Nixonland. Part 12

"Hey! Hey! Viva Che! Hey! Hey! Viva Che!"

Hippies in Halloween drag had chanted incantations to levitate the five-walled monster ten feet off its foundations, sprayed "Lace" at U.S. marshals (it "makes you want to take off your clothes, kiss people, and make love"), chanted "Beat Army" as if they were at a homecoming game, and wrote mash notes to Ho Chi Minh on the walls.

Kid with bullhorn: "We've given enough speeches! Let's rush them!" "We've given enough speeches! Let's rush them!"

Military voice, over loudspeaker: "Your permit has expired. If you do not leave this area, you will be arrested. All demonstrators are requested to leave the area at once. This is a recorded announcement." "Your permit has expired. If you do not leave this area, you will be arrested. All demonstrators are requested to leave the area at once. This is a recorded announcement." Six thousand extra troops from the Eighty-second Airborne were in town from Fort Bragg. Some guarded the National Archives: "They might go for the Const.i.tution," a Pentagon official told Six thousand extra troops from the Eighty-second Airborne were in town from Fort Bragg. Some guarded the National Archives: "They might go for the Const.i.tution," a Pentagon official told Newsweek. Newsweek.

From the same window where he'd seen Norman Morrison immolate himself, Robert McNamara gazed down upon the scene. TV cameras doted on the not-inconsiderable number of young women, yielding the weapon of s.e.x. Some teasingly opened soldiers' flies. Others placed flowers in the barrels of their guns. On the surface, a gesture of sweetness. Deeper down, for a soldier steeled for grim conflict, just doing his duty, the most unmanning thing imaginable: you are slaves, and we are free. you are slaves, and we are free.

Marshals drew back their billy clubs. Some were ripped from their hands before they could bring them down. Laughter: flowers are falling from the brim of your helmet! flowers are falling from the brim of your helmet!

The peaceniks grew progressively more brazen. Giggling, some charged an unguarded door.

In the end, it all looked "futile and inconclusive to outsiders," Garry Wills of Esquire Esquire observed. He recorded a different conclusion among militants: they described "with undisguised enjoyment the ma.s.sive retaliation into which our government had been prodded." observed. He recorded a different conclusion among militants: they described "with undisguised enjoyment the ma.s.sive retaliation into which our government had been prodded."

The president was once again sure Moscow was behind the demonstration (when the CIA reported back, "we see no significant evidence that would prove Communist control or direction," Dean Rusk insisted they "just hadn't looked hard enough"). McNamara reflected that if professionals had truly led the ragged insurrectionists, they could have shut the building down. He now thought Vietnam a colossal blunder. Dean Rusk, on the other hand, said abandoning the fight would put the U.S. mainland itself in "mortal danger."

Hip and square lived in separate mental worlds. Two contending sets of rumors circulated: that cleanup crews found "nothing but bras and panties. You never saw so many." And that two marchers had been dragged into the building and summarily executed. The next week at Indiana University, Dean Rusk was drowned out by hecklers crying "Murderer!" and "Fascist!" He begged for calm and got it, until a little old lady started whapping one of the bearded hecklers with her umbrella. A chant broke out from another quarter of the audience: "Hit him again harder! Hit him harder!"; radicalization was breaking out all over. The Pentagon, Abbie Hoffman promised in the pages of the hippie rag The Realist, The Realist, was nothing: "Get ready for a big event at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next August." was nothing: "Get ready for a big event at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next August."

Meanwhile the nation's governors spent the third week of October on a cruise s.h.i.+p, dancing political dances, behaving the way politicians do, as if nothing had changed since the times of James Garfield.

The annual conference of the National a.s.sociation of Governors was where pols let their hair down in exotic locales, gossiped, jockeyed, sized up who was who, put on a show for reporters, flaunted their privileges as men who ran the world. This year the setting was the S.S. Independence, Independence, steaming to the Virgin Islands. Reporters chucklingly mutinied for better access, signing a "Press Power" manifes...o...b..nning "honky" governors from the media lounge, demanding busing from the lower to upper decks. Lobster was on the menu every day. steaming to the Virgin Islands. Reporters chucklingly mutinied for better access, signing a "Press Power" manifes...o...b..nning "honky" governors from the media lounge, demanding busing from the lower to upper decks. Lobster was on the menu every day.

One night state executives sashayed to the steel-band beat at a tropical-themed costume ball (though Lester Maddox limited himself the whole hot trip to a black suit and black tie). A reporter tapped the shoulder of the governor of Michigan mid-mambo with the wife of the governor of Was.h.i.+ngton. What did he make of this latest kerfuffle about the president?

(LBJ had posted a telegram to the s.h.i.+p, intended for his...o...b..ard a.s.signee, a former Democratic Texas governor. An incompetent in the mailroom delivered it to a Republican governor's stateroom by mistake. It contained instructions on which arms to twist to win a resolution praising Johnson's Vietnam policy.) Romney, dressed like Xavier Cugat and stepping lively on the floor (in his younger days he'd taken dancing lessons), said the ruse was typical Johnsonian "news manipulation," then deftly picked back up the beat. (No one feared the power of the president anymore; Esquire Esquire had recently run eight thousand words t.i.tled "The Dark Side of LBJ," exposing his every dirty trick, neurotic tic, and distasteful toilet habit.) had recently run eight thousand words t.i.tled "The Dark Side of LBJ," exposing his every dirty trick, neurotic tic, and distasteful toilet habit.) Nancy and Ronnie Reagan sipped cremes de menthe through straws at dance floor's edge. The journos plied him, too. He returned noncommittal aw-shucks pleasantries and pulled upon his pastel drink.

(They said that Reagan might be the third full-fledged Republican presidential aspirant. On the most recent cover of Time, Time, he was pictured alongside Nelson Rockefeller on an old-timey campaign poster, the sages who decided such things having declared Rocky-Reagan, or Reagan-Rocky, was the Republican dream ticket.) he was pictured alongside Nelson Rockefeller on an old-timey campaign poster, the sages who decided such things having declared Rocky-Reagan, or Reagan-Rocky, was the Republican dream ticket.) Nelson Rockefeller downed seasickness pills and said that while it was flattering to be on the cover of Time, Time, "I'm not a candidate, I'm not going to be a candidate, and I don't want to be president." "I'm not a candidate, I'm not going to be a candidate, and I don't want to be president."

