Cases in American Political Leadership: Nixon: Summer and Autumn 1968

For next time, Nelson, ch. 8.

Review from last time: Why Agnew?

THURMOND HAD VETO
Contrast with Lodge
Bailed from Rocky
Again: Attacked civil rights leaders (and see who was mayor of Baltimore)
MD: Slave state that was in the Union
No vetting. He was taking bribes. Mitchell probably knew.
Gaffe machine -- quickly discredits self. From his 1996 obituary:

The nine-week election campaign did little to polish Mr. Agnew's image, marked as it was by a series of gaffes. He spoke of ''Polacks,'' and of a ''fat Jap''; he accused Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, the Democratic candidate, of being ''soft on Communism,'' a comment that drew rebukes even from fellow Republicans. Although billed as the Nixon camp's urban expert, Mr. Agnew disdained visits to ghettos, saying, ''If you've seen one slum, you've seen them all.''

Lessons from 1960:

Management

HHH

Disadvantages

Convention
Hawks v. Doves

Advantages

Wallace

Strong at first, leaks support to Humphrey
LeMay (Nelson 206)
In 1968, David Broder wrote of George Wallace:

What strikes you about that message — and I am trying to be as restrained as possible— is its steady and repetitive incitement to violence. Wallace may not be tougher on law and order than Nixon or Humphrey, but he verbalizes the wish to lash out against those who offend in a way that more restrained and responsible leaders would never do in an age of violence such as we live in...If any anarchist (the Wallace word for "demonstrator") lies down in front of a Wallace motorcade, "it will be the last car he ever lies down in front of." If students fly the Viet Cong flag in a Wallace administration, "I would have me an Attorney General that would drag them in by their long hair and ..." You rarely hear the last words of Wallace's threats, because they are lost in the roar from his crowd. "Crowd" is perhaps too polite a word. When Wallace has finished his harangue, the emotion is closer to that of a lynch mob -- a pack of angry, frustrated men and women, who see his cause, not just as a chance for victory but as a guarantee of vengeance against all who have affronted them for so long.

Nixon spot foreshadows future "decision" ads.