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1968
Is the Ghost of Hubert Humphrey Stalking Kamala Harris?
As a pivotal election neared, a candidate had to decide whether to keep supporting an unpopular war or speak out for a meaningful change. Humphrey faced that choice in 1968. Harris faces it now.
Aug 15, 2024
After the Democrat in the White House decided not to run for reelection, the vice president got the party’s presidential nod—and continued to back the administration’s policies for an unpopular war. As the election neared, the candidate had to decide whether to keep supporting the war or speak out for a change.
Hubert Humphrey faced that choice in 1968. Kamala Harris faces it now.
Despite the differences in eras and circumstances, key dynamics are eerily similar. The history of how Vice President Humphrey navigated the political terrain of the war in Vietnam has ominous parallels with how Vice President Harris has been dealing with the war in Gaza.
From Landslide to Chaos
For millions of liberals, during the first half of the 1960s, Hubert Humphrey was the nation’s most heroic politician. As the Senate majority whip, he deftly championed landmark bills for civil rights and social programs. By the time President Lyndon B. Johnson put him on the Democratic ticket in 1964, progressive momentum was in high gear.
LBJ defeated ultra-conservative Barry Goldwater in a landslide. As vice president, Humphrey assisted Johnson to follow up on the 1964 Civil Rights Act with the 1965 Voting Rights Act and a huge set of antipoverty measures while enacting broad social programs in realms of education, health care, nutrition, housing and the environment. Midway through the summer of 1965, Johnson signed Medicare and Medicaid into law.
The chaos and bitterness in Chicago underscored how the vice president’s deference to the war president had weakened the party while undermining the chances for victory.
Meanwhile, escalation of the U.S. war on Vietnam was taking off. And, as Martin Luther King Jr. soon pointed out, “When a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war, social programs must inevitably suffer. We can talk about guns and butter all we want to, but when the guns are there with all of its emphasis you don’t even get good oleo [margarine]. These are facts of life.”
At first, Vice President Humphrey wrote slightly dovish memos to Johnson, who angrily rejected the advice and retaliated by excluding him from key meetings. Banished to the doghouse, Humphrey licked his wounds and changed his approach. By early 1966, he was deferring to Johnson’s war views in private and advocating for the Vietnam War in public.
As the war escalated, so did the vice president’s zeal to extol it as a fight for freedom and democracy. “By 1967 he had become a hawk on Vietnam,” biographer Arnold Offner noted. Beneath the lofty rhetoric was cold calculation.
“Humphrey’s passage from dove to hawk on Vietnam was not the result of one-sided White House briefings or of his ability, as one journalist had noted, to see silver linings in the stormiest clouds,” Offner wrote. “His change of position derived from a case of willful mind over matter, from his strong anti-Communism combined with political expediency driven by ambition, namely desire to remain in Johnson’s good graces and perhaps succeed him whenever his presidency ended.”
That desire to be in the president’s good graces did not dissipate after Johnson suddenly announced in a televised address on March 31, 1968 that he would not seek reelection. Four weeks later, Humphrey launched a presidential campaign that pitted him against two antiwar candidates, Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy.
From the outset, Humphrey was plagued by his fear of antagonizing Johnson if he were to depart from a pro-war script. The United States had “nothing to apologize for,” Humphrey said. He didn’t run in any primaries and was not willing to debate McCarthy or Kennedy.
Humphrey mouthed the same old rhetoric to rationalize the administration’s policies for the war in Vietnam. Several high-level supporters—including Iowa’s Governor Harold Hughes, Vermont’s Governor Philip Hoff, and the venerable former New York governor and ambassador Averell Harriman—advised him to resign the vice presidency and thus free himself from entanglement with Johnson. But to Humphrey, such a step was unthinkable.
And so, Hubert Humphrey rode in the caboose of the war train all summer. In late August, the day before the Democratic National Convention got underway in Chicago, he told viewers of the CBS program Face the Nation that the administration’s policies in Vietnam were “basically sound.”
The convention nominated him while, outside, tear gas filled the air during what a report from a special federal commission later called a police riot that meted out violence to antiwar demonstrators as well as some journalists. Inside the turbulent convention, dissenting delegates were outshouted, outvoted and suppressed by the pro-Humphrey forces.
The chaos and bitterness in Chicago underscored how the vice president’s deference to the war president had weakened the party while undermining the chances for victory. In polls, Humphrey trailed the Republican candidate Richard Nixon by double digits.
And yet, like a true warhorse, the VP could not bring himself to break from the president’s steely insistence on maintaining the U.S. government’s horrific violence in Vietnam. The Democratic ticket of Humphrey and Maine’s senator Edmund Muskie was in a tailspin, propelled downward by Humphrey’s refusal to break ranks with Johnson.