(No one quite believed him. Since his 1959 inauguration, the oil heir was always drafting himself for president, then ostentatiously withdrawing himself from consideration, then drafting himself back in at the last minute.) Onboard, Rocky was seen everywhere huddling with Romney. Romney thought he'd received a pledge in blood from him that Rocky was out for good and had laid plans for an official candidacy announcement. But then, there were those polls: Rocky led LBJ by fourteen points while Nixon and Romney were ahead by only four. As the press corps had sung at the last Gridiron Dinner: "His mouth tells you no! no! But there's yes! yes! in his eyes."

(Maryland's new governor, Spiro Agnew, was running a one-man Rocky-for-President crusade. No one knew much about Agnew, except that he'd beaten a Democrat in November by running to his left on civil rights.) Outside the reach of the steel band's strains, Nixon agents quietly prowled, urging governors to stay uncommitted. Another onboard Johnson proxy, John Connally, governor of Texas, was locked in his cabin with aides, trying to figure out the next move for the president. It turned out to be a duck-out: canceling the "spontaneous" presidential drop-in on the governors' final port of call. Johnson held terrible cards. An unprecedented movement was afoot on the left wing of the Democratic Party, led by an energetic young activist named Allard Lowenstein: "Dump Johnson"-just as Republicans used to launch movements in the fifties to "Dump Nixon." On bad days the president moaned to his aides he'd prefer to take them up on the offer.

The soul of Johnson's problem was that Richard Nixon, on the campaign trail in 1966, had been right: the Democratic Party was splitting down the middle over Vietnam.

At the board meeting in September for Americans for Democratic Action, the group that had set the agenda for the Democratic Party's liberal wing since 1947, an unthinkable debate broke out: whether to withdraw support for the greatest presidential champion of liberalism since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. One bloc said Vietnam betrayed everything ADA was supposed to stand for. Another bloc saw holding the line in Vietnam as honoring ADA's founding principle: liberal anticommunism.

This latter faction had a friend in high places: their cofounder, Hubert Humphrey, who as Minneapolis mayor marched into the 1948 Democratic National Convention and proclaimed that the party must break with segregation, risking his political future for liberal principle. Speaking to ADA in 1965, he had delivered the liberal-hawk case for Vietnam: "This is the clearest lesson of our time. From Munich until today we have learned that to yield to aggression brings only greater threats." He had repeated it again to the group's inner circle in April of 1967. Arthur Schlesinger had replied, "Hubert, that's s.h.i.+t and you know it." Hubert said he didn't remember Arthur saying that when he was working under JFK, when the commitment to Vietnam began.

This is what Vietnam was doing to the Democratic Party: people who agreed about 98 percent of everything else were throwing schoolyard taunts at one another.

At the ADA board meeting before the governors' conference, the youngest member, Allard Lowenstein, said that liberal principle demanded they join his Dump Johnson efforts. He was opposed by the old-guard labor leaders, who thought this was crazy talk. These men lived by negotiation, through give-and-take, storing power through patient inst.i.tution-building. That was how they had made made the world's first ma.s.s middle cla.s.s-their glory, their legacy, a human accomplishment more awesome than all the Seven Wonders of the World. Johnson was their partner in the endeavor, the man to take it to the next step. And these the world's first ma.s.s middle cla.s.s-their glory, their legacy, a human accomplishment more awesome than all the Seven Wonders of the World. Johnson was their partner in the endeavor, the man to take it to the next step. And these kids kids were willing to p.i.s.s it away, with their airy talk about idealism and revolt and Lyndon Johnson's "evil." Gus Tyler of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union said they were changing the whole point of liberal politics-"away from economics to ethics and aesthetics, to morality and culture"-and would thus throw America's poor "to the Republican wolves." Sure, LBJ was a son of a b.i.t.c.h. But he was were willing to p.i.s.s it away, with their airy talk about idealism and revolt and Lyndon Johnson's "evil." Gus Tyler of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union said they were changing the whole point of liberal politics-"away from economics to ethics and aesthetics, to morality and culture"-and would thus throw America's poor "to the Republican wolves." Sure, LBJ was a son of a b.i.t.c.h. But he was our our son of a b.i.t.c.h. And liberals had precious few son of a b.i.t.c.hes to triflingly throw away. son of a b.i.t.c.h. And liberals had precious few son of a b.i.t.c.hes to triflingly throw away.

Arthur Schlesinger and Kenneth Galbraith formulated a compromise that carried the meeting: ADA would advocate for an antiwar plank at the Democratic convention instead of the divisive distraction of taking on the power of the presidency. Lowenstein didn't sign on. He couldn't imagine how a movement of liberal ideals could countenance a colonial war. He couldn't understand how anyone saw a political future for the Democrats behind a war and a leader less popular by the day. He didn't understand how the Democrats could stake their fortunes on the old old way of doing things-governors brokering presidential nominations on cruise s.h.i.+ps-in a world where everything worthwhile was way of doing things-governors brokering presidential nominations on cruise s.h.i.+ps-in a world where everything worthwhile was new: new: where all authenticity and truth concentrated on the side of idealism, of revolt, of the anticolonial-of where all authenticity and truth concentrated on the side of idealism, of revolt, of the anticolonial-of youth. youth.

He spoke for a new Democratic mood: the idea that the insurgencies of the 1960s had rendered the old rules of power obsolete. "One cannot speak of Black Power, or the riots or even Vietnam, in a departmentalized vacuum," Jack Newfield wrote. "They are all part of something larger. We have permitted political power in America to pa.s.s from the people to a technological elite.... Representational democracy has broken down."

People such as Lowenstein and Jack Newfield called their movement to harness insurgent idealism within the two-party system the New Politics. It was defined by disgust with the business-as-usual political dances of the old politicians in a time of moral enormity, and by the belief that organizing youthful and not-so-youthful idealists to kick that elite and their son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h handmaidens clean out of power was no less than a prerequisite for national survival. "If we have LBJ for another four years, there won't be much of a country left," another young New York writer, Pete Hamill, wrote in a letter to Bobby Kennedy. And the Democrats "will be a party that says to millions and millions of people that they don't count, that the decision of 2,000 hack pols does."

They ran the Dump Johnson movement on a shoestring out of a D.C. hotel room. They built organizations in Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California-states where Democratic reform clubs filled with earnest and bespectacled college professors and social welfare professionals had been fighting quixotic (and sometimes successful) battles against entrenched urban machines for decades. An ADA board member who ran a pizza parlor in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, declared himself sympathetic. But he said he'd be branded as unpatriotic in his small town if he signed up. He finally came around: "Why am I in politics if they're going to take my boys and send them off to a war I don't believe in, and I can't do anything about it?"

