November 5, 1968

from ’68 – A Novel

 

A small Tuesday night crowd gathered at Skip’s Place, watching the election returns trickle in, waiting for one of the three major networks to declare a winner. After a while, they grew bored with the coverage and Skip switched to a channel showing I Love Lucy reruns; that is, until the polls closed in California. Then it was back to Skip’s favorite network, CBS, where he expected to hear the straight scoop from the veteran team anchored by Walter Cronkite. Little did Skip and his customers know that they’d have to wait until Wednesday morning for a winner to be declared.

            “I can’t believe it’s this close. Humphrey was so far behind coming out of Chicago in August, I didn’t think it was possible for him to make up the ground.”

“Yeah, but he waited too long to break with Johnson and come out for an end to the bombing. He should have done that right off the bat.”

“And what about Nixon? Losing to Kennedy in ’60. Losing for governor in ’62. I thought he was dead. What a comeback!”

“You know, I think he’ll be a pretty good president.”

The lone woman sitting at the bar spoke up then, her voice heavy with emotion. “Ah, they’re all a bunch of crooks … a bunch of lousy crooks, every damn one of ’em.”

“Come on, Alice, why do you say that?”

“Because it’s true. Look what they do: stage some phony Gulf of Tonkin incident so they can bomb North Vietnam. Send five hundred thousand of our kids to prop up those crooks in Saigon. And then, at the last minute, a week before the election, Johnson declares a halt to the bombing and says a peace agreement is close, just to try to throw the election to Humphrey.”

“Well, hell—”

“Do you think LBJ cares about the kids that are dying while he plays politics with their lives? He doesn’t give a rat’s ass! All they care about is power. They’ll do anything to get it, and they’ll do anything to keep it.”

“Hey, calm down, Alice. Come on—”

She was crying openly now. “My best friend just lost her son. He’s coming home in a box. And for what? Half the country is against the damn war. They’re all a bunch of crooks.”

“Well, Nixon says he’s got a secret plan to end the war.”

“And you believe that crap? If he’s got a plan, why doesn’t he tell us what it is? And what about Humphrey? He didn’t come out for a bombing halt until he saw he was getting his ass kicked in the polls. They’re a bunch of damn crooks.”

“You know, Alice may be right. Remember that Orson Welles film, where his character Harry Lime is way up in a Ferris wheel or something, and he says to Joseph Cotton, ‘See those people down there, all those little black dots? If one of those dots stopped moving forever, would you really care?’ That’s our politicians, up there in that Ferris wheel, looking down at all of us little black dots on the ground.”

“Well, listen to you, Mr. Philosopher. Since when did you get so intellectual? Orson Welles, my ass.”

Their attention returned to the election results.

“Hey, how ’bout George Wallace? Looks like he is going to carry about five states— Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas.”

“Geez, Humphrey could really use those electoral votes.”

“Hell, those votes were never going to Humphrey. They would have gone to Nixon. The old ‘solid South’ hates the Democrats now, because of the civil rights laws.”

“Wallace was never going to win the election. What was he trying to do?”

“He wanted to keep Humphrey and Nixon from getting two hundred and seventy electoral votes, throw the election into the House of Representatives.”

“How the hell does that work anyway? Since they’re mostly Democrats, wouldn’t they just vote for Humphrey?”

“Damned if I know. I’m sure if it looks like it’s going that way, Uncle Walter will explain it to us.”

And so it went as the clock ticked closer to midnight. Alice’s friends took her home. Skip resisted the temptation to switch channels in search of something to laugh about. Eventually Walter Cronkite advised his viewers that it was all coming down to Ohio, Illinois, and California—all three states too close to call. Nixon would wind up carrying those three states and the country would wake up to the news that he, Richard M. Nixon, would become the thirty-seventh president of the United States, winning three hundred and one votes in the Electoral College. The true election wonks noticed right away that if Humphrey had carried California, George Wallace would have achieved his goal.

Nixon’s secret plan took another seven years to bear fruit. In the meantime, many more sons and daughters came home in flag-draped coffins, black dots on the ground that simply stopped moving forever.

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