Nixonland. Part 13

Len Garment found a diamond in the rough. "He's proven he can take it," someone told the tape recorder. "He's been slapped down before and can come back." Garment underlined the sentences twice: "That's it!" Here was something they could work with. Like Churchill, like Abraham Lincoln-Nixon's the man who came back.

That was the message 150,000 New Hamps.h.i.+rites read February 2: "During fourteen years in Was.h.i.+ngton, I learned the awesome nature of the great decisions a President faces.... During the past eight years I have had a chance to reflect on the lessons of public office.... I believe I have found some answers." (They spent hours haggling over the verbs: believe, hope, believe, hope, or simply or simply have have? Believe, Believe, they decided, was the ticket: not too arrogant, not too diffident.) His campaign posters proclaimed, "You can't handshake your way out of the kind of problems we have today. You've got to think them through-and that takes a lifetime of getting ready." That made a virtue of the thing the jackals of the press might soon be hammering him for. For Richard Nixon would hardly be shaking any hands at all. they decided, was the ticket: not too arrogant, not too diffident.) His campaign posters proclaimed, "You can't handshake your way out of the kind of problems we have today. You've got to think them through-and that takes a lifetime of getting ready." That made a virtue of the thing the jackals of the press might soon be hammering him for. For Richard Nixon would hardly be shaking any hands at all.

His Concord speech was all s.h.i.+ning idealism: America was suffering a "crisis of the spirit." The president had lost the "soul of the nation." The nation needed leaders.h.i.+p to provide "the lift of a driving dream." It was followed by a most un-Nixonian function: an open-bar reception for the press. The candidate circulated, ham-fistedly slapping backs and telling jokes, then leapt upon a chair for an informal speech. This campaign, he promised, would be the most open he'd ever run. The press corps, charmed, composed an impromptu ditty around the bar about this New Nixon-"the newest ever seen."

First thing next morning, the candidate slipped out before any reporters or handshake-hungry voters could spot him. For actually, this was to be the most closed closed campaign he'd ever run. campaign he'd ever run.

The idea had come of an appearance the previous autumn on Mike Douglas's afternoon chat show. As Nixon sat in the Douglas show's makeup chair, he chatted perfunctorily with a young producer about how silly it was that it took gimmicks like going on daytime talk shows to get elected in America in 1968. The producer, a twenty-six-year-old named Roger Ailes, did not come back with the expected deferential chuckle. Instead he lectured him: if Nixon still thought talk shows were a gimmick, he'd never become president of the United States. Ailes then reeled off a litany of Nixon's TV mistakes in 1960, when Ailes had been in high school-and, before he knew it, had been whisked to New York and invited to work for the man in charge of the media team, Frank Shakespeare. Shakespeare had been a division president at CBS. There had been talk of him as the fair-haired boy who might one day replace William S. Paley, the network's president. A friend of William F. Buckley's, what he really wanted to do was destroy liberals. He would have done it for his first presidential choice, Ronald Reagan, if he hadn't finally decided that the actor was too untested.

His young confederate Ailes was a TV-producing prodigy, transforming Douglas from a local Philadelphia fixture into a national icon of square chic: "Each weekday more than 6,000,000 housewives in 171 cities set up their ironing boards in front of the TV set to watch their idol," said a feature story in Time. Time. Ailes was perfect to execute the newest Nixon's new idea, the most brazen in the history of political TV. Ailes, Garment, Shakespeare, Ray Price, and a young lawyer from Nixon, Mudge, Tom Evans, met in a CBS screening room. Like football coaches, they reviewed game film: seven hours of Nixon TV appearances. As a stump speaker, the medium could make him look like an earnest, sweaty litigator. He did better on camera in informal settings, looking a questioner in the eye. They decided that this would be how they would make sure Nixon was seen-all through 1968. Ailes was perfect to execute the newest Nixon's new idea, the most brazen in the history of political TV. Ailes, Garment, Shakespeare, Ray Price, and a young lawyer from Nixon, Mudge, Tom Evans, met in a CBS screening room. Like football coaches, they reviewed game film: seven hours of Nixon TV appearances. As a stump speaker, the medium could make him look like an earnest, sweaty litigator. He did better on camera in informal settings, looking a questioner in the eye. They decided that this would be how they would make sure Nixon was seen-all through 1968.

But Richard Nixon had enemies. Genuinely impromptu encounters-the sort that were supposed to be the charm of New Hamps.h.i.+re campaigning-had a chance of turning nasty. Thus the innovation. They would film impromptu encounters. Only they would be staged.

Shakespeare brought on board a TV specialist from Bob Haldeman's old employer, J. Walter Thompson. Harry Treleaven was a TV-obsessed nerd who perennially bored people by rhapsodizing over the technical details of his craft. Militantly indifferent to ideology, his last triumph was rewiring the image of George Herbert Walker Bush, the new congressman from Houston who'd lost a Senate race as a Goldwater Republican in '64. Men-on-the-street in Houston had thought George Bush likable, though "there was a haziness about exactly where he stood politically," Treleaven wrote in a postmortem memo. Treleaven thought that was swell. "Most national issues today are so complicated, so difficult to understand," he said, that they "bore the average voter." Putting 85 percent of Bush's budget into advertising, almost two-thirds of that into TV, he set to work inventing George Bush as a casual kind of guy who walked around with his coat slung over his shoulder (he was actually an aristocrat from Connecticut). Since the polls had him behind, Treleaven also made him a "fighting underdog," "a man who's working his heart out to win." His ideology, whatever it was, wasn't mentioned.

Nixon gave this team carte blanche: "We're going to build this whole campaign around television. You fellows just tell me what you want me to do and I'll do it."

On February 3, he was slipped out a back door in Concord and spirited to tiny Hillsborough, where an audience of two dozen townsfolk handpicked by the local Nixon committee sat waiting in a local courtroom. Outside were uniformed guards to keep out the men to whom Richard Nixon had just pledged his most open campaign ever. Lights, camera, action; citizens asked their questions; cameras captured their man's answers; then, Treleaven, Ailes, and Garment got to work chopping the best bits into TV spots. Garment, the neophyte, thought editing was neat. It reminded him of the creative flights of jazz improvisation.

The reporters threatened mutiny. Ailes offered them a compromise: from now on they'd be allowed to watch on monitors in a room nearby and interview the audience after the show. If they didn't like it, tough. A man who raged at what he could not control, Richard Nixon had found a way to be in control.

Romney's approach was rather different. He preferred naked honesty. His position paper "A New U.S. Foreign Policy for the 1970s" argued that letting small conflicts on the global periphery become referenda on American prestige could only end in disaster. His stump speech insisted that "there can't be adequate progress" on race and crime until the war was ended, that the "Johnson-Nixon policy of military escalation was self-defeating," that LBJ was "spinning a web of delusion over the events in Vietnam": "When you want to win the hearts and minds of people, you don't kill them and destroy their property. You don't use bombers and tanks and napalm to save them." Audiences proved nonresponsive-though they did cheer his call for the end of student draft deferments. Jules Witcover thought Romney's Vietnam address at Keene College in New Hamps.h.i.+re "one of the most straightforward speeches given by any candidate." That was the one where a student shouted out afterward, "Were you brainwashed this this time?" time?" THE WAY TO STOP CRIME IS TO STOP MORAL DECAY, THE WAY TO STOP CRIME IS TO STOP MORAL DECAY, read Romney's billboards. Wags said it sounded like an ad for a dentist. Nixon's slogan was all studied Madison Avenue vagueness: read Romney's billboards. Wags said it sounded like an ad for a dentist. Nixon's slogan was all studied Madison Avenue vagueness: NIXON'S THE ONE. NIXON'S THE ONE. His Vietnam talk was full of finely canted phrases signifying nothing. He would "end the war and win the peace." "The goal of our diplomacy should be to prevent future wars by strengthening the countries seeking freedom. But if war comes and they appeal to us for help, let's help them fight the war and not fight the war for them." ("There was always sustained applause," the His Vietnam talk was full of finely canted phrases signifying nothing. He would "end the war and win the peace." "The goal of our diplomacy should be to prevent future wars by strengthening the countries seeking freedom. But if war comes and they appeal to us for help, let's help them fight the war and not fight the war for them." ("There was always sustained applause," the New York Times New York Times observed.) observed.) He got the world's attention when in the middle of a patriotic stem-winder in rural Hampton he said, "If in November this war is not over, I say that the American people will be justified in electing new leaders.h.i.+p, and I pledge to you that new leaders.h.i.+p will end the war and win the peace in the Pacific." Reporters raced for the phones: it sounded as if he was promising a plan to end the war. Democrats pressed him on the specifics of his "pledge," asked whether it was responsible to keep secret from the president any plan that could end the war. Nixon's response only proved how much more adept he was at backing out of the kind of corners that George Wilcken Romney backed himself into: "People ask me, 'What will you give North Vietnam?'" (That old Nixon trick, the unsourced question.) "Let me tell you why I won't tell you that. No one with this responsibility who is seeking office should give away his bargaining positions in advance. That's why I will not be tied to anything Johnson has said except the commitment. Under no circ.u.mstances should a man say what he will do in January. The military situation may change, and we may have to take an entirely new look."

People were trusting Nixon's answers. People still a.s.sumed Romney was Rockefeller's stalking horse-even when he dragged Rockefeller along to say he didn't want to be president. They didn't trust trust Romney-a situation not helped by the mysterious pamphlets that started circulating: "Supreme Court Declares Romney Not Qualified Under the Const.i.tution." (Romney had been born while his parents were in Mexico.) He was even accosted by a man in Manchester who said Romney drank too much. Mystified, the Mormon replied, "I've never had a drink in my life." Romney-a situation not helped by the mysterious pamphlets that started circulating: "Supreme Court Declares Romney Not Qualified Under the Const.i.tution." (Romney had been born while his parents were in Mexico.) He was even accosted by a man in Manchester who said Romney drank too much. Mystified, the Mormon replied, "I've never had a drink in my life."

The Michigander was mincemeat. His lieutenants told him he might get fewer votes than Rockefeller write-ins and gingerly suggested he quit. It was still a shock when he stepped up to the microphones on February 28 at a governors' conference in Was.h.i.+ngton and did just that. The pundits learned that few beyond their incestuous claque were entirely aware of who their anointed front-runner was. Immediately, the Times Times put the hometown boy on the front page: "Rockefeller Could Open a Campaign in 2 Weeks." put the hometown boy on the front page: "Rockefeller Could Open a Campaign in 2 Weeks."

Nixon began campaigning in code against Rockefeller. "I take no pleasure, no gratification," he said, in Romney's retreat. "I admire men who get into the arena. Some of the others have not"-adding that primaries should decide the nominee, not the "kingmakers at Miami." That was code to play to conservative resentments: Phyllis Schlafly's 1964 argument in A Choice, Not an Echo A Choice, Not an Echo was that liberals like Rockefeller always won Republican nominations when Wall Street kingmakers pulled strings behind the scenes. was that liberals like Rockefeller always won Republican nominations when Wall Street kingmakers pulled strings behind the scenes.

Nixon also took a calculated risk. He was already projected to win big in New Hamps.h.i.+re. But now he needed a blowout blowout to scare Rocky out of the race. Nixon had a nationwide radio address scheduled for March 7, the Thursday before the New Hamps.h.i.+re balloting. The domestic mood provided him his text. It was finally time to move all in on the subject upon which he'd heretofore been sedate: the crisis of law and order. It was time to blame it all on the liberals. to scare Rocky out of the race. Nixon had a nationwide radio address scheduled for March 7, the Thursday before the New Hamps.h.i.+re balloting. The domestic mood provided him his text. It was finally time to move all in on the subject upon which he'd heretofore been sedate: the crisis of law and order. It was time to blame it all on the liberals.

Liberals: like the blue-ribbon panel convened by New Jersey governor Richard Hughes, which released its report on the Newark riot on February 10 (that same day, department-store executives from around the country met in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, for training on how to evacuate their customers in a firebombing). The Hughes Commission noted "a pattern of police action for which there is no possible justification," that "the single continuously lawless element operating in the community is the police force itself," and that the ultimate cause of the violence was "official neglect." They concluded, "The question is whether we should resort to illusion or finally come to grips with reality."

The public was choosing illusion. Newark's police superintendent said his own investigation found no abuses; Chief Dominick Spina wondered where he could find the Hughes Commission's "kind words concerning the dedication, the courage, and the loyalty of the men in blue who worked inhuman tours of duty to help establish order in this troubled city." Mayor Addonizio responded to the report by naming a Negro to command the riot precinct; cops protested the move in an hour-long demonstration outside city hall in subzero weather. Politicians from miles around joined the chorus: Mayor Thomas G. Dunn of Elizabeth called the Hughes report "an open invitation to lawlessness." A white Newark knockabout named Anthony Imperiale gathered two hundred armed citizens for vigilante patrols of ghetto streets in cars they called "jungle cruisers."

