But that’s a misinterpretation of an obviously tumultuous year: The sitting president’s belated decision to step down was actually the most popular and unifying moment in a string of ugly and divisive events.
In the 1964 presidential election, Lyndon B. Johnson won the largest landslide victory in American history. However, by 1968, the Vietnam War and the resulting inflation had significantly reduced Johnson’s popularity, and on January 30, North Vietnam and its Viet Cong allies launched an offensive in the south in an attempt to further escalate the war.
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who had a front-row seat to 1968 as a young aide to President Johnson, traces that timeline in her recent memoir, “Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s.” “By the end of March, the president’s approval rating had fallen to 36 percent, the lowest since taking office,” she writes. (Biden’s latest approval rating was 38 percent, according to Gallup.)
Johnson stunned the nation by withdrawing from the campaign trail in 1968 after his disastrous showing in the New Hampshire primary, an embarrassing wake-up call. Like Biden, Johnson was a lifelong politician who had served as a senator, vice president and in the Oval Office; he lived for competition and loved to give speeches. The nation understood that quitting the campaign trail was neither natural nor comfortable for him.
“Johnson accomplished something extraordinary by putting country above his own ambition,” Goodwin writes, summing up the reaction. And he records an overwhelmingly positive response: “Overnight, the nation’s political climate changed. A Harris Poll the day after the president’s speech recorded this reversal, going from 57 percent disapproval to 57 percent approval…
“Editorial after editorial praised the president’s waiver,” the authors continue. “The Washington Post declared that President Johnson’s ‘personal sacrifice in the name of national unity entitles him to a special place in American history.'”
Johnson’s decision to respect public sentiment and withdraw from the race was very well received. Far from throwing the system into disarray, it gave Americans something to applaud and a leader they could approve of. Johnson was enveloped in warmth and enjoyed “the happiest week of my career as president, and perhaps as a public official,” Goodwin quotes Johnson’s speechwriter, Horace Busbee.
How did this happy moment come to be associated with chaos and upheaval? A few days after Johnson’s announcement, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. This incident had nothing to do with Johnson’s decision, but it changed the national mood. That night, violent protests broke out in Washington, DC, and cities across the country, with widespread looting and arson.
This horrific event, coinciding with the assassination of Dr. King, obscures the lessons of 1968 for Biden and his supporters. With Johnson’s decision to drop out of the race, politics shifted in his party’s favor. The president’s approval ratings soared from low to high. And a vigorous campaign began to take over from Johnson. The race seemed to be winding down in favor of Senator Robert F. Kennedy (R-New York), but in early June, Kennedy was also assassinated.
Although the unrest and bloodshed had nothing to do with Johnson’s abdication, it soured the mood of a temporarily relieved electorate and enabled “law and order” candidate Richard M. Nixon to win a narrow victory over Johnson’s Vice President, Hubert Humphrey.
After 14 presidential elections, the world and American politics have changed a lot. But Biden, who, like Johnson, will set aside his own ambitions for the country, will be showered with the same praise and gratitude. Biden’s willingness to listen and follow the message of the people will turn the tide in his approval ratings and fuel a lively and exciting campaign to choose his successor from among the many new faces in the Democratic Party.
We can be thankful that 2024 is not a repeat of 1968. Our leaders will not be murdered and our cities will not burn. These differences allow Joe Biden to emulate President Johnson without creating confusion. Biden can accomplish the noble task that President Lyndon B. Johnson failed to accomplish: healing the nation and leading his party to victory through noble acts of awareness and courage.
