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An American Melodrama: The Presidential Campaign of 1968

Lewis Chester,

Godfrey Hodgson

Bruce Page

4.22 · Rating details · 37 Ratings · 8 Reviews

For those who can bear to face it again, here is a report on the '68 Presidential campaign by three British journalists who covered it for the London Times. Beginning with the foreboding events of 3/31-4/6, they plunge onward thru the primaries to the conventions, paying rather less attention to the anti-climactic Nixon-Humphrey bout which followed. Using the mass-psychoan ...more

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Hardcover, 830 pages

Published May 1st 1969 by Viking Press (NY) (first published April 1969)

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Sep 07, 2009 Erik Graff rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Americans

Recommended to Erik by: no one

Shelves: history

1968 was the most intense year of my life as it involved the events of the assassinations of M.L. King and R.F. Kennedy, the campaign of Senator Eugene J. McCarthy, the Chicago police riot during the Democratic Convention, the Parisian students' revolt, the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Tet offensive in Vietnam etc. I was personally most involved in the McCarthy campaign and the police riot (ouch!) in my hometown--and I was only a high school sophomore!

It was also the year I made m ...more

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Nov 11, 2014 Peter Jakobsen rated it really liked it

Definitive account of the 1968 Presidential campaign, written by three accomplished British journalists, manages to avoid the faux pomp of much American political writing; brilliantly coves the most critical election since 1932 with telling vignettes of key players, Democratic, Republican and independent. Pithy chapters on RFK's death in Los Angeles and Nixon working southern delegates at the Miami Hilton are classic.

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Mar 23, 2008 Nick Black rated it really liked it

I just can't get enough of 1968! A pretty masterful account of this wild, wacky election.

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Jan 19, 2016 Kinksrock rated it it was amazing

Incredibly thorough account of the 1968 presidential election.

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Jun 14, 2018 Mark rated it really liked it

Clear and detailed description of the presidential election 50 years ago, and i keep thinking how much things are the same. Racism, demogoguery, political tribalism, we are dealing with all of this still. I really enjoyed the style as well, the authors quote extensively from history and mythology as much as political science, and put things in better context in a way few politics writers do these days. Worth a read.

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Aug 07, 2016 Tom Schulte rated it liked it

While this book has one author, it is actually the work of three English journalists covering the election. The "Melodrama" in the title plays on their structure of "XII" "acts" and a coda. I think they would have been better dropping that idea, but the depth of coverage makes this a revealing look at presidential politics from primaries to election. It is also interesting how much has changed. Primaries were not universal, yet, and two-party politics more so with George Wallace & Curtis LeM While this book has one author, it is actually the work of three English journalists covering the election. The "Melodrama" in the title plays on their structure of "XII" "acts" and a coda. I think they would have been better dropping that idea, but the depth of coverage makes this a revealing look at presidential politics from primaries to election. It is also interesting how much has changed. Primaries were not universal, yet, and two-party politics more so with George Wallace & Curtis LeMay
nabbing an electoral vote of 46 for the American Independent party and a vocal advocacy for racial segregation in public schools and a viable option for the hawks.

The Republican nominee, former Vice President Richard Nixon, won the election over the Democratic nominee, incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey. This made a winner out of Nixon the loser and showed Humphrey could not get out of Johnson's shadow.

The bulk of this book is on the primaries which is where the drama was, despite the October surprise of Paris peace talks shenanigans around Johnson and Nixon.

On the Democratic side, those primaries had the late entry of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, assassinated June 6, 1968 on the night of a California victory. Many of his follower threw in with Eugene McCarthy
as an anti-war candidate with others flocking to Senator George McGovern for his outspoken opposition to the growing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. These two became much more viable without RFK and with President Lyndon B. Johnson withdrawing Mar 31, 1968. This all came to a head at the 1968 Chicago convention and its hippy-bashing police riot.

On the Republican side we had primary contestants Governor Ronald Reagan of California, when that state was basically Republican and Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York trying to defeat his own image as plutocrat and Governor George Romney of Michigan on the scene until he withdrew Feb 28, 1968.

It makes me think our election year is even less about hawks and doves and spawning less violence and protests and, in a sense, less present and fierce.

Like Alexis de Tocqueville, these European correspondents over in their reportage much that was true then and rings true now, like

"...personal influence is probable the most effective means of persuading people who are uncertain about voting at all that they should vote. And voters of low motivation, once brought to the polls, are more likely than not to be Democrats. Similarly, the more people vote, the better for the Democrats, since there are more of them."

On the Republican side, a bluening state map and a failure to disavow or reign in the most radical right-wingers proves to be a long, long problem for Republicans and it would seem a party split or triumphant third party may prove the ultimate reckoning. ...more

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