BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback

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Not since the Civil War had America been this divided. The decisions to both go to war in Vietnam and to pass several Civil Rights Bills that changed how America interacted socially led to an explosive Presidential Election year.  Never had their been a campaign with more extreme lows as this one had. 

First came a major offensive by the enemy in Vietnam during the Vietnamese New Year known as Tet. The offensive was actually a military failure but you would never convince anyone of that in the United States. It led to an upstart Senator from the State of Minnesota named Eugene McCarthy to challenge his own party's President in the New Hampshire Primary. He nearly won capturing over 40% of the vote. 

That brought in the younger brother of the slain former President, the former Attorney General turned New York Senator, Robert F. Kennedy into the race for President.  Over on the Republican's side, several Governors, George Romney, Nelson Rockefeller and even the new California Governor Ronald Reagan saddled up to run against Lyndon Johnson, but on that side of the aisle there was one clear front runner, Vice President Richard Nixon. 

Just six years before, in 1962, Nixon had lost a bid for the California Governorship and appeared totally washed up in politics. He had appeared to be a loser. But after the Republican's nominated an extremist candidate for President in 1964, Senator Barry Goldwater, many Republicans had abandoned the party and voted for President Lyndon Johnson in an unprecedented landslide election. Richard Nixon had not. He stayed loyal and worked harder for Goldwater than Goldwater did.  He then went out and campaigned all over the country for Republicans in the 1966 mid terms. 

Now Nixon was back, rested and ready, with a platform he had developed over many years in the wilderness and he, like all the democrats in the race, set dead aim on Lyndon Johnson, but LBJ had a surprise for them and when he bowed out it turned the entire election upside down. 

Sadly, just a few days later the Civil Rights Leader  who had led a movement of nonviolence and helped change the country for the better, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. It set the country on fire, and was just the first of many tragedies that 1968 would see happen. Relive this period of tumult in this first episode examining the critical year of Upheaval that was 1968. 

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This episode unfolds in two parts. 

In the mid 1990's, Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara wrote a book in which he describes what he called the mistakes his generation of leadership had made in Vietnam and his thoughts on how future generations could avoid them.  He admits they were wrong.  McNamara has often been criticized by historians, even in our series we used one interview with Michael Beschloss where he described McNamara's representations critically  from this very book. So I thought we should here from the man himself. This was his appearance, in 1996, with Ted Koppel on the  ABC News show " Nightline" 

Then we pick up where we left off with an escalating war in South East Asia and the protests it set off here at home. Here you can hear some of the hearings started by Senator William Fulbright, and the aggressive voicing of concerns from Oregon Senator Wayne Morse, and we can listen in as President Lyndon Johnson tries to control it all, to no avail, as the war grows to a half a million men in a full scale land war in Asia, and lays the ground work for a political explosion in 1968, a Presidential election year. 

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At the end of 1968 the United States was a country at war abroad and in chaos at home.  The  American people  were asking the same question that movie star Lauren Bacall expressed to the country on "The Dick Cavett Show", "What has become of our country, is our country worth saving? "

In January 1969, a new President, but a leader many had written off as a failure years before returned to the national stage to prove to the nation that it was not only a country worth saving but it was still the Greatest Country on Earth. 

But it is a story that came with a high price and for the past 47 years a horribly unfair and one sided story has been promoted across the land.

But now,

Finally, the remarkable Presidency of Richard Nixon will be told, here on Season 4 of "Bridging the Political Gap" starting in October 2021.

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In this episode we see events start moving fast. You see a divide start to show between members of the Johnson Administration as to what to do about the problems of Vietnam. The enemy starts bombing American targets including the Brinks Hotel during the Christmas season, maximizing the number of deaths in the hotel.

Still Lyndon Johnson refuses to retaliate. He still has to be convinced that a war in Vietnam would be worth it. He listens as his advisor George Ball urges him to walk away and let the Government fall. South Vietnam had become a basket case in the year and a few months since the assassination of its long time President Ngo Dinh Diem. Johnson assistant, Jack Valenti,  called it a "turnstile of leadership" as the country's Presidency was passed around, one time in just 19 days. 

