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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again everyone and now we continue our series, 'The Eights', a brief history of the American culture wars decade by decade. This week we're in 1968. Today's question is how close was Richard Nixon's brand of backlash populism to Donald Trump's? More broadly, how the heck at the end of the counterculture of 1960s did the United States elect Richard Nixon of all people President of the United States? Cokie Roberts and Elizabeth Drew will be on in a little while to talk about it, but let's start here.

We don't want to overlook that Nixon did have opponents for the republican nomination that year. Let's listen to two of them. Mitt Romney's father, George Romney, many of you have never heard this man's voice and he was significant in the United States. He was governor of Michigan. He had been president of the Ford Motor [unintelligible 00:01:05] American Motors that made Ramblers and those cars. He was huge in the auto industry and the governor of Michigan and he was a presidential hopeful. George Romney was considered a moderate compared to Nixon, but he still honed right in on culture war themes. Listen in this clip to how he explicitly defends the establishment and suggests that Black America was about to start a guerilla war.

George Romney: The size and complexity of our national problems have bred a widespread sense of personal futility. We've begun to see acceptance of irresponsibility as a way of life. There's a growing aimlessness and flabbiness in our American society. The evidence is everywhere. Too frequently, family responsibilities are pre-empted by government and weakened by obsolete welfare policies that cripple each new generation of the poor.

The crime rate mounts and over half the major crimes are committed by teenagers. To avoid a society that seems to offer no cause worth serving, too many turn to drugs, alcoholism, or other means of escape. Too often, young people who are just bursting with idealism, either find themselves playing a game for which they have little heart or are hurling themselves into wasteful protest against the so-called establishment. Men and women in the slums bitter over unfulfilled promises listen to revolutionaries who would plunge us into guerilla civil warfare. We're becoming a house divided.

Brian: George Romney, father of Mitt, running for president in 1968. I guess old George started the frat bro naming thing. His name was just George, but he named his second Mitt like a baseball glove. Mitt named his first son Tagg, which of course is something you can do with a mitt. Also running against Nixon was Ronald Reagan, then the governor of California and already a diehard conservative ideologue. Reagan of course would go onto be elected president in 1980, but already in '68, he was talking about freedom in anti-counterculture terms.

Ronald Reagan: There are things for which if need be we are willing to die and one such thing is freedom. Will we as a nation burn our draft card or will we serve above and beyond the call of duty?

Brian: Now, opposing being drafted into a corrosive war represented the cause of freedom to many baby boomers. To Reagan, as you heard in that clip from '68, freedom was the opposite of that. Nixon himself invoked similar pro-war language that he tied to cultural mores in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention as he invoked his slogan, The Silent Majority. Here's 30 seconds of that.

Richard Nixon: Did we come all this way for this? Did American boys die in Normandy, and Korea, and in Valley Forge for this? Listen to the answer to those questions. It is another voice, it is a quiet voice in the tumult of theshouting. It is the voice of the great majority of Americans, the forgotten Americans, the non-shouters, the non-demonstrators. They’re not racists or sick, they’re not guilty of the crime that plagues the land.

Brian: Richard Nixon from his republican convention acceptance speech. Now, one New York City footnote to that Miami Beach convention, Mayor John Lindsay, New York's Republican Mayor at that time, was being floated as a moderate alternative to the [unintelligible 00:05:11], Spiro Agnew, to be Nixon's running mate and do the Conservative Republican, Liberal Republican unity ticket, but Lindsay declined to make himself an issue and instead seconded Agnew's nomination on the floor, unity for the right of the party.

Yesterday's guest in this series, Lawrence O'Donnell, who wrote a book on the '68 election said, "Donald Trump actually models himself less on Nixon than on the third-party candidate in 1968, the segregationist Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, who actually won five southern states, 46 electoral votes, and 13% of the popular vote that year. For example, here's Wallace in '68 pugnaciously telling protesters to go away.

George Wallace: Why don't you young punks go out of the auditorium?

Brian: Well, young punks get out of the auditorium. Trump in 2016?

Donald Trump: Look at these people. Well, what a bunch of losers, I tell you. You are a loser. You really are a loser. Buddy, are you ready? Get them out of here. Get the out of here. Get the hell out of here.

Brian: More [00:06:23] George Wallace than Richard Nixon to be sure. Here is Wallace singling out The New York Times as an enemy of the people.

Wallace: The average citizen in this County has more intelligence and sense in his little finger than the editor of The New York Times has in his whole hand.