The feds later recorded Mayor Dunn taking money from a Mafia a.s.sociate. Tony Imperiale had a long criminal record. The white public accepted these malefactors as tribunes of law and order nonetheless. Both whites and blacks, Garry Wills wrote in Esquire, Esquire, were "arming for Armageddon." were "arming for Armageddon."

On February 8, in Orangeburg, South Carolina, black students had gathered to picket a segregated bowling alley. Police responded by firing into the crowd, killing three. At the International a.s.sociation of Chiefs of Police convention, four different kinds of armored personnel carriers were on display. The army laid stockpiles of heavy weaponry in half a dozen depots to supply seven special brigade-size civil-disturbance task forces and offered weeklong riot-training sessions for police forces at a Fort Gordon staging area called Riotville. (The New York Times New York Times came to visit: "Mobs may flood an area with gasoline or oil and ignite it as troops advance into an area," an instructor lectured.) The White House seriously countenanced a rumor that black soldiers back from Vietnam would try to take over cities guerrilla-style. A book went on sale called came to visit: "Mobs may flood an area with gasoline or oil and ignite it as troops advance into an area," an instructor lectured.) The White House seriously countenanced a rumor that black soldiers back from Vietnam would try to take over cities guerrilla-style. A book went on sale called How to Defend Yourself, Your Family, and Your Home, How to Defend Yourself, Your Family, and Your Home, advertised as "guidance that you, your wife-yes, and your children-must have as the crime rate continues to soar in the Great Society jungle," as liberals transform America "into a happy hunting ground for the thief, the rapist, the drug addict, the pervert, the arsonist, the murderer for kicks, the looter." Imaginations, too, were running riot. advertised as "guidance that you, your wife-yes, and your children-must have as the crime rate continues to soar in the Great Society jungle," as liberals transform America "into a happy hunting ground for the thief, the rapist, the drug addict, the pervert, the arsonist, the murderer for kicks, the looter." Imaginations, too, were running riot.

Or maybe they were just being realistic. On February 17, five thousand militants rallied at the Oakland Auditorium for the birthday of Black Panther founder Huey Newton, in jail for the shooting death of Oakland policeman John Frey. H. Rap Brown called Newton "our only living revolutionary in this country today. He has paid his dues. He has paid his dues. He has paid his dues. How many white folks did How many white folks did you you kill today?" James Forman, now Panther "minister of foreign affairs," said that in the event of his own a.s.sa.s.sination, "I want thirty police stations blown up, one Southern governor, two mayors, and five hundred cops dead." In the event of Huey's, he said, "The sky is the limit." kill today?" James Forman, now Panther "minister of foreign affairs," said that in the event of his own a.s.sa.s.sination, "I want thirty police stations blown up, one Southern governor, two mayors, and five hundred cops dead." In the event of Huey's, he said, "The sky is the limit."

An ancient concept from the common law was enjoying a resurgence: the posse comitatus. posse comitatus. Sheriff Woods of Cook County announced plans to form a thousand-volunteer armed-and-helmeted, khaki-clad riot force to muster for the Democratic National Convention. (A Chicago circuit judge shut down the plan two weeks later, though not before Woods had fielded thousands of enthusiastic inquiries from men willing to work for free.) The Republican convention would take place at Miami Beach-located on an island that could be sealed off from marauding hordes by closing down the causeways. Sheriff Woods of Cook County announced plans to form a thousand-volunteer armed-and-helmeted, khaki-clad riot force to muster for the Democratic National Convention. (A Chicago circuit judge shut down the plan two weeks later, though not before Woods had fielded thousands of enthusiastic inquiries from men willing to work for free.) The Republican convention would take place at Miami Beach-located on an island that could be sealed off from marauding hordes by closing down the causeways.

A new movie, Planet of the Apes, Planet of the Apes, imagined what life would be like if whites suddenly found themselves a subject population. It graced theaters as New Yorkers dodged rats and waded chest-deep through garbage from a wildcat sanitation workers' strike. Mayor Lindsay wanted to enlist National Guardsmen as garbagemen. Governor Rockefeller, horrified, had visions of trench warfare in the rubbish piles between the armed scabs and strikers. H. Rap Brown threw in with the mayor: "We want troops. We want to overthrow the government. We want to have rioting. We want to fight the soldiers." A sort of hippie street gang from the Lower East Side added their two cents. They called themselves Up Against the Wall Motherf.u.c.kers, after the command supposedly barked by Newark cops to Negroes under custody, transformed into a line of poetry by LeRoi Jones. They collected the nastiest Hefty bags from the rotting piles, marched them through the streets, boarded the IRT subway line, and deposited them on the gleaming marble steps of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. imagined what life would be like if whites suddenly found themselves a subject population. It graced theaters as New Yorkers dodged rats and waded chest-deep through garbage from a wildcat sanitation workers' strike. Mayor Lindsay wanted to enlist National Guardsmen as garbagemen. Governor Rockefeller, horrified, had visions of trench warfare in the rubbish piles between the armed scabs and strikers. H. Rap Brown threw in with the mayor: "We want troops. We want to overthrow the government. We want to have rioting. We want to fight the soldiers." A sort of hippie street gang from the Lower East Side added their two cents. They called themselves Up Against the Wall Motherf.u.c.kers, after the command supposedly barked by Newark cops to Negroes under custody, transformed into a line of poetry by LeRoi Jones. They collected the nastiest Hefty bags from the rotting piles, marched them through the streets, boarded the IRT subway line, and deposited them on the gleaming marble steps of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

The hot story among the pundits was the kids and their New Politics. But Gallup released a poll on February 27: for the first time in American history, "crime and lawlessness" ranked as the most important domestic problem. Almost two-thirds said courts didn't deal harshly enough with crime. Half the women said "they'd be afraid to walk alone at night" in their neighborhood. The Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times had reported before Christmas that George Wallace had less than a third of the 66,059 signatures he needed to get on the California ballot; the day after New Year's, he triumphantly turned in 100,000. He also received the endors.e.m.e.nt of the National Fraternal Order of Police-having stamped the John Birch Society slogan "Support Your Local Police" on Alabama license plates. had reported before Christmas that George Wallace had less than a third of the 66,059 signatures he needed to get on the California ballot; the day after New Year's, he triumphantly turned in 100,000. He also received the endors.e.m.e.nt of the National Fraternal Order of Police-having stamped the John Birch Society slogan "Support Your Local Police" on Alabama license plates.

