Didnnunes Say That He Wasnt Running Again

Fifty years ago, on March 31, 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson appeared on national television and announced that he was partially halting the U.S. bombing of Vietnam, and that he had decided non to seek his party'southward nomination for president. "There is division in the American business firm at present," Johnson declared.

The news that the President had refused to seek re-ballot sent waves of shock and elation through a stunned electorate. At the same fourth dimension, his withdrawal from the race crystallized the nature of the conflicts that had divide the land forth ideological, racial, and class lines so deeply. Just within days it became all too credible that no single human action of political sacrifice could repair the divisions in the land. Johnson's presidency was a symbol and a reflection of the nation'due south fissures, but information technology was not ultimately its root crusade.

Johnson himself alluded to the deep roots of the unraveling of America in his surprise announcement: "With America's sons in the fields far away, with America's futurity under challenge right hither at abode, with our hopes and the earth'southward hopes for peace in the rest every day," he said, "I exercise not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to whatever personal partisan causes or to whatever duties other than the awesome duties of this part—the Presidency of your country."

His refusal to run once again was, on some basic level, a recognition of political reality. For all his legislative achievements (the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare and Medicaid), LBJ had become the confront of America'south divisions. To those on the Correct, Johnson had done too much, too apace, overloading the system with big-regime programs that trampled on individual liberties. Much of the Left viewed Johnson as the corrupt wheeler-dealer who had lied America into the disastrous, bloody Vietnam quagmire.

LBJ faced long odds in Nov; his pinnacle aides feared that he might not fifty-fifty win re-nomination. With his public approval rating at around 36 percent, LBJ had barely survived a surprisingly stiff primary challenge from antiwar Sen. Eugene McCarthy in New Hampshire, who took 42 percent of the vote to LBJ'due south 48 per centum on March 12. 4 days later, on March 16, New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, a long-fourth dimension LBJ nemesis, declared that he, likewise, would challenge Johnson for the nomination.

View of anti Vietnam State of war demonstrators standing and protesting outside the White House during a march to the Pentagon in Washington DC to plead for an end to the conflict, 1967. (Credit: Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Presidents rarely refused to stand for a full 2nd term. Simply Johnson's handling of the war in Vietnam hung boundness-like around his White House. He had repeatedly lied most America'due south armed forces progress, and the Tet Offensive in which Viet Cong troops attacked key cities in Southward Vietnam in January disproved the assistants's confidence that victory was just around the corner. (Harry Truman, similarly saddled with the unpopular Korean War, refused to run in 1952.)

Johnson's leading Republican contender Richard Nixon may well have trounced Johnson in November had he stood for a second term. As Johnson's withdrawal acquired turmoil within the Autonomous Party, Republicans appeared to have the upper-hand in the race to retake the White Firm.

LBJ's announcement was so dramatic partly because it was and so unexpected. When LBJ sat down to deliver the oral communication, even he wasn't certain that he would utter the words his aides had written for him. LBJ had acquired a reputation, rooted in decades of service in Senate leadership and and so in the White House, as a brilliant legislative operator, a masterful manipulator of men and laws, a politico who wished both to advance his own self-interest and outdo FDR equally the greatest reform president of the 20th century.

Past March 1968, however, "Landslide Lyndon," then named afterwards his 64 percentage trouncing of Barry Goldwater in 1964, had go gripped with anxiety, insecurity, and doubtfulness over the war, inner-metropolis riots, and the perceived failure of the war on poverty.

The 2 serious Democratic master challengers already in the race, McCarthy and Kennedy, along with their aides and allies reacted to Johnson's surprise announcement to not run confronting them with a combination of effusive glee and unsettled defoliation about what his departure would mean for their chances of winning the presidency. Upon hearing Johnson's announcement, RFK'south friend Jim Whittaker placed a call to Kennedy and told him, "Congratulations," as if the candidate had just won the nomination.

McCarthy gave credit for Johnson'south withdrawal from the race to antiwar activists in full general and those who had volunteered on his campaign in particular. Referring to Johnson'due south supporters, McCarthy said, "I don't call back they could stand up up confronting five million college kids just shouting for peace. There was too much will-power there."

Richard Goodwin, a former LBJ speechwriter who had joined McCarthy's entrada in protestation of the Vietnam War, felt "stunned, then exultant" when he heard Johnson say he would get out the White House in January. Goodwin leapt out of his chair, approached the goggle box gear up, and pointed at Johnson. "I thought it would accept another six weeks," he said.

But Johnson'southward withdrawal as well raised some hard questions for Democrats. The candidates and their allies feared that Johnson'southward determination might sap the energy that had provided them with much political attention and excitement from the moment they announced their chief challenges. As Autonomous leaders struggled to figure out how to respond to Johnson'southward sudden withdrawal, antiwar activists rejoiced.