The foot soldiers were mostly students. They knocked on doors, armed with idealism and intellectual arguments: that a Democratic house built on a foundation of Southern whites in an age of the Voting Rights Act, by a labor movement defending the Cold War status quo, overseen by a malodorous cla.s.s of D.C. power brokers, could not thrive in an America where the median age by 1970 would be 26.5. That the old order was built for a fearful era of scarcity, not this era of full employment and abundance. That the New Politics was the only way to save an idealistic but increasingly alienated generation from the violent snares of SDS-style nihilism. They canva.s.sed, too, armed with McLuhanite a.s.sumptions: that, enmeshed in the new tactile media world, people would prefer the "new face" over the old one; the "authentic" over the plastic; the happening happening instead of the instead of the happened. happened.

What they were not armed with, as 1968 approached, was a candidate.

The New Politics was flavored Kennedy. Everybody knew it. "He's a Happening" was the t.i.tle of a 1966 profile of Bobby Kennedy by Andrew Kopkind, the New Republic New Republic's most radical young writer. The article luxuriated over Kennedy's pa.s.sion for "sudden, spontaneous, half-understood acts of calculated risk," his denouncing of "easy solutions" (even more, he "seems to dislike solutions in general"). Kennedy was always searching for new frontiers of meaning. "Where does he look? Among the grape-pickers on strike in central California, in Cloth Market Square in Cracow, on the Ole Miss campus.... Maybe the poor know; he studies the condition of the urban ghettos. Is it in Latin America? He'll go and see. Is it in South Africa? Get him a visa. Whatever the object of his quest, Kennedy is unlikely to find it. He is looking not for a thing, but for a happening-what is happening to politics, to people." Kennedy preferred speaking at schools rather than civic clubs. When the kids asked when he was running for president, he replied, "When you're old enough to vote for me." The rumor was that Bobby had sampled LSD. Wrote countercultural journalist Hunter S. Thompson, "There is a strange psychic connection between Bobby Kennedy's voice and the sound of the Rolling Stones."

The Happening released a book that fall, the kind that presidential aspirants put out before announcing their campaigns. The first chapter of To Seek a Newer World To Seek a Newer World was ent.i.tled "Youth" and spoke of "the white power structure," "the Establishment," and Watts as a "revolt against official indifference." He complained we "send people to jail for the possession of marijuana" and do nothing about cigarettes, which "kill thousands of Americans each year," then launched into an indictment of the phoniness of the old men that Holden Caulfield couldn't beat, of "the terrible alienation of the best and bravest of our young" that existed "hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country." was ent.i.tled "Youth" and spoke of "the white power structure," "the Establishment," and Watts as a "revolt against official indifference." He complained we "send people to jail for the possession of marijuana" and do nothing about cigarettes, which "kill thousands of Americans each year," then launched into an indictment of the phoniness of the old men that Holden Caulfield couldn't beat, of "the terrible alienation of the best and bravest of our young" that existed "hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country."

This Bobby Kennedy was the New Politics made flesh. Bobby Kennedy was the New Politics made flesh.

But there was another Bobby Kennedy. Who was one of the son of a b.i.t.c.hes.

This Bobby Kennedy was his brother's point man for the secret a.s.sa.s.sination attempts against Fidel Castro, was a staffer to Joe McCarthy, ran his brother's presidential campaign in a way that rendered ruthless ruthless a word that forevermore attached itself to him. Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panther Party's eloquent minister of information, wrote of the time he met Bobby Kennedy: "I sat up close and got a good look at his mug. I had seen that face so many times before-hard, bitter, scurvy-all those things I had seen in his face on the bodies of nighttime burglars who had been in prison for at least ten years." This Bobby was at best a slightly left-of-usual pract.i.tioner of the malodorous old kind of politics, a man for the proverbial smoke-filled rooms, cutting smelly little deals about whom they'd let run the country while ghettos and peasant hamlets burned. This Bobby was visible in the Vietnam chapter of a word that forevermore attached itself to him. Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panther Party's eloquent minister of information, wrote of the time he met Bobby Kennedy: "I sat up close and got a good look at his mug. I had seen that face so many times before-hard, bitter, scurvy-all those things I had seen in his face on the bodies of nighttime burglars who had been in prison for at least ten years." This Bobby was at best a slightly left-of-usual pract.i.tioner of the malodorous old kind of politics, a man for the proverbial smoke-filled rooms, cutting smelly little deals about whom they'd let run the country while ghettos and peasant hamlets burned. This Bobby was visible in the Vietnam chapter of To Seek a Newer World To Seek a Newer World-full of technicalities and legalistic half measures. Above all, this Bobby was a calculator: if he took on the president in 1968 as Allard Lowenstein was begging him to do, the tea leaves told him he might lose. This Bobby was greeted by placards at a Brooklyn College lecture in memory of JFK: BOBBY KENNEDY-HAWK, DOVE, OR CHICKEN? BOBBY KENNEDY-HAWK, DOVE, OR CHICKEN?

The older RFK advisers-JFK White House people-were all caution, watching the polls: the same ones that showed him beating LBJ 5232 in a head-to-head contest also showed that 50 percent more people "intensely disliked" him as they did LBJ. The advisers knew a presidential run wouldn't be New Politics hearts and flowers: it was war against the power of an entrenched Establishment that knew how to draw blood, even against the brothers of martyrs. The young staffers in his Senate office simply didn't accept the argument. They were sure that such risk was his essence. essence. "Those New Frontier cats were out of the fifties," one of the young Turks told reporters. "Don't forget that JFK campaigned in '60 on Quemoy and Matsu and all that Cold War c.r.a.p." "Those New Frontier cats were out of the fifties," one of the young Turks told reporters. "Don't forget that JFK campaigned in '60 on Quemoy and Matsu and all that Cold War c.r.a.p."

It was a Georgetown soap opera for the ages. In March 1967, as Ethel Kennedy gave birth to the couple's tenth child, a columnist at Time Time told LBJ that Bobby was all but "decided to get into the race"; then in April the magazine reported he'd submit sworn affidavits to keep his name off any primary ballot. Reports reverberated, too, across Was.h.i.+ngton of his tirades against the president: "How can we possibly survive five more years of Lyndon Johnson? Five more years of a crazy man?" Then in June he made a florid toast to the president at a New York fund-raiser, praising "the height of his aim, the breadth of his achievements, the record of his past, and the promise of his future." told LBJ that Bobby was all but "decided to get into the race"; then in April the magazine reported he'd submit sworn affidavits to keep his name off any primary ballot. Reports reverberated, too, across Was.h.i.+ngton of his tirades against the president: "How can we possibly survive five more years of Lyndon Johnson? Five more years of a crazy man?" Then in June he made a florid toast to the president at a New York fund-raiser, praising "the height of his aim, the breadth of his achievements, the record of his past, and the promise of his future."