The simple baseline condition of orderliness that middle-cla.s.s Americans expected as their birthright was being cast adrift. America: she was starting to smell. And then came the Kerner Commission report.

Lyndon Johnson had convened a commission to study the riots when the Eighty-second Airborne was still bivouacked in Detroit. It released its findings February 29. By March 3, nine days before the New Hamps.h.i.+re primary, the New York Times New York Times released a paperback version. Johnson had wanted his commission to wax cautious concerning solutions-to take into account the limits posed by an unfriendly Congress and the constraints of a nation at war. He wanted them to blame outside agitators. He thought he had it wired: Chairman Otto Kerner, Illinois's governor, was a creature of the Daley machine. What Johnson didn't count on was Vice Chairman John Lindsay, who maneuvered himself as the Kerner Commission's de facto chairman and saw to it the report demanded $30 billion in new urban spending-the very amount Martin Luther King had announced as the goal for his upcoming Poor People's Campaign. Lindsay also, considering the draft report too cautious, had a young aide write an aggressive introduction and got the panel to adopt it almost verbatim. Its words were to become famous: released a paperback version. Johnson had wanted his commission to wax cautious concerning solutions-to take into account the limits posed by an unfriendly Congress and the constraints of a nation at war. He wanted them to blame outside agitators. He thought he had it wired: Chairman Otto Kerner, Illinois's governor, was a creature of the Daley machine. What Johnson didn't count on was Vice Chairman John Lindsay, who maneuvered himself as the Kerner Commission's de facto chairman and saw to it the report demanded $30 billion in new urban spending-the very amount Martin Luther King had announced as the goal for his upcoming Poor People's Campaign. Lindsay also, considering the draft report too cautious, had a young aide write an aggressive introduction and got the panel to adopt it almost verbatim. Its words were to become famous: "This is our basic conclusion: Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white-separate and unequal....

"The vital needs of the nation must be met; hard choices must be made, and, if necessary, new taxes enacted.

"Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans.

"What white Americans have never understood-but what the Negro can never forget-is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White inst.i.tutions created it, white inst.i.tutions maintain it, and white society condones it."

"Johnson Unit a.s.sails Whites in Negro Riots" was the headline in the New York Times. New York Times. The next day on Capitol Hill, where a new civil rights bill had been sailing toward Senate pa.s.sage with a bipartisan open-housing provision to cover 66 percent of all housing units, Everett Dirksen and his son-in-law Howard Baker coordinated crippling amendments to cut that protection by two-thirds. The bill might not have pa.s.sed at all had not Strom Thurmond and Frank Lausche slapped on an "H. Rap Brown amendment" that made it a federal crime to travel from one state to another with the intent to start a riot-rammed through even though Vice President Humphrey, presiding in the Senate chamber, ruled the amendment procedurally out of order. Florida conservative Spesser Holland baited his fastidious colleagues: "Mr. President, it is simply amazing to me that some senators seem to be unwilling to cast a yea or nay vote on an amendment which deals with the subject of riots." The next day on Capitol Hill, where a new civil rights bill had been sailing toward Senate pa.s.sage with a bipartisan open-housing provision to cover 66 percent of all housing units, Everett Dirksen and his son-in-law Howard Baker coordinated crippling amendments to cut that protection by two-thirds. The bill might not have pa.s.sed at all had not Strom Thurmond and Frank Lausche slapped on an "H. Rap Brown amendment" that made it a federal crime to travel from one state to another with the intent to start a riot-rammed through even though Vice President Humphrey, presiding in the Senate chamber, ruled the amendment procedurally out of order. Florida conservative Spesser Holland baited his fastidious colleagues: "Mr. President, it is simply amazing to me that some senators seem to be unwilling to cast a yea or nay vote on an amendment which deals with the subject of riots."

The president was aghast at the Kerner Commission report. It did the one thing he'd been so careful never to do when laying the political groundwork for his sweeping social and civil rights legislation: blame the majority, instead of appealing to their better angels. None wanted to be hectored as oppressors. They thought they had enough problems of their own.

Indeed, in a sense, they did. Life was not as easy for middle-cla.s.s Americans as it had only recently been. Their purchasing power was leveling off, even dropping. Unemployment among white teenagers-prime age for throwing rocks at Martin Luther King-was now 12 percent. ("Come back when you have that draft thing out of the way," they heard at the factory gates, while richer kids had no problems getting out of their military obligations.) That the unemployment rate was 27 percent among young blacks did not change the alchemy of status anxiety: as the lot of blacks improved somewhat, the marginal privilege of possessing white skin proportionately weakened. This had political consequences, as one of Richard Nixon's new young advisers, Richard Whalen, wrote the boss in a memo: "The ordinary white American lacks the wherewithal to purchase what I call 'social insulation'...[like] the well-heeled liberals who, for example, zealously promote integration of the public schools while they send their own children to expensive private schools." The "blind demagogs" (sic) of the Kerner Commission, editorialized the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Tribune, were "awash in tears for the poor oppressed rioters." At the expense of the people who couldn't afford private schools. At the expense of the people who paid all the taxes-and who, the Kerner Commission insisted, should have to pay more. were "awash in tears for the poor oppressed rioters." At the expense of the people who couldn't afford private schools. At the expense of the people who paid all the taxes-and who, the Kerner Commission insisted, should have to pay more.

It was a boon season for white expressions of grievance. A correspondent with the Milwaukee Journal Milwaukee Journal responded to an article about a white, female civil rights activist with his own explanation of why she stuck up for the colored man: "he has more s.e.x than the poor overworked white man." In a fifteen-city poll only one-fifth of whites agreed that Negroes suffered "some" job discrimination; 40 percent thought they didn't suffer any at all. Black athletes were talking about boycotting the Olympics in Mexico City. "I'd give up my life if necessary to open a door or channel to reduce bigotry," said one of them, Tommie Smith, a star sprinter at San Jose State who wasn't able to rent an apartment in the city where he was a sports star. A white letter-writer to the responded to an article about a white, female civil rights activist with his own explanation of why she stuck up for the colored man: "he has more s.e.x than the poor overworked white man." In a fifteen-city poll only one-fifth of whites agreed that Negroes suffered "some" job discrimination; 40 percent thought they didn't suffer any at all. Black athletes were talking about boycotting the Olympics in Mexico City. "I'd give up my life if necessary to open a door or channel to reduce bigotry," said one of them, Tommie Smith, a star sprinter at San Jose State who wasn't able to rent an apartment in the city where he was a sports star. A white letter-writer to the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post Sat.u.r.day Evening Post responded as if responded as if he he were the victim: "We who have worked and played with our Negro companions seem to be forced into a situation of being either for the Negro or for America, but not for both." were the victim: "We who have worked and played with our Negro companions seem to be forced into a situation of being either for the Negro or for America, but not for both."

