Vice-President Hubert Humphrey was defeated by Richard Nixon in the 1968 presidential race, writes Prof. Madhav Das Nalapat
Richard Milhous Nixon defeated his Democratic rival, Vice-President Hubert Horatio Humphrey, in 1968 to become the next President of the United States. The reason why Humphrey lost was because he declined to move far away from the record of his boss, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, on the unpopular Vietnam War. Overall, Johnson was a transformational President, who but for Vietnam would have been better treated by many historians.
The war in Vietnam was why Humphrey was challenged in the Democratic primary by Eugene McCarthy, whose sole electoral plank was that he would end the Vietnam War as soon as he took charge in the Oval Office. Had Vice-President Humphrey followed his own instincts and made a promise similar to that made by McCarthy of ending the war speedily, he may have annoyed Johnson, who made a fetish of personal loyalty, but very likely would have won the US Presidency.
Ironically, his rival Richard Nixon promised a quick end to the war in Vietnam, a vow he had no intention of keeping. Once President of the US, Nixon accelerated efforts aimed at forcing North Vietnam to accept the status quo of a divided Vietnam, as had taken place in the 1950s in Korea. Together with National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, he launched a strategy of carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos in an effort to stop supplies and soldiers from the north reaching the south.
Had the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong been similar in their logistics arrangements to US forces, the strategy would have worked. However, Ho Chi Minh merely transferred men and materiel through dirt tracks and jungles by bicycle and by porters, ignoring the so-called “Ho Chi Minh trail” that Nixon had sought to disrupt and destroy. Agent Orange was freely used in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, whose effects have continued to linger even now.
Countless human beings were killed, maimed or made diseased as a consequence. Only painfully and slowly was US troop withdrawal carried out. All US forces exited Vietnam in defeat in 1973. Johnson had done more for civil rights in the US with his 1964 Civil Rights Act, he did more for Black Americans than any US President barring Abraham Lincoln. It was the Vietnam War which made him, and by extension Vice-President Humphrey, unpopular with many white voters in the South.
Had Humphrey dissociated with President Johnson just on policy towards Vietnam, he would have been seen by enough voters as not tied to the President in the way his reticence to challenge Johnson’s unpopular Vietnam policy made him out to be. As a consequence, he could have erased the effect of the losses in the South caused by Johnson’s civil rights achievements.
By dissociating with Johnson’s policy on Vietnam, Humphrey could have put that issue behind him and focused on the Great Society social security reforms that Johnson introduced for the first time in the US. Instead, he was pilloried night and day on Vietnam.
Joe Biden has been an outstanding President but for a trio of stains on his record. One was his lack of ability to initially control a flood of illegal migrants on the US border with Mexico, another was his peremptory order to all US forces to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2021.
Vice-President Kamala Harris has escape routes to prevent these two errors of President Biden from defining her in the way Republicans are doing. On the border, it was former President Donald Trump who stopped the passage of a bipartisan bill in 2024 that would have significantly reduced the illegal migrant flow into his country. Harris has to make clear that under her, the border would be secure, and that the flow of illegals would drop to a very low number.
All illegals who were permitted entry would comprise only of those suited by temperament and training to be good US citizens, while others would be sent back from the border itself. On Afghanistan, she could point out that all that President Biden did in 2021 was to have operationalised the complete withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan that was agreed upon by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the command of President Trump the previous year.
Kamala Harris needs to stress her commitment to border security and to the uniformed forces. If Kamala Harris and other Democrat campaigners pointed out facts inconvenient to Trump on the border and Afghanistan often and emphatically, in particular to the white underclass that Trump is courting, her chances for being the first woman President of the US would rise significantly.
Biden has a good record on healthcare and social security, and Harris could focus on this. The third disaster under Biden is the Ukraine war, which has been a disaster for US policy from the start. The war is causing much of the domestic inflation that is being pointed out by Republicans as the reason why the Vice-President should be defeated. So far, Kamala Harris has hewed to the Biden line on Ukraine, a policy which will result in higher inflation, higher monetary costs and the increasing destruction of Ukraine.
A Korea-style Armistice ending the war needs to be implemented soonest. In the way there has just been a prisoner swap with the Russians, she needs to make clear that as President, Harris would work to convince Russia along with Ukraine to agree to an armistice based on the status quo. Kamala Harris needs to signal that she wants the Ukraine war to end soon, or else will be conceding several votes to Trump. At the same time, she needs to show that she is for all US citizens, whatever their faith or ethnicity, and will act to improve the lives of all, especially the underprivileged, on matters such as jobs, healthcare and housing.
Vice-President Hubert Humphrey failed to distance himself from the Johnson legacy on Vietnam and lost. Kamala Harris needs to showcase elements of the Biden legacy such as healthcare, while distancing herself from (i) illegal immigration and step away from (ii) Biden’s embrace of the Ukraine war and (iii) his disastrous pell-mell withdrawal from Afghanistan. If not, she will fall into the Humphrey Trap and lose to Trump on 5 November 2024 the way Humphrey lost to Nixon on 5 November 1968.
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