Brian: Trump in 2016.

Trump: I know New York Times which is failing, really failing madly. I call the failing New York Times. Every story they write [unintelligible 00:06:52]

Brian: One more of George Wallace '68.

Wallace: I want to tell these national parties this, they're going to find out there are a lot of red necks come November 5th in this country and [inaudible 00:07:02]. They've used us a doormat long enough.

Brian: They'll find out there's a lot of red necks in this country come election day, and talking about the world, "They've used us as doormats," and of what he considered real Americans, "Used us as doormats for others concerns." Sound familiar?

Trump: The US has become a dumping ground for everybody else's problems.

Brian: It's 'The Eights', a brief history of the culture wars decade by decade. We are in 1968, and we'll listen more from the archives from 1968 as we go and talk to Cokie Roberts and Elizabeth Drew. Stay with us.

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Brian: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again everyone. We're doing our series, 'The Eights', A brief history of the American culture wars decade by decade. This week we are in 1968, and today's question is, how close was Richard Nixon's brand of backlash populism to Donald Trump's, and more broadly, how the heck at the end of the counterculture 1960s did the US elect Richard Nixon of all people President of the United States?

With me now, an all-star duo on Nixon's backlash populism and any similarities with today, NPR senior political analyst Cokie Roberts, and Elizabeth Drew, who was a Washington correspondent for The Atlantic in 1968. These days she's a contributor to The New York Review of Books, she also wrote a book about Richard Nixon. Good morning Cokie. Good morning Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Drew: Good morning, Brian.

Cokie Roberts: Good morning, Brian. Good morning, Elizabeth. Nice talking to both of you.

Elizabeth: Good morning, Cokie.

Cokie: How are you doing?

Brian: Elizabeth, it was so interesting for me yesterday to read your April 1968 article about the election on the Atlantic-

Cokie: You'll notice, Elizabeth, he brings in the old ladies for this- [crosstalk]

Elizabeth: [unintelligible 00:09:04]

[laughter]

Brian: We've had people with memories from 1948 on in this series. You quoted a former Census Bureau director saying, "The essential fact about the 1968 electorate was that it was unyoung, unBlack, and unpoor." Sounds strikingly similar to how Trump beat Clinton, but it was even more the case in '68, wasn't it?

Cokie: The famous Scammon articulation of the electorate.

Brian: Right, Mr. Scammon, the former Census Bureau Director. Elizabeth, what do you remember?

Elizabeth: Well, that was supposed to be, and it was, a fairly shocking approach to our politics because we had a used-centered politics and Scammon, what he was really saying is, "If the Democrats go this way, they're going to lose." That there aren't that many Blacks who are out there and who vote. Of course, now, they systematically try to keep them from voting, so I don't know that that's in advance. Most of the voters are going to be middle-class, and they're not going to be the youth. If the Democrats are up to trying to appeal to those groups of people, they're not going to win.

Now, as you know, as both of you know, that election was a hair breathe close. There's been a lot of theory. I think one can overdo something like that. There's been a long-standing theory that had the election gone on for another week Humphrey would have won. It was extremely close. It had to do with whether Lyndon Johnson would stop the bombing of North Vietnam. A lot of factors played into that.

The other book, and I'm sure Cokie remembers as well, and probably more important at the time was one by a Kevin Phillips, The Emerging Republican Party. He was saying that the way for the Republicans to win was to appeal to the South, hint Whites, and blue-collar voters, and blue-collar workers. He had it right. I would say that is more the prototype for our current Republican politics than Scammon's book was.

Brian: The Emerging Republican Majority by Kevin Phillips back then, and some people will remember that Kevin and Cokie used to do the weekly Monday morning-

Cokie: We did.

Brian: -political analysis.

Cokie: Sometimes accompanied by my [unintelligible 00:11:40]. [laughs] Elizabeth of course is right, there was so much going on in that election, but you can't leave out George Wallace in that analysis because if you combine the Nixon vote and the Wallace vote, you get a very middle-class white vote. Wallace is the last third party candidate to get in the electoral college votes. You really had an understanding on his part, and on the part-- By the way, the campaign he waged was not a racist campaign. He had some dog-whistles things, but he didn't go out and wail against Black people or anything like that. He sounded so much like Donald Trump 'On the Stump', that it's really eerie.

Brian: Are you talking about Nixon or Wallace?

Cokie: I'm talking about Geroge Wallace. A very populist approach, and instead of draining the swamp, it was getting those pointy-headed egg heads our of Washington.