Into this context stepped Richard Nixon. Garry Wills had written, alluding to the Kerner Commission, "many of those who have awakened to the concept of two countries are determined that their side must win in any conflict between the two." On the radio nationwide, on March 7, the Thursday before New Hamps.h.i.+re went to the polls, Richard Nixon cast himself as the white side's field marshal: "We have been amply warned that we face the prospect of a war in the making in our own society. We have seen the gathering hate, we have heard the threats to burn and bomb and destroy. In Watts and Harlem and Detroit and Newark, we have had a foretaste of what the organizers of insurrection are planning for the summer ahead....

"We must take the warnings to heart and prepare to meet force with force if necessary....

"The riots shook the nation to a new awareness of how deep were Negro resentments, how explosive the grievances long suppressed. But that lesson has been learned." Further agitation "could engulf not only the cities, but all the racial progress made in these troubled years....

"Our first commitment as a nation in this time of crisis and questioning must be a commitment to order."

That following Monday night, the day the Senate finally pa.s.sed a civil rights bill with an open-housing provision, in Grosse Point, Michigan, a rich white enclave next to Detroit, Martin Luther King received the most terrifying heckling of his career. The next day, Richard Nixon received 79 percent of the New Hamps.h.i.+re Republican vote. Only 11 percent wrote in Rockefeller. The "Nixon can't win" trope was being extinguished-so much so that a billionaire found him worthy of an investment: two days later, from his penthouse atop Las Vegas's Desert Inn, Howard Hughes dispatched a lieutenant to see Nixon. "I feel there is a really valid possibility of a Republican victory this year," the recluse explained, "that could be realized under our sponsors.h.i.+p and supervision every inch of the way."

"The people of this country don't like absentee candidates," Nixon said of the New Hamps.h.i.+re results, then hied himself to Wisconsin, armed with a separate focus-grouped message for its its voters, where the whole thing would repeat itself three Tuesdays later. Wisconsin was also set to become another showdown between the president and Gene McCarthy. voters, where the whole thing would repeat itself three Tuesdays later. Wisconsin was also set to become another showdown between the president and Gene McCarthy.

Then things got a little complicated-the most frenzied three weeks in American electoral history, ending in a tragedy.

The day after New Hamps.h.i.+re, followed by a cloud of reporters through a Senate corridor, Robert F. Kennedy blurted an admission: "I am now rea.s.sessing my position."

It made him sound like a creep: Gene McCarthy had jimmied the lock, but Bobby would s.n.a.t.c.h up the jewels. But Bobby thought McCarthy was a creep. "If someone could appeal to the generous spirit of Americans to heal the race question, this is what the campaign should be about," he had told a January background breakfast with reporters. "McCarthy is unable to tap this spirit"-after which the scribes had pleaded with Kennedy to make a public statement about his intentions. He replied, "I have told friends and supporters who are urging me to run that I would not oppose Lyndon Johnson under any foreseeable circ.u.mstances." It was only hours before the unforeseeable occurred: the Tet Offensive.

Also on the day after New Hamps.h.i.+re, Kennedy went to the Oval Office and insolently presented LBJ an ultimatum: name a commission, including Kennedy, to negotiate a Vietnam withdrawal plan with the enemy. Nothing could have enraged Johnson more. When he had faced that agonizing choice whether to fish or cut bait in Vietnam after November 22, 1963, he acted partly from fear of retaliation from an angry RFK for retreating from his brother's commitment. Now RFK claimed his brother never intended to escalate the war. A recurrent nightmare troubled the president's sleep: "Chased on every side by a giant stampede...I was forced over the edge by rioting blacks, demonstrating students, marching welfare mothers, squawking professors.... Robert Kennedy had openly announced his intention to reclaim the throne in the memory of his brother...the American people, swayed by the magic of the name, were dancing in the streets." "Chased on every side by a giant stampede...I was forced over the edge by rioting blacks, demonstrating students, marching welfare mothers, squawking professors.... Robert Kennedy had openly announced his intention to reclaim the throne in the memory of his brother...the American people, swayed by the magic of the name, were dancing in the streets."

That same day, the new defense secretary, Clark Clifford, told Johnson the army was prepared to respond to summer riots. He was worried about the generals, though: "Their insensitivity to the civilian considerations has been quite manifest." The Ohio legislature had pa.s.sed a bill providing a twenty-year penalty for damaging fire hydrants. New York voted in a bill outlawing the "encouraging" of violence. Minneapolis's police chief took delivery of a s.h.i.+pment of AR-15 semiautomatic rifles. Omaha recovered from a riot spurred by the opening convention of the state branch of George Wallace's American Independent Party.

Martin Luther King was shuttling in and out of Memphis in support of striking garbage workers. Or, as Governor Buford Ellington put it, "training three thousand people to start riots." Five hundred Tennessee citizens signed a complaint asking a U.S. district judge to suspend Governor Ellington's frightening plans for National Guard training exercises that would simulate riots in black neighborhoods. Ellington huffed in return, "When we say we are going to train the Guard to protect the lives of people and their property, there is a big hullabaloo about it" from "people who would like to see riots." A third of the New York Times New York Times's dispatch on the controversy focused on one of the five hundred pet.i.tioners having been arrested for possession of marijuana.

The 1968 civil rights bill moved to the House. Minority leader Gerald Ford announced he would fight the open-housing provision. Southern governors, ignoring outright a 1967 decision of the Fifth Circuit articulating an "affirmative duty...to bring about an integrated, unitary school system in which there are no Negro schools and no white schools-just schools," were served a deadline by the dreaded Harold Howe II of the HEW education office: comply by September of 1969, or else. The California Democratic Council adopted a proGene McCarthy resolution at their annual convention. The keynote speaker-Martin Luther King-refused to indicate a preference for McCarthy or RFK, but made it clear he opposed the inc.u.mbent: "Flame throwers in Vietnam fan the flames in our cities-I don't think the two matters can be separated."