Lowenstein searched desperately for a second option. All the best antiwar senators had reelection fights in 1968-some, like George McGovern, tough ones. Senator Fulbright, the dove chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, who spoke of how "the war in Vietnam is poisoning and brutalizing our domestic life," was a Southern senator who voted down the line against desegregation. Lowenstein wrote them all letters nonetheless, begging them to stand in the gap.

Only Eugene McCarthy, the diffident, difficult senator from Minnesota, expressed any interest, proposing a meeting later in the year. The prospect hardly inspired. McCarthy was an odd duck. The small-town Minnesota native who'd turned himself into an intellectual at a tiny Catholic college had once considered entering the priesthood, even a monastery. When Richard Nixon entered the House of Representatives, he started a club for freshmen Republicans-a congressional branch of the Orthogonians. He gave them the hail-fellow-well-met moniker the Chowder and Marching Club. When McCarthy pulled together a like-minded cadre of young Midwestern liberals, on the other hand, he called it the Democratic Study Group. McCarthy liked liked to study. He wrote poetry in his spare time, difficult, modern stuff, inspired by Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams. Not the sort you'd pick for a street fight with LBJ. to study. He wrote poetry in his spare time, difficult, modern stuff, inspired by Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams. Not the sort you'd pick for a street fight with LBJ.

The tensions came out at the ADA board meeting on September 23. They came out, too, later that same night, at a council of war on Robert Kennedy's political future at his Virginia mansion. All the old Kennedy hands were there. The younger aides, the hotheads, were banished, their views represented by Allard Lowenstein and Village Voice Village Voice writer Jack Newfield. writer Jack Newfield.

The junior senator from New York moderated languidly from the sofa, wearing a sweater and a necklace of the style referred to as "love beads," evaluating the debating points.

Schlesinger peddled his "peace plank" compromise. "You're a historian, Arthur. When was the last time millions of people rallied behind a plank plank?" Senator Love Beads mocked.

Lowenstein, sitting cross-legged in stocking feet, launched into his Dump Johnson spiel: national redemption versus national suicide. The president was weak, weak, and Kennedy himself admitted he might well withdraw rather than risk a humiliating defeat. A lame duck, growing lamer by the day. And only he, Kennedy, could rescue America from this moral cretin-couldn't he and Kennedy himself admitted he might well withdraw rather than risk a humiliating defeat. A lame duck, growing lamer by the day. And only he, Kennedy, could rescue America from this moral cretin-couldn't he see see it? it?

The Kennedy of the cigar chompers replied how that would go down in the real world. "People would say that I was splitting the party out of ambition and envy. No one would believe that I was doing it out of how I feel about Vietnam and poor people."

He did, however, allow for a scenario in which he might might do it: "I think Al is doing the right thing, but I think someone else will have to be the first." do it: "I think Al is doing the right thing, but I think someone else will have to be the first."

The first. first. Coolly, calculatedly, Mr. Seek-a-Newer-World seemed to be proposing a sacrificial lamb to test out the Dump Johnson idea first with the power brokers-after which he could swoop in and cash in on the other man's risk. The idealist Lowenstein was livid: "The people who think that the future and honor of this country are at stake because of Vietnam don't give a s.h.i.+t what Mayor Daley and Governor Y and Chairman Z think!" Coolly, calculatedly, Mr. Seek-a-Newer-World seemed to be proposing a sacrificial lamb to test out the Dump Johnson idea first with the power brokers-after which he could swoop in and cash in on the other man's risk. The idealist Lowenstein was livid: "The people who think that the future and honor of this country are at stake because of Vietnam don't give a s.h.i.+t what Mayor Daley and Governor Y and Chairman Z think!"

But here, precisely, was the thing. Governor Y and Chairman Z, twirling each other's wives around on the dance floor of the governors' conference s.h.i.+p of Fools, for all their untoward old oldness, happened to harbor expertise at discerning what voters wanted-had some sense of how many how many "people who think that the future and honor of this country are at stake because of Vietnam" there were. Which is to say they knew how to win elections-an achievement necessarily prior to seeking a newer world. "people who think that the future and honor of this country are at stake because of Vietnam" there were. Which is to say they knew how to win elections-an achievement necessarily prior to seeking a newer world.

Here would be the New Politics' tragic flaw: everywhere it recognized only enthusiasms. It couldn't see, for instance, what Nixon did: that one wave of the political future was an ambivalent, reactionary rage.

Boston had a mayoral election that November of 1967. The liberal inc.u.mbent, Kevin White, faced a challenge from the antibusing hero of the Boston School Committee, Louise Day Hicks. "I have guarded your children well," she would say. "I will continue to defend the neighborhood school as long as I have a breath left in my body."

There were seventy thousand vacant desks in Boston's white neighborhoods. But for the city to bus them there, Hicks said, would create an "unfair advantage" for black children. A couple of years before, black parents, exploiting an open-enrollment loophole that let them choose their children's schools if they provided the transportation, had put up funds to run their own private bus service. Hicks nastily put up bureaucratic roadblocks to stop Operation Exodus. Boston's Cardinal Cus.h.i.+ng told her he was considering joining the civil rights groups marching against her. "Your Eminence," she responded, "if you had done that, I hope you would have marched right upstairs to my office on the third floor so that I could have handed you my resignation in person." The cardinal expressed astonishment that she would resign from the school committee. She replied, "No, Your Eminence. I didn't mean from the school committee. I mean my resignation from the Catholic Church."

Hicks was helped when Newsweek Newsweek featured her on the cover in an article that was supposed to hurt her. They described her supporters as "a comic strip gallery of tipplers and brawlers and their tinseled overdressed dolls...the men queued up to give Louise their best, uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g cigar b.u.t.ts from their chins to buss her noisily on the cheek, or pumping her arm as if it were a jack handle under a truck." Orthogonian-style, she featured the article in her advertis.e.m.e.nts. She came within a minuscule 12,249 votes of becoming the mayor of Boston. featured her on the cover in an article that was supposed to hurt her. They described her supporters as "a comic strip gallery of tipplers and brawlers and their tinseled overdressed dolls...the men queued up to give Louise their best, uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g cigar b.u.t.ts from their chins to buss her noisily on the cheek, or pumping her arm as if it were a jack handle under a truck." Orthogonian-style, she featured the article in her advertis.e.m.e.nts. She came within a minuscule 12,249 votes of becoming the mayor of Boston.

