Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (112 page)

Events in New York City indicated that a few of these people were willing to take violent action. When New York City mayor John Lindsay, a liberal, decided to set aside a day in memory of the victims at Kent State, hundreds of people, many of them students, gathered peacefully for the occasion in the financial district. Just before the noon lunch hour, some 200 construction workers suddenly descended on the commemorators. As police stood by, the workers swung their hard hats as bludgeons at the students, beating as many heads as they could. The workers then marched on City Hall, bringing a mob of sympathetic bystanders with them. There a uniformed postal worker raised the American flag, which had been dropped to half-staff in commemoration of Kent State. A Lindsay aide reacted by relowering the flag. This set the crowd aflame. The mob swarmed past police who again did little to intervene, across the tops of parked cars, and up the steps of City Hall. Chanting "All the way with the USA," they returned the flag again to full staff. The workers then pushed into nearby Pace College and knocked more heads before melting away—it was 1:00
P.M.
—to return to work. A total of seventy people were bloodied in the assault. Only six workers were arrested. Six days later Peter Brennan, leader of the local construction workers' union, traveled to the White House to present Nixon with an honorary hard hat. Nixon accepted it as a "symbol, along with our great flag, for freedom and patriotism to our beloved country."
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Nixon, buoyed by support such as this, held to his course. Indeed, he further broadened the war by sending the South Vietnamese army into Laos in February 1971, an effort that turned into military disaster. But large-scale dissent also persisted, both on the campuses and elsewhere. In April 1971 a radical group of militants, calling themselves Mayday, vowed to "shut government down" in Washington. They performed "lieins" on bridges and major avenues in the District. Mobs roamed the streets and broke windows. Police retaliated violently, provoking one of the worst riots in Washington history. Some 12,000 were arrested.
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Other war-related controversies further rent the nation that spring. Lieutenant William Calley, charged with murdering many of the civilians at My Lai in 1968, was found guilty in late March by a military court and sentenced to life in prison at hard labor. His conviction enraged many pro-war advocates, who were sure that he had been made a scapegoat, and further inflamed domestic debate. Nixon reacted by releasing Calley from the stockade and confining him to his quarters at Fort Benning, Georgia, while the conviction was reviewed. The trial and its aftermath, which lightened Calley's punishment, aroused more bitter feelings and served as a nasty reminder of the viciousness of the conflict.
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Equally divisive was the start of publication in mid-June by the
New York Times
of the so-called Pentagon Papers. This was a 7,000-page collection of documents, originally commissioned by McNamara in 1967, concerning America's conduct of the war to that time. Many of the documents had been classified top secret. Inasmuch as the papers focused on the war under Kennedy and Johnson, Nixon might well have paid no heed. But Kissinger worried about the safety of his secret back channels and argued that publication of the papers was a violation of national security. More important, he was outraged—Haldeman said he put on "one of his most passionate tirades"—because the man who leaked the documents to the
Times
was Daniel Ellsberg, whom Kissinger had placed on the National Security Council staff as a consultant. Nixon agreed with Kissinger and sought a court injunction to stop further publication. Two weeks later the Supreme Court stymied Nixon's effort, ruling by a vote of 6 to 3 that publication of the documents did not violate national security. Justice Black stated that the effort to stop publication constituted "prior restraint" and was a "flagrant, indefensible" violation of the First Amendment. The judgment was a milestone in judicial interpretation of the rights of the press.
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The decision infuriated Nixon and Kissinger, who determined to get even with Ellsberg and plug the leaks. They turned first to Hoover and the FBI for help, but Hoover dragged his feet—in part, apparently, because he was a friend of Ellsberg's father-in-law. They then resolved to set up their own operation, the White House Special Investigations Unit. Nixon told Ehrlichman, "If we can't get anyone in this damn government to do something about [leaks], then, by God, we'll do it ourselves. I want you to set up a little group right here in the White House. Have them get off their tails and find out what's going on and figure out how to stop it." Ehrlichman organized a staff in the Executive Office Building, with a sign on the door reading
PLUMBERS
. They were ordered to do what it took to plug leaks.

