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The Sixties

1968

Aired July 31, 2014 - 21:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LYNDON B. JOHNSON, FMR. U.S. PRESIDENT: The enemy of freedom has chosen to make this year the decisive one.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Something's going to happen that change is on the way.

We can change America. We can change the world.

EUGENE MCCARTHY, FMR. U.S. SENATOR: What we need now is reconciliation in this land.

GEORGE WALLACE, THIRD-PARY CANDIDATE AGAINST NIXON AND HUMPHREY: There is nothing wrong with you that a good haircut wouldn't cure

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And rest assured, we, Democrats will stir it up well here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This election year of 1968 has touched the emotions and result of logic like never before.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think we have become too much proud in this dungeon.

REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST: Either we go up together or we go down together.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And we have not (inaudible) and understanding for our fellow citizens. We will (inaudible) America.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I need your help.

LANCE MORROW, ESSAYIST, THE MAGAZINE: If you look at the whole year as theater, as the real acts of tragedy, there's an almost poetic feeling to it. 1968 was one Goddamn thing after another.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hardly a day goes by without a new report of another demonstration or protest against the Vietnam War.

JOHNSON: There is in the land a certain restlessness.

DAN RATHER, JOURNALIST, CBS NEWS: Lyndon Johnson whatever else want to think of him (inaudible) have the stone of Vietnam around it.

JERRY RUBIN, ANTI-WAR ACTIVIST: We're living in a middle of a beast. Lyndon Johnson is a common murderer.

LEONARD STEINHORN, AUTHOR, THE GREATER GENERATION: Johnson did things that no other president did, Civil Rights, great society. He should have been somebody that every young person and every liberal would have celebrated but they didn't. He became the Vietnam War president.

ROBERT DALLEK, AUTHOR, LYNDON B. JOHNSON: PORTRAIT OF A PRESIDENT: We've been told repeatedly that it was succeeding. We're defeating them. They can't hold out.

Johnson kept saying this light at the end of the tunnel.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a CBS News special report, Saigon under fire.

MIKE WALLACE, CBS NEWS: The enemy in Vietnam has demolished the myth that allied military strength controls that country.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The American Embassy is under siege. Inside are the Viet Cong terrorist squads that charged in during the night.

MORROW: The Tet Offensive was an enormous game changer. They were shooting up the American Embassy. They had hit dozens of cities all over Vietnam. It was a tremendous shock.

JOHNSON: We have known for several months now that the communist planned a massive winter-spring offensive. We do not think that our military operations are going to be at all materially affected.

ROBERT SCHENKKAN, PLAYWRIGHT, ALL THE WAY: He was unable to be honest with the American people because of course he was unwilling to simply say this is (inaudible) of the war.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cronkite in Vietnam report, real one, take four.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These ruins are in Saigon, capital of the largest city of South Vietnam.

MORLEY SAFER, JOURNALIST, 60 MINUTES: When he went to Vietnam during Tet, it was the first time and maybe the only time that Walter had shown any kind of bias in his public broadcast.

WALTER CRONKITE, CBS NEWS: It is increasingly clear to this report that the only rational way out will be to negotiate, not as victims but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could.

DALLEK: After Walter Cronkite, Johnson's popularity sinks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To most ordinary citizens, it has become obvious the war is not being one.

SANDER VANOCUR, JOURNALIST, NBC NEWS: Opposition to the war was rising. It wasn't just beatniks and young kids.

KING, JR.: We are fighting a war and I'm convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world.

ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR., ENVIRONMENTAL ATTORNEY AND AUTHOR: Martin Luther King came out I guess in the Vietnam War, his own followers said, "You shouldn't be focusing on that, you should be focusing on our issue." And he said, "They're intertwined. You can't separate them."

KING, JR.: President Kennedy said on one occasion, "Mankind must put an end to war. A war will put an end to mankind."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you honestly think that if there was an election, a vote for and against the war that the anti-war people would win out?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, it's really hard to tell now. The polls are uncertain but the polls do say that most of the country is discontent with the matter the war is taking. I think something ought to be done.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator, how are you?