Listen to various interviews from several Johnson Advisors, George Ball, Jack Valenti, Dean Rusk,  Clark Clifford, William Bundy, Bill Moyers, Daniel Ellsberg, and Robert Thompson all discuss how the momentum built toward the decision to commit land troops in Vietnam. 

 These interview snippets are from PBS's "LBJ Goes to War", and "LBJ: The American Experience", plus LBJ's actual phone calls as he wrestles with moving forward and committing troops. An act that will Americanize the war and eventually lead to 500,000 American soldiers on the ground in Vietnam, a country half way around the World. 

Questions or comments at  , [email protected] ,  https://twitter.com/randal_wallace   , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
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Even though we were already involved, this was the event that really started us down the long road to a full scale land war in Asia. 

Strangely, to this day no one knows exactly for sure what happened in the middle of the night on the other side of the world. Most likely, nothing. But the supposed attack on the U.S.S. Maddox and U. S. S.  C. Turner Joy led to a retaliatory strike against North Vietnam and then the Johnson Administration seeking a resolution from Congress that would unshackle it and allow it to wage war in Vietnam. 

Not only are the events that happened in the night shrouded in mystery so are the events that led to Lyndon Johnson's announcements and his decision to retaliate. The entire thing begged a question that was  raised against the next President in another situation more famously, but it still applies to the Gulf of Tonkin and Lyndon Johnson too. 

What did the President know and when did he know it?

 Did Lyndon Johnson's Defense Secretary, a holdover from the Kennedy Administration, ever tell him that there was  evidence that the two ships may actually have never been fired upon at all and the entire thing could have been the results of " an over eager sonar man and freak weather effects"  

Here listen to accounts from the military men who were actually there that night as they retold it to the The Learning Channel in its documentary "The Johnson Tapes" and then listen to the actual phone calls to and from Lyndon Johnson and his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and then listen as Johnson's aids describe a man who torturously analyzed the situation trying to figure out any way he could avoid escalating  involvement in Vietnam into a full scale Land War in Asia. 

Questions or comments at  , [email protected] ,  https://twitter.com/randal_wallace   , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
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On August 1, 2012, My brother Keith Wallace collapsed after he had a brain aneurysm burst in Manning S. C. He died on August 2, 2012. 

In Memory of him on this the 9th anniversary, I thought we would rebroadcast the ABC News "Carolina This Week with Tim McGinnis" show from 2013 in which I discussed his situation and the importance of organ donation. 

Thousands of people desperately wait on lists for kidneys, hearts, livers, lungs, and other needed life giving organs. Keith lives on because he signed up as an organ donor and after his death he was able to give the gift of life to as many as four people and help countless others through eye and tissue donation. 

If you would like to sign up to become an organ donor here in South Carolina you can do that at DonateLifeSC.org or you can sign up at the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles. If you live outside South Carolina we are confident that there are organizations that would greatly appreciate you signing up with them in your location. 

Please give the gift of life,

Thank you,

Randal 

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He was known as the Wizard of Ooze, a disheveled, elderly man with a distinctive voice and a great sense of humor and a thoughtful, cautious style.  He was the leader of the Republican Minority in the United States Senate. He often had only 36 members in his caucus. But that was often enough votes to break a filibuster and deliver enough votes to pass major legislation that would not happen with the majority party divided. 

Senator Everett Dirksen was a powerful figure in the country in the 1950's and 1960's. He was a man that John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson both depended on,  especially in the area of civil rights. Everett Dirksen worked with Lyndon Johnson to make sure it happened three times and when the 1965 Civil Rights act was passed, Senator Everett Dirksen, the Republican Leader, got the first pen. 