Elizabeth: Bureaucrats, pointy-headed bureaucrats.

Cokie: Right, understanding that people thought that Washington didn't pay any attention to them. The Democrats continued to fall into that trap. Things haven't changed that much.

Brian: Listeners, for your oral history contribution to 'The Eights' today, how about anyone who remembers voting for Richard Nixon in 1968? Yesterday, we did McCarthy, and RFK, and Hubert Humphrey voters. For today, anyone listening right now willing to call up and remember voting for Nixon and why? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Let's see if we get anyone. Everyone from that era claims they were at Woodstock in 1969. [laughs] Whether they were or not-

Cokie: Well, not me.

Brian: -maybe no one from that era who voted for Nixon will admit it, but maybe you will. Listeners, we're trying to understand in this history series, 'The Eights', why Richard Nixon of all people was elected president of the United States.

Elizabeth: Brian, can I come in on that?

Brian: You can in a second. Let me just make sure they have the question and the phone number. Listeners, help us with your own memory or voting for Nixon in 1968 in particular, 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692, with Cokie Roberts and Elizabeth Drew. Elizabeth, go ahead.

Elizabeth: Well, I think one thing of working backwards, is saying, "Richard Nixon of all people," and we're thinking about the Richard Nixon of 1973, '74 when he got into the whole Watergate [unintelligible 00:14:20]. The Nixon of '68 had been in the House of Representatives, he'd been in the Senate, he'd been vice-president for eight years. He wasn't an unrespectable figure.

There's always been a side of Nixon that people didn't like. He was called Tricky Dick from the days he started in politics in California. The Nixon who got elected was experienced, and Humphrey had his own weaknesses. You can't say how one was without counting how the other one behaved. Of course, the problem that Humphrey had is, he was completely trapped by Lyndon Johnson and Johnson's conduct of the war in Vietnam. Humphrey begged him to cut off the bombing of the North and he just wouldn't do it until close to the end and then it said, "It's too close to the end." The Nixon in '68 is not the Nixon that we all remember so clearly, if those like Cokie and I are antiquities who were alive during Watergate, that’s the Nixon that you're comparing it to.

Cokie: I think that's a very good point, Elizabeth. Don't forget, Brian, the 1968 convention for the Democrats had also been part of the picture. I remember being at that convention and it was not something that the American people liked looking at. They didn't see a party that seemed to be respectable, it didn't seem to be able to manage anything, and was certainly not something that they identified with if you were a middle class mom living in Akron, Ohio.

Elizabeth: [unintelligible 00:16:01] mention the violence, Cokie.

Cokie: Then there was violence on both sides.

Brian: Now, you've mentioned and our guest yesterday, Lawrence O'Donnell who wrote a book, Playing With Fire about the election of 68, you've all said Trump has been modeling himself more explicitly on George Wallace than Nixon. Here are two more short examples of that from Wallace '68. Here's Wallace dissing young men in '68 who wore long hair and called for peace and love.

Wallace: I love you too, I sure do. Oh, I thought you were she, you're a he, oh my goodness.

Brian: Today, it's Trump's anti-transgender policies objecting to the crossing of he and she. Here is George Wallace in '68 threatening official violence really against protesters if they engaged in non-violent civil disobedience like they did one time with President Johnson.

Wallace: When he was in California, a group of anarchists lay down in front of his automobile and threatened his personal safety, the president of the United States. Well, I want to tell you that if you will elect me the president and I go to California, when I come to Arkansas and some of them lie down in front of my automobile it will be the last one they’ll ever want to lie down in front of.

Brian: "Some of them lie down in front of my automobile, it will be the last one they’ll ever want to lie down in front of." We know that Trump has-

Elizabeth: He sounds very familiar, but I doubt that Donald Trump is actually modeling himself to George Wallace. I suspect [unintelligible 00:17:34] haven't heard of George Wallace, but he understands the same strain in the American electorate of a lot of people who feel like they have been left out of the political calculations and who feel that both parties are ignoring them and that they want to champion for them who just tells it like it is, as they would say. I think that that's something that Donald Trump understands in a way that George Wallace also did.

Brian: By contrast with those Wallace clips, here's how carefully Nixon was trying to walk the line while still running this Southern Strategy, as it's known, racialized campaign, but sounding like he's for civil rights, but then still coming out with the racial appeal to Whites. Listen to how he walks that line.

