Vietnam's Second Front: Domestic Politics, the Republican Party, and the War

6. The Zalmoxis Effect: Vietnam and the 1968 Presidential Election

195 chapter 6 The Zalmoxis Effect Vietnam and the 1968 Presidential Election The politician is an acrobat. He keeps his balance by saying the opposite of what he does. —Maurice Barrès, Mes cahiers Depend on it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. —Samuel Johnson quoted in Boswell’s Life of Johnson The pantheon of Greek gods ranges from the almighty Zeus—king of the gods, supremeruleronMountOlympus,godofthunderandthesky—tolesser-known but colorful deities like Adephagia (goddess of gluttony) and Priapus (god of fertility). One of the more obscure gods was Zalmoxis, who assumed human form and disappeared in the underworld for three years before returning in the fourth. Although a ruler and god of the underworld to the Thracians, he could easily have been the god of elections. In the American political system, every fourth year witnesses the spectacle of a presidential election, where candidates make sweeping, grandiose promises for change, peace, and prosperity—and then the rhetoric disappears for three years until it returns again for the next campaign. In 1968, the Zalmoxis effect reared its head as Republican presidential aspirants jockeyed for position, with Vietnam acting as a fulcrum for the primary contests. The war also figured prominently in the fall campaign between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey, exerting broad influence despite the candidates’ best efforts (and hopes), and nearly determining the outcome of 196 Vietnam’s Second Front the election. This chapter is devoted to examining how the GOP grappled with Vietnam on multiple fronts—internally, against the Johnson administration, and during the race for the White House—during 1968. With his nomination virtually assured, Nixon began to craft a centrist position on Vietnam. The Baltimore Sun reported in March 1968 that House Republicans had become increasingly dovish with regard to the war, noting that over half the 187 GOP representatives had signed a resolution calling for “a congressional review of fundamental policy in Southeast Asia.” The bulk of these, the article notes, “want a ‘de-Americanization’ of the war.”1 Yet Nixon could not embrace opposition to the war completely. Many Southern Republicans stood considerably to the right of the national political mainstream on a variety of economic, social, and especially racial issues. This cohort within the party had vigorously supported Goldwater in 1964 and had not relinquished its hard-core conservative views. If Nixon hoped to gain and hold the allegiance of both groups, he would have to use all his political skills to maneuver among the factions within the party.2 Speaking to a Republican gathering in Nashua, New Hampshire, in March, Nixon pledged to “end the war and win the peace.”3 In this and subsequent statements on the war made during 1968, he “walked a tightrope of meaning, using nuanced words and phrases to keep his balance.” For doves and moderates, he emphasized nonmilitary steps toward peace; for hawks and conservatives, he talked about maintaining pressure on Hanoi and the Viet Cong and winning the peace. This, then, was his challenge: to woo the doves while holding on to the hawks and staying true to his own foreign policy convictions. Fortunately for him, the diverse opinions on the war that pervaded the country in early 1968 allowed him to propose politically appealing courses of action to disparate parts of the electorate without abandoning his own foreign policy goals and strategies .4 This “middle-of-the-road” strategy, Nixon’s speechwriter Richard Whalen noted in his memoirs, was intended, not to discover the most valid solution for Vietnam, but rather “to find the least assailable middle ground”—recently abandoned by Romney and not yet occupied by Rockefeller—that would secure the GOP nomination.5 Nevertheless, Nixon still faced challenges to his candidacy. George Wallace, the outspoken and controversial former governor of Alabama, decided to run as an independent. While his campaign focused heavily on the issues of race and states’ rights, Wallace’s position on the war was simple and direct: he would turn the problem over to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ask them what needed to be done, and then “get on with doing it”—exactly what Goldwater had proposed in 1964. According to Wallace, the United States should call on “all the military ability we have,” excluding nuclear weapons, to win the war. He rejected the The Zalmoxis Effect 197 concept of inviting the National Liberation...