John Lewis has nothing to apologize for
Oct. 27th, 2008 01:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamsharkI just listened to a fascinating podcast about the 1968 presidential campaign. Y'know, I was 18 in 1968 and reasonably aware of what was going on. But somehow it just didn't come home to me what a horrific set of events occurred in 1968. I guess whatever happens when you're a kid just seems kind of ordinary, and the Era of Assassination had been going on for 5 years at that point. Chaos just seemed normal and sort "not my problem."
But the political process that year seemed to be literally disintegrating into a maelstrom of assassination, rioting and generational warfare. No wonder the grownups were scared. Scared enough to vote for anybody that talked nonstop about "law and order." A lot of things changed in American politics in 1968. It was the first time a presidential candidate was assassinated. It was the first time a political party convention erupted into widespread violence and shut down a major city, and it was the last time that a real party convention would be held (one that was anything but a ceremonial crowning of a preselected candidate).
It was also the beginning of a new era in campaign management. Nixon had learned from his ignominious defeat in the first TV-centric presidential campaign (1960) and built himself a political machine that focused on staging carefully managed media events. Did you know that Nixon invented the "town hall meeting" format, complete with prescreened participants asking planted questions? And, while Nixon certainly didn't invent negative campaigning, his campaign pioneered a so-called "Southern Strategy" that was based on the deliberate use of code words designed to let his target audience know that he would oppose integrated schools, voting rights for black people, and filthy hippie war protesters while using language that was vague enough that he could deny ever having said such things.
George Wallace picked up this technique and made it his trademark. Everybody knew what he meant when he talked about "law and order" and "local control" so he never had to actually say it - he left that to his supporters. His specialty was whipping up a crowd into a frothing frenzy of racist/classist hatred and then insisting that he had no idea what got into them. Here's a typical quote from one of his campaign managers:
Gosh, where do people get these horrible racist ideas? We never said anything like that! Sound familiar? It did to John Lewis, and he said so. More power to him.
But the political process that year seemed to be literally disintegrating into a maelstrom of assassination, rioting and generational warfare. No wonder the grownups were scared. Scared enough to vote for anybody that talked nonstop about "law and order." A lot of things changed in American politics in 1968. It was the first time a presidential candidate was assassinated. It was the first time a political party convention erupted into widespread violence and shut down a major city, and it was the last time that a real party convention would be held (one that was anything but a ceremonial crowning of a preselected candidate).
It was also the beginning of a new era in campaign management. Nixon had learned from his ignominious defeat in the first TV-centric presidential campaign (1960) and built himself a political machine that focused on staging carefully managed media events. Did you know that Nixon invented the "town hall meeting" format, complete with prescreened participants asking planted questions? And, while Nixon certainly didn't invent negative campaigning, his campaign pioneered a so-called "Southern Strategy" that was based on the deliberate use of code words designed to let his target audience know that he would oppose integrated schools, voting rights for black people, and filthy hippie war protesters while using language that was vague enough that he could deny ever having said such things.
George Wallace picked up this technique and made it his trademark. Everybody knew what he meant when he talked about "law and order" and "local control" so he never had to actually say it - he left that to his supporters. His specialty was whipping up a crowd into a frothing frenzy of racist/classist hatred and then insisting that he had no idea what got into them. Here's a typical quote from one of his campaign managers:
And I remember I was in a little town in south central Massachusetts called Webster. I went to the Polish-American Club And the manager says, "Well," says, "when Governor Wallace is elected president," he said, "he's going to line up all these niggers and shoot them, isn't he?" And I said, "Oh hell, no." You know, I was being honest with him. I said, "He's just worried about agitators and things like that." But this guy was dead serious.
Gosh, where do people get these horrible racist ideas? We never said anything like that! Sound familiar? It did to John Lewis, and he said so. More power to him.
