| Description |
1 online resource (484 pages) : illustrations |
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text file rda |
| Contents |
Seizing the moment -- Declaring war -- "Why isn't he a priest?" -- Sleepy Hollow -- "A hard and harsh moral judgment" -- Dump Johnson -- The general -- "We will never be young again" -- Old politics -- "A decent interval" -- Peace with honor -- Peter the hermit -- "Clean for Gene" -- The new Nixon -- "Nixon's the one" -- "Abigail said no" -- The poor people's campaign -- "Something bad is going to come of this" -- "Stand up and be counted" -- "It's not important what happens to me" -- "I've seen the promised land" -- The happy warrior -- Don't lose -- "Everything's going to be okay" -- Stop Nixon -- "Great television" -- The last liberal standing -- The peace plank -- "The whole world's watching" -- "The government of people in exile" -- The perfect crime -- Epilogue. |
| Summary |
From the host of MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell Nothing went according to the script. LBJ was confident he'd dispatch with Nixon, the GOP frontrunner; Johnson's greatest fear and real nemesis was RFK. But Kennedy and his team, despite their loathing of the president, weren't prepared to challenge their own party's incumbent. Then, out of nowhere, Eugene McCarthy shocked everyone with his disloyalty and threw his hat in the ring to run against the president and the Vietnam War. A revolution seemed to be taking place, and LBJ, humiliated and bitter, began to look mortal. Then RFK leapt in, LBJ dropped out, and all hell broke loose. Two assassinations and a week of bloody riots in Chicago around the Democratic Convention later, and the old Democratic Party was a smoldering ruin, and, in the last triumph of old machine politics, Hubert Humphrey stood alone in the wreckage. Suddenly Nixon was the frontrunner, having masterfully maintained a smooth fac?ade behind which he feverishly held his party's right and left wings in the fold, through a succession of ruthless maneuvers to see off George Romney, Nelson Rockefeller, Ronald Reagan, and the great outside threat to his new Southern Strategy, the arch-segregationist George Wallace. But then, amazingly, Humphrey began to close, and so, in late October, Nixon pulled off one of the greatest dirty tricks in American political history, an act that may well meet the statutory definition of treason. The tone was set for Watergate and all else that was to follow, all the way through to today. |
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Examines the 1968 presidential election to evaluate its lasting influence on American politics and the Democratic Party, exploring the pivotal roles of Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, two high-profile assassinations, and the Chicago riots. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 461-470) and index. |
| System Details |
Requires Boundless App. |
| Chronological Term |
1963-1969 |
| Subject |
Presidents -- United States -- Election -- 1968.
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Politics and government. |
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Presidents -- Election. |
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United States -- Politics and government -- 1963-1969.
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United States. |
| Genre |
Electronic books. |
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Electronic books.
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| Other Form: |
Electronic reproduction of (manifestation): O'Donnell, Lawrence. Playing with fire New York : Penguin Press, 2017 9780399563140 (DLC) 2017031414 (OCoLC)973087457 |
| ISBN |
9780399563157 : $65.00 |
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0399563156 : $65.00 |
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