Nixon: Let those who have the responsibility to enforce our laws and our judges who have a responsibility to interpret them be dedicated to the great principles of civil rights, but let them also recognize that the first civil rights of every American is to be free from domestic violence and that right must be guaranteed in this country.

Brian: Referring domestic violence. Now we think of it as something that goes on in your house.

Elizabeth: Spousal abuse.

Brian: Right, and he was referring to riots in in American cities.

Elizabeth: Brian, I think that really what’s run through all of this is race. You mentioned dog whistles, I think they were a little louder than that under a Wallace who stood in the schoolhouse door to keep Blacks from entering.

Cokie: Not on the campaign trail, Elizabeth, when he was on campaign trail.

Elizabeth: Let me go on for a minute, please. I wasn't saying it was on the campaign trail. I was saying that race ran through the campaigns and Wallace stood for that. He was seen as that person. Nixon picked up on race, the Southern Strategy, it needs no further explanation. Nixon, why did he pick Spiro Agnew? Because Spiro Agnew, as mayor of Baltimore, had big battles with Blacks and showdowns with them in appearances and so on. You go on through, Ronald Reagan began his campaign in the Shoba, Mississippi, near where the civil rights workers were murdered and on it goes. I think there's been a strain in the Republican races all the way through on race. You get to Trump, and what was the first words out of his mouth after he came down the famous scene of the escalator which none of us will ever forget? "Well, Mexico, they send us rapists, they send us murderers." Immigration equals race in many of these instances. The Republicans have been playing with that the entire time.

Cokie: Elizabeth's right. It really did start with Nixon because it wasn't through under Eisenhower who got a significant portion of the African-American vote. Keep in mind, 1968, we had the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, the Voting Rights Bill of 1965 when Lyndon Johnson signed it saying it was turning over the south to Republican party, and then the Housing Bill of 1968. My father was the majority whip of congress in that time. His vote for the Housing Bill almost defeated him, and he had been in congress for 20 something years. The fact is that fair Housing Bill was a very dangerous thing for Democrats. It was the right thing to do, but it was very dangerous for them.

Elizabeth: Also, you had the issues over school busing. That was very big. It was big in the north, which is what Kevin Phillips understood and what Nixon ran on too. Yes, the south, but they're also areas of blue-collar workers in the north.

Cokie: Louise Day Hicks in Boston.

Elizabeth: That's right.

Brian: Let's bring in some of our callers with some oral histories from people who voted for Nixon in 1968 as we continue in our series, 'The Eights', a brief history of the culture wars decade by decade. Our guests for today's segment, journalist Elizabeth Drew and Cokie Roberts. Jerry in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jerry.

Jerry: Good morning. I voted for Nixon because I thought apart from his somewhat unattractive personality, he was the best qualified candidate. Brian, I resent your posing the question, "Who will admit to voting for him?" It's an unnecessary and very cheap shot. Race has been an issue in our politics well after this. The Democrats played the race card too, only in a different way. I don't only vote Republican. Since Nixon, I voted for three Democrats.

Brian: That's fine. Plus I was making a joke because Nixon's reputation turned into what it turned into. What was it in '68? Let's stay on '68, Jerry. What was the Nixon versus Humphrey choice for you if that was your choice?

Jerry: It was mostly the [unintelligible 00:22:57] Democratic party. I would have voted for Humphrey had maybe Chicago not taken place in the violent way it had, but I just felt it was too much influence that Humphrey as president, he would have changed in ways that I wouldn't be comfortable with. I didn't serve in Vietnam. I feel fortunate that I wasn't called. I didn't demonstrate against it, but I was opposed to the war. Traveling in Europe for a good part in '68, where there was a lot of resentment against it, and I learned a lot about not supporting the war when I was traveling more than when I was in this country.

Brian: Jerry, I'm going to leave it there. Thank you so much for calling in with that memory. Charles in Melbourne, Florida, you're on WNYC. Hi, Charles.

Charles: Hi.

Brian Lehrer: You are Nixon voter in '68 right?

Charles: Nixon voter in 1968. Some of the reasons for that were just spoken of by the previous caller. I was very disappointed with the Democratic party, especially in light of the goings on of Chicago. The feeling I got was that Humphrey was too fragmented, and the party itself was too fragmented to accomplish removing us from Vietnam, which was my primary and main objective for voting for Nixon, who I did believe would get us out. As it turned out, ironically, I shortly then began demonstrating against Nixon in Washington with the hundreds of thousands of others. My Nixon story starts out okay, but ends up badly.

Brian: Charles, thank you so much for that. Now, on this belief that Nixon would be more likely than Humphrey to get us out of the war, somehow resolve Vietnam, which we've now heard from two callers, somebody wrote the other day that there's a parallel with the Russia investigation with Nixon in '68. Elizabeth, didn't he open up some secret back channel in the Vietnam war peace talks that came to be considered treason as by his critics?

Elizabeth: Well, there were two things, Brian. By now, I write now for The New Republic [unintelligible 00:25:41]. First of all, Nixon said he had a secret plan to end the Vietnam war. It remained secret. They didn't have a plan, but that's what he kept saying. I think Humphrey had a weakness that was shown in his being trapped by Johnson. Anyway, one, was the secret plan, and then there was the very same incident where it appeared that the Paris peace talks were really getting somewhere. What is done is that Henry Kissinger, who had worked both sides of the street during the campaign, but he decided he'd end up with Nixon, was making calls and Nixon was making calls.

There was the famous [unintelligible 00:26:40] who was very close to the people in charge of south Vietnamese government. Her husband had been a big World War II [unintelligible 00:26:50] over Asia. She herself was Asian. [unintelligible 00:26:56] conveyed the word at the request of Nixon and Kissinger, we believe, to say, "Look, if they hold on, they get South Vietnam a better deal than they were about to get in the Paris peace talks." They sabotaged the talks. Now, they didn't get a better plan. The war went on for about five more years and it ended pretty much the same way it would have had they accepted the plan in Paris.

Cokie: [unintelligible 00:27:27] thousands of Vietnamese killed in the [unintelligible 00:27:29].

Brian: Yes. Let's take another memory from Laurie in Brooklyn contributing to oral history. Hi Laurie.

Laurie: Hi. I was not a voter, I was a child, but my parents nearly got divorced because of the election. It's not a joke. My parents had been Eisenhower Republicans. They were proud that Eisenhower ordered the troops in '53 to go into little rock to support school integration, but the war and the '68 uprisings really split my parents apart. Of the four children, almost all of us were in the demonstrations in '68 in Chicago. My father was pro-Nixon. He thought Humphrey was incompetent. He was appalled by his own kids demonstrating.

My mom was one of the founders of Another Mother for Peace, and had two draft age sons that she was dammed that she was going to see go to Vietnam. The tensions got so high that I still can't believe their marriage survived it, '68. It struggled on right afterwards, but it came very close. The whole family was deeply torn asunder and a tremendous hatred of Richard Nixon among all the kids, but with my father defending Nixon right to the bitter end.

Brian: Can I just ask how your parents did in the 1980 election with Ronald Reagan?

Laurie: Well, my mother passed away in '72, so that wasn't an option.

Brian: I'm sorry. Laurie, thank you so much for sharing that sorry. Wow. We're almost out of time. Cokie, as a footnote, if you happen to know, Roger Ailes, who went on to start Fox News, of course, was a Nixon person in '68, also Alan Greenspan, and of course, Roy Cohn. Do you happen to know Roger Ailes' 1968 political origin story?

Cokie: No. I was not aware of his presence in 1968. I've learned since that he was very influential in trying to deal with Nixon, and the debates and those kinds of things. Nixon had done so poorly against John Kennedy, at least visually. That's really all I can tell you about that.

Brian: Anything on any of them, Ailes or Roy Cohn in 1968, Elizabeth?

Cokie: Of course, Roy Cohn-

Elizabeth: I don't know about Roy Cohn, but I think he was of a different category, but Ailes also advised Nixon on how to have this county hall kinds of things. This was a strain. This was difficult, but Nixon started to look more homey and less polarizing figure.

Cokie: Scary. [laughs]

Elizabeth: Yes, that's the word.

Brian: There we leave it. Now, I'm going to accurately identify Elizabeth Drew as now with The New Republic. In those days in '68, she was with The Atlantic. Many of you might remember that she did the Letter From Washington for The New Yorker for many years. She's also author of the relevant book, Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon's Downfall that came out in 2014. Of course, Cokie Roberts, NPR senior commentator and author of books, including Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation. Thank you so much for joining us on our series 'The Eights'.

Elizabeth: It was fun.

Brian: Really great.

Cokie: Great to be with both of you. Also, WNYC listeners, give. You're just cheating if you listen to the radio for free. That's stealing. Give money.

Brian: Thanks, Cokie. More to come. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

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Brian: [unintelligible 00:31:28] in the news again today relative to the Russia investigation, but yes, that was the Rolling Stones from 1968.

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