How did our politics get so harsh and divisive? Blame 1968.

[DonViejo]

Review of "American Maelstrom: The 1968 Election and the Politics of Division" by Michael A. Cohen

By Carlos Lozada June 30 at 10:00 AM

AMERICAN MAELSTROM: The 1968 Election and the Politics of Division

By Michael A. Cohen

Oxford University Press. 427 pp. $29.95

When the world starts feeling chaotic — and yes, the summer of 2016 is making a strong play for chaos — it’s tempting to look back for reference points and precursors, to some past time that can explain why things turned out this way, that maybe can give us someone to blame.

Michael A. Cohen’s “American Maelstrom” chronicles a bygone presidential election featuring a fear-mongering, race-baiting candidate stoking white resentment; a long-shot lefty whipping up collegiate frenzy with his anti-status-quo message; and an establishment front-runner who, recovering from a painful electoral defeat eight years earlier, was hoping to prove just likable enough to win. Voters cast their ballots against a backdrop of political assassinations, police brutality and a seemingly endless war, one that Americans did not want to lose but did not care to continue waging.

Cohen, a political columnist for the Boston Globe, does not draw direct parallels between particular candidates in 1968 and today; no, that would be too easy. The true link is not the politicians, he contends, but the politics. The presidential campaign would fracture the nation’s post-World War II “liberal consensus” — the understanding among Republican and Democratic elites that the federal government should provide economic opportunity and security at home and remain vigilant against communism abroad. In its place, he argues, appeared the polarization now so pervasive in our politics, as “the ideologically committed wings of each side began to more forcibly assert themselves.”

The result was not just a Nixon presidency that would end in disgrace, it was “four decades of division, incoherence, and parochialism in American politics.”

Cohen tells this unhappy story through the strategies and fortunes of the men contending for the presidency: former vice president Richard Nixon, Gov. Ronald Reagan, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and Gov. George Romney on the Republican side; Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Sen. Robert Kennedy, Sen. Eugene McCarthy and (at times) President Lyndon Johnson for the Democrats; and former Alabama governor George Wallace, the Democrat-turned-independent who was “so willing to tap into the dark pools of popular alienation.”

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2016/06/30/how-did-our-politics-get-so-harsh-and-divisive-blame-1968/

[liberal N proud]

1. I have always blamed Watergate and the republicans thirst for revenge

Which was why Bill Clinton was impeached for a BJ.

[beachbum bob]

2. gingrich started it in late 1980's...article is missing that

thats when the whole process started being always us vs them....and not what is good or bad for america

[DonViejo]

4. I have to disagree...

it began in 1968 and has seeped through our politics ever since. BTW, this is a book review, not an article per se

[thucythucy]

6. It began much earlier than that.

Nixon in the 1950s made a career of red baiting. He even called his opponent in the 1962 race for the California governorship "soft on communism"--that was Gov. Brown Sr., a practicing Catholic. Senator McCarthy in the '50s, the race baiting, red baiting, anti-labor, anti-women, anti-Semitic campaigns of the 1930s.... dirty politics has been here for a long time.

I think in fact the '60s and '70s were an aberration in that this sort of politics was actually toned down for a while, until Republicans realized (under Reagan, then Gingrich) that they did better in an era of dirty politics.

For what it's worth, I doubt Nixon would have resigned if Republicans hadn't gone to him and insisted. Had that happened today, the GOP would have rallied around him, and constitution be damned, just as they're ignoring so many other aspects of decent, constitutional government today.

1968 was a year of catastrophe, ending in the election of Nixon--but it wasn't the turning point as I see it. That would be 1980, when Reagan used racist dog whistles (and backdoor negotiations with Iran) to secure the defeat of Carter. A second Carter term would have forestalled much of the chaos we see today. Just my opinion.

Have a happy 4th!

[DonViejo]

8. Actually, Nixon's red baiting began in 1950...

when he ran for the U.S. Senate against Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas, the first Democratic woman elected to Congress from California.

