anti Vietnam War demonstrators standing and protesting outside the White House during a march to the Pentagon in Washington DC to plead for an end to the conflict, 1967. (Credit: Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Presidents rarely refused to represent a full second term. Simply Johnson'southward treatment of the war in Vietnam hung albatross-like around his White Business firm. He had repeatedly lied almost America'south war machine progress, and the Tet Offensive in which Viet Cong troops attacked key cities in Due south Vietnam in January disproved the administration'southward conviction that victory was just effectually the corner. (Harry Truman, similarly saddled with the unpopular Korean War, refused to run in 1952.)

Johnson's leading Republican contender Richard Nixon may well have trounced Johnson in Nov had he stood for a second term. As Johnson's withdrawal caused turmoil within the Democratic Political party, Republicans appeared to accept the upper-hand in the race to retake the White House.

LBJ's announcement was so dramatic partly because it was so unexpected. When LBJ sat down to deliver the speech, even he wasn't sure that he would utter the words his aides had written for him. LBJ had acquired a reputation, rooted in decades of service in Senate leadership and then in the White House, as a bright legislative operator, a masterful manipulator of men and laws, a pol who wished both to advance his own self-interest and outdo FDR as the greatest reform president of the 20th century.

By March 1968, however, "Landslide Lyndon," and so named after his 1948 senate chief win confronting Coke Stevenson, had become gripped with anxiety, insecurity, and uncertainty over the war, inner-city riots, and the perceived failure of the state of war on poverty.

The two serious Democratic primary challengers already in the race, McCarthy and Kennedy, along with their aides and allies reacted to Johnson's surprise announcement to not run against them with a combination of effusive glee and unsettled defoliation about what his departure would mean for their chances of winning the presidency. Upon hearing Johnson's declaration, RFK's friend Jim Whittaker placed a call to Kennedy and told him, "Congratulations," every bit if the candidate had just won the nomination.

McCarthy gave credit for Johnson'south withdrawal from the race to antiwar activists in full general and those who had volunteered on his campaign in particular. Referring to Johnson's supporters, McCarthy said, "I don't call up they could stand up against five million college kids but shouting for peace. There was too much will-power in that location."

Richard Goodwin, a former LBJ speechwriter who had joined McCarthy'due south campaign in protest of the Vietnam State of war, felt "stunned, then exultant" when he heard Johnson say he would leave the White House in January. Goodwin leapt out of his chair, approached the television, and pointed at Johnson. "I thought it would take some other six weeks," he said.

But Johnson'due south withdrawal also raised some hard questions for Democrats. The candidates and their allies feared that Johnson'due south decision might sap the energy that had provided them with much political attention and excitement from the moment they appear their master challenges. Every bit Autonomous leaders struggled to figure out how to respond to Johnson's sudden withdrawal, antiwar activists rejoiced.

Whorl to Keep

Their movement, some of them concluded, had forced Johnson to alter his war policy and to decide that he could non win another term. From Madison, Wisconsin, to Berkeley, California, students honked their horns and held spontaneous street parties equally a rare burst of jubilation took hold. Perhaps the state of war would finally begin to end now that Johnson was bowing out of the race.

At the aforementioned fourth dimension, the decision provided a short-term jolt to Johnson's political standing. Much of the public and the news media interpreted Johnson'south declaration as a Godsend that fabricated the projection of national repair more feasible for 1968; LBJ's withdrawal offered hope, however scant, of national reconciliation, hope that new leaders would step up and somehow unite a fractured Commonwealth. Johnson's decision not to seek re-election was a sign that the political system was still responsive to the people'southward will.

In this spirit, paper editorials praised Johnson'southward decision equally a potent step toward healing, and a Harris poll revealed that Johnson'southward numbers had climbed from 57 percent disapproval of his task performance to 57 pct approval as a result of his decision not to run again.

Streets afire from rioting post-obit the bump-off of Martin Luther King Jr., 1968. (Credit: Lee Balterman/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Nevertheless the impression that this was a moment of national reunification engendered by Johnson's withdrawal was only a chimera. Information technology shimmered on the surface of national politics and it was a mirage in the final assay. In bowing out of the race, Johnson had just papered over divisions that had been in the making for years, or even decades. Most shattering of all, the pace and calibration of events undercut any lasting momentum toward unity gained through Johnson's announcement.

5 days after the oral communication, James Earl Ray, a pocket-size-time criminal with racist views, shot and killedMartin Luther King, Jr. as he was standing on the 2d-floor balustrade of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. "Everything we've gained in the last few days we're going to lose tonight," Johnson predicted to his aide Joseph Califano. Riots soon tore through more than 100 American cities.

Just 2 months later on, in June of 1968, 22-yr-onetime Sirhan Sirhan shot and killed Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel shortly after Kennedy's victory in the California primary. His assassination deprived Democrats of their best antiwar candidate with some ability to bring together African-Americans and the white working-class in a year when segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace's third-political party candidacy was surging.

Johnson'due south decision was not all it was cracked up to be. He remained the de facto leader of the Autonomous Party and he continued to be the Party's Kingmaker, insisting that his handpicked successor, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, endorse the administration'due south war policies and stay loyal to Johnson. Humphrey had enough support amid delegates to win the nomination at the party's fierce, fractious convention in Chicago that summertime, and the party'due south platform past and large reflected Johnson's views of the war and endorsed his connected military machine delivery to Vietnam.

Republican candidate Richard Nixon campaigning for Presidency in Iowa, October 1968. (Credit: Raymond Depardon/Magnum Photos)

Johnson's withdrawal from the race also gave conservative Republicans a long-awaited opening. Johnson'southward partial bombing halt and his pledge to seek a negotiated peace in Vietnam gave leading Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon space on the Vietnam question. Rather than having to specify his plans for ending the war in Vietnam honorably, Nixon was now able to fudge the details and instead say he wanted to requite Johnson's proposals a chance to be successful.

Every bit we now know, the United states would get on to lose tens of thousands of lives in Vietnam before its last withdrawal from the land in 1975. In the long run, Republicans were able to utilize the end of Johnson'south career as a coda for what they charged was the ruin liberalism had brought both to the domestic U.s.a. and the arenas of foreign and military policy. Conservatives asserted that Johnson had micromanaged and lost the war in Vietnam by refusing to unleash the full military arsenal of the United States.

They further claimed that LBJ's Great Society had ushered in a menstruation of heightened racial tensions, worsened the plight of the urban poor, and raided the white workingman'due south pocketbook to pay for programs aimed at helping the poor and racial minorities. Thus Johnson's leave from the race became a pivotal symbol in the rising of modern conservatism, confirming for conservatives that a titanic liberal such as Johnson had to cease his presidency in disgrace considering liberalism had yielded a series of miserable failures. Republicans saw the speech as proof that Johnson—and his calendar—were unworkable and had been defeated.

With his policies under fire from all directions, and his popularity at a nadir, the virtually powerful human being in America was forced into early on retirement. Richard Nixon ultimately defeated Hubert Humphrey in Nov, of course, although information technology's conceivable that he would have won an fifty-fifty more commanding victory had the unpopular Johnson stayed in the race.

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Matthew Dallek, acquaintance professor at George Washington University'due south Graduate School of Political Management, is author, most recently, of Defenseless Nether the Night: The Roosevelt Years and the Origins of Homeland Security.

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Source: https://www.history.com/news/lbj-exit-1968-presidential-race

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