STEINHORN: When some of the anti-war activists were looking for somebody to run for president and a number of people turned them down including Robert Kennedy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are increasing reports out of Washington that your advisers are not telling you that you should run against President Johnson this year.

ROBERT F. KENNEDY, FMR U.S. SENATOR: I have no plans. I have no plans to change the statement that I've already made.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: According to -- Senator?

TIMOTHY NAFTALI, HISTORIAN: The assumption among the Kennedy intimates was that LBJ was totally unbeatable in 1968 and Bobby would run in 1972.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The anti-war movement needed a leader and it fell to Eugene McCarthy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How do you do?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nice meeting you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nice to meet you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Very nice hearing ...

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator, President Johnson supporters say you don't have a chance here in New Hampshire and you'll be lucky if you get 10 percent of the vote. What do you say about that?

EUGENE MCCARTHY, FMR. U.S. SENATOR, MINNESOTA: Well, I don't know. The people who are supporting me say I would do much better than that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One Democrat, Senator Eugene McCarthy, defied the president a bit for his party's nomination, his platform feast.

NAFTALI: Eugene McCarthy does something that, you know, that was taboo. He comes out against the sitting president from the same party.

MORROW: McCarthy came in from left field. He was not thought off in the front rack of the presidential contenders. But there was a great deal of frustration and even despair among the young. Eugene McCarthy gave them hope.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Any volunteers for Senator McCarthy?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm reminding everybody to vote in the primary.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: From NBC News Election Central in Manchester, New Hampshire, this is the news.

DAVID BRINKLEY, NBC NEWS: If McCarthy gets as much as 30 percent of the vote or more against an incumbent president he can legitimately claim an important victory.

KENNEDY, JR.: McCarthy didn't win in the New Hampshire primary but he took enough votes that had scared Lyndon.

TOM HAYDEN, CO-FOUNDER, STUDENTS FOR A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY: He got 42 percent of the vote. But McCarthy was a nothing, an upstart. If McCarthy could draw blood, Johnson was vulnerable.

MCCARTHY: They said at '68 was the year I think that marks the 12th to today.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It probably just strike you, you're not disappointed that he didn't actually won?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, no. Oh, he did win though. This is exactly what he wanted. He said you shouldn't have descent that breaks down our system. You should work through the Democratic process to get what you want.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You can hope and I mean you've got to base it on the dream and this is coming true.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whatever happened to Robert Kennedy?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think ...

DAVID SCHOUMACHER, CBS NEWS: Perhaps the most important result out of all these from McCarthy's viewpoint is that he will, from now on, be treated as a serious presidential candidate.

MORROW: All of a sudden, after New Hampshire, there's a new political reality and Bobby very rapidly starts recalculating.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you welcome his entrance?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I don't know. It's a little crowded. No. But ...

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

RICHARD NIXON, FMR. VICE PRESIDENT: Let me tell the issue of '68, the issue of 1968 is not the Johnson personality but the Johnson policy that I happen to believe that this country can afford four more years of Lyndon Johnson. That is the issue of 1968.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For 16 years now in the shadow play of American politics there has always been a Richard Nixon. He's not coming back, he never left.

NAFTALI: Most political observers thought Nixon was finished. He'd been counted out so many times. So, Nixon wanted to show the leaders of the Republican Party he was a winner.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We'll inaugurate a Republican president next January. Thank you.

NAFTALI: Media consultants worked with him so he wouldn't be the sweaty Nixon of 1960.

NIXON: I'm really the most difficult man in the world when it comes to a so-called public relations firm. Nobody's going to package me. Nobody's going to make me put on an act for television. If people looking at me and say, "That's a new Nixon," then all that I can say is, "Well, maybe you didn't know the old Nixon."

GLORIA STEINEM JOURNALIST: I wrote a diary of being on the Nixon campaign plan. And I came out just saying, "What does he believe in? What does he care about? How can we trust him?" I realized that the person I felt most related too was Robert Kennedy.

KENNEDY: I have traveled and I have listened to the young people of our nation and felt their anger about the war that they are sent to fight and about the world they are about to inherit. I'm announcing today my candidacy for the presidency of the United States.

