Nixonland.

And on Monday, September 16, 1968, it featured Richard Milhous Nixon.

One of Laugh-In Laugh-In's writers was Nixon's old joke-man, Paul Keyes. One of their running gags enlisted random celebrities to utter the innuendo-laden non sequitur "Sock it to me."

A hippie girl, drenched by water, answered a telephone call, supposedly from Governor Nelson Rockefeller: "Oh, no, I don't think we could get Mr. Nixon to stand still for a 'Sock it to me.'"

The screen filled with the famous ski-jump-nosed, fifty-five-year-old mug, intoning in cool self-mocking bafflement, "Sock it to me me?!"

Paul Keyes was sure to nab the tape after they got the take before Nixon's dubious aides got to it first. Their doubts disappeared after the show ran. Humphrey was supposed to be the live wire, the happy warrior, selling the politics of joy. Not going on Laugh-In Laugh-In himself was one of the things Humphrey lamented cost him the election. himself was one of the things Humphrey lamented cost him the election.

Humphrey couldn't catch a break. Nixon won the hipness battle both ways: Stewart Alsop called him "the quintessential square"; his celebrity surrogates were the likes of Bud Wilkinson and the saccharine pop singer Connie Francis. Hubert Humphrey's was Frank Sinatra. But Sinatra inspired contempt from the youth culture and was too much a swinger to comfort the squares.

Nixon's TV spots were groundbreaking. The man who made them, Gene Jones, was a former marine combat photographer who'd never directed a commercial. What attracted the campaign to pay him exorbitant fees nonetheless was A Face of War, A Face of War, a visually overwhelming, unnarrated doc.u.mentary that followed a marine company over ninety-seven days of combat in Vietnam. When it was screened for the Nixon media team, the only female in the audience walked out three minutes into the second reel, saying, "I can't watch that." It was the last thing anyone said for twenty minutes. a visually overwhelming, unnarrated doc.u.mentary that followed a marine company over ninety-seven days of combat in Vietnam. When it was screened for the Nixon media team, the only female in the audience walked out three minutes into the second reel, saying, "I can't watch that." It was the last thing anyone said for twenty minutes.

Nixon's commercials would run without narration as well. The sound would only be music and snippets from stump speeches. The images, rapid-fire collages of still photographs, told the story just as effectively with the sound off, a visual semaph.o.r.e. TV specialist Harry Treleaven was so proud of their aesthetic force that he screened them for curators at the Museum of Modern Art, hoping they might be added to the collection. The aesthetes were unimpressed: "The good guys are either children, soldiers, or over fifty years old." It was a telling moment: that was why Treleaven believed they belonged in the museum. He responded, "Nixon has not only developed the use of the plat.i.tude, he's raised it to an art form"-a mirror of Americans' "delightful misconceptions of themselves and their country." (He meant it as a compliment.) Jones's a.s.sistant imagined staging the State of the Union this same way-intercut with heart-tugging stills.

To tripping, jarring music: "It is time for an honest look at the problem of order in the United States."

(Firefighters dousing a burning apartment building; white-helmeted Chicago cops; a banner at a march: INDEPENDENT SOCIALISM. INDEPENDENT SOCIALISM.) "Dissent is a necessary agent of change, but in a system of government that provides for peaceful change, there is no cause for a resort to violence."

(A sign, NONE DARE CALL IT TREASON: YAF DARES, NONE DARE CALL IT TREASON: YAF DARES, which was visually clever. The biggest, most noticeable word was which was visually clever. The biggest, most noticeable word was treason, treason, that old Nixon trick: that old Nixon trick: he he wasn't calling anything "treason," just reporting what others were saying; what's more, that he sign-posted Young Americans for Freedom signaled his outreach to Reagan and Thurmond conservatives; and for those for whom the light struck from another angle, it showed that he was against "extremists on both sides." Another sign: wasn't calling anything "treason," just reporting what others were saying; what's more, that he sign-posted Young Americans for Freedom signaled his outreach to Reagan and Thurmond conservatives; and for those for whom the light struck from another angle, it showed that he was against "extremists on both sides." Another sign: STAMP OUT VD. STAMP OUT VD. Perhaps the full acronym, not visible, was VDC, standing for Berkeley's most prominent antiwar group, the Vietnam Day Committee; either way, the anxiety over s.e.xual dissolution was tapped.) Perhaps the full acronym, not visible, was VDC, standing for Berkeley's most prominent antiwar group, the Vietnam Day Committee; either way, the anxiety over s.e.xual dissolution was tapped.) "Let us recognize that the first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence."

(More burning buildings, rubble; the naked torso of a female mannequin. No black men in these pictures, just depictions of the consequences of what black men did-and in that naked white female torso, a suggestion of the most awful thing black men did of all.) "So I pledge to you we shall have order in the United States."

Another group of American image-makers were aghast. The network news divisions and the men who ran them prided themselves as the oasis in the vast wasteland. The networks poured money into news after the quiz show scandals of the late 1950s, loss leaders to clean up their image and preserve their precious government licenses to use the public's airwaves. TV news styled itself a moral center of American civic life, independent and public-spirited. It was their their footage of Bull Connor's fire hoses in Birmingham that catalyzed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, footage of Bull Connor's fire hoses in Birmingham that catalyzed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, their their footage at the Edmund Pettus Bridge that brought about the Voting Rights Act of 1965. footage at the Edmund Pettus Bridge that brought about the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

NBC, with its flags.h.i.+p evening news show the Huntley-Brinkley Report, Huntley-Brinkley Report, was the most morally self-a.s.sured. They had a young producer out of Chicago named Lew Koch, whose specialty was covering the civil rights and antiwar movements. They'd turned to him the previous January when they wanted to know if there would be violence at the Democratic convention. Knowing the parties involved, he said, yes, absolutely. During convention week, Koch had led the teams that went into the streets and parks to capture the footage of that violence. was the most morally self-a.s.sured. They had a young producer out of Chicago named Lew Koch, whose specialty was covering the civil rights and antiwar movements. They'd turned to him the previous January when they wanted to know if there would be violence at the Democratic convention. Knowing the parties involved, he said, yes, absolutely. During convention week, Koch had led the teams that went into the streets and parks to capture the footage of that violence.