The next morning, a Sat.u.r.day, the president popped around to the Sheraton Park Hotel for a breakfast speech to the National Alliance of Businessmen that all but accused his critics of being against the troops: "Earlier this week in the East Room of the White House, I awarded the Medal of Honor to two of our bravest fighting marines....

"As your president, I want to say this to you today: We must meet our commitments in the world and in Vietnam. We shall and we are going to win.

"To meet the needs of these fighting men, we shall do whatever is required."

Pay any price. Bear any burden.

That afternoon, his nightmare came true. Robert F. Kennedy p.r.o.nounced the precise same phrase his brother had in 1960 in the exact same spot: "I am announcing today my candidacy for the president of the United States." He continued, "My decision reflects no personal animosity or disrespect toward President Johnson.... It is now unmistakably clear that we can change these disastrous, divisive policies only by changing the men who are now making them.... At stake is not simply the leaders.h.i.+p of our party or even our country-it is our right to moral leaders.h.i.+p of this planet."

(But no disrespect intended.) Allard Lowenstein was enraged: the great existential hero, who said he couldn't run because it would make him like an opportunist, had made his move months too late, at the moment of minimum risk-just like any other Old Politician. Among McCarthy supporters, metaphors proliferated: a dog stealing another's bone, a scrooge, a miner jumping a claim; Paul Newman said Kennedy was taking "a free ride on McCarthy's back."

Bobby was now the sun around which the rest of the political universe revolved. Reagan lovers fantasized that Richard Nixon would drop out rather than face a Kennedy-Nixon rematch. Wallaceites fantasized victory, thanks to Southerners who would sooner slit their throats than vote for the former attorney general who had invaded their states. Rockefellerites, hoping to position their their man as the charismatic liberal in the fight, were crushed, and even the freaks dreaming of framing the Democratic convention in Chicago in August as a "Festival of Death" were bereft: "We expected concentration camps and we got Bobby Kennedy," Jerry Rubin lamented. As for Gene McCarthy, he hated Kennedy as much as Nixon and Johnson did: just like that Little Lord Fauntleroy, scooping up others' hard work as if it belonged to him by birthright. man as the charismatic liberal in the fight, were crushed, and even the freaks dreaming of framing the Democratic convention in Chicago in August as a "Festival of Death" were bereft: "We expected concentration camps and we got Bobby Kennedy," Jerry Rubin lamented. As for Gene McCarthy, he hated Kennedy as much as Nixon and Johnson did: just like that Little Lord Fauntleroy, scooping up others' hard work as if it belonged to him by birthright.

Johnson, speaking that Monday to the National Farm Union in Minneapolis, called Vietnam War skeptics like the two fellows he was running against something close to traitors.

"Most of these people don't say, 'Cut and run.' They don't say, 'Pull out.'...They say that they want to do less than we are doing. But we are not doing enough to win....

"We love nothing more than peace, but we hate nothing more than surrender....

"So as we go back to our homes, let's go back dedicated to achieving peace in the world, trying to get a fair balance here at home, trying to make things easier and better for our children than we had them, but, above all, trying to preserve this American system, which is first in the world today.

"I want it to stay first, but it cannot be first if we pull out and tuck our tail and violate our commitments."

Stay in Vietnam or surrender "this American system." Robert F. Kennedy had once given friends three conditions under which he would run for president. One was that he would have to become convinced that LBJ was psychotic. Perhaps this was evidence of the final break.

Forty-four U.S. soldiers died in Vietnam the day of the New Hamps.h.i.+re primary. The next day, March 13, fifty-three; March 14, sixty-two. March 15: forty-one. The day of the president's breakfast speech and RFK's announcement: forty-eight, five of them shy of their nineteenth birthday.

Perhaps eager for good news to report, the New York Times New York Times's front page related on March 17 an operation in Quang Ngai, the bloodiest of Vietnam's provinces, where forces of the newly formed Americal division killed a reported 128 enemy soldiers in a pincer action: "The operation is another American offensive to clear enemy pockets still threatening the cities. While the two companies of United States soldiers moved in on the enemy force from opposite sides, heavy artillery barrages and armed helicopters were called in to pound the North Vietnamese soldiers." The official brigade report on which the dispatch was based quoted one Lieutenant Colonel Frank Barker: "The combat a.s.sault went like clockwork. We had two entire companies on the ground in less than an hour."

Richard Goodwin quit the McCarthy campaign to join Kennedy's. Seymour Hersh, a fierce moralist, was almost ready to quit McCarthy in disgust at all the opportunism in Democratic politics and go back to his previous trade-investigative journalism.

Ferment on the Republican side. Liberal Republicans took out newspaper ads begging Nelson Rockefeller to announce. Pundits such as Walter Lippmann and James Reston said he was the GOP's only hope.

Rockefeller would have loved to be the man to destroy Richard Nixon. Maybe now he'd have the chance. He received a spontaneous delegation of Oregonians at his Fifth Avenue town house begging him to campaign in their state's crucial May primary. The next day, at his mansion on Foxhall Road in Virginia, he entertained the pleadings of the powerful liberal Republican from Kentucky, Senator Thruston Morton. Maryland's Governor Agnew shuttled around the country promoting a Rockefeller candidacy, and was seen emerging with Lindsay, Rhode Island governor John Chafee, and South Dakota governor Nils Boe from Rockefeller headquarters. On March 19, the Times Times reported it outright: Rockefeller would be running. reported it outright: Rockefeller would be running.

He had a press conference scheduled for 2 p.m. the next day at the New York City Hilton. The freshman governor of Maryland invited the Annapolis press corps to watch the presidential candidacy announcement with him on his office TV, so they could record his delighted reaction to the eventuality he'd been working toward for months.

Agnew sat a yard from the set, the reporters in a half moon behind him.

In Manhattan, Rockefeller parted a festive crowd, signaled for the cheering to stop, and made straight for the kind of upbeat rhetoric fit to launch a presidential crusade.

Then, a sudden swerve: "I have decided to reiterate unequivocally that I am not a candidate campaigning directly or indirectly for the presidency of the United States.... Quite frankly, I find it clear at this time that a considerable majority of the party's leaders wants the candidacy of former vice president Richard Nixon, and it appears equally clear that they are keenly concerned and anxious to avoid any such divisive challenge within the party as marked the 1964 campaign." He added, "We live in an age when the word of a political leader seems to invite instant and general suspicion. I ask to be spared any measure of such distrust. I mean I shall abide by what I say."

