1968: United States

Presented below are articles on politics, foreign relations, Congress, the Supreme Court, social welfare, the budget, and national defense.

Politics

'These are not ordinary times and this is not an ordinary election.' With that prophetic, tragic understatement, Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York announced his candidacy for president on March 16. In American polities 1968 was truly an extraordinary year. It was a year of turbulence and upset, of violence and assassination, of bitterness and anger and insistent demands for change. And yet the major parties chose as their presidential candidates two of the most familiar figures on the political landscape: Republican Richard Milhous Nixon and Democrat Hubert Horatio Humphrey. Their lackluster campaign resulted in the triumph of Nixon, the man who had been heavily favored throughout the fall. But Humphrey's closing surge and the strength, especially in the South, of third-party candidate George Corley Wallace made Nixon a minority president with a blurred and hesitant mandate from the nation he prepared to lead into the 1970's.

Republicans.

The year began with Richard Nixon a strong favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination. After losing the presidential race to John F. Kennedy in 1960 and failing to win the governorship of California in 1962, Nixon was considered a political has-been. But the former vice-president moved to New York, entered a lucrative law practice, and began the long journey back. He stumped the country tirelessly for Republican candidates, building up his credit with the party professionals. Generally considered a moderate, he won the admiration of the GOP's conservative wing by supporting Barry M. Goldwater in 1964 while many liberals were turning their backs on the Arizonan. Nixon's one serious drawback in 1968 was his 'loser' image (he had not won an election on his own in 18 years); so he entered every primary from New Hampshire on, in the hope that a string of impressive victories would refurbish his reputation.

The Republican moderates had decided after the disaster of 1964 that in order to win the nomination for a moderate they would have to agree on one candidate and support him vigorously. But the man who emerged as their standard-bearer was Governor George Romney of Michigan, a stiff and unimpressive campaigner whose popularity had already begun to sink as the year began. When Romney and Nixon began stumping through the snows of New Hampshire, it was soon apparent that the Michigan governor was over his head. His moralizing style and confusing statements made little impact on the voters. When his private polls predicted a disastrous defeat, Romney withdrew one week before the primary, and Nixon won overwhelmingly by default. Nixon gained impressive victories in the primaries that followed.