Michael Cohen explains why he calls his book on 1968 “American Malestrom"
In this election season, there have been a number of analogies made between the 2016 and 1968 elections. Michael Cohen’s new book, “American Maelstrom: The Election of 1968 and the Politics of Division,” tells the story of 1968. He kindly answered some questions about the book from political scientist Tom Schaller and me. A lightly edited transcript follows.
Why write a book about 1968 now? What attracted you to this particular election?
Michael Cohen: First and foremost, this was an amazing election with an assemblage of political talent unlike anything we’ve ever seen in American politics – Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bobby Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney and George Wallace. These are the men who defined American politics from the 1950s to the 1980s — and in each of their stories and the races they ran in 1968, there is a very specific political legacy.
And then you had so many incredible events that year: The Tet offensive, Eugene McCarthy almost beating LBJ in New Hampshire, Robert Kennedy challenging LBJ for the nomination, LBJ dropping out a few weeks later, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., the riots outside the Democratic convention in Chicago.
But the bigger issue is that 1968 represented a clear inflection point in American politics. Political junkies will be familiar with the traditional story of 1968: that it represented the end of the New Deal coalition and the post-war liberal consensus, and began the country’s political shift to the right. But 1968 was also a huge turning point for both parties.
On the Republican side, it confirmed the ascendancy of the conservative right — something that many observers had pooh-poohed after Barry Goldwater’s loss in 1964.
For Democrats, it was a more decisive break, from the Cold War politics of Johnson and Humphrey to a more liberal foreign policy perspective and a greater appreciation for social justice issues — at the expense, as it would turn out, of economic justice issues.
Moreover, the shift of both parties toward their more liberal and conservative political wings (especially the Republicans) really did begin in 1968. The liberal consensus had always been a bit overrated, but there’s truth to the idea that both parties in the 1950s and ’60s coalesced around a certain set of ideas on domestic and foreign policy — and particularly on the latter that began to end in 1968. So this election, in many ways, spurred the process of political polarization that we’re dealing with today.
Beyond that, you see in 1968 the creation of a new political narrative and a new language about politics. A lot of this came from George Wallace, who is the underrated figure from 1968. He largely birthed the idiom of conservative, anti-government politics, but unlike Goldwater or other more doctrinaire conservatives, he gave it a much more populist feel. He was anti-elitist, focused his message around working-class Americans (albeit white working-class Americans), and mined growing white anxiety and resentment over civil rights and integration. But he was not a small conservative — in fact, quite the opposite. Wallace was actually a New Deal liberal, except on race.
To be sure, the shift out of 1968 was not so much a policy shift as it was a political shift. After 1968, Republicans and in particular Nixon figured out how to play on fears over crime, integration and economic anxiety to reassert themselves as the nation’s dominant political party. ...