George Wallace was running the same game nationally. The night of his wife's inauguration in January of 1967, his veteran speechwriter, Klansman Asa Carter, and Selma sheriff Jim Clark, had hosted a secret meeting at Woodley Country Club in Montgomery to start planning Wallace's third-party presidential run. When his wife left the capitol for the day, George would sit in the governor's chair and regale the press with a history lesson: eleven American presidents had been elected without a popular majority, three without even a plurality. "Lincoln was a plurality winner, and I'll be a plurality winner. In a four-man race he didn't get a majority of the people's votes, but he had enough to get a majority of the electoral votes. Well, if I run, this will be at least a three-man race, and the same thing could happen." In spring he once more toured the North, winning over skeptics with his talk of "that left-winger in New Jersey who says he longs longs for-that's what he said, he for-that's what he said, he longs longs for-a Vietcong victory.... If I were president, I would order the attorney general to inst.i.tute action against those people who give aid to the enemy, including treason charges, and would put some of these people in the penitentiary"-acting for the "workin' folk fed up with bureaucrats in Was.h.i.+ngton, pointy-headed intellectuals, for-a Vietcong victory.... If I were president, I would order the attorney general to inst.i.tute action against those people who give aid to the enemy, including treason charges, and would put some of these people in the penitentiary"-acting for the "workin' folk fed up with bureaucrats in Was.h.i.+ngton, pointy-headed intellectuals, swaydo swaydo-intellectual morons tellin' 'em how to live their lives."

Then he left under armed guard, a sweaty savor of imminent violence hanging in the air.

In November he made a six-city tour of Ohio to stir up the 433,100 signatures he'd need to get on the ballot as the candidate of his own American Independent Party. Then it was off to California. To boost the interest of the press, he brought along his wife the governor, once again delicately recovering from a cancer operation. His haunts were the working-cla.s.s suburbs where Reagan had done best. A country band warmed up for him with his campaign song, "Stand Up for America," replete with references to "rioting and looting and the cities being burned," and the "sovereign state with rights" that was "about to be destroyed" by the Great Society. He needed 66,059 signatures by January the first. He had 25,000 so far.

"How would you people like it if you were told you would have to bus your children out of your neighborhood?" he would bray, from behind what three British journalists described as "a curious bulletproof structure known as a 'lectern.'"

"You people work hard, you save your money, you teach your children to respect the law. Then when someone goes out and burns down half a city and murders someone, swaydo swaydo-intellectuals explain it away by sayin' the killer didn't get any watermelons to eat when he was ten years old.... The Supreme Court is fixing it so you can't do anything about people who set cities on fire."

(It sure made Nixon look respectable when he couched the same sentiments in four-syllable words.) A memo from General Lewis B. Hershey, the administrator of the Selective Service system, recommended to the nation's 4,088 draft boards that they immediately induct draft-deferred protesters. The generation-gap comedy The Graduate, The Graduate, starring Dustin Hoffman, was an enormous. .h.i.t. A single called "An Open Letter to My Teenage Son" was holding steady in the top ten in time for enjoyment during holiday family gatherings, behind "Daydream Believer," "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," and "Incense and Peppermints," but ahead of "Please Love Me Forever" by Bobby Vinton. In the song, the father told his son that if he burned his draft card, he should also burn his birth certificate, for "from that moment on, I have no son." starring Dustin Hoffman, was an enormous. .h.i.t. A single called "An Open Letter to My Teenage Son" was holding steady in the top ten in time for enjoyment during holiday family gatherings, behind "Daydream Believer," "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," and "Incense and Peppermints," but ahead of "Please Love Me Forever" by Bobby Vinton. In the song, the father told his son that if he burned his draft card, he should also burn his birth certificate, for "from that moment on, I have no son."

Eugene McCarthy announced on November 30 that he would enter four primaries against Lyndon Johnson. "I am concerned that the administration seems to have set no limit to the price which it is willing to pay for a military victory," McCarthy said, and that one of the reasons he was throwing his hat in the ring was to salve a "sense of political helplessness": "there is growing evidence of a deepening moral crisis in America-discontent and frustration and a disposition to take extralegal if not illegal actions to manifest protest." Time Time magazine dug it: "McCarthy's candidacy will at last give legitimate dissenters a civilized political voice." magazine dug it: "McCarthy's candidacy will at last give legitimate dissenters a civilized political voice."

The other kind of dissenters had set upon Dean Rusk's limo when he visited New York, splattering red paint on one window and kicking in another. A cop yelled that his brother had died in Vietnam and challenged any protester to fight in an alley. Other cops shouted "Fairies!" and "Jew b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" and "Commies!" One said to another, "You pull these guys' pants off and they ain't got no p.e.c.k.e.r."

Cop militancy was spiraling, too.

General Westmoreland was in the United States, telling the National Press Club that "we have got our opponents almost on the ropes," that "the end begins to come into view," that there was "light at the end of the tunnel." Time Time argued victory was imminent: argued victory was imminent: November 17: "so wide-ranging is Allied surveillance...that few safe spots remain to the Communists in South Vietnam."

November 24: "slow but promisingly tangible progress.... Viet Cong recruitment, running last year at a rate of some 7,500 per month, has now dropped to 3,500."

December 8: "In recent weeks in South Viet Nam, Communist troops have been regularly beaten back, hurled from prepared positions, put to flight and slaughtered in huge numbers."

December 29: "Even by the Jovian standards of Operation Rolling Thunder, the code name for the air war against North Viet Nam, it was a spectacular performance: the most devastating six days of the air war."

January 5: "ARVN: Toward Fighting Trim."

January 12: "Administration officials, long convinced that there is no realistic hope of peace negotiations until after the 1968 elections-if then-were admitting last week that they may have been too pessimistic."

Time opined, too, on the "Real Black Power": Negroes getting elected to public office in Southern towns where only racists had served before; a Negro, Carl Stokes, elected mayor of Cleveland; a cover story celebrating the ceremony in which "Dean Rusk, Secretary of State of the U.S.... grandson of two Confederate soldiers, had given his only daughter's hand to a Negro." You could read that before ducking in to see the kindhearted integrationist allegory opined, too, on the "Real Black Power": Negroes getting elected to public office in Southern towns where only racists had served before; a Negro, Carl Stokes, elected mayor of Cleveland; a cover story celebrating the ceremony in which "Dean Rusk, Secretary of State of the U.S.... grandson of two Confederate soldiers, had given his only daughter's hand to a Negro." You could read that before ducking in to see the kindhearted integrationist allegory Guess Who's Coming to Dinner Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and dream, as the New Year began, along with Bob Hope closing his Christmas broadcast from Vietnam, "With G.o.d's help, this will be the end." A White House pollster exulted that now that the nation was finally coming around with the president on Vietnam, they could soon "s.h.i.+ft gears to the domestic side": the Great Society would somehow live yet. and dream, as the New Year began, along with Bob Hope closing his Christmas broadcast from Vietnam, "With G.o.d's help, this will be the end." A White House pollster exulted that now that the nation was finally coming around with the president on Vietnam, they could soon "s.h.i.+ft gears to the domestic side": the Great Society would somehow live yet.

And you could even believe it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Fed-up-niks.

WAY BACK IN F FEBRUARY OF 1967, 1967, SO VERY LONG AGO, SO VERY LONG AGO,TIME MAGAZINE MAGAZINE described the magic of Tet Nguyen Dan, the Vietnamese lunar New Year: described the magic of Tet Nguyen Dan, the Vietnamese lunar New Year: "When Ong Tao, the Spirit of the Hearth, returns home each year after his call on the Heavenly Jade Emperor, all Viet Nam takes a holiday from war and erupts in the festival of Tet to welcome the Lunar New Year. It is a time of dancing and dragon masks, of firecrackers rigged from snail sh.e.l.ls and gunpowder, of feasting on roast pork and sugared apricots. It is also a time of homecoming." The piece went on to report that many Vietcong fighters were taking advantage of the four-day holiday truce to defect.

This year was different. While Americans read in Time Time about the light at the end of the tunnel, in Saigon women secreted guns, ammunition, land mines, and grenades in flower baskets and laundry bundles, and spies set up as taxi drivers and noodle sellers prepared to breach the U.S. emba.s.sy. They succeeded-as eighty-five thousand troops of the National Liberation Front and the North Vietnamese army overran thirty-nine of forty-four South Vietnamese provincial capitals. The Tet Offensive: the tidal wave dousing the light at the end of the tunnel. about the light at the end of the tunnel, in Saigon women secreted guns, ammunition, land mines, and grenades in flower baskets and laundry bundles, and spies set up as taxi drivers and noodle sellers prepared to breach the U.S. emba.s.sy. They succeeded-as eighty-five thousand troops of the National Liberation Front and the North Vietnamese army overran thirty-nine of forty-four South Vietnamese provincial capitals. The Tet Offensive: the tidal wave dousing the light at the end of the tunnel.

The administration pushed back with public relations. The president told the nation the Communist charge had been a military failure. General Westmoreland said we had "the enemy on the run." Johnson's chief Vietnam ideologist, Walt Whitman Rostow, called it "the greatest blunder of Ho Chi Minh's career." "If this is a failure," Senator George Aiken averred, "I hope the Vietcong never have a major success."

The cruel futility of the war on both sides was revealed as never before. The a.s.sociated Press's Peter Arnett came across the charred remains of hundreds of bodies in the provincial capital of Ben Tre. A major explained, "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it." (It fulfilled a prophecy made seven months earlier by Senator George McGovern: "We seem bent on saving the Vietnamese from Ho Chi Minh even if we have to kill them and demolish their country to do it.") By the time the Vietcong were dislodged from their stronghold in the imperial city of Hue, out-of-control Communist cadres had ma.s.sacred thousands of "cla.s.s enemies," including Catholic priests burned alive and four hundred men killed while holed up in a cathedral. An AP photographer and an NBC camera crew captured a South Vietnamese police commander executing a man in civilian clothes with his hands tied behind his back. It was the kind of thing Reader's Digest Reader's Digest reported only the savage enemy did. The photo ran on the front page for breakfast-time perusal in even staunchly pro-war papers. In the reported only the savage enemy did. The photo ran on the front page for breakfast-time perusal in even staunchly pro-war papers. In the New York Times New York Times it stretched across four columns, beneath a headline reading, "Johnson Pledges Never to 'Yield.'" it stretched across four columns, beneath a headline reading, "Johnson Pledges Never to 'Yield.'"

He pledged never to yield as reporters questioned administration officials on rumors he was moving in tactical nuclear weapons to defend the besieged mountain base of Khe Sanh, where 543 marines were killed in seven days. CBS News's Walter Cronkite, the "Most Trusted Man in America," left his anchor desk and traveled to Saigon. He uttered an unprecedented editorial: "How could the Vietnamese Communists have mounted this offensive with such complete surprise?...After all, the cities were supposed to be secure.... To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past.... It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could. This is Walter Cronkite. Good night."

In Gallup's last pre-Tet poll the number of self-described "hawks" was 60 percent. "Doves" were 24 percent. Now it was 41 to 42. The president's approval rating was darting below 40 percent. Only 26 percent approved of how he was handling the war.

Robert F. Kennedy spoke in Chicago on February 8: "Our enemy, savagely striking at will across all of South Vietnam, has finally shattered the mask of official illusion.... We have sought to resolve by military might a conflict whose issue depends upon the will and conviction of the South Vietnamese people. It's like sending a lion to halt an epidemic of jungle rot." He called for peace talks to include the Vietcong. That cut off administration rhetoric, which didn't even acknowledge their existence as a legitimate political ent.i.ty, at the knees. Old Kennedy friends further to the right lost hope in him altogether; Joseph Alsop fielded calls from them calling RFK a traitor. Which, to some of his left-wing devotees, only added to his glamour. Kennedy concluded by implying the president was a liar: "It is the truth that makes us free"-so did that mean he would be running for president himself?

Mayor Richard Daley was up on the dais. It was well-known that Daley thought the war was shaping up as a disaster for the Democratic Party. Would he let Bobby Kennedy say such things if he wasn't auditioning the idea of a Kennedy antiwar candidacy? Pete Hamill, a young journalist who'd given up his New York Post New York Post job to write a novel about Che Guevara, wrote Kennedy a letter from London: "I wanted to remind you that in Watts I didn't see pictures of Malcolm X or Ron Karenga on the walls. I saw pictures of JFK...if a 15-year-old kid is given a choice between Rap Brown and RFK, he job to write a novel about Che Guevara, wrote Kennedy a letter from London: "I wanted to remind you that in Watts I didn't see pictures of Malcolm X or Ron Karenga on the walls. I saw pictures of JFK...if a 15-year-old kid is given a choice between Rap Brown and RFK, he might might choose the way of sanity.... Give that same kid a choice between Rap Brown and LBJ, and he'll probably reach for his revolver." Older, wiser Kennedy staffers tried to keep stuff like this away from him: a messiah complex was not conducive to senatorial work. But a younger staffer, press secretary Frank Mankiewicz, slipped Hamill's letter to the boss. Kennedy kept it in his briefcase, read it over and over, and pa.s.sed it to friends, puzzling out whether Tet had changed America enough to render this New Politics the wave of the future. choose the way of sanity.... Give that same kid a choice between Rap Brown and LBJ, and he'll probably reach for his revolver." Older, wiser Kennedy staffers tried to keep stuff like this away from him: a messiah complex was not conducive to senatorial work. But a younger staffer, press secretary Frank Mankiewicz, slipped Hamill's letter to the boss. Kennedy kept it in his briefcase, read it over and over, and pa.s.sed it to friends, puzzling out whether Tet had changed America enough to render this New Politics the wave of the future.