Among the people who eagerly helped the plumbers were Nixon aide Charles Colson, a zealous and unprincipled loyalist, G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent with an irrepressible attraction for derring-do, and E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA agent. Within a month of the establishment of the plumbers' office Ehrlichman authorized them to break into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding, in Los Angeles, in order to dig up information. Whether Nixon knew of the covert action remains unclear, but he had pressed Ehrlichman to get the plumbers moving. On Labor Day weekend Hunt, Liddy, and three Cuban exiles recruited by Hunt staged the break-in, only to find nothing of interest. The administration's obsessiveness about leaks, having led to criminal activity, was to have catastrophic consequences later on.
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Meanwhile, Nixon steadily pursued Vietnamization, forcing the South Vietnamese army to do more and more of the fighting. By March 1972 there remained only 95,000 American troops in the country, compared to more than 500,000 when he had taken office in 1969. At this point the North Vietnamese staged another major military attack, the so-called Easter offensive, and Nixon retaliated with massive bombing of the North as well as of its strongholds in the South. "The bastards have never been bombed like they're going to be bombed this time," he said. Nixon also imposed a naval blockade on North Vietnam and mined the North Vietnamese harbor of Haiphong—steps that Johnson, fearful of direct Chinese intervention, had never dared to take.

If Nixon had responded this fiercely in 1969 or 1970, he might well have unleashed massive domestic protests. In mid-1972, however, these did not occur—in part because by then the South Vietnamese were suffering most of the casualties. Moreover, neither the Russians nor the Chinese sent in combat troops. Both nations by then seemed more interested in improving relations with the United States than in backing North Vietnam forever and anon. Brezhnev, indeed, welcomed Nixon to Moscow for the summit in May 1972 even though bombs had damaged four Soviet ships. The ferocity of the American military response, killing an estimated 100,000 North Vietnamese troops, managed also to stem the enemy assault. South Vietnam held on to its major cities, and Thieu remained in power.
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The "peace with honor" that Nixon had promised still seemed far away in the summer of 1972, but he nevertheless could claim that America was staying the course.

B
Y THIS TIME
N
IXON
was focusing ever greater attention on the business of getting himself and Agnew, once again his running mate, re-elected. This turned out to be a relatively easy but also divisive and ultimately damaging effort.

His greatest asset was the weakness of his opposition. One of his fears had been that Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy of Massachusetts would oppose him. But Kennedy then self-destructed on July 19, 1969 (only hours before America landed its men on the moon), when a car he was driving plunged off a bridge at Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts. Kennedy escaped from the car, swam to shore, and went to bed at his hotel. He reported the accident only the next morning, at which point it was discovered that a passenger in the car, twenty-eight-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, had drowned in the accident. Kennedy's irresponsible behavior did not hurt him with the star-struck voters of Massachusetts, who repeatedly re-elected him to the Senate. But it badly damaged his aspirations to be President. Luck had smiled on Nixon.

Another tragedy, this one on May 15, 1972, further helped the President's chances for re-election. On that day a deranged young man by the name of Arthur Bremer shot and severely wounded George Wallace, who had been running strongly in Democratic presidential primaries, winning in Florida, Tennessee, and North Carolina, and finishing second in northern states such as Wisconsin, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. Although it was clear that Wallace would not win the Democratic nomination, it seemed likely that he would ultimately bolt the Democrats and run as an independent. If so, he might drain millions of votes away from Nixon. The shooting changed all that. Wallace won primaries in Maryland (where he had been shot) and Michigan on the day after Bremer wounded him. But the bullet had penetrated his spinal column and paralyzed him from the waist down. In chronic pain and in a wheelchair, Wallace was forced to withdraw.