In New York, his audience moaned in disappointment. In Annapolis, reporters filed out confirmed in their sense of their governor as something of a buffoon. Rockefeller had never bothered to call his number one backer with advance word. Agnew, shutting down his Draft Rockefeller office, began thinking about whether Richard Nixon better suited him.

In Nashville, then Georgia and Alabama and Kansas, Bobby Kennedy launched his campaign tacking right, condemning those who "burn and loot." He also opened a vein of astonis.h.i.+ng vituperation at the president of the United States. He spoke of his proposed commission to settle Vietnam: "I wanted Senator Mansfield, Senator Fulbright, and Senator Morse.... And the president, in his inimitable style, wanted to appoint General Westmoreland, John Wayne, and Martha Raye." He quoted Tacitus to describe Johnson's war: "They made a desert and called it peace."

But no disrespect intended.

This was supposed to be the heartland, where disloyalty to the commander in chief in wartime was tantamount to treason. But people were eating it up. They seemed to share with the tousle-haired charismatic a bracing sense of catharsis-finally free to release bottled-up anger at Vietnam. That they had struggled together to achieve belief in this war and could now finally acknowledge it was all a mistake. The sense of political momentum was overwhelming.

Kennedy called Mayor Daley three separate times to beg an endors.e.m.e.nt. His younger brother Teddy, the senator from Ma.s.sachusetts, called, too. They knew the mayor was heartsick about what the war was doing to the families of the Bungalow Belt, what it was doing to his beloved Democratic Party. But he replied that the president was unbeatable. The notion that Kennedy would have an easier time than McCarthy at pulling off party regulars receded. So now came this remarkable thing: a three-way fight for the Democratic Party nomination, with one of the candidates an inc.u.mbent president.

Deciding who would be the nominee was far from a simple matter. Only seventeen states even had primary elections. Some had filing dates that had already pa.s.sed; others had loopholes that made them irrelevant as indicators of popularity. Usually presidential aspirants ended up doing battle on the same ballot and on the same hustings against each other in half a dozen states or less. New Hamps.h.i.+re and Wisconsin were often among them: they were early and had entrance requirements and a history behind them that made them difficult to duck. Wisconsin also required no party registration from primary voters, which could make a contest there a crucial indicator of a candidate's general-election crossover potential. Oregon and California were often showdown states, too: Oregon because of its unique requirement that every candidate named in the press as a presidential possibility was automatically on the ballot unless he filed a public affidavit avowing he would not accept the nomination if offered; California because of its size, because its delegate primary was winner-take-all, and because of its date, early in June.

But 75 percent of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention were chosen in state and district conventions and caucuses and backroom meetings populated by regular Democratic politicians, with bosses such as Mayor Daley and Indiana's Governor Roger Branigan and New Jersey's Richard Hughes first among equals. The theory was that the people would speak whether their states had primaries or not: politicians, responsible to electorates, would lean toward the popular choice as revealed in other states' primaries. But the theory had never been put to the test in a rodeo as wide open as this. Perhaps the race would be over only in late August, when the Democrats fought it out on the floor of their convention, like in 1924, when it took 103 ballots before John W. Davis won the required majority.

Bobby Kennedy toured California starting March 23. He had a hard time holding on to his cuff links. At the first rally, he was almost pulled out of a moving car by enthusiasts; in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, people scaled sixty-foot pylons to secure a view. Mexican-Americans serenaded him in San Jose; at Salinas, fans almost caved in the airport roof. Women held up their babies to him; teenagers tore after the motorcade; in Watts, where once they threw firebombs, they greeted Kennedy as a conquering hero. He said LBJ was "calling on the darker impulses of the human spirit," that "integrity, truth, honor, and all the rest seem like words to fill out speeches, rather than guiding principles." In a time of political darkness, people came to believe he could make all the hurt go away. Some senators began doing the unthinkable, like Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut, who had been JFK's secretary of health, education, and welfare: coming out against their own party's sitting president. The New York Times New York Times pointed out that a poll of state Democratic chairmen still gave the president 400 more votes than the 1,312 needed to be nominated. Kennedy held fast to the notion that the regulars could not but listen to these screaming crowds, speaking the New Left's language of partic.i.p.atory democracy: "Why should a thousand politicians, using casual arithmetic, consult among themselves and make this choice?" pointed out that a poll of state Democratic chairmen still gave the president 400 more votes than the 1,312 needed to be nominated. Kennedy held fast to the notion that the regulars could not but listen to these screaming crowds, speaking the New Left's language of partic.i.p.atory democracy: "Why should a thousand politicians, using casual arithmetic, consult among themselves and make this choice?"

According to the Gallup poll published March 24, Kennedy was preferred to Johnson 4441 in a head-to-head matchup; Johnson beat McCarthy 5929. McCarthy had a chance to gain ground in Wisconsin, where Kennedy had missed the filing deadline to get on the ballot. His TV commercials-"McCarthy is the best man the best man to unify our country"-were hitting a nerve. McCarthy kids were on their way to ringing nearly a million doorbells. to unify our country"-were hitting a nerve. McCarthy kids were on their way to ringing nearly a million doorbells.

Which doorbells was a subject of some tension.

Gene McCarthy was not a favorite of Negro voters. At a disputatious conclave at headquarters, a senior staffer proposed skipping the ghetto: "We need those Polish votes to get Milwaukee"-who, if they saw Gene McCarthy in the ghetto, "will think he's soft on Negroes." These were fighting words to the caucus of militants who via McCarthy were giving representational democracy one last chance before taking to the streets. "White racists! White racists!" they shouted. The meeting broke up in disarray.

The acrimony was a product of higher stakes: the experts were talking about McCarthy winning Wisconsin and perhaps humiliating Johnson out of the race for good, making it a two-way fight between RFK and McCarthy. White House political aides tried to find their footing in this new political world: one where presidents had to fight for renomination, and college kids seemed as important as precinct captains. "Organize one of those electric guitar 'musical' groups to travel around to meetings," Johnson's white-haired, pipe-puffing press secretary, George Reedy, suggested. "It is not too difficult to get some kids with long hair and fancy clothes and give them a t.i.tle such as 'The Black Beards' or 'The White Beards' and turn them loose. They don't have to be very good musically to get by as long as they have rhythm and make enough noise."

The commander in chief scrawled on the face of the memo, "This may deserve attention."

