The New Context of '68

In a single week, the entire political context of 1968 changed almost beyond recognition. Out of New Hampshire's frozen farm lands and bucolic hamlets emerged a new equation for the Democratic Party; what had once been a Cakewalk was now a slashing dogfight. From the nation's first primary and its aftermath in Washington also came some new and vigorously stated perspectives on the major issues confronting the country.

Only days before, the Republicans had seemed to be the chosen victims of an internecine bloodletting; the Democrats, with an incumbent President, appeared to be headed for snug harbor. New Hampshire, with a relished penchant for turning things topsy-turvy, turned them over once again. When the results were in, the G.O.P. had a clear front runner in Richard Nixon and a long-shot challenger in Nelson Rockefeller. The Democrats, by contrast, had on their hands the most dramatic--and potentially explosive--political situation in decades.

Three men figured in the new Democratic equation:

> EUGENE J. MCCARTHY, Senator from Minnesota, presidential candidate from out of nowhere, who confounded everybody by scoring heavily in the New Hampshire voting and demonstrating that the divisions within the Democratic Party were indeed deep.> ROBERT F. KENNEDY, Senator from New York, all along the likeliest man to challenge the President, but inhibited by fear that to join the fray would sunder the party, expose him to charges of opportunism, and wreck his hopes of assuming the office that his brother held so briefly.

>LYNDON B. JOHNSON, the President, the greatest vote-getter in U.S. history, now in serious trouble because of an arduous war abroad, a racial crisis of alarming proportions at home, and a gyrating economy that seems to be getting out of hand.

The Triggerman. And three's a crowd. The ingredients for an intraparty explosion were already there, but it was McCarthy who pulled the trigger with his New Hampshire showing. Before the debris had settled, Kennedy moved to shoulder him aside. Scarcely a month after he had unequivocally denied speculation that he would challenge the President, the Senator announced: "I am reassessing my position." Before he reached a final decision, he made an extraordinary offer to the President (see box, p. 18), to which Johnson, not surprisingly, said no. Kennedy soon afterward decided to run.

In the chandeliered, Corinthian-columned Senate Caucus Room, where his brother had launched his campaign eight years earlier, he began with the identical words that John F. Kennedy had used: "I am announcing today my candidacy for the presidency of the United States." In front of Bobby was a throng of 450, including Wife Ethel and nine of his ten children; behind him was the big, green-felt-covered table at which he had sat as counsel both for Joe McCarthy's investigations subcommittee and for the Army-McCarthy hearings that finally curbed the Wisconsin Senator's power in the dim, drear days of the middle 1950s.

Ticking off a list of Johnsonian policies that had brought "despair" to the nation and "the growing risk of war" to the world, he declared : "I run because it is now unmistakably clear that we can change these disastrous, divisive policies only by changing the men who make them. For the reality of recent events in Viet Nam has been glossed over with illusions. The report of the riot commission has been largely ignored. The crisis in gold, the crisis in our cities, the crisis on our farms and in our ghettos, all have been met with too little and too late."

Invidious Comparison. He was less than convincing in his argument that he had held off running until McCarthy proved in New Hampshire "how deep are the present divisions within our party and country." But, he said, "now that the fight is one over policies which I have long been challenging, I must enter that race. The fight is just beginning, and I believe that I can win."

Pressed on his Viet Nam stand, he offered no reevaluation but a recap of what he has been urging for quite some time--de-escalation, a bombing pause, more fighting by the South Vietnamese, negotiations with the Viet Cong, and guarantees of a role for them in Saigon politics.

In every way possible, Bobby subtly invoked the memory of his late brother --same room, same gestures, same table, same prose style, same age at declaration (42). But the comparison could not but be invidious. Bobby notably lacked J.F.K.'s easy grace in reading his statement, stumbled over several answers, and failed to persuade skeptics that he was not merely claim jumping Gene McCarthy. Though he assured the Minnesotan that "my candidacy would not be in opposition to his, but in harmony," the two men will clash in the Nebraska, Oregon and California primaries unless they can work out an accommodation beforehand. In keeping with his cool strategy, McCarthy did not seem disposed to do so.

Primary Speculation. Ultimately, the decisive battle is likely to pit Kennedy against Johnson. It is one that the President has been anticipating--and dreading--for more than four years. Publicly, Johnson reacted to the sudden challenge with a blend of studied indifference and forced jocularity. "Everybody is speculating," he chuckled to a businessmen's group after Kennedy's announcement. "Some speculate in gold, a primary metal, and others just speculate in primaries." Now that the battle had been joined, there was an air of fatalistic acceptance. "Well," said White House Press Secretary George Christian, "I'm glad it's out in the open now instead of all that burrowing around."

Out in the open it is, at last, and that may prove to be a healthy development. A vigorous three-way debate in the Democratic Party can only stimulate and enhance the present two-way debate in the Republican Party--and the whole country should benefit when the issues are discussed by men whose careers are at stake in every stand they take and word they say.

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