Roll to Go on

Their movement, some of them ended, had forced Johnson to alter his war policy and to decide that he could not win some other term. From Madison, Wisconsin, to Berkeley, California, students honked their horns and held spontaneous street parties equally a rare flare-up of jubilation took hold. Perhaps the war would finally begin to stop now that Johnson was bowing out of the race.

At the same fourth dimension, the conclusion provided a curt-term jolt to Johnson'southward political standing. Much of the public and the news media interpreted Johnson'southward announcement every bit a Godsend that made the project of national repair more than feasible for 1968; LBJ's withdrawal offered hope, even so scant, of national reconciliation, hope that new leaders would pace upward and somehow unite a fractured Democracy. Johnson'southward decision not to seek re-election was a sign that the political system was still responsive to the people'south will.

In this spirit, newspaper editorials praised Johnson'due south determination equally a stiff footstep toward healing, and a Harris poll revealed that Johnson'due south numbers had climbed from 57 percentage disapproval of his job performance to 57 percent approval every bit a issue of his conclusion not to run again.

Streets afire from rioting post-obit the bump-off of Martin Luther King Jr., 1968. (Credit: Lee Balterman/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Yet the impression that this was a moment of national reunification engendered by Johnson'due south withdrawal was merely a chimera. Information technology shimmered on the surface of national politics and information technology was a mirage in the final assay. In bowing out of the race, Johnson had just papered over divisions that had been in the making for years, or even decades. Nigh shattering of all, the stride and scale of events undercut any lasting momentum toward unity gained through Johnson's announcement.

Five days after the speech, James Earl Ray, a small-time criminal with racist views, shot and killedMartin Luther King, Jr. as he was standing on the 2d-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. "Everything we've gained in the last few days we're going to lose tonight," Johnson predicted to his aide Joseph Califano. Riots soon tore through more 100 American cities.

Only two months later, in June of 1968, 22-year-old Sirhan Sirhan shot and killed Robert F. Kennedy at the Administrator Hotel presently after Kennedy's victory in the California chief. His assassination deprived Democrats of their best antiwar candidate with some ability to bring together African-Americans and the white working-course in a year when segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace's third-political party candidacy was surging.

Johnson's decision was not all it was cracked up to be. He remained the de facto leader of the Democratic Party and he connected to be the Political party'southward Kingmaker, insisting that his handpicked successor, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, endorse the assistants's war policies and stay loyal to Johnson. Humphrey had enough support among delegates to win the nomination at the political party's violent, fractious convention in Chicago that summer, and the party's platform mostly reflected Johnson's views of the war and endorsed his continued military machine commitment to Vietnam.

Republican candidate Richard Nixon candidature for Presidency in Iowa, Oct 1968. (Credit: Raymond Depardon/Magnum Photos)

Johnson'south withdrawal from the race also gave conservative Republicans a long-awaited opening. Johnson's fractional bombing halt and his pledge to seek a negotiated peace in Vietnam gave leading Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon space on the Vietnam question. Rather than having to specify his plans for ending the war in Vietnam honorably, Nixon was at present able to fudge the details and instead say he wanted to give Johnson's proposals a chance to be successful.

Equally nosotros at present know, the U.s.a. would go on to lose tens of thousands of lives in Vietnam before its concluding withdrawal from the country in 1975. In the long run, Republicans were able to utilise the end of Johnson's career every bit a coda for what they charged was the ruin liberalism had brought both to the domestic The states and the arenas of foreign and military policy. Conservatives asserted that Johnson had micromanaged and lost the war in Vietnam by refusing to unleash the total military arsenal of the U.s.a..

They further claimed that LBJ's Cracking Society had ushered in a period of heightened racial tensions, worsened the plight of the urban poor, and raided the white workingman's handbag to pay for programs aimed at helping the poor and racial minorities. Thus Johnson'southward exit from the race became a pivotal symbol in the rise of mod conservatism, confirming for conservatives that a titanic liberal such as Johnson had to end his presidency in disgrace because liberalism had yielded a series of miserable failures. Republicans saw the oral communication as proof that Johnson—and his agenda—were unworkable and had been defeated.

With his policies nether burn from all directions, and his popularity at a nadir, the most powerful man in America was forced into early retirement. Richard Nixon ultimately defeated Hubert Humphrey in November, of grade, although it's believable that he would have won an fifty-fifty more commanding victory had the unpopular Johnson stayed in the race.

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Matthew Dallek, associate professor at George Washington Academy's Graduate School of Political Management, is author, most recently, of Defenseless Under the Night: The Roosevelt Years and the Origins of Homeland Security.

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Source: https://www.history.com/news/lbj-exit-1968-presidential-race

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