He was inordinately proud of what they'd produced-1968's version of Bull Connor's fire hoses: glorious moral theater, naked evil being visited upon innocents. He repaired to NBC headquarters at the Merchandise Mart after that first broadcast filled with self-satisfaction. A sympathizer with the antiwar movement, he thought he had advanced their cause considerably.

The a.s.signment editor asked him to help with the phones; the switchboard was overwhelmed.

The first call: "I saw those cops beating the kids-right on for the cops!"

Another: "You f.u.c.king commies!" He was referring to NBC-as if they they had instigated the riots. had instigated the riots.

The calls kept coming, dozens. They came to all the networks, for days upon days. Some people saw n.o.ble cops innocently defending themselves. Others accused the networks of hiring cops to beat up kids to spice up the show. Lew Koch was so shaken by the experience, he left for a soul-searching six-month leave of absence.

The media had left Chicago united in the conviction they were heroes, prophets, martyrs. "The truth was, these were our children in the streets, and the Chicago police beat them up," the New York Times New York Times's Tom Wicker wrote. "In Chicago," Stewart Alsop wrote, "for the first time in my life it began to seem to me possible that some form of American fascism may really happen here." Top executives at all the networks, New York Times New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post and and Newsweek Newsweek publisher Katharine Graham, Time Inc. editor in chief Hedley Donovan, and publisher Katharine Graham, Time Inc. editor in chief Hedley Donovan, and Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler, posted an unprecedented telegram to Mayor Daley, excoriating the way newsmen "were repeatedly singled out by policemen and deliberately beaten...to discourage or prevent reporting of an important confrontation between police and demonstrators which the American public as a whole has a right to know about." publisher Otis Chandler, posted an unprecedented telegram to Mayor Daley, excoriating the way newsmen "were repeatedly singled out by policemen and deliberately beaten...to discourage or prevent reporting of an important confrontation between police and demonstrators which the American public as a whole has a right to know about."

Then they learned the American public thought differently.

The Chicago Daily News Chicago Daily News devoted an entire page on August 29 to a set of pictures doc.u.menting a circle of cops and an off-duty army paratrooper beating one of their photographers, James O. Linstead, even after he'd pulled out his press card. He was wearing a helmet; they pulled it off. They kept on going until they'd broken bones. The devoted an entire page on August 29 to a set of pictures doc.u.menting a circle of cops and an off-duty army paratrooper beating one of their photographers, James O. Linstead, even after he'd pulled out his press card. He was wearing a helmet; they pulled it off. They kept on going until they'd broken bones. The News News was a liberal paper, the kind that editorialized high-mindedly that "the International Amphitheatre, dressed up and fortified, lies in the shadow of one of the worst slums in the nation," that the National Rifle a.s.sociation should lose its tax exemption, that "the closer one gets to the campus scene, the less black-and-white the picture becomes." They turned their letters section over to the debate over the convention violence. Some supported the paper's position. They wrote things like "When I was with the Marines, I thought I was fighting for democracy, but now I come home to find a police state as bad as the Communists'"; and "We need to establish immediately a 'humane society' for the prevention of cruelty to our finest people, who are still human enough to protest the wholesale killing of a wonderful people in the name of patriotism by a nation of moral imbeciles." was a liberal paper, the kind that editorialized high-mindedly that "the International Amphitheatre, dressed up and fortified, lies in the shadow of one of the worst slums in the nation," that the National Rifle a.s.sociation should lose its tax exemption, that "the closer one gets to the campus scene, the less black-and-white the picture becomes." They turned their letters section over to the debate over the convention violence. Some supported the paper's position. They wrote things like "When I was with the Marines, I thought I was fighting for democracy, but now I come home to find a police state as bad as the Communists'"; and "We need to establish immediately a 'humane society' for the prevention of cruelty to our finest people, who are still human enough to protest the wholesale killing of a wonderful people in the name of patriotism by a nation of moral imbeciles."

Many more, however, converged upon another narrative.

"The major television networks have shown a completely one-sided story of what happened...."

"The Yippies and McCarthy people were not just throwing beer cans and ashtrays at the police and National Guard. They were throwing plastic bags of excrement and bricks from the 15th floor...."

"They insulted the police with words that can't be printed, and wrote these same words on their foreheads. The Chicago police reacted as any police force in the country would have...."

"I failed to see reports of the lewd activities, the vile provocations, or violence committed by the degenerates who invaded our city...."

"We are amazed and angry at the shameful las.h.i.+ng our city and our mayor have been subjected to because of the events of last week. Much of this undeserved criticism is the result of the distorted presentation of the events by television, newspapers, and radio...."

"My neighbor is a Chicago policeman, one of those a.s.signed to protect the Hilton Hotel from mob invasion. On Monday and Tuesday he worked sixteen hours straight. I met him coming home Thursday morning. He was covered with human excrement thrown on him by the mob."

Hard-nosed Chicago newsmen pointed out these were obviously just-so stories. A cop has to return to the station house after his s.h.i.+ft; they let him inside covered with feces? He drives back home to his wife and children still covered with the same s.h.i.+t? And where, exactly, does one procure bricks bricks on the fifteenth floor of the Conrad Hilton Hotel? on the fifteenth floor of the Conrad Hilton Hotel?

The narrative came from Chicago city government. Mayor Daley proclaimed on August 29 in an appearance on the Today Today show, "The television industry is part of the violence and creating it all over the country.... What would you do if someone was throwing human excrement in your face? Would you be the calm, collected people you think you are?" b.u.mper stickers proliferated nationwide: show, "The television industry is part of the violence and creating it all over the country.... What would you do if someone was throwing human excrement in your face? Would you be the calm, collected people you think you are?" b.u.mper stickers proliferated nationwide: WE SUPPORT MAYOR DALEY AND HIS CHICAGO POLICE. WE SUPPORT MAYOR DALEY AND HIS CHICAGO POLICE. Sixty percent of Americans polled supported the sentiment, and 90 percent of the seventy-four thousand letters City Hall received in the mail in the two weeks after the convention. It wasn't, they said pace Tom Wicker, Sixty percent of Americans polled supported the sentiment, and 90 percent of the seventy-four thousand letters City Hall received in the mail in the two weeks after the convention. It wasn't, they said pace Tom Wicker, their their children being beaten in the streets of Chicago. And these media mandarins, they said, weren't their moral authorities. children being beaten in the streets of Chicago. And these media mandarins, they said, weren't their moral authorities.

