Even as Americans are experiencing something different in this election year, there remains strong support among voters for confident, knowledgeable presidents who exude clearheaded leadership as our nation’s president.
It reminded me of a story involving a good presidential candidate who spoke the truth, got into trouble for it and self-destructed long before the election.
I was a student at Hamline University in the late ’60s, serving as chair of the popular Hamline Republican Club (we outnumbered the College Democrats manyfold). One of things we did was help candidates, including the surprise election of South St. Paul attorney Harold LeVander as governor in 1966 and a young Arne Carlson’s 1967 campaign for Minneapolis mayor.
We began to contemplate engagement in some manner in the 1968 presidential campaign.
Convening Hamline students liked Rockefeller
Of course, students did not automatically act as a block and we shared differing opinions; an all-campus, nonpartisan political convention of more than 1,000 Hamline students in 1968 did choose New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller as its favorite over Minnesota’s own Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
Monitoring campaigns was mostly through newspapers and nighty network news programs in those days. It was long before students had access to the more extensive news and social media outlets of recent years.
[image_caption]Chuck Slocum[/image_caption]
President Lyndon Johnson, who took office in 1963 upon the death of John Kennedy, had ramped up the war in Vietnam as his major foreign policy accomplishment. Concerning Vietnam, by 1967 things were uneasy on campuses throughout the country, including Hamline. Minnesota’s other U.S. senator, Gene McCarthy, decided to bring the issue of ending the Vietnam conflict — it was never an official war — into the 1968 campaign.
I liked the fact that the elder Romney was governor of Michigan (1963-69) and had substantial public support throughout the country; we invited him to speak on campus, but were not successful. A devout Mormon and former CEO of American Motors, Romney had popularized the Rambler and described the “big three” automakers as producing “gas-guzzling dinosaurs.”
Romney’s change of opinion on Vietnam
Romney decided to go directly to Vietnam himself and examine the situation. Upon his return, he had originally said he was confident that the military was doing the right things and that U.S. success was a foregone conclusion. Not long thereafter and after careful study, Romney began to share his doubts about Vietnam, calling it “a tragic mistake.”
CBS’ Roger Mudd quizzed Romney on the about-face in 1967. Romney said he had been “brainwashed” by government officials into thinking earlier that Johnson’s policies might work. Almost immediately, Romney’s character, loyalty, and intelligence were called into question by his opponents and the news media. Republican governors, long considered political allies, were quoted as saying Romney was “naïve.” It was not so much that people doubted that Romney had been lobbied vigorously when in Vietnam but that he had been unable to resist the effects of having his brain washed.
The Detroit News editorially argued that the state’s governor “was either incapable of maintaining a stand on so vital an issue” or, less charitably, “that he trims his Vietnam positions to accommodate prevailing political winds.”
Field left wide open for Nixon
Romney dropped out of the race on the eve of the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire Primary, leaving the Republican field wide open for Vice President Richard Nixon, the eventual winner.
Costly political gaffes have plagued candidates since the beginning of America’s unique two-party system.
During my more active days of partisan politics, there were several examples following Romney’s “brainwashed” 1968 situation: Edmund Muskie (“for crying out loud”) and George McGovern (“1,000% behind Eagleton”) in 1972, Gerald Ford (no Soviet domination of Easter Europe) in 1976, Jimmy Carter (Playboy “lust in my heart” quote) in 1976, Ronald Reagan (“the evil empire”) in 1984, Gary Hart (“catch me if you can”) in 1984.
But few have seen a more unusual presidential campaign than our current Donald Trump/Joe Biden contest, to be sure. It is not just the language but the issues — BLM, COVID-19 — that are driving the 2020 rhetoric.
Chuck Slocum, founder and president of The Williston Group, can be reached at Chuck@WillistonGroup.Com He recommends a book, “Observing Our Politicians Stumble,” written by Richfield native Stephen Frantzich, a political scientist who has spent his career at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
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A memorably striking moment in television coverage of that Republican convention was the long shot on George Romney. He was stunned and seemingly frozen with shock and disappointment at Nixon’s win on the first ballot. He looked like a statue by Rodin.
I did a little campaign work that year for Nelson Rockefeller, who made some headway with the Minnesota delegation. If Nixon had not won so quickly by lining up the votes of the Maryland delegation (by making a deal with Spiro Agnew), Rockefeller might have succeeded on some subsequent vote. Something about Nixon’s personality bothered me, and I ended up voting for Humphrey.
It had not been such a major cultural turning point; nowadays the Republican party would never nominate someone like Nixon, who brought up the idea of a negative income tax and whose administration inaugurated the EPA. But as years passed, the Republican party catered more to single minded right-to-lifers and racists, while I became more liberal.
A cultural change happened; now many voters identify with Trump’s Archie Bunker persona. Trump entirely lacks Bunker’s forgivable likability, but he owns the Republican party.
It certainly sounds like Romney Sr. tended to shoot from the hip, and didn’t take 2 minutes to think through what he was going to say to justify an about face on a major policy.
Why was it unacceptable to say the truth–that he had been “actively misled” by the military, not “brainwashed” by them. Or that the generals were engaged in “wishful thinking, not reality”. Or that he had been able to “see through the rose-colored glasses as a result of his fact-finding mission”? Not the greatest rhetorical strategy, Romney senior. Did he have a brain to wash?
Note that Romney (like his son) was another CEO-type who apparently thought that politics was the same friendly and deferential arrangement as being the Big Cheese at some giant corporation. Another reason that the Biznessman president can’t work, as we are seeing on the big screen right now.
Didn’t Nixon campaign on a promise to get us out of Viet Nam? How could that have been the difference between Nixon and Romney? I suspect there was a little (actually a lot) more to it than a few jokes swirling around washed an unwashed brains. But I was 6 years old at the time, what do I know?
Just out of college at the time, I remember the scenario well. He made an unfortunate choice of words to identify a scenario that was, in those days, not uncommon, just as it’s not uncommon now. I thought Romney’s dismissal as a result was unfair at the time, and still think so, but thoughtfulness is rarely rewarded in American politics (Obama being the chief exception of the past generation). As for being brainwashed, it seems to me that television audiences now are more likely to suffer from it than the candidates themselves. In the late ’60s, there were fewer networks, and they all pretty much reported the same news. Sometimes there was spin from the federal or other level level of government involved, but TV reporting generally held on to the notion of “objectivity.” Not so any longer. If you live on the right, mainstream networks are “fake news,” and if you live on the left, Fox is equally “fake news,” though the spin from the networks is, ahem, not exactly equivalent. I’d personally argue that people who get their news from Fox are the ones who are “brainwashed,” but I feel sure they’d argue just as sincerely that those who get their news from mainstream sources are equally “brainwashed.”