Nixonland: America's Second Civil War and the Divisive Legacy of Richard Nixon 1965-72

by Rick Perlstein

Sunday morning the rolling campus hills had the feel of a carnival. Children climbed around the tanks and helicopters; coeds struck up innocent flirtations with guardsmen; a private joked with a freshman, “Hang around, buddy. There’s a rumor that the state is going to cut our pay from $25 a day to $12.80. If they try that, Governor Rhodes will be calling you characters out to subdue us.” The two kids struck up such a friendship that the student went off and bought him some oranges. The soldier said he couldn’t accept them. “Didn’t you hear what the girls did to us at Berkeley? Injected the damned fruit with acid, and you had guys all over the place going off on trips.” Governor Rhodes flew into town at 9 a.m. on a helicopter—there to look tough because the Republican primary was on Tuesday. He was running for Senate. His opponent, Robert Taft III, was running as a New Politics liberal calling for “irreversible” withdrawal from Vietnam. And Taft was ahead in the polls. The governor met in Fire House No. 1 with the mayor, the National Guard commander, the federal district attorney, the district prosecutor, and the commander of the State Highway Patrol. Rhodes banned university officials from the meeting. He didn’t want any liberal administrators whimpering please. Gruff, dough-faced Rhodes laid out the goal: keep the university open without any further demonstrations so as not to hand a victory to the “dissident element.”