And the public being their customers, it wasn't long before the media mandarins' interpretations changed.

Walter Cronkite had Mayor Daley on his program. "Perhaps he had been called to heel by management," a Tocqueville out of Great Britain, G.o.dfrey Hodgson, of the Times on Sunday, Times on Sunday, speculated. "Perhaps he felt that he had erred and strayed from the path of strict professionalism. Whatever the reason, his manner with Daley was almost obsequious. He repeatedly addressed him as 'sir.' He introduced him with the ingratiating remark, 'Maybe this is a kiss-and-make-up session, but it's not intended that way.... I think we've always been friends.'" speculated. "Perhaps he felt that he had erred and strayed from the path of strict professionalism. Whatever the reason, his manner with Daley was almost obsequious. He repeatedly addressed him as 'sir.' He introduced him with the ingratiating remark, 'Maybe this is a kiss-and-make-up session, but it's not intended that way.... I think we've always been friends.'"

Daley reeled off fantastic lies: "They had maps locating the hotels and routes of buses for the guidance of terrorists from out of town.... How is it that you never showed on television, Walter, the crowd marching down the streets to confront the police?"

Cronkite gingerly pointed out that many of the victims were members of the press.

Daley retorted, "Many of them are hippies themselves. They're part of this movement. Some of them are revolutionaries and they want these things to happen. There isn't any secret about this." Then he shared with Cronkite something "that I never said to anyone": the miscreants had been planning a.s.sa.s.sinations. "I didn't want what happened in Dallas or what happened in California to happen in Chicago."

Cronkite sat and took it. The editor of the Chicago Daily News, Chicago Daily News, whose publisher had signed the telegram to Daley, abjectly apologized for one of his reporters who had shouted at policemen beating three women, "For G.o.d's sake, stop that!": "He acted as a human being, but less than a professional, he was there as a reporter and not to involve himself." whose publisher had signed the telegram to Daley, abjectly apologized for one of his reporters who had shouted at policemen beating three women, "For G.o.d's sake, stop that!": "He acted as a human being, but less than a professional, he was there as a reporter and not to involve himself."

Chicago's American was the conservative Hearst paper, and even their tough-guy, cop-loving columnist Jack Mabley had written about how "a policeman went animal when a crippled man couldn't get away fast enough." Shortly thereafter, Mabley climbed down from his short career as a cop critic in a moment of severe self-doubt: "80 to 85 percent of the callers and letter writers cheering for Daley and the cops: You can't help that gnawing feeling-can all these people be right and I be wrong?" was the conservative Hearst paper, and even their tough-guy, cop-loving columnist Jack Mabley had written about how "a policeman went animal when a crippled man couldn't get away fast enough." Shortly thereafter, Mabley climbed down from his short career as a cop critic in a moment of severe self-doubt: "80 to 85 percent of the callers and letter writers cheering for Daley and the cops: You can't help that gnawing feeling-can all these people be right and I be wrong?"

G.o.dfrey Hodgson wrote of the media about-face: "They had been united, as rarely before, by their anger at Mayor Daley. Now they learned that the great majority of Americans sided with Daley, and against them. It was not only the humiliation of discovering that they had been wrong; there was also alarm at the discovery of their new unpopularity. Bosses and cops, everyone knew, were hated; it seemed that newspapers and television were hated even more."

Nixon paid attention. The public was on his his side in his war against the media Franklins, in a way deeper than Nixon had ever dared dream. Again, he had it both ways: for actually the media was, if anything, accommodating him. Frank Shakespeare fantasized aloud to a reporter about calling in NBC's chairman of the board and telling him, "We are going to monitor every minute of your broadcast news, and if this kind of bias continues, and if we are elected, then you just might find yourself in Was.h.i.+ngton next year answering a few questions. And you just might find yourself having a little trouble getting some of your licenses renewed." Then Nixon gave a speech on his conception of the presidency (on the radio, so not too many people would hear it): "It's time we once again had an open administration.... We should bring dissenters into policy discussions, not freeze them out." The Johnson administration had been one of angry division; as president, he would be the guardian of "intellectual ferment," both a "user of thought and a catalyst of thought," for "the lamps of enlightenment are lit by controversy." The punditocracy swooned. Walter Lippmann (he had called the Checkers Speech "the most demeaning experience my country has ever had to bear") wrote, "I believe that there really is a 'new Nixon,' a maturer and mellower man who is no longer clawing his way to the top, and it is, I think, fair to hope that his dominating ambition will be to become a two-term president." Kenneth Crawford, side in his war against the media Franklins, in a way deeper than Nixon had ever dared dream. Again, he had it both ways: for actually the media was, if anything, accommodating him. Frank Shakespeare fantasized aloud to a reporter about calling in NBC's chairman of the board and telling him, "We are going to monitor every minute of your broadcast news, and if this kind of bias continues, and if we are elected, then you

A Nixon campaign commercial called "Convention": A bra.s.s band, like the bra.s.s band that played over the McCarthy delegates standing on their chairs singing peace songs, blares "A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight." The familiar, old-fas.h.i.+oned convention scenes: standards, balloons, placards, Hubert at the podium, exuberant delegates.

The music distorts electronically into a hideous pulse. With each new picture, someone's mouth is open wider. Hubert's is the punctuation mark. It looks as if he is screaming.

A new set of photographs, cutting quicker: firemen and flames; bleeding protesters running from the police; a bearded, screaming peacenik; more flames; another bearded screamer.

(No black people were seen rioting in commercials like these; that would have been labeled "racism." Instead, only the aftereffects aftereffects of black rioting were shown: rubble and flames. Rioting white hippies in Chicago were thus a visual G.o.dsend.) of black rioting were shown: rubble and flames. Rioting white hippies in Chicago were thus a visual G.o.dsend.) The music returns to the proper track. A picture of Hubert with his jaw clenched, waving American flags, Hubert at the podium again-cue for the music to distort again, and pictures of soldiers dying in other soldiers' arms, all olive drab. Then the bra.s.s band again, then Hubert, smiling-as the sound track starts shrieking again for a set of photos of Appalachian poverty.