In 1950, Gahagan Douglas ran for the United States Senate even though the incumbent Democrat Sheridan H. Downey was seeking a third term. William Malone, the Democratic state chairman in California, had advised Douglas to wait until 1952 to run for the Senate, rather than split the party in a fight with Downey. Gahagan Douglas, however, told Malone that Downey had neglected veterans and small growers and must be unseated. Downey withdrew from the race in the primary campaign and supported a third candidate, Manchester Boddy, the owner and publisher of the Los Angeles Daily News. When Gahagan Douglas defeated Boddy for the nomination, Downey endorsed the Republican U.S. Representative Richard M. Nixon.[9] Nixon's fellow Congressman John F. Kennedy quietly donated money to Nixon's campaign against Gahagan Douglas.[10]

In the primary race, Boddy had referred to Gahagan Douglas as "the Pink Lady" and said that she was "pink right down to her underwear", a suggestion that she sympathized with the Soviet Union. During the general election, Nixon reprised this line of attack. His campaign manager, Murray Chotiner, had flyers printed on sheets of pink paper. Nixon implied that she was a Communist fellow traveler by comparing her votes to those of the far-left, pro-Soviet Rep. Vito Marcantonio. Gahagan Douglas, in return, popularized a nickname for Nixon which became one of the most enduring nicknames in American politics: "Tricky Dick."

Nixon won the election with more than 59 percent of the vote, and Gahagan Douglas' political career came to an end. The conservative Democrat Samuel W. Yorty (later a Republican convert) succeeded her in Congress.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Gahagan_Douglas

[thucythucy]

16. You're right.

I'd forgotten about this.

Another good read on all this is David Halberstam's "The Powers That Be" about the evolution of the major American media in the middle part of the 20th century. The red baiting of the '30s was intense. I'm a little vague on this, but there was a socialist candidate for governor of California (I want to say Sinclair Lewis or Upton Sinclair, I always get those guys confused) who actually had a chance to win. The Hearst family and others, who owned the movie theatres, produced "newsreels" with "interviews" of "Bolsheviks" waiting on the California borders to swarm in once the socialist won. These played before every movie showing in the state. I remember the gist of one "interview" was a guy with a foreign accent saying, "I like the system in Roosia, I think we should try it here." The socialist was of course defeated.

I sure miss Halberstam.

[bemildred]

5. Our politics has always been ugly, really ugly.

This year was not that special.

[malthaussen]

7. More entertaining than most, though.

It's not every election you get 16 clueless GOP empty suits in search of a script.

-- Mal

[bemildred]

9. And definitely less predictable.

But yeah, how important they are, and yet with so few ideas as to what to do. "Let's go back to 1950!"

[LongtimeAZDem]

10. "You hatchet-faced nutmeg dealer"

Attack Ads, Circa 1800:

[malthaussen]

11. Parliamentary politics have always been harsh.

When I was researching in the state papers of the Pennsylvania colony, the very first meeting of the legislature included a rowdy sit-in and punch-up. We should never forget that on 22 May 1856, Senator Charles Sumner was physically assaulted and caned on the Senate floor by Representative Preston Brooks. It is an instructive episode: a man assaults another many years his elder while the latter is sitting helplessly at his desk, and is lauded as a courageous hero in the partisan press.

I'm frankly finding all the comparisons between 1968 and today tiresome, but whatever sells.

-- Mal

[seabeckind]

12. The key words: "harsh and divisive"

There have always been disagreements. Sometimes to an extreme. But eventually the strife worked out as an equilibrium was reached. Eg, the 1968 problem within the democratic party ended with the loss of the presidency because those most affected were forced to change their target. That doesn't seem to be true today. I think the chance to unite the party was lost.

I believe on a national level it has gotten progressively worse since around the mid-80s when it looked as if the common people lost their influence in the decisions about their destiny.

“A revolution is coming – a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough – but a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability."

Robert F. Kennedy

He was speaking of a different country at a different time but it is a message that needs to be heeded today. When the political process turns against the common man in favor of those in favor, there's gonna be hel to pay.

Lot's of little flags popping up. Bunch of them in this country and a bunch in the world.

[Nitram]

13. It must be the fault of neoliberalism. Isn't everything?

[seabeckind]

14. Neoliberalism == Reaganomics == trickledown

A lot of people's quality of life hit a big hole in the road starting in the 80's.

I know your intent was snark but there's truth in it.

People tend to be less belligerent if they can see a decent future.

[struggle4progress]

15. The 1998 TN state senate race between Byron Looper and Tommy Burks became really ugly

but the 1860 US Presidential election launched a civil war