Nixon then had the pleasure of watching the Democrats tear themselves apart. Edmund Muskie, an early leader, had already dropped out, the victim in part of his own ineptitude as a campaigner, in part of "dirty tricks" (later exposed during the Watergate controversy) that Nixon had ordered to undermine his candidacy. The battle for the Democratic nomination then featured Hubert Humphrey, still eager to be President, and George McGovern of South Dakota. Entering the decisive California primary in June, McGovern had what seemed to be a safe margin. But Humphrey campaigned vigorously, focusing popular attention on his opponent's hostility to defense spending—in a state where thousands of jobs depended on it. Humphrey also heaped scorn on a "demogrant" proposal that McGovern had proposed. A rehashed and ill-considered version of Nixon's Family Assistance Plan, it would have given $1,000 in tax money to millions of Americans. Humphrey also managed to depict McGovern as a radical, associating him with the "Three As"—of Acid, Abortion, and Amnesty (for Vietnam draft evaders). McGovern favored the third of these, but not the first, and he had taken no clear position on the second. Still, Humphrey's charges seemed to hit home. McGovern staggered through to a narrow victory in California, but he was a wounded candidate. Nixon relished the thought of repeating Humphrey's attacks against McGovern in the campaign ahead.
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In mid-July McGovern won the Democratic nomination but paid another high price in the process. New party rules that a Commission on Party Structure (which he had headed) had developed in the years following the contentious party convention in 1968 set aside greatly increased percentages of delegate seats for women, blacks, and young people in 1972. The new rules, indeed, accelerated the trend toward grass-roots politics pioneered by McCarthy in 1968 and revolutionized the nature of electoral procedures in the party.
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At the convention, 38 percent of the delegates were women (compared to 13 percent in 1968), 15 percent were black (compared to 5 percent), and 23 percent were younger than 30 (compared to 2.6 percent). Many of these people were enthusiastic liberals who had had little experience in national politics; a few pressed for radical causes. Urban bosses, labor leaders, and representatives of white ethnic groups—keys to the Democratic electoral coalition—were outraged. The crowning insult to these party faithful—and symbol of how far to the left the party had moved in four years—came when the delegates voted to exclude Mayor Richard Daley and his followers. They seated instead a delegation led by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, a young black preacher who had been an ally of Martin Luther King. Only one of the Jackson slate of fifty-nine was an Italian-American; only three were Polish-American. Frank Mankiewicz, a McGovern spokesman, conceded wryly, "I think we may have lost Illinois tonight."
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The disarray of the convention seemed only to grow as the spectacle careened to a close. McGovern had trouble finding a vice-presidental nominee, finally settling on Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, a relative unknown. But the delegates then proceeded to advance thirty-nine additional candidates for the number two slot, including Mao Tse-tung, Archie Bunker, and Martha Mitchell, the outspoken wife of Nixon's campaign manager. By the time McGovern gave his acceptance speech it was 2:30 in the morning. Americans who watched the convention were shocked by the disorder that had overtaken the party.
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Nixon then got still one more unexpected bit of luck. Ten days after the end of the convention Eagleton admitted that he had earlier in his life undergone electroshock therapy for depression. McGovern at first stood "1,000 per cent" behind his running mate. But controversy over Eagleton's mental health intensified, and McGovern backed down, thereby displaying inconsistency and indecisiveness. McGovern found a replacement, Sargent Shriver, only after embarrassing rebuffs from Muskie, Kennedy, and Humphrey. Nixon, who was scornful of Shriver, was delighted at the vulnerability of the ticket that now confronted him. Discussing how to belittle Shriver in the campaign, he told Haldeman, "Destroy him . . . kill him." The McGovern-Shriver ticket, he confided, was "a double-edged hoax."
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McGovern was by all accounts a decent man. As a bomber pilot in World War II he had won the Distinguished Flying Cross. He had then earned a doctoral degree in American history, taught at Dakota Wesleyan, and served as both congressman and senator from South Dakota. He was one of the first senators to call for pulling out of the Vietnam War, supporting an amendment (with Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon) in 1970 that would have required withdrawal of all American forces there by mid-1971. Getting out of Vietnam was his chief issue in 1972. He also tried to blame Nixon for a break-in on June 17 at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building of Washington. Nixon, he said, ran the "most corrupt Administration in history." But McGovern was an uninspiring speaker and a poor organizer. Well-meaning and liberal, he seemed to learn about the issues only as he went along. "Every time he opened his mouth," one early supporter said at the end of the campaign, "it came out irresponsible. Starting with the Eagleton affair, I just felt that this was a man who was not sure. So I voted for Nixon with no enthusiasm."
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