Yale University Press
The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968
Key Metrics
- Luke a Nichter
- Yale University Press
- Paperback
- 9780300280135
- -
- -
- History > Modern - 20th Century
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
A Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2023: Politics
The book is a delightful demolition of the many political myths that continue to muddy our understanding of that election year. . . . Nichter's book stands out for its clear, direct prose and the scrupulous research on which it's based.--Barton Swaim, Wall Street Journal
The 1968 presidential race was a contentious battle between vice president Hubert Humphrey, Republican Richard Nixon, and former Alabama governor George Wallace. The United States was reeling from the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy and was bitterly divided on the Vietnam War and domestic issues, including civil rights and rising crime. Drawing on previously unexamined archives and numerous interviews, Luke A. Nichter upends the conventional understanding of the campaign.
Nichter chronicles how the evangelist Billy Graham met with Johnson after the president's attempt to reenter the race was stymied by his own party, and offered him a deal: Nixon, if elected, would continue Johnson's Vietnam War policy and also not oppose his Great Society, if Johnson would soften his support for Humphrey. Johnson agreed.
Nichter also shows that Johnson was far more active in the campaign than has previously been described; that Humphrey's resurgence in October had nothing to do with his changing his position on the war; that Nixon's Southern Strategy has been misunderstood, since he hardly even campaigned there; and that Wallace's appeal went far beyond the South and anticipated today's Republican populism. This eye-opening account of the political calculations and maneuvering that decided this fiercely fought election reshapes our understanding of a key moment in twentieth-century American history.
Author Bio
Luke A. Nichter is a Professor of History, Book Review Editor for Presidential Studies Quarterly, and National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar. He has held fellowships at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the University of Michigan, the University of Oxford, and the London School of Economics.
He is a New York Times bestselling author or editor of six books, including
Richard Nixon and Europe: The Reshaping of the Postwar Atlantic World (Cambridge University Press),
and, with Douglas Brinkley, The Nixon Tapes: 1971-1972 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and The Nixon Tapes: 1973 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). His books on the Nixon tapes won the 2017 Arthur S. Link – Warren F. Kuehl Prize for Documentary Editing by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and were named among the five best books on the 1970s in the Wall Street Journal by Jane Kamensky, Professor of History at Harvard University.
Luke’s current book project is Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. and the Decline of the Eastern Establishment, to be published by Yale University Press.
Luke has been endorsed by the American Historical Association for his work on government openness. He is a former founding Executive Producer of C-SPAN's American History TV, launched during January 2011 in 41 million homes.
Luke’s website, nixontapes.org, offers free access to all publicly released Nixon tapes as a public service – featured on CBS Sunday Morning in 2014. He earned his Ph.D. in History from Bowling Green State University.
Source: Texas A&M University - Central Texas
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