It wasn’t until Sept. 30 that Humphrey took a meaningful step. His campaign bought 30 minutes of national TV air time on NBC, and he used it to deliver a speech that finally created a bit of daylight between him and Johnson’s war. Humphrey said that as president he’d be willing to halt the bombing of North Vietnam. The speech revived his campaign, which nearly closed the gap with Nixon in October. But it was too little, too late.
Trying to Square a Circle of Mass Murder With the 'Politics of Joy'?
Like Hubert Humphrey six decades ago, Kamala Harris has remained in step with the man responsible for changing her title from senator to vice president. She has toed President Biden’s war line, while at times voicing sympathy for the victims of the Gaza war that’s made possible by policies that she supports. Her words of compassion have yet to translate into opposing the pipeline of weapons and ammunition to the Israeli military as it keeps slaughtering Palestinian civilians.
As the Democratic standard-bearer during carnage in Gaza, Harris has been trying to square a circle of mass murder, expressing empathy for victims while staying within bounds of U.S. government policies. Last week, Harris had her national security adviser declare that “she does not support an arms embargo on Israel.”
Like Hubert Humphrey six decades ago, Kamala Harris has remained in step with the man responsible for changing her title from senator to vice president
If maintained, that stance will continue to be a moral catastrophe—while increasing the chances that Harris will lose to Donald Trump. In effect, so far, Harris has opted to stay aligned with power brokers, big donors and conventional political wisdom instead of aligning with most voters. A CBS News/YouGov poll in June found that Americans opposed sending “weapons and supplies to Israel” by 61 to 39 percent.
Last week, Harris described herself and running-mate Tim Walz as “joyful warriors.” Many outlets have heralded their joyride along the campaign trail. The Associated Pressreported that “Harris is pushing joy.” A New York Times headline proclaimed that “joy is fueling her campaign.” The brand of the Harris campaign is fast becoming “the politics of joy.”
Such branding will be a sharp contrast to the outcries from thousands of protesters in Chicago outside the Democratic National Convention next week, as they denounce U.S. complicity with the methodical killing of so many children, women and other civilians in Gaza.
Campaigning for joy while supporting horrendous warfare is nothing new. Fifty-six years before Vice President Harris called herself a “joyful warrior,” Vice President Humphrey declared that he stood for the “politics of joy” when announcing his run for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination.
At that point, the Pentagon was several years into its massive killing spree in Vietnam, as Humphrey kicked off his campaign by saying: “here we are the spirit of dedication, here we are the way politics ought to be in America, the politics of happiness, politics of purpose, politics of joy; and that’s the way it’s going to be, all the way, too, from here on out.”
If Kamala Harris loses to Trump after sticking with her support for arming the slaughter in Gaza, historians will likely echo words from biographer Offner, who wrote that after the 1968 election Humphrey “asked himself repeatedly whether he should have distanced himself sooner from President Johnson on the war. The answer was all too obvious.”
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1968 and 2024: Déjà Vu All Over Again?
The Gaza War has not created the kind of turmoil that nearly ripped apart the country in 1968, at least not yet.
May 11, 2024
The similarities are eerie:
Then and now, student anti-war demonstrations disrupted college campuses.
Then and now, the police were called in to arrest students, and often used excessive force.
Then and now, the Democratic sitting president was unpopular, and the Republican challenger was an extreme law and order conservative out for revenge against liberals.
Then and now, there were major ideological differences about a war between the young and the old.
But these similarities are largely superficial. 1968 was different.
Then there were 536,000 U.S. troops stationed in Vietnam, and the American population was deeply divided about not only whether the war should be continued, but whether it was justified in the first place. The Vietnam War was the salient political issue of the day, and young had to decide whether to serve or dodge the draft.
So far, despite the campus protests and coverage of the devastation, the war in Gaza ranks near the bottom on the list of concerns of the average American, even among young voters.
In 1968, the anti-war movement was part of a widespread rebellion against the anti-communist, hierarchical structure of society. The edifice of traditional authority was under siege. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll were perceived as forms of liberation and a direct threat to the established order. Having long hair could get you pulled in by the police or beat up by a hard-hat.
The threat of violence was palpable, and eruptions were not rare. Two of the most prominent anti-war and civil rights leaders of the era, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, were assassinated in 1968. The Democratic Convention in Chicago turned into a sprawling police riot. Convention delegates and journalists, as well as protestors, were punched and manhandled. (I was an eyewitness to both.)
Some groups, like the Weathermen, believed that violent acts were necessary to “bring the war home.” Bank of America branches were attacked with some regularity, often by bombing.