MORROW: Eugene McCarthy clears away and test the water but he wasn't the guy who was going to get there. Bobby was going to get there.

KENNEDY: This nation must adopt a foreign policy which says clearly and distinctly no more Vietnams.

TODD GTILIN AUTHOR, THE SIXTIES: YEARS OF HOPE, DAYS OF RAGE: You have the declaration of another rival candidate from within his own party. Currents of anti-war sentiment are building off. And the same time, the war is getting worse. That I think of here Lyndon Johnson, you'd feel you're being surrounded by a stampede.

JOHNSON: Good evening, my fellow Americans. Tonight, I want to speak to you of peace in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.

SCHENKKAN: This is the moment for LBJ where the pressures of Vietnam are being almost overwhelming.

JOHNSON: It is true, that a house divided against itself is a house that can not stand. Accordingly, I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have just heard the president of the United States Lyndon Baines Johnson in an address from his office at the White House. The advance text of his address did not contain those last remarks saying and I quote from President Johnson, "I shall not seek and will not accept the nomination of my party for the presidency."

Roger, no question about it. This was a bombshell politically.

ROGER MUDD, NBC NEWS: Well, you really don't know where to begin.

EDWIN NEWMAN, NBC NEWS: For our guest today, first is the Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey.

HUBERT H. HUMPHREY, FMR. VICE PRESIDENT: Well, yesterday they announced his candidacy for the democratic presidential nomination.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hubert Humphrey was LBJ's vice president and now he's running for president. Humphrey has doubts about Vietnam but has been a good soldier. He stood by Johnson.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your president made a supreme political sacrifice to promote this cause of peace. He was one of the casualties of this war.

MORROW: I don't think there was ever an overwhelming enthusiasm for Hubert. The drama of McCarthy and Kennedy had captured everyone's attention.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is the key Vietnam?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, in a large way. In a large measure, not totally, but that there's a certain degree of general protest amongst the youth which I think is unbalanced a healthy favor.

MARK RUDD, ANTI-WAR ACTIVIST: It was a long frustration on the part of students that the war was not drawing to a close despite our demonstrations. So, the students began to become more militant.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At Columbia University, students barricade themselves in the University buildings. Their leader is a 20 year old ex boy scout, Mark Rudd.

RUDD: I would say that we now have more support than any group had on about any political issue has ever held on any -- at anytime.

Columbia became the symbol of students in revolt.

MARK KURLANSKY, AUTHOR, 1968: Activists like Tom Hayden went to Columbia and said, "Lets have more Columbias."

HAYDEN: There's nothing like feeling that you're fighting the power or somebody is listening to you at least to draw more people in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We started shouting the phrase and it's a phrase that's been used in other words and by action of people all around the world when they faced truth. And that phrase is "Up Against the Wall--".

RUDD: We have an idea that this was the beginning of something very important. We took it as the beginning of revolution.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's happening to America, conversation three. Tonight, our young people, what's bothering them?

NEWMAN: Is there really a generation gap?

HARRY EDWARDS, AUTHOR, THE STRUGGLE THAT MUST BE: Generation gap is a way that fights in this country, and obstruction in this country, the system in this country rationalizes its lack of responsibility in teaching this generation. How to solve the problems which we are faced with.

1968 was the year that you count point to and say, "Here is where the separation began between past generations and generations going forward.

KENNEDY: I think all of us have a role to play. And I think all of us have a great stake in the future, you more than anybody else. As President Kennedy once said, "You have to the least ties to the past and the greatest stake in the future."

KENNEDY, JR.: You will find idealism in youth and I think that's something my father and my uncle recognized and why they always visited the universities. I remember my father talking about how the founders of the American Revolution, you know, they were young people.

WALLACE: Well, you better don't even vote over here, you're not (inaudible). You don't even vote. Come up here and I'll autograph your (inaudible) for you (inaudible).

NAFTALI: There was a third party candidate in this selection George Wallace. But Wallace was not affected by the Vietnam issue. He was going to have a certain amount of support in the South come what may.

