The Making of the President 1968 (Landmark Political) Review

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The Making of the President 1968 (Landmark Political) ReviewTheodore White's considerable acumen and access to the corridors of power made him a worthy chronicler of the 1960 and 1964 presidential campaigns, but his tone of genteel liberalism made him seem an anachronism by 1968, the year of the Tet offensive, race riots, and the generation gap. But his "The Making Of The President - 1968" may be the best of his election chronicles precisely because of White's position at the nexus of one of America's great culture clashes.
It was the year Vice President Hubert Humphrey tried to shake off the cold grip of his unpopular boss, Lyndon Johnson, and run as his own man, while Richard Nixon sought to convince the electorate he was new and improved from the 1960 figure they rejected. Which one would be more successful?
There's not a lot of tension in the contest itself. White's readers knew who won, as do you. But White does shine in the wealth of detail he offers on the race, his philosophical analysis of shifting attitudes, and a cast of unique characters including the racist third-party candidate George Wallace, prickly peace advocate Eugene McCarthy, and hapless George Romney, an early GOP frontrunner of whom another Republican comments: "Watching George Romney run for the presidency was like watching a duck try to make love to a football."
There was tragedy in the 1968 race, too, most especially the murder of Democrat Sen. Robert Kennedy after his win in the California primary. White dedicates the book to Bobby and Jack Kennedy, and it's clear the reporter's heart was broken by what happened to them. Yet he manages to stand back and give an objective account of Kennedy's foreshortened run.
White seems to be everywhere, with Kennedy and his family at a California home the night before his assassination, with Humphrey at the Democratic convention in Chicago the night the town blew up in rioting and tear gas, with Nixon on Election Eve, flying over the nation as Nixon stares out a airplane window "as if by looking down and concentrating he could pull in more votes."
Nixon comes off well in this book. 1968 was his year, and White gives him his due. Perhaps White bought too much into Nixon's new public image; time showed those demons inside him were not dead but resting. But Nixon was also a figure of great dimension and brilliance, and White provides expert testimony for that. Plus Nixon best articulated a position on one core issue, law-and-order, which White and many other concerned observers, liberal though they were, could see America needed more of in 1968. Claiming this issue for his own gained Nixon the support of much of the moderate middle, the "silent majority" he spoke of on the stump.
White does have an ornate style that may bore some, and there's a lengthy postscript on what it all meant which was probably already outdated by the time the book was published. But "The Making Of The President - 1968" is by no means an outdated book. It's instead a primordial account of national politics as we now know them, with its sharp divides along racial, class, and ideological grounds, where the old ways, for better and worse, were being changed forever and the politicians were struggling to keep up. It should be required reading for political science majors; it's worthwhile reading for any citizen.
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