Some had no doubt. College students, housewives, celebrities, swarmed New Hamps.h.i.+re to volunteer for Eugene McCarthy. Capitol Hill staffers packed their bags to work for him with the words ringing in their ears that they'd never work in Was.h.i.+ngton again. The polls gave the aloof Minnesotan 11 percent, which seemed about right. "He seemed like a nice enough man," a Granite State matron who met him at a shopping center said-though she couldn't quite remember his name. McCarthy counted his lack of charisma as a virtue. He refused to mention he was Catholic, though New Hamps.h.i.+re was two-thirds Catholic. An odd duck, this politician who didn't care what others thought of him. But that was also one of his strengths. It's amazing how easily the average politician can be intimidated. Not Eugene McCarthy. In 1952 he went on national TV to debate that other McCarthy, the senator from Wisconsin, who huffed that liberals like Eugene were the reason we no longer "have" China. The dry-witted former professor fearlessly came back, "It is not our policy to 'have' people."

He hated being a senator, called the upper chamber "the last primitive society on earth." He would craft a brilliant amendment to an intricate tax bill to help the poor, then he wouldn't show up to vote for it, scoffing at colleagues who criticized him. He seemed to care more for the opinion of intellectuals, and published poetry that frankly insulted his colleagues: "Stubbornness and penicillin / hold the aged above me." However, he was like other senators in that he believed he could be president. In 1960 he complained, "I'm twice as liberal as Hubert Humphrey, and twice as intelligent as Stuart Symington, and twice as Catholic as Jack Kennedy"-so why was the speculation settling on them them?

He made his national reputation that year with a nominating speech for Adlai Stevenson that celebrated the pure-hearted n.o.bility of Adlai's defeats: "Do not turn away from this man.... Do not leave this man a prophet without honor in his own party!" It marked a certain structural weakness of liberalism: seeing honor as an end in itself. And in 1968, amid the dishonor of Vietnam, that made the only man with the guts to take on the president seem all the more attractive to liberals. They bestowed upon him wild-eyed devotion-this man who saw an honorable speech as one without applause lines, usually concerning some obscure Roman emperor.

Still, the kids flocked to New Hamps.h.i.+re to work for him. It had been a risky strategy to encourage them. When many middle-aged Americans thought of antiwar youth, they pictured smelly hippies trying to levitate the Pentagon. The shrewd McCarthy manager who took charge of the college volunteers made them shave their beards and eschew miniskirts and segregated them by s.e.x: "All we need is for the press to report that we are all sleeping together up here, and we will blow all the good we hope to achieve." On their own, the kids banned alcohol. Local staffers invited the press to one of their parties. The staffers back in D.C. were horrified at the prospect. It turned out to be the most brilliant move of the campaign. The clean-cut kids blew the likes of the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post's Mary McGrory away: "Where he has already been visibly and dramatically successful is in closing the gap between the generations and making good on his promise to civilize dissent."

The president's humiliations compounded. The first couple couldn't travel to college campuses and cultural functions. (Neither could the second couple. Hubert Humphrey addressed the National Book Awards ceremony, and the novelist Mitch.e.l.l Goodman shouted, "We are burning children in Vietnam!") In January, Eartha Kitt attended a White House luncheon on juvenile delinquency hosted by the first lady. "They don't want to go to school because they're going to be s.n.a.t.c.hed from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam," the nightclub singer and Batman Batman villainess said. It made Lady Bird Johnson cry. villainess said. It made Lady Bird Johnson cry.

On January 23, North Korea captured an American spy s.h.i.+p, the Pueblo. Pueblo. The president was helpless to do anything about it. John Birch Society b.u.mper stickers blossomed: The president was helpless to do anything about it. John Birch Society b.u.mper stickers blossomed: REMEMBER THE PUEBLO. REMEMBER THE PUEBLO. Then, on January 30, Tet. On February 13, the board of Americans for Democratic Action voted 65 to 47 to endorse McCarthy. (The presidents of the Steelworkers, the Communications Workers, and the International Ladies' Garment Workers' unions resigned in a huff. McCarthy didn't care. He called labor bureaucrats "old buffalos.") Walter Cronkite's broadcast detonated over the White House: "I've lost Mr. Middle America," said a president who was now sallow and gaunt, terrified he'd be hit with another heart attack or a stroke, the kind that had crippled the second term of Woodrow Wilson. Walter Lippmann wrote that the president's reelection "will not arrest but will force the disintegration of the party" and that Robert Kennedy ought not to wait until 1972, when the Democrats would be ruined by "four more years of distrust, division, and dissent." Then, on January 30, Tet. On February 13, the board of Americans for Democratic Action voted 65 to 47 to endorse McCarthy. (The presidents of the Steelworkers, the Communications Workers, and the International Ladies' Garment Workers' unions resigned in a huff. McCarthy didn't care. He called labor bureaucrats "old buffalos.") Walter Cronkite's broadcast detonated over the White House: "I've lost Mr. Middle America," said a president who was now sallow and gaunt, terrified he'd be hit with another heart attack or a stroke, the kind that had crippled the second term of Woodrow Wilson. Walter Lippmann wrote that the president's reelection "will not arrest but will force the disintegration of the party" and that Robert Kennedy ought not to wait until 1972, when the Democrats would be ruined by "four more years of distrust, division, and dissent."

The White House rushed a rearguard action to save face for the president in New Hamps.h.i.+re. It had seemed a little too desperate for a man who had won one of the greatest landslides in presidential history to interrupt his duties as Leader of the Free World to hie himself to the secretary of state's office in Manchester to register as a candidate. So he deployed New Hamps.h.i.+re's Democratic governor and senator to slap together a hasty Johnson write-in campaign to keep McCarthy to his predicted 11 percent.

Governor King began making absurdly high predictions: McCarthy would get 40 percent (and it would bring "dancing in the streets of Hanoi"). Senator McIntyre called McCarthy the candidate of "draft dodgers and deserters." As American bombers began raining savage reprisals on Buddhist temples in Hue, JFK's legendary speechwriter Richard Goodwin presented himself as a volunteer at McCarthy headquarters. "With these two typewriters," he told the McCarthy campaign's press secretary, an intense young Chicagoan named Seymour Hersh, "we're going to overthrow the government."