WALLACE: There's not a dime worth of difference in either one of the two parties. And if they don't give the people a choice, we're going to give them a choice by having a new party.

MORROW: It was just a plain ordinary anti-government streak in him. It was his act, "You bastards in Washington are not going to tell me what to do."

WALLACE: And you and anarchist, better have your day now because I tell you again you're through after November fifth in this country.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KENNEDY: Ladies and gentlemen. Could you lower those signs, please? I have some very sad news for all of you, and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world. And that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.

EVAN THOMAS, AUTHOR, ROBERT KENNEDY: HIS LIFE: When King was killed, Bobby was on his way to a campaign stop in Indianapolis, into the galleon of the ghetto and the cops said "Don't go." They were fearful of a riot. Bobby went any ways.

KENNEDY: For those of you who are black and are tempted to fill with -- be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.

STEINHORN: He gives this spontaneous speech to an absolutely devastated crowd. This wasn't just politics, he made it personal.

KENNEDY: Let us say a prayer for our country and for our people. Thank you very much.

CHET HUNTLEY, NBC NEWS: This country and every person in it suffered a terrible loss tonight with the assassination of this man. The perpetrator of this deed brings down upon all of us the painful charge, that we Americans are prisoners of violence and destruction and death. That is the tragedy of it. Restraint, jovialness, charity, virtues we so desperately need that had a dark day.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: King was the only rational voice that was left in America. He stood against the war in Vietnam. He stood against violence. Period. So, when you killed him, you killed everything. You killed the only rational voice that's left.

EDWARDS: It became absolutely clear, you don't want Dr. King, you assassinated nonviolent direct action, you tried to kill the dream, OK, here's the taste of the nightmare.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The outrage could not be contained. Fires burned in the cities of America.

HARRY REASONER, CBS NEWS: Washington, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, New York, these are just a few of the cities in which the Negro anguish over Dr. King's murder, express their self in violent destruction.

JEFF GREENFIELD, JOURNALIST: I remember coming at Washington, two or three days after King had been killed. I was thinking "What am I seeing here? This is the United States of America and there are machine guns on the steps of the capitol?"

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One-hundred cities rage with riot, 20,000 are arrested.

RUDD: People were in an open revolt. Sirens wailing, people screaming and it shook everyone, black and white to the core.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nothing could be more desecrating for the memory of Martin Luther King and to use his death as an excuse to engage in imbalance.

EDWARDS: There was a faith and spirit vacuum, and when you find people who have lost that hope, fear tends to fill that vacuum, people were increasingly afraid and missed the law and order, step up on the Republican side.

NIXON: This is a nation of laws. No one is above the law, no one is below the law and we're going to enforce the law and Americans should remember that if we're going to have law and order.

KENNEDY: Handing (ph) those provisions that exist between black and white, I want us to work together and I run on that basis for president of the United States.

KENNEDY, JR: My father's appeal was to really the most disenfranchised classes. He felt like nobody else was speaking for them and that's where his space was rather than with the liberals, because the liberals were for McCarthy.

MCCARTHY: I want to reassure you that I'm not yielding to anybody along the way, either the vice president or President Kennedy.

MORROW: Indiana, Bobby wins. Nebraska, Bobby wins. And then on May 28th, Oregon.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: McCarthy's crowds in recent days have been good, larger than Kennedy's in many places although without the frenzy that accompanies a Kennedy appearance.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can't afford to lose if I'm going to remain a very active and viable candidate, it would adversity affect in a very serious way.

CRONKITE: The actual final figures yet to come in but apparently Senator McCarthy has won a major victory in Oregon. Senator Kennedy has suffered a severe set back. They move on now to California and the primary there, a week from tonight.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And this result, tonight, does not approve of course of Kennedy's politically dead this year, it does prove that he is politically mortal that establishes that he is Robert Kennedy after all, not John F. Kennedy.

NIXON: I think what will happen now is that McCarthy gets a new life. He's still a long shot, but he has a chance now. I think that, however, you don't write off Robert Kennedy because he can come off the floor and win big in California, that's what he has to do. But if he doesn't win big in California, he's had it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

STEINHORN: Bobby Kennedy having lost Oregon knew that he had to win California and that would be his ticket to the convention.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It will take a very big win, a spectacular win in California, the return of (inaudible) Robert Kennedy.