(This was incredibly brazen. Fighting poverty had been Hubert Humphrey's greatest contribution to American public life. They were attacking him at his greatest strength: strength: well, you said you were warring on poverty. And here was plain evidence: poverty still existed. The Johnson administration is a failure. The Democrats were failures. Hubert Humphrey is a failure.) well, you said you were warring on poverty. And here was plain evidence: poverty still existed. The Johnson administration is a failure. The Democrats were failures. Hubert Humphrey is a failure.) Bra.s.s band. Hubert. Hubert distorted in triplicate.

"This Time"

"NIXON."

More chaos in the streets. Whenever a new Black Panthers chapter was founded, violent confrontations with police soon followed. New York's new Panthers threw a Molotov c.o.c.ktail at an empty police cruiser in July; patrolmen led into an ambush were wounded by a shotgun blast in August; and on September 4, after two Panthers left the Brooklyn criminal court for a preliminary hearing on an a.s.sault charge, off-duty cops in the gallery pummeled exiting spectators with the blackjacks and billy clubs they pulled out from under their jackets, crying, "Wallace! Wallace! Wallace!" Four days later J. Edgar Hoover called the Panthers "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country." On September 10, Huey Newton was convicted. The next day, Berkeley announced a new "social a.n.a.lysis" course with guest teacher Eldridge Cleaver. Max Rafferty, whose boon chances for California's Senate seat were the subject of a September 1 New York Times Magazine New York Times Magazine profile, announced he was withholding Cleaver's paycheck and ordered the Board of Regents to cancel the course. In Mexico City, already rocked by a ma.s.sacre of student protesters, the Olympics reached their dramatic climax: two sprinters, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, lowered their heads and raised their fists in a Black Power salute on the medal stand rather than acknowledge the American flag. profile, announced he was withholding Cleaver's paycheck and ordered the Board of Regents to cancel the course. In Mexico City, already rocked by a ma.s.sacre of student protesters, the Olympics reached their dramatic climax: two sprinters, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, lowered their heads and raised their fists in a Black Power salute on the medal stand rather than acknowledge the American flag.

The old distinctions and gradations on the left-freak, pacifist, New Leftist, black militant-were breaking down into an undifferentiated, and paranoid, insurrectionism. In Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan, a New Left hotbed, a group calling itself the White Panthers pledged "total a.s.sault on the culture by any means necessary, including rock and roll, dope, and f.u.c.king in the streets." "Get a gun, brother, learn how to use it," one of their statements proclaimed. "You'll need it, pretty soon." There followed a wave of bombings in southern Michigan, including the burning of a clandestine CIA recruitment office. It was the first serious incidence of New Left violence. The White Panthers became a target of the FBI's COINTELPRO secret counterintelligence initiative.

If anyone was keeping score, right-wing vigilantes were far worse. In July and August, a group of right-wing Cuban exiles firebombed the publisher of the diary of Che Guevara-the thirteenth anti-Castro bombing in New York since April-along with the British consulate in Los Angeles, the Mexican government's tourist office in Chicago (twice), and a British cargo s.h.i.+p in Miami harbor. On August 13, state troopers uncovered a half ton of dynamite, automatic weapons, tear gas, and crates of ammunition in Johnsonburg, New Jersey, belonging to the group Cuban Power. Eleven days later, in Connecticut, Minutemen invaded the pacifist farm in Voluntown in an attempt to burn it down, then shot it out with state police, blinding one of their members. ("I think all of us would rather see our place burned down than to see a Minuteman blinded," a pacifist told the New York Times. New York Times. A local, less conciliatory, said, "I see them come to the post office. They're a cruddy bunch. They don't wash up and shave.") A local, less conciliatory, said, "I see them come to the post office. They're a cruddy bunch. They don't wash up and shave.") But people weren't keeping score. Certain hegemonic narratives prevailed. A Harris poll offered several statements with which people could agree or disagree. The consensus: "liberals, long-hairs, and intellectuals have been running the country too long." Sixty-four percent of respondents cla.s.sified as "low income whites" thought so. Eighty-one percent of the sample thought "law and order has broken down in this country," 84 percent that a "strong president can make a big difference in directly preserving law and order." Forty-two percent of Americans said blacks were "more violent than whites." But the poll didn't ask about the danger posed to law and order by right-wing Cubans, or white survivalist Minutemen.

Labor Day weekend in Atlantic City, a new kind of radical stormed a sacred citadel-parading a flock of sheep down the Atlantic City boardwalk at the Miss America pageant and crowning one, Yippie-style, "Miss America." Then they tossed "instruments of torture to women"-typing manuals, girlie magazines, Ladies' Home Journal, Ladies' Home Journal, false eyelashes and high-heeled shoes, and most notoriously, bras-into a "freedom trash can" that they had hoped to light aflame. (They couldn't get a fire permit.) During the pageant ceremony, as the outgoing queen bade farewell, sixteen radical feminists unfurled a banner and shouted, "Freedom for women!" false eyelashes and high-heeled shoes, and most notoriously, bras-into a "freedom trash can" that they had hoped to light aflame. (They couldn't get a fire permit.) During the pageant ceremony, as the outgoing queen bade farewell, sixteen radical feminists unfurled a banner and shouted, "Freedom for women!"

Amid it all, George Wallace preached defiance to the same symptoms as Nixon, with precisely the opposite remedy. Nixon appealed for quiet. Wallace said, "We need some meanness. meanness." It turned pundits white-knuckled: "Never again will you read about Berlin in the '30s without remembering this wild confrontation of two irrational forces," the New Republic New Republic's TRB remarked after a Madison Square Garden rally that required a thousand police to keep the peace. (Wallace had tried and failed to get the city to let him have Shea Stadium.) Wallace was approaching ballot access in all fifty states, polling consistently around 20 percent. When his campaign film The Wallace Story The Wallace Story aired nationwide, its appeal for funds earned five times more than Hubert Humphrey's. A North Carolina political a.n.a.lyst compared it to an iceberg: "There's a lot more to it than shows on the surface and what's beneath is the dangerous part." aired nationwide, its appeal for funds earned five times more than Hubert Humphrey's. A North Carolina political a.n.a.lyst compared it to an iceberg: "There's a lot more to it than shows on the surface and what's beneath is the dangerous part."