Perhaps the biggest difference between then and now is politics. Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ), the sitting president, had crushed the ultra-conservative Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election, winning 60 percent of the popular vote and 496 of the 548 electoral votes. Johnson, who had been John F. Kennedy’s vice-president and took office after Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, went on to pass major civil rights and anti-poverty legislation. He was viewed as the most progressive president since Franklin Roosevelt. Many believed he was even more progressive because of his courage enacting strong anti-segregation legislation that he knew would turn the Southern states away from the Democratic Party.
You want to know what fascism in America might look like? It was 1968 in Chicago.
Biden, who won a much narrower victory over Trump in 2016, has gained fame among progressives and labor leaders through the passage of his infrastructure and climate bills. He also provided more labor support in key agencies like that National Labor Relations Board, and is being hailed as the greatest labor-oriented president since Franklin Roosevelt.
Johnson’s opponent in 1968 was expected to be Richard Nixon, a polarizing conservative political figure who few believed stood a chance against such a popular sitting president. The Vietnam War, however, eroded Johnson’s popularity as he bore the blame for the continued death and destruction. The chant he often heard from protestors was, “Hey! Hey LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?!”
The political establishment in 1968, as in 2024, refused to challenge the sitting president even as his popularity plummeted. But one maverick senator, Eugene McCarthy (D: MN), threw his hat in the ring and drew the more moderate anti-war students into his campaign under the banner of “Get Clean for Gene.” By the thousands they knocked on doors during the New Hampshire primary, and the results shocked the country, with McCarthy gaining a 42 percent share of the votes compared to Johnson’s 50 percent.
Even though Johnson won New Hampshire, he was in serious political trouble. He realized he likely would lose the next primary in Wisconsin to McCarthy, and he faced a formidable challenge from Bobby Kennedy, who jumped into the race after the New Hampshire close call. Johnson then did the unthinkable – he withdrew. This was quite unbelievable. In less than four years, one of the most popular presidents in American history was forced out of office by the anti-Vietnam War movement.
Hubert Humphry, Johnson’s V.P., and former liberal senator from Minnesota, became the Democratic establishment candidate and was tightly controlled by Johnson. “I’ve got his pecker in my pocket,” Johnson supposedly said. Kennedy, who was assassinated the night he beat McCarthy in the June California primary, would have been a formidable challenger to Humphry, but McCarthy didn’t have the votes at the convention to defeat the vice president.
The Democratic convention was a nightmare, one I experienced first-hand. The police were out to beat up anyone who looked like a protester. They even pummeled reporters and attacked McCarthy delegates at the convention. You want to know what fascism in America might look like? It was 1968 in Chicago.
The Johnson/Humphry forces, fully in control, refused to compromise with the anti-war faction and shot down a rather mild platform peace plank that called for an end to the bombing of North Vietnam and a negotiated withdrawal of American troops. The anti-war delegates and protesters left Chicago with nothing, beaten and in despair.
As a result of the violent convention, captured live on TV, Nixon was way up in the polls, and seemed to be cruising to an easy victory. Even though the police caused nearly all of the violence in Chicago, it looked like an enormous breakdown of law and order, a key element in Nixon’s platform.
But in the last few weeks before the November 1968 election, Humphry moved towards the peace plank that had been rejected at the convention, and his poll numbers improved to the point where Nixon’s enormous lead evaporated. Had Humphry got his pecker out of Johnson’s pocket a month or so earlier, I’m quite certain he would have won.
Ultimately it was an election about the Vietnam War and law and order. Nixon had the edge in the former by pretending to be more of a dove than Humphry, who had so much difficulty separating himself from Johnson’s war. Nixon gained, too, on the latter issue, as images of the Chicago riots and the Black revolts in dozens of cities across the country after King was assassinated made his “silent majority” fearful.
The Gaza War has not created the kind of turmoil that nearly ripped apart the country in 1968, at least not yet. Even the current campus conflicts, fortunately, don’t match the catastrophic clashes that reached their peak in 1970 when National Guardsmen fired into a crowd of demonstrators at Kent State, killing four and wounding nine unarmed students.
Today, there are no courageous and credible Democratic challengers willing to take on a sitting president, even a president who is 81 years old and running behind the election-denying Donald Trump in the polls.
I’m struck by the contemporary sound of the words Johnson used to announce his withdrawal from his re-election campaign on March 31, 1968.
“… I would ask all Americans, whatever their personal interests or concern, to guard against divisiveness and all of its ugly consequences.
What we won when all of our people united just must not now be lost in suspicion, and distrust, and selfishness, and politics among any of our people.
And believing this as I do, I have concluded that I should not permit the Presidency to become involved in the partisan divisions that are developing in this political year. …
I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office–the Presidency of your country.
Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.”
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