KURLANSKY: Bobby's going to do it. You know, it's just the way everybody felt.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Final votes will be Kennedy, 48 percent, Senator McCarthy 41 percent ...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He won.

KENNEDY: All of us are involved in this great effort. And as a great effort not on behalf of the Democratic Party, it's a great effort on behalf of the United States, on behalf of our own people, on behalf of mankind and all around the globe and the generation.

My thanks to all of you and I was on to Chicago and let's win there.

GREENFIELD: I was upstairs and the ambassador told me we were getting ready for our victory party and somebody called, I picked up the phone and this colleague said that something has happened to the senator.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator Kennedy has been shot ...

VANOCUR: In his bedroom, I couldn't find Kennedy, on his arm and he's lying on the floor.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Somebody shot him in this part behind the kitchen, behind the kitchen here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody please stay back. Please stay back. We need a doctor here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please, it's very important. We need a doctor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Will you please clear this room?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If you will not leave the room, we cannot give medical aid for the senator. Now, would please ...

GREENFIELD: I can't say that people who saw it, "How this could happen?" because we'd seen it happen.

The truths is this had been in the back of everybody's mind and one of the reasons why, you know, some people said, don't do this, don't run.

CHET STANLEY, NBC NEWS: Robert Kennedy is in the most grave condition, and hope is difficult to find.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator Robert Francis Kennedy died at 1:44 a.m. today, June 6, 1968. He was 42 years old.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As you all know that no words can really fully convey the feeling that one must have for the nation in the face of this tragedy, this new tragedy.

VANOCUR: People say, well, it was inevitable. His brother was murdered and so was he. Nothing's inevitable. It just happened.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This plane will take back the body of Robert Francis Kennedy to New York.

Also on board this plane today will be Mrs. John F. Kennedy. Also on board will be another widow, Mrs. Martin Luther King Jr. Somehow and in some way, we seemed to be sending a great many of our young leaders to their early graves.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's been a very emotional period for all of us who have worked for the senator. And personally, the most horrifying thing in these last few days was this morning when I attach this black ribbon unto my campaign button because now I'm lost. I'm desperate. And I don't know where we're going from here.

BRINKLEY: When Senator Kennedy went down, he was trying to speak for those Americans including the young who feel the need to change many aspects of American life.

The left cause (ph) has not been still forever because even without him that changes will be made because they have to be. But nobody knows when nor how nor whether the changes will be made peacefully or violently.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In the meantime, this country has lost another leader as far as I'm concerned we've lost the only leader that I feel gives us any hope for the future. I mean, what happens to the country? I mean, you wonder if it's worth saving, you know, what is it? What's left of this country?

RATHER: I know my own feelings were and I think they were widely shared. We have to question ourselves, is our country coming apart? What are we becoming?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CRONKITE: This Walter Cronkite. In Miami Beach at this first session of the Republican National Convention.

RATHER: Richard Nixon was the leader when he walked in to the Republican convention, I positive that he would be the candidate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A new fashion Nixon runs an old fashion campaign and that's what the country seems to want.

MORROW: There were challengers. There was no strong feller in New York for starters and George Romney of Michigan and the Sun Talk of Reagan. But Nixon had a lock on the delegates.

GOV. SPIRO AGNEW, (R) MARYLAND: We are a nation in crisis. Right now change rules America. It's time for America to rule change. It is my privilege to place a nomination, the man for 1968, the honorable Richard M. Nixon. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are 30 votes in Wisconsin and this should put him across.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Richard M. Nixon.

NIXON: Sit down and get to work.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, it looks like Nixon and nobody is really surprised and no committed Republican feels cheated. What was the fuss all about?

DALLEK: The Republicans understand that Nixon in this time of tumultuousness, he gives people the sense of continuity.

NIXON: What is most important now is for us to think how we can get this war ended.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Nixon talks of an honorable peace but says nothing about how he would attain it.

DALLEK: At this point, the war is continuