Rick Perlstein: Thirty-five years later, what the 1972 campaign can—and can’t—teach liberals today
[Rick Perlstein is the author of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. A senior fellow at Campaign for America's Future, his book Nixonland will be published in June.]
If you happen to find yourself listening to Conversation 62 of Tape 33 of the new Nixon documents released this summer, this is what you will hear: On Election Night 1972, Richard M. Nixon, having served George McGovern the biggest electoral college defeat in history, took a congratulatory phone call from Hubert H. Humphrey, who all but admitted he had wanted McGovern to lose, and that he had tried to keep him from winning.
It is oblique, as the wink-wink, nudge-nudge understandings of backroom politics so often are. Nixon had earlier dispatched Henry Kissinger to convey to Humphrey the (false) message that the Vietnam peace deal he would sign after the election was perfectly marvelous. On the tape, Humphrey agrees that, yes, Nixon was better for peace than McGovern. Nixon grants Humphrey absolution for having nonetheless campaigned for the Democratic nominee ("you had to fight for your man"), and Humphrey’s voice turns conspiratorial: "Well, I’ll have a talk with you some time. . . . I did what I had to do. If not, Mr. President, this whole defeat would have been blamed on me and on some of my associates." They both share a hearty laugh. Nixon, delighted to confirm that the man he shivved to get to the Oval Office preferred to keep him there for four more years, waxes effusive, reminding him that Winston Churchill returned to the prime minister’s chair at age 68–"so what the hell, you’re still in your sixties!" Then he rings off, thanking Humphrey "for being such a statesman."
This astonishing conversation condenses so much about that strangest of American presidential elections, 1972: its battle for the soul of the Democratic Party, fought by an antiwar insurgency far to the left of the Cold War consensus and an ossified, go-along-to-get-along establishment; the dishonest and dishonorable way Nixon settled Vietnam to secure reelection; the crashing irony that the nation delivered a 60.67 percent popular majority to a man they claimed to trust more than the antiwar insurgent, but who had already directed a criminal coverup. Dwell, however, on Humphrey’s line–"this whole defeat would have been blamed on me and some of my associates." For condensed in that is an entire subsequent history that, like Faulkner said of the South’s, isn’t even past: It is the battle for the meaning of 1972....
Read entire article at Democracy: A Journal of Ideas
If you happen to find yourself listening to Conversation 62 of Tape 33 of the new Nixon documents released this summer, this is what you will hear: On Election Night 1972, Richard M. Nixon, having served George McGovern the biggest electoral college defeat in history, took a congratulatory phone call from Hubert H. Humphrey, who all but admitted he had wanted McGovern to lose, and that he had tried to keep him from winning.
It is oblique, as the wink-wink, nudge-nudge understandings of backroom politics so often are. Nixon had earlier dispatched Henry Kissinger to convey to Humphrey the (false) message that the Vietnam peace deal he would sign after the election was perfectly marvelous. On the tape, Humphrey agrees that, yes, Nixon was better for peace than McGovern. Nixon grants Humphrey absolution for having nonetheless campaigned for the Democratic nominee ("you had to fight for your man"), and Humphrey’s voice turns conspiratorial: "Well, I’ll have a talk with you some time. . . . I did what I had to do. If not, Mr. President, this whole defeat would have been blamed on me and on some of my associates." They both share a hearty laugh. Nixon, delighted to confirm that the man he shivved to get to the Oval Office preferred to keep him there for four more years, waxes effusive, reminding him that Winston Churchill returned to the prime minister’s chair at age 68–"so what the hell, you’re still in your sixties!" Then he rings off, thanking Humphrey "for being such a statesman."
This astonishing conversation condenses so much about that strangest of American presidential elections, 1972: its battle for the soul of the Democratic Party, fought by an antiwar insurgency far to the left of the Cold War consensus and an ossified, go-along-to-get-along establishment; the dishonest and dishonorable way Nixon settled Vietnam to secure reelection; the crashing irony that the nation delivered a 60.67 percent popular majority to a man they claimed to trust more than the antiwar insurgent, but who had already directed a criminal coverup. Dwell, however, on Humphrey’s line–"this whole defeat would have been blamed on me and some of my associates." For condensed in that is an entire subsequent history that, like Faulkner said of the South’s, isn’t even past: It is the battle for the meaning of 1972....