He sent his biggest gun to Wisconsin: Postmaster General Lawrence O'Brien, JFK's campaign manager in 1960 and LBJ's in 1964. But O'Brien phoned the boss from the barren LBJ headquarters in Milwaukee that things looked bad. James Rowe, an old FDR political aide, sent Johnson a brutally frank memo: to Americans he was now the "war candidate," and "hardly anyone today is interested in winning the war."

The hands that were reaching out for RFK: in 1964, they had been reaching out for Johnson.

He was going to lose a primary.

If he lost the Democratic nomination, became a lame duck within his own party, within his own party, how in the world could he govern in the next nine months, let alone run a war? how in the world could he govern in the next nine months, let alone run a war?

The president began to look almost demented. At a March 25 speech to the AFL-CIO Building Trades Department, as North Vietnamese troops made their deepest penetration into the South so far, he cried: "Now, the America we are building"-he paused and hit the words deliberately for emphasis-"would-be-a-threatened-nation if we let freedom and liberty die in Vietnam.... if we let freedom and liberty die in Vietnam....

"I sometimes wonder why we Americans enjoy punis.h.i.+ng ourselves so much so much with our own with our own criticism. criticism.

"This is a pretty good land. I am not saying you never had it so good. But that is a fact, fact, isn't it?" isn't it?"

He pulled himself close to the podium and stared into the audience, his eyes as wide as saucers. Being president was becoming a living h.e.l.l. And that was all before the second Wise Men meeting.

The bipartisan mandarinate known formally as the Senior Advisory Group began preparing that night at the Pentagon for their meetings with the president. Among them were advisers who'd steered the course of the Cold War before the Cold War had even been named. The last time the Wise Men had met, on November 2, 1967, they had told the president to stay the course. Now, the head of counterinsurgency briefed them that because Americans had killed eighty thousand enemy soldiers, Tet was a marvelous U.S. victory. UN amba.s.sador and former Supreme Court justice Arthur Goldberg questioned the figures. Wasn't the usual ratio of casualties to deaths four to one?

The briefer acknowledged that was so.

Then, Goldberg replied, that meant some 320,000 Communists had been removed from the field of battle. But the general had just told them that the Communists had only 240,000 soldiers.

Another briefer was more forthright. He said progress on the ground in Vietnam would take five to seven more years. Clark Clifford asked him if the war could ever be won: "Not under present circ.u.mstances." Clifford asked him what he would do if he were president: "Stop the bombing and negotiate."

Which was exactly what President Johnson had been going around telling audiences he'd never do.

They greeted Johnson the next morning. "Mr. President, there has been a very significant s.h.i.+ft in most of our positions since we last met," McGeorge Bundy began. He invoked Truman's legendary secretary of state: "Dean Acheson summed up the majority feeling when he said that we can no longer do the job we set out to do in the time we have left, and we must begin to take steps to disengage."

When Lyndon left, he raged to wise man George Ball, "Your whole group must have been brainwashed!" It was a last gasp. He was finally beginning to get the picture: he had to prepare the American people for the reality of eventual disengagement from Vietnam.

On March 27, Richard Nixon announced a national radio talk for three nights later, the Sat.u.r.day before the Wisconsin balloting. He was still squirming out from under his implication that he had a plan to end the war; his speechwriters were agonizing over how they could formulate something that would say nothing but sound like a way to end the war. Nixon was still haunted by the same fear as in 1966: that his opponent Lyndon Johnson would pull a peace rabbit out of his hat. Nixon wouldn't put anything past any Democrat. "Of course they stole the election," he apprised a new aide about 1960, "and Johnson will do anything to win the next one, too." By the same token, he didn't put anything past the Eastern Establishment media. Look at the cover of the new Esquire Esquire-a composite photo of Nixon's face and a pair of hands applying hairspray, foundation, eye makeup, and lipstick. c.o.c.ksuckers! c.o.c.ksuckers!

No other Republicans were on the ballot in Wisconsin. But Reagan supporters dreaming of a write-in surprise had bought time for his TV special to run the final weekend. Johnson showed a flash of his old fire, lecturing at a March 27 bill signing for the House to "quit fiddling and piddling" on the pending civil rights bill. The magic of that spring day in 1965, when he held a joint session of Congress speechless quoting Martin Luther King-"And...We...Shall...Overcome!"-seemed so very long ago. "We have permitted the Stokely Carmichaels, the Rap Browns, the Martin Luther Kings to cloak themselves in an aura of respectability," a presidential a.s.sistant and family friend wrote Johnson, reviewing King's recent statements about "violating the law by obstructing the flow of traffic in Was.h.i.+ngton or stopping the operations of the government." He advised the president to speak of the civil rights hero as an enemy. The president's Gallup approval rating was 35 percent. And that was before the riot that accompanied Martin Luther King to Tennessee.

King had been reluctant to involve himself in the sanitation workers' labor grievances in Memphis. He was planning the crusade of his life, a "Poor People's Campaign" in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., and was frazzled beyond recognition. He'd first thought of the idea in the autumn after the agonizing 1966 Chicago campaign: a general strike of the poor in the nation's capital. "We ought to come in mule carts, in old trucks, any kind of transportation people can get their hands on. People ought to come to Was.h.i.+ngton, sit down if necessary in the middle of the street, and say, 'We are here; we are poor; we don't have any money; you have made us this way; you keep us down this way; and we've come to stay until you do something about it.'" What his movement's exertions had already won-the right to vote; the right to a lunch-counter hamburger-had long ago begun to feel to him a mockery. Americans still remained indifferent, perhaps even more than before, to the abject racialized privation in their midst. He said the Kerner report showed how "the lives, the incomes, the well-being, of poor people everywhere in America are plundered by our economic system." He now frankly called himself a socialist.

The plan, as it shaped up through early '68, was for the initial a.s.sault on D.C. to come on Eastertide: one hundred leaders lobbying for a government jobs or guaranteed income program. That failing, three thousand dest.i.tute Americans would "tent in" on the Mall. If that didn't get results, King imagined a "ma.s.sive outpouring of hundreds of thousands of persons" the weekend of June 15. Civil disobedience had never been attempted on such a scale. To transform what he now called "a sick, neurotic nation" would require disruption "as dramatic, as dislocative, as attention-getting as the riots without destroying life or property." "The city will not function," he'd told reporters after his testimony to the Kerner Commission. He spoke of similar demonstrations nationwide: "We got to go for broke this time."