Even some Wallace aides were frightened. "Now let's get serious a minute," the president of a Polish-American club told Wallace's right-hand man, Tom Turnipseed, arranging a rally outside Webster, Ma.s.sachusetts. "When George Wallace is elected president, he's going to round up all the n.i.g.g.e.rs and shoot them, isn't he?" When the aide replied, laughing, "We're just worried about some agitators. We're not going to shoot anybody," his host responded, with dead seriousness, "Well, I don't know whether I'm for him or not." Wallace's aides met some of their organizers only at night, lest decent folks see the kind of bottom-feeders they were working with. News crews started bringing extra cameras to the rallies-one aimed at the podium, another at the demonstrators pelting it with eggs, tomatoes, bottles, and sandals (a reference to Wallace's mockery of bearded sandal-wearers). Wallace would respond with the story of the demonstrator who lay down in front of President Johnson's limousine: "I tell you when November comes, the first time they lie down in front of my limousine, it'll be the last one they'll ever lay down in front of because their day is over over!" The story got delirious ovations. As did "We don't have riots in Alabama. They start a riot down there, first one of 'em to pick up a brick gets a bullet in the brain, that's all."

He was a conquering hero in Newark, where he helped Anthony Imperiale win a city council seat. In Columbia, Illinois, an all-white town outside East St. Louis, he swept a high school mock election after the student speaking for him at the a.s.sembly said, "I have nothing against n.i.g.g.e.rs. Every American should own one." The AFL-CIO held top-secret findings that one of three of its members supported Wallace. A Chicago Sun-Times Chicago Sun-Times poll taken the same week found the number at 43 percent for Chicago steelworkers. poll taken the same week found the number at 43 percent for Chicago steelworkers.

For a New Deal romantic like Hubert Humphrey, sacrificing the working cla.s.s to a reactionary demagogue was agony. However, the real harm Wallace posed was to Richard Nixon: all those union members, all those Dixiecrats breaking from the Democrats, were it not for Wallace, might be heading straight for him him; also those Strom Thurmond Republicans Nixon coveted-Wallace's natural const.i.tuency. That was why Wallace hit Nixon hardest in his speeches-a.s.sailing him as part of the team that had sent troops to Little Rock and installed Earl Warren: "Nixon is just like the national Democrats. He's for all this federal invasion of the states' right to run their own affairs."

Warning Southerners off Wallace consumed enormous energies in the Nixon campaign. Only there was a catch. It was like with those Wallace supporters whom Wallace deputies would only visit at night. Fred LaRue of Mississippi articulated the strategy in a memo September 7: "The anti-Wallace message will be indirect-'between the lines' and 'in regional code words.'" That Nixon was working to poach Wallace's vote was something decent folks were never supposed to find out about. Harry Dent ran the operation, though he was never brought aboard the campaign payroll.

For instance, they commissioned a country music ballad: Tell me where there's a man...in this fair land,Who can get us back on the track?d.i.c.k Nixon is a decent manWho can bring our country back.

And since Southerners hate outsiders telling them what to do, LaRue explained, "the multi-stanza ballad will allow issues to be included or excluded as the local situation indicates. The song's technical aspects will be such that 'local talent' as well as a variety of 'stars' can render it effectively." His biggest problem was finding singers to perform the Nixon jingle. They all were backing Wallace. LaRue was skilled, though, at getting the commercials played during the right programs. "Now you take Orlando, Florida, for instance," he explained. "There is no country-and-western show in town there, so we go to wrestling instead."

A Thurmond Speaks for Nixon-Agnew Committee campaign poster blared, "SENATOR THURMOND Denied The Republican Nomination To The Liberal Gov. Rockefeller.... Help Strengthen STROM THURMOND'S Position In The New Republican Administration With A Rousing Endors.e.m.e.nt Of RICHARD NIXON ON NOV. 5." And: "Help Strom Thurmond lead South Carolina back to its rightful position in the nation." A pamphlet published quotes from Nixon's "Man in the Arena" segment from Charlotte: "I wouldn't want to see a federal agency punish a local community"; "I don't believe you should use the South as the whipping boy"; "There has been too much of a tendency...for both our courts and our federal agencies to use the whole program of school integration for purposes which have very little to do with education." Southern editors started writing about the rise of the "Nixiecrat." And "Uncle Strom's Cabinet."

Humphrey had a Southern strategy, too. It was to appeal to Southerners' material interests: "WALLACE'S ALABAMA ranks 48th among states in per-capita annual income and is $900 below the national average. WALLACE'S ALABAMA meets only one of eight key standards for state child labor laws." Humphrey also plied their better angels. A five-minute commercial featured E. G. Marshall, star of the long-canceled courtroom series The Defenders, The Defenders, dreadfully earnest in front of a picture of Wallace: "When I see this man, I think of feelings of my own which I don't like but I have anyway. They're called prejudices.... He would take that prejudice and make it into national law." Gubernatorial candidates such as Ernest Vandiver, Ellis Arnall, and Jimmy Carter had tried that "better angels" stuff in 1966. It didn't work. dreadfully earnest in front of a picture of Wallace: "When I see this man, I think of feelings of my own which I don't like but I have anyway. They're called prejudices.... He would take that prejudice and make it into national law." Gubernatorial candidates such as Ernest Vandiver, Ellis Arnall, and Jimmy Carter had tried that "better angels" stuff in 1966. It didn't work.

Elsewhere, the commercials featured Humphrey's talking head, stumbling over himself in earnest on-the-other-handedness. ("Law and Order": "When a man says that he thinks that the most important thing is to double the rate of convictions, but he doesn't believe in, and then he condemns, uh, the vice president, myself, for wanting to double the war on poverty, I think he has, uh, lost his sense of values. You're not going to make this a better America just because you build more jails. What this country needs are more decent neighborhoods, more educated people, better homes. Ah, if we need more jails we can build them, but that ought not be the highest objective of the presidency of the United States. I do not believe that repression alone can bring a better society.") Nixon exploited his long-standing friends.h.i.+p with the Reverend Billy Graham. First, in 1967, he invited Graham to spend a few days with him to "help" him decide whether to run; later he told the incredible fib that Graham had been more responsible than anyone else for his decision. Graham seated him in the VIP section of his nationally televised Pittsburgh crusade in September 1968 and called Nixon one of his most cherished friends (then, in a private meeting, Nixon entrusted the preacher with a secret message for the president, that Nixon would give him the major share of the credit when the war was settled and do what he could to ensure Johnson's historical legacy). Shortly before Election Day, Graham broke his announced policy of not involving himself in partisan politics by conceding he had voted for Nixon absentee. Graham, Nixon's research showed, was the "second most revered man in the South among adult voters."

That supposed nullity, Spiro Agnew, toured the South to great effectiveness. The media were forever comparing him unfavorably to Humphrey's supersound choice, Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine. Muskie made the only speech at the Democratic convention that seemed to satisfy all factions. Time Time had maintained a schoolgirl crush on the guy since 1954: "Lawyer Edmund Sixtus Muskie, 40, in whose grey-blue eyes s.h.i.+nes a light seen in the early days of the New Deal...an enthusiastic fisherman, a good skier, and a competent trackman...tall, ruggedly handsome...a stubborn political independence...a New England legislator's characteristic attention to detail and distaste for florid rhetoric." Late in September, Muskie made the front pages of newspapers around the country as a hero of conciliation. Humphrey's appearances were being disrupted left and right by longhairs calling him a warmonger, a murderer, an American Adolf Hitler. During a speech on the steps of the courthouse in Was.h.i.+ngton, Pennsylvania, some long-haired kids from the local college tried the routine out on Muskie, chanting, "Stop the war! Stop the war!" Muskie decided he wasn't in the mood to outshout them and offered to let them choose a spokesman to take the podium for ten minutes if they agreed to listen to him afterward. The chosen kid nervously argued, while learning what it was like to speak when the heckling was directed at him, "Wallace is no answer, Nixon is no answer, Humphrey is no answer. Sit out this election; don't vote for president." had maintained a schoolgirl crush on the guy since 1954: "Lawyer Edmund Sixtus Muskie, 40, in whose grey-blue eyes s.h.i.+nes a light seen in the early days of the New Deal...an enthusiastic fisherman, a good skier, and a competent trackman...tall, ruggedly handsome...a stubborn political independence...a New England legislator's characteristic attention to detail and distaste for florid rhetoric." Late in September, Muskie made the front pages of newspapers around the country as a hero of conciliation. Humphrey's appearances were being disrupted left and right by longhairs calling him a warmonger, a murderer, an American Adolf Hitler. During a speech on the steps of the courthouse in Was.h.i.+ngton, Pennsylvania, some long-haired kids from the local college tried the routine out on Muskie, chanting, "Stop the war! Stop the war!" Muskie decided he wasn't in the mood to outshout them and offered to let them choose a spokesman to take the podium for ten minutes if they agreed to listen to him afterward. The chosen kid nervously argued, while learning what it was like to speak when the heckling was directed at him, "Wallace is no answer, Nixon is no answer, Humphrey is no answer. Sit out this election; don't vote for president."

Muskie then took the podium. He reviewed his modest upbringing. He described what the price of political apathy had been for the poor Maine region he came from: the special interests ran things and made the people poorer. But once the people became engaged and started electing Democrats, things started getting better. He concluded, "Don't misjudge the basic goodwill of this American system." The students swarmed him like a hero. The Wallace partisans in the crowd were praiseful, too-mingling, for the first time, with the dirty hippies. The Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post called it "one of the spectacular performances of the 1968 political campaign." When Agnew made the news during the campaign, it was always for making gaffes. called it "one of the spectacular performances of the 1968 political campaign." When Agnew made the news during the campaign, it was always for making gaffes.

Agnew called a Hawaiian reporter, in front of the other reporters, a "fat j.a.p." Asked why he didn't campaign among the poor, Agnew answered, "If you've seen one slum, you've seen them all." He used the word Polack Polack in Polish Chicago, though the Democratic vice-presidential candidate's father's name at birth was Stephen Marciszewski. When the Nixon media team came calling to John Lindsay for an endors.e.m.e.nt, the mayor said he was "not going to endorse anybody, G.o.ddammit, particularly Richard Nixon, unless someone strangled Agnew." One of the Humphrey team's few clever commercials focused in on a corner of a TV set. A man on the sound track was laughing uproariously; as the camera slowly pulled back, you saw what he saw on the screen: "Agnew for Vice President." in Polish Chicago, though the Democratic vice-presidential candidate's father's name at birth was Stephen Marciszewski. When the Nixon media team came calling to John Lindsay for an endors.e.m.e.nt, the mayor said he was "not going to endorse anybody, G.o.ddammit, particularly Richard Nixon, unless someone strangled Agnew." One of the Humphrey team's few clever commercials focused in on a corner of a TV set. A man on the sound track was laughing uproariously; as the camera slowly pulled back, you saw what he saw on the screen: "Agnew for Vice President."

But the visuals were more clever than the politics. Many viewers weren't sure what they were supposed to be laughing at; just that Democrats were telling them to laugh at someone-just the thing a sanctimonious liberal would do. And if it so happened that you liked liked Spiro Agnew, that voice on the TV was laughing Spiro Agnew, that voice on the TV was laughing at you. at you.

Agnew called Humphrey "soft on inflation, soft on Communism, and soft on law and order over the years," and "squishy soft" on Vietnam. That crossed the media Establishment's unwritten rule against "McCarthyism." Agnew compounded the problem by claiming he wasn't aware of the McCarthyite resonances of his phraseology. The big editorial pages all but claimed a scalp. But Nixon couldn't have been too impressed: he knew a thing or two about good-cop/bad-cop president/vice-president routines. Such rhetoric helped them in Dixie; it was a stock-in-trade for people like Strom Thurmond.

