In 1964, the conservative Republicans finally got their candidate, Barry Goldwater nominated for president. The conservatives had complained bitterly that they had had to put up with Willkie, Dewy, Eisenhower and even Nixon. Their favorite, Senator Robert Taft, had consistently been passed over. 1964 was their year, but it was a hollow victory. The economy was excellent, and there was a lot of sentimental support for Johnson in the wake of the Kennedy assassination (The "Let us continue" button.) Johnson went in with a big advantage that only got wider. Goldwater made some serious mistakes when he told Tennessee electric customers that he was going to sell the Tennessee Valley Authority election generating plant to private investors. He also made waves when he spoke of turning over control of tactical nuclear weapons to commanders in the field. (The mushroom cloud button, "Go with Goldwater") Goldwater was compared to Dr. Strangelove, a satirical film about those who were in charge of nuclear weapons. Here is a box of LBJ buttons. Goldwater set a marker when he was one of few senators who refused to vote for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It earned him support in the South and started to turn the South from "blue to red," but at the time, it cost him a lot of votes. Despite the poor election showing, Goldwater buttons are popular with collectors because of their innovative designs. Here is a group of them. One of Goldwater's most popular slogans was "In your heart you know he's right." One Democratic response to that was, "Yes, extreme right." Another one was "But in your guts, you know he's nuts." Another famous Goldwater quote was "Extremism in the defense of liberty is not vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is not virtue." This was a major line from his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention. The jet plane button referred to the fact that Goldwater had a jet pilot's license. The were also plays on his number, which included "AUH2O" and golden pieces suspended in water in a plastic bubble The bright pink button which reads, "Hang LBJ by his ears," referred to an incident John had with one of his beagles, "Him" and "Her." To how how they could yelp, Johnson picked on of them up by its ears to get it to cry out. Johnson also referred to an official White House portrait of him as the "ugliest thing I ever saw." If you ever find an example of the red button with Goldwater's picture and "But in your guts, you know he's nuts," hang on to it. It's worth several hundred dollars.
It my understanding that that commercial was only run once. The Johnson campaign agreed that it was over the top. They were so far ahead in the polls at that point that it didn't matter.
Wow! That's pretty wild for a political ad. Well, Johnson was persuaded to step out of the race because his party didn't think he'd win, and then the frontrunner RFK was assassinated and that's how we got Nixon.
RFK might have gotten the Democratic nomination, but it was far from certain. LBJ had stacked the delegate deck for Hubert Humphrey to get the nomination. Johnson was determined not to be repudiated for his Vietnam policy. RFK and LBJ hated each other. Johnson called Kennedy “that little piss ant.” It probably dated from the tension between the Johnson and Kennedy camps during the Kennedy administration. Robert Kennedy would have the last person he wanted to get the nomination. That Johnson - Kennedy button I mistakenly bought twice was a sort of a joke. Johnson would have never picked RFK as a running mate. The Kennedy and McCarthy people did not see eye to eye. The McCarthy people viewed RFK as an opportunist who took advantage of the risk and success that McCarthy had achieved. There was no guarantee that the McCarthy delegates would immediately switch to Kennedy. When George McGovern picked up the mantle for Kennedy at the convention, the McCarthy delegates continued to support McCarthy. When RFK won California, it was big, but it didn’t guarantee a win at the convention. The Johnson - Humphrey delegates were still in the majority. Primaries were not the road to the nomination in those days. That came after George McGovern’s reform committee changed things. Things were very different in 1968 than they are today.
Johnson barely won the New Hampshire primary. The news media made it seem like McCarthy won. Johnson knew he would have to fight to make primary system look like he had public support. In realty many of the convention delegates had already been picked. Johnson was a shoe-in for the nomination, but he didn’t want to be embarrassed. So he withdrew from the race. Humphrey, who had been after the presidency since the mid 1950s, was ready sell his political soul to get the nomination. Humphrey could not compete in the primaries with the Johnson pro-message. Humphrey got one convention delegate in the New York primary.
Both LBJ and Humphrey needed each other. They both needed some cred off each other's stances so Dems ended up with a marriage of convenience for LBJ and inconvenience for Humphrey. It harkened back to the days when a new English King had to marry a French queen (with lots of land holdings in her dowery) in hopes of preventing a Eurpean war early in his monarchy. LBJ does NOT become the nominee without a northern civil rights Senator to balance the ticket. Humphrey's best chance at getting the nomination, is waiting in the wings as VP until LBJ (who was not in good health at all) retires. Both of their ambitions were severely upended by the new great issue of the day - Vietnam! Johnson literally could not stand the oval office, he worked tirelessly to gain. He far preferred the machinations in the Congress to those on the global stage. At least the arcane parlementarian rules, were actual rules! After JFK, Senators are often presidential nominees, but senators do not become President. Senators have to become Vice President, and then they may become President. Obama is the only exception.
This button symbolizes what Lyndon Johnson did to Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 presidential race. It was "the Lyndon Johnson seal of approval." It looks like it's time to post up the buttons from 1968.
LBJ was by far the better candidate of the entire bunch. What sunk him was the blatant lying by hacks like McNamara and the Joint Chiefs to both the public and even worse their Commander in Chiefs re what was going on in Vietnam and the media spinning the Tet Offensive as some sort of great Communist victory instead of the massive defeat of the VC it was, destroying the VC as a viable force and validating LBJ's policy of escalation. Thereafter the North Vietnamese could do no wrong as far as the left and right wing nutjobs were concerned, making it impossible for LBJ to continue in office. His policies re Viet Nam and Israel led to the bankruptcy of the Soviet Union and the steep decline of Soviet influence in the ME and Africa.
I was not aware of any "right wing nutjobs" that were part of the anti Vietnam War movement. The few I did hear wanted to take the restraints off and prosecute the war far more aggressively. Vietnam was a huge bargain for the Soviets and the Red Chinese. For a limited investment, they had the U.S. military tied up in a costly conflict, and the domestic U.S. political scene in turmoil.
Then you didn't pay attention much. The right wing hated Johnson for his Civil Rights Bill and blamed him for all kinds of stuff. Nice dream world you love in there. I bet ice cream is free and puppies never grow up, too.
We were talking about the Vietnam War, not the 1964 Civil Rights Act. If you are a Democrat, southern members of your party were the leading opponents of it.
Okay, we will agree to disagree. For investments far less, in real dollar terms, than the current U.S. support of the Ukraine, the Soviet Union and China got the U.S. spend $176 billion, took over 56 thousand casualties and got to sow domestic discord throughout America. According to the CIA, the Russia and China combined spent from $600 to $950 million on the Vietnam War. The higher number is 185 times what the U.S. spent on the war. And for that investment, the Vietnamese communists won the war. Today the Chinese are still collecting benefits from their support. The Vietnam War was the great radicalizer which turned many young people of my generation into far left radicals. Many of those radicals stayed on to get advanced degrees and became college professors. From there the cancer has spread further and further. The radicals now own the Democrat Party, which is a strong foothold in setting our domestic and foreign policies.
lol not even remotely true. And, 56 K casualties during the entire war was far less than deaths in auto accidents in the U.S. for the decade of 1960 to 1970. Nobody snivels about that, though. 'Domestic discord' has nothing to do with the fact the Soviets went bankrupt and ended up on western life support until it collapsed completely. You can blame the pandering to Wall Street and concentration of wealth, beloved by right wingers, for the 'radicalization', but you can't, you have a peer group to pander to and they might not let you play in the treehouse again if you posted real facts.