He did not say, significantly, "We're going to elect Gene McCarthy."

At that prospect, many Dump Johnson volunteers were indifferent, even hostile. Some thought Kennedy had set up McCarthy as a "stalking horse"-the steed who ran at the front of the pack to tire the compet.i.tion while the favorite hung back staying fresh until it was time to make his move. Kennedy insisted he wouldn't run "under any conceivable circ.u.mstances." But he had also recruited a staffer to prepare a paper on primary entrance requirements, publicly disparaged McCarthy, and stepped up his attacks on the president: "If there is stealing in Beaumont, Texas," he said on the Senate floor March 7, after the president dismissed corruption in the Saigon government by saying there was stealing in Beaumont, too, "it is not bringing about the death of American boys."

A Kennedy-shaped ghost trailed McCarthy's every step. McCarthy's shrewd managers encouraged the apparition. One of their posters showed JFK and Gene side by side, asking, "What's happened to this country since 1963?" General MacArthur was pictured on one puffing on his corncob pipe: "Anybody who commits the land power of the United States on the continent of Asia ought to have his head examined." Another slogan flattered New Hamps.h.i.+rites' legendary flintiness: SHRINKING DOLLAR, GROWING WAR. SHRINKING DOLLAR, GROWING WAR. Others appealed to their live-free-or-die vanity: "Independence: Ask for the Democratic ballot and vote for Senator McCarthy." A poster with Pope Paul VI-"We cry out in G.o.d's name-stop!"-was judged too hot for circulation; their method was the soft sell. None of them argued explicitly Others appealed to their live-free-or-die vanity: "Independence: Ask for the Democratic ballot and vote for Senator McCarthy." A poster with Pope Paul VI-"We cry out in G.o.d's name-stop!"-was judged too hot for circulation; their method was the soft sell. None of them argued explicitly for for McCarthy. McCarthy.

"Don't argue with anyone," the forty-five hundred volunteers who came the final weekend, almost one for every ten voters, were briefed. "Remind them that Vietnam is causing inflation." The New York Times New York Times had reported that Westmoreland was requesting 206,000 more soldiers. On primary Tuesday it snowed. Dump Johnson and Vietcong insurgents both knew that tricky weather favored insurgents. had reported that Westmoreland was requesting 206,000 more soldiers. On primary Tuesday it snowed. Dump Johnson and Vietcong insurgents both knew that tricky weather favored insurgents.

The guerrillas gathered, hopeful, at the Sheraton-Wayfarer in Manchester to watch the returns. Precincts started reporting: 35 percent, 40 percent, 45 percent. The whooping was more intense than any political reporters had ever heard. McCarthy ended up with 42.4 percent of the vote-and twenty of twenty-four delegates. Newsweek Newsweek called it an "astonis.h.i.+ng political upset": "In the s.p.a.ce of five days last week, a phenomenon that began as little more than a courageous exercise in political dissent was transformed into a convulsion that shook every corner of the American political landscape." Lyndon Johnson tried to pooh-pooh it: "New Hamps.h.i.+re is the only place where the candidate can claim twenty percent as a landslide, forty percent as a mandate, and sixty percent as unanimous." McCarthy's New Hamps.h.i.+re cocampaign manager told reporters not to be fooled: "For the first time, a large proportion of the country was capable of being convinced that the government had lied to them." called it an "astonis.h.i.+ng political upset": "In the s.p.a.ce of five days last week, a phenomenon that began as little more than a courageous exercise in political dissent was transformed into a convulsion that shook every corner of the American political landscape." Lyndon Johnson tried to pooh-pooh it: "New Hamps.h.i.+re is the only place where the candidate can claim twenty percent as a landslide, forty percent as a mandate, and sixty percent as unanimous." McCarthy's New Hamps.h.i.+re cocampaign manager told reporters not to be fooled: "For the first time, a large proportion of the country was capable of being convinced that the government had lied to them."

That, at least, was one interpretation. Later, two polling experts, Richard Scammon and Benjamin Wattenberg, looked more closely at the data and learned that 60 percent of the McCarthy vote came from people who thought LBJ wasn't escalating the Vietnam War fast enough. fast enough. They weren't voting for McCarthy because he was "liberal." They pulled their lever for him, Scammon and Wattenberg convincingly argued in a book, They weren't voting for McCarthy because he was "liberal." They pulled their lever for him, Scammon and Wattenberg convincingly argued in a book, The Real Majority, The Real Majority, that came out two years later, because they were "Fed-up-niks." They saw McCarthy as an alternative to the status quo, and the status quo was a nation gone berserk. that came out two years later, because they were "Fed-up-niks." They saw McCarthy as an alternative to the status quo, and the status quo was a nation gone berserk.

Richard Nixon, as usual, understood the subterranean dynamics better. He won his victory in New Hamps.h.i.+re with 79 percent of the vote. But the tea-leaf readers barely paid attention. He was still their favorite joke.

Their second favorite joke was now Romney. He'd kept on leaping over New Hamps.h.i.+re snowdrifts like a guy who didn't know he was licked, when he wasn't in Wisconsin milking cows. His theory seemed to be that if he could shake every hand in the state, he couldn't lose. The futility was symbolized by a trip to a duckpin bowling alley. He rolled a solid nine on his first throw. He kept on firing until he picked up the spare-thirty-four shots later.

No such hyperactivity for Nixon. He officially announced his presidential campaign at the last moment possible, arriving in New Hamps.h.i.+re on February 2, the same day 150,000 letters announcing his run, prepared entirely in secret, arrived at 85 percent of New Hamps.h.i.+re households. The day went off with Prussian discipline. He arrived in Boston at midnight at a tiny, out-of-the-way hotel that wasn't informed it had a celebrity guest. He got a good night's sleep for his first Manchester press conference-in the afternoon, where campaign kickoffs had traditionally come early in the morning-where he laid down an anti-Rockefeller-and-Romney marker: only "the decisive winner of the primaries will and should be nominated." He gave his opening speech in Concord in the evening, resting in between. In 1960, he'd nearly killed himself. This year, it was all about avoiding mistakes.

The message was tested using the latest survey-research techniques. Five hundred New Hamps.h.i.+re Republicans sat down for long tape-recorded interviews. At the headquarters in New York, the staff pored over the transcripts. It was not a pleasant project: "He's a loser."

"Frankly, I don't think he stands much of a chance."

"He's always running for something but never getting there."

"Should be honest with himself and quit running."