In this special edition of "Bridging the Political Gap" we honor this extraordinary man who often is forgotten in the story telling of the effort to pass civil rights.  Here we get to know him,  enjoy his Grammy winning version of the Pledge of Allegiance, and his tour through the U.S. Capital with ABC News anchorman Howard K. Smith and  even his guest appearance on "What's My Line?",  

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If President Lyndon B. Johnson has a real claim to greatness it is for his work to pass the Voter's Rights Act of 1965.  It was the act that guaranteed every citizen in this country the right to vote. It came after a horrifying Sunday in the Alabama town of Selma. It was there that a contingent of Alabama State Troopers attacked a group of protesters as they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The entire country watched it all on television, including the President.

Lyndon Johnson had just passed a Civil Rights Act in 1964 that had guaranteed access to all Americans to public places. But that Act did nothing about laws and restrictions all over the country that were used to prevent African Americans from voting and registering to vote. Johnson knew that something had to be done and it could wait no longer. It had been a century since President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation and won a war to insure African Americans their freedom in America. During the century that had followed a  period of racist, shameful segregation had been allowed to exist unchallenged through out the land.

Lyndon Johnson knew that his chance to gain a permanent place of greatness in our nation's history would be "to finish what Lincoln began." Here listen in as he works with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr,  Senator Everett Douglas, and many others to get the 1965 act passed and to insure the safety of thousands of protesters in Alabama as they marched to secure their rights as Americans. Listen in as he pressures the Alabama Governor, George C. Wallace (no relation) into securing the safety of the marchers. It is truly a historic moment in the history of our country and thanks to President Johnson's taping system and the gift of audio recording we can listen in as it all unfolds. 

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Few relationships in the history of our country were as important as the one between President Lyndon Johnson and his Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and fewer still, were as bad. The two men could not stand one another and it was like that from the start. In 1960, Bobby Kennedy had tried to get Lyndon Johnson to back out of his acceptance of the Vice Presidential slot on the Democratic Ticket. It was a slight that had never been forgiven.

Through out the Kennedy Administration Robert Kennedy had marginalized LBJ, and kept him out of major policy decisions. Many around the President had often joked to one another, out in the open, "What ever happened to Lyndon Johnson?" 

On November 22, 1963, an assassin changed everything, suddenly Lyndon Johnson was the center of the political universe. But he still needed the Kennedy family and that meant keeping Robert Kennedy in place, at least for the immediate future. The two men tried to make it work and together they managed to get one of the main pieces of civil rights legislation in history passed in 1964. 

But as the Democratic Convention grew nearer the strains in their relationship grew more extreme. Robert Kennedy had ambition to be Vice President and get himself in line to reclaim the Presidency that had once been his brother's job.  Lyndon Johnson, on the other hand, would have preferred, as Presidential aid Dick Goodwin said, Ho Chi Min himself to having to put Robert Kennedy on the 1964 ticket. Here we look at all the maneuvering in both directions that was done by one man to get on the ticket and by another to prevent it from happening, all with a scandal mixed in in between. 

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This episode opens as Lyndon Johnson declares War on Poverty in America. LBJ had a vision of the America he wanted to create and unlike many of our Presidents this man was the quintessential legislator.  Johnson's ability to get legislation passed was an area of his job in which there has been no equal, whether you like what he passed or not. Johnson's Great Society changed America in fundamental ways and redefined what many Americans looked for in their Federal Government. 

One of the centerpieces of Johnson's Great Society was in the area of Civil Rights. He was a Southerner from the State of Texas and as such he knew what racial divisions looked like. As a former school teacher he saw the inequities in the lives of his students in Cotulla, the small Texas town he had taught in. He was determined to change the Jim Crow laws of the South.

On the eve of the passage of his landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 , which would guarantee access to all public accommodations and ending segregation, three civil rights workers would disappear in Mississippi. Listen in as the President deals with this horrifying development.

 Listen as he talks to the Senator and Governor of the State of Mississippi, to an FBI Director who was himself no friend of the struggle for civil rights, listen as he calls one of the students mothers  and also listen as he closes the deal he needed to get the 1964 Civil Rights Bill passed. It is a fascinating look inside the wheeling and dealing this President would become famous for, and an education on the complexities of the job he had, and the times in which he served. 

Questions or comments at  , [email protected] ,  https://twitter.com/randal_wallace   , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
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