"Senator Thurmond Speaks for Nixon-Agnew" commercials started late in September, produced entirely outside Treleaven and Shakespeare's operation by Dent, off the payroll, and cleared through campaign manager John Mitch.e.l.l (conversely Thurmond was given the right to veto anything in a national commercial that might be offensive to the South: an image of a black soldier, for instance, in a Vietnam ad). The money was raised by the South Carolina textile magnate and Thurmond confidant Roger Milliken. The coordinator of Nixon's Southern organization, Bo Callaway, the former Georgia congressman who'd lost the governors.h.i.+p to Lester Maddox, campaigned baldly for Wallace supporters: "I think the ideas expressed by George Wallace are the ideas a great many Republicans espouse." Indeed the message of the Thurmond ads was not that Wallace was wrong, but that Wallace couldn't win; that boosting the fortunes of a third-party candidate only hastened the Yankee apocalypse. And Thurmond had matchless credibility to deliver that message: he had invented the Southern third-party strategy himself, in 1948. It worked: whenever Thurmond's commercials ran in a certain town, Tom Turnipseed lamented, Wallace's numbers immediately tanked.

So it seemed, as September became October, Nixon was going to win, Humphrey was going to lose. Wallace was going to show respectably, but not respectably enough to matter.

Then suddenly, things started to change. Hubert Humphrey phoned Lyndon Johnson from the campaign trail in Salt Lake City on Monday night, September 30.

"Mr. President?"

"Hi."

"How are you this evening?"

"Fine."

"Say, I'm going to be on your TV in about five minutes."

"All right, I'll turn it on."

"On NBC, and I thought I should have called you a little earlier, but they had me taping here all day and I've been about half-dead."

"Is it taped?"

"Yeah, it's taped."

"Good. Well, I'll turn it on."

"And it points out the things that we've done here on Vietnam.... It says, for example, that we've given the time for Asian nations to strengthen themselves and work together, and so we see a stronger Southeast Asia-a stronger South Vietnam-contrasted with a few months ago when peace negotiations were started. And there are new circ.u.mstances which will face the new president, in light of these circ.u.mstances, and a.s.suming no marked changes in the present situation, how would I proceed. And let me make clear first what I would not do. I would not undertake a unilateral withdrawal...I make that very clear..."

What the vice president was telling the president was that he had finally inched to his master's left on Vietnam. The words were that he would "be willing to stop the bombing of the North as an acceptable risk for peace because I believe it could lead to success in the negotiations and a shorter war." Johnson asked some perfunctory questions about what exactly the new doctrine entailed. Humphrey replied, "I think I've done it carefully here without jeopardizing what you're trying to do." The president didn't blow up in anger. He just said, "I'll turn it on, thank you." The vice president, clearly relieved, signed off, "G.o.d bless you. Thank you."

None of this was news to the president-who had talked on the phone forty-five minutes earlier with Richard Nixon in a much longer and more intimate conversation. Nixon described to him an early AP wire story on Humphrey's new position. Johnson told Nixon he thought the consequences of Humphrey's move would be disastrous: that if the bombings were stopped, the enemy "could just come day and night." Johnson quoted a telegram from Commander Creighton Abrams that a bombing halt would mean "a several-fold increase in U.S. and allied casualties." Then Johnson spelled out what his present negotiating position was in Paris-demanding far greater concessions before even considering stopping the bombing-and said the United States would only prevail in negotiations by hanging tough in the field. Nixon replied that the AP called what Humphrey was up to "a dramatic move away from the Johnson administration foreign policy"-and a.s.sured the Democratic president, "it's not my intention to move in that direction." Nixon spoke of Johnson's position as "our" position. And that "that's what I'm going to continue to say."

Nixon was calling the Democratic standard-bearer the president's betrayer. And when he finished, the president thanked him warmly. But the president didn't know that he also was being betrayed: Nixon already had it on secret authority from a source inside the Paris peace negotiations that LBJ himself planned to initiate a bombing halt sometime in October-intrigue upon intrigue upon intrigue.

Humphrey's speech was not bold; there were all kinds of conditions. But it was his first sign of defiance to the president. He even directly contradicted the president's earlier slap-down of him, that "no man can predict" when troops could be withdrawn, and said he thought some could be withdrawn starting in 1969. He also said Nixon had "taken a line on Vietnam policy which I believe could lead to a great escalation of the war." Even more important were the atmospherics. Usually Humphrey appeared with the vice-presidential seal and flag. Usually Humphrey was introduced as the vice president. Not this time. This time, he was introduced as the "Democratic candidate for president." Hubert Humphrey had reclaimed his p.e.c.k.e.r.

On October 9, he ran an ad during a network showing of Dr. Strangelove Dr. Strangelove that took up where LBJ's "Daisy" ad of 1964 had left off: it argued against Nixon's position that the nuclear nonproliferation treaty should be delayed by showing an exploding mushroom cloud. Another ad showed Nixon speaking without any sound for twelve seconds, then a voice-over: "Mr. Nixon's silence on the issue of Vietnam has become an issue in itself." It concluded with a quote from Mark Hatfield, the Republican senator who had seconded Nixon's nomination, that deflated Nixon's very masculinity: "The Paris peace talks should not become the skirt for timid men to hide behind." that took up where LBJ's "Daisy" ad of 1964 had left off: it argued against Nixon's position that the nuclear nonproliferation treaty should be delayed by showing an exploding mushroom cloud. Another ad showed Nixon speaking without any sound for twelve seconds, then a voice-over: "Mr. Nixon's silence on the issue of Vietnam has become an issue in itself." It concluded with a quote from Mark Hatfield, the Republican senator who had seconded Nixon's nomination, that deflated Nixon's very masculinity: "The Paris peace talks should not become the skirt for timid men to hide behind."

Campaigning started getting fun again. The peacenik pickets started abating or began carrying signs reading IF YOU MEAN IT, WE'RE FOR YOU. IF YOU MEAN IT, WE'RE FOR YOU. Humphrey started rising in the polls, and soon both Harris and Gallup were predicting a toss-up. Humphrey started rising in the polls, and soon both Harris and Gallup were predicting a toss-up.

But something seemed off. The candidate brought it up to his campaign manager, Lawrence O'Brien, after a trip to West Virginia: "Larry, I don't see any Humphrey signs, any Humphrey literature. I'm out there breaking my b.u.t.t and I don't see any campaign activity to back me up."

His people hadn't wanted to worry him. Now they realized they had no choice. "We're broke, Hubert," O'Brien told him. "We don't have the money and we can't get credit. We're not going to have the materials we wanted, and the television campaign has to be cut to the bone. The money just isn't there."

Campaigning was a cash-on-the-barrelhead business: vendors had no interest in being stuck with unpaid bills by losing candidates. The Democrats raised $5 million for the presidential campaign; $3.4 million of that was loans. But the Republicans spent $6.27 million on TV alone. Nixon's well was bottomless. One friend, eccentric billionaire Chicago insurance man Clement Stone, pledged to match donations up to $1 million. Eventually, he raised that to $2 million. There were advantages to being the party of business. Most years, the Democrats could at least count on huge donations from corporations hedging their bets. But this year, the big guns ceased their commitments when the early polls showed Humphrey so far behind. The week of October 13, Humphrey ran no state or regional commercials at all.

It was stark, awfully stark. One day, Humphrey operatives Bob Strauss and Bob Short and two Humphrey backers from Minnesota, Dwayne Andreas of Archer Daniels Midland and Jeno Paulucci, the wiener king, sat down in Texas to ask a group of oilmen for a $700,000 advance. The cowboys asked whether Humphrey would maintain the oil-depletion allowance. The Humphrey men tried to hint diplomatically that this wasn't the sort of request polite millionaires made outright. "No confirmation, no seven hundred thousand dollars," their spokesman replied. Paulucci, a blunt man, asked if they insured their buildings. They replied that they did, of course. Paulucci said, "My advice to you would be, even though you are for Nixon because you think he's going to save your oil-depletion allowance, to spend that seven hundred thousand dollars on insurance.... If I were Hubert Humphrey and you didn't give me that money, I not only would take away your depletion allowance, I'd cut off your b.a.l.l.s." The gambit didn't work. Paulucci found his way to a pay phone and reported, "We have to cancel next week's advertising. We don't have the money."

As for Wallace, he had shot himself in the foot-or nuked himself, as the case may be.

When the time came for the governor to think about a running mate, his people cast about for a national name. J. Edgar Hoover was suggested, or Curtis LeMay, or Kentucky Fried Chicken's Colonel Sanders. His aides liked former Kentucky governor and baseball commissioner A. B. "Happy" Chandler. Wallace was reluctant: "That fellow's a liberal," he said. His aides wore him down: "We have all the nuts in the country," one said. With Chandler, "we would get some decent people-you working one side of the street and he working the other side." Reluctantly, Wallace agreed, and the decision was leaked to reporters.

In Montgomery, the phones started ringing off the hook. John Birch Society members, a crucial component of Wallace's national organization, especially flooded the switchboards. Chandler had had a role in the hiring of Jackie Robinson by the Brooklyn Dodgers. He had protected children integrating Kentucky schools in 1955. Wallace's Kentucky chair resigned, calling Chandler an "out-and-out integrationist." Oilman Bunker Hunt, who'd donated a briefcase filled with $250,000 in hundred-dollar bills for the "rainy day fund," called in a rage: he preferred John Birch Society leader and former agriculture secretary Ezra Taft Benson. Wallace rescinded Chandler's invitation.

The Wallace team turned their consideration to General LeMay. The eccentric air force veteran was vastly proud of the savagery of his bombing runs over Tokyo, disconcertingly eager to repeat the performance when he'd been commander of America's nuclear fleet. But he also was a hero and a genius, the man who engineered the Berlin Airlift. He was frustrated and bored after his 1965 retirement and gung ho for George Wallace-the only candidate, he said, committed to "turning the Vietnam War effort over to the military." LeMay was chairman of the board of an electronics company that threatened to fire him if he ran, so a Wallace aide flew to Dallas and got Bunker Hunt to put up a million-dollar trust to reimburse the general's loss of salary. A meeting was arranged for September 27 in Chicago, where the candidate gave his potential running mate the a.s.surances he needed. LeMay was flown to Pittsburgh, where Wallace was appearing, and in a hotel suite aides gave him a crash course in the politician's most crucial skill: deflecting troublesome questions. They were especially adamant in explaining to him-they were still at it at 4:30 a.m.-that as much as he might not like it, the American people had a phobia about nuclear warfare, and it was not worth trying to disabuse them.

Then came LeMay's debut press conference, broadcast live on all three networks.

George Wallace introduced him as a man unafraid to appreciate the "tender and the trivial."

Second question. Jack Nelson of the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times asked the man who might be a heartbeat away and so forth a question about his area of expertise: "If you found it necessary to end the war, you would use nuclear weapons, wouldn't you?" asked the man who might be a heartbeat away and so forth a question about his area of expertise: "If you found it necessary to end the war, you would use nuclear weapons, wouldn't you?"

The general started in enthusiastically: "We seem to have a phobia about nuclear weapons.... I think there are many times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons. However, public opinion in this country and throughout the world just throw up their hands in horror when you mention nuclear weapons, because of a lot of propaganda that's been fed to them."

He went on to make his point by describing the negligible effects of the nuclear tests on Bikini atoll: "The fish are all back in the lagoons; the coconut trees are growing coconuts; the guava bushes have fruit on them; the birds are back. As a matter of fact, everything is about the same." The land crabs, he allowed, "were a little bit 'hot.'" But if it came to it, "I would use anything we could dream up, anything we could dream up-including nuclear weapons, if it was necessary."

Reporters dashed to the phones. One of them upset a chair in his rush. As it happened, within two weeks the Wallace campaign would achieve its long-standing goal: being on the ballot in all fifty states (it came when the dreaded Supreme Court ruled that Ohio's ballot-access laws were too restrictive in a case called Socialist Labor Party v. Rhodes. Socialist Labor Party v. Rhodes. Thank you, Socialist Labor Party). There was nothing to celebrate. Bombs-Away LeMay and Wallace had begun their downward spiral to the 13.8 percent they ended up receiving on November 5. Thank you, Socialist Labor Party). There was nothing to celebrate. Bombs-Away LeMay and Wallace had begun their downward spiral to the 13.8 percent they ended up receiving on November 5.