Presidents go with grace or grimace

Here’s what I learned recently: If you live long enough you can become an unassailable political authority about historical events. If the event took place over 50 years ago, most everyone else involved has died off. May they rest in peace while I muse free of challenge.

On CBS Morning News I get to talk about President Lyndon Johnson’s surprising announcement on March 31, 1968 that he would not run for re-election. I was asked to compare that with President Biden’s retirement and the campaign that did/will follow.

I was working for Vice President Hubert Humphrey as his press secretary. Humphrey was next in line, but not the heir apparent. It was early in the election year, but two charismatic senators were already challenging Johnson because Vietnam was on the news every night — death and destruction far away, and protest in our streets at home.

Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy had received 41% of the votes in the New Hampshire primary on March 12. It was not a numerical victory for him, but it was a smashing blow to an incumbent president. The Vietnam War had another victim in Johnson.

Sen. Robert Kennedy had entered as well. He inherited more than the family name of a martyred brother. He brought an excitement to the campaign that was impossible to match. In short, Johnson left the race with two rather well financed challengers splitting the party and country over the war.

Johnson gave Humphrey about 20 minutes notice that he would not run again. On the day Johnson withdrew, Humphrey was heading for Mexico City to sign a regional nuclear non-proliferation pact. That morning when he answered a knock at his apartment door (there was no Vice Presidential mansion then) there stood Lyndon Johnson. He’d never visited before. Johnson said he had two endings to a speech scheduled for TV that night. He wasn’t sure yet whether he would announce that he was in or out.

That evening Humphrey was in the Mexican president’s mansion for dinner when the call came from the White House that Johnson would use the second ending. Humphrey knew what that meant: Out — but a tap would not reveal LBJ’s decision.

Today is not in any political way like that yesterday. There are wars, but no GIs are coming home in body bags day after day. Kamala Harris has no challengers. The convention is likely to be a love fest inspired by Harris but required by Donald Trump. Democrats have a Republican opponent who makes Richard Nixon look like St. Francis of Assisi.

We came out of the convention about 18 points behind Nixon. When on Sept. 30, Humphrey called Johnson, and read him from a speech he was about to make saying he would stop the bombing of North Vietnam, Johnson muttered something like “You are going to make it regardless of what I say” and hung up. Others listened and approved. Humphrey lost to Nixon by less than 1%.

I think the real difference between this election and that one is that our candidate Kamala Harris will be carried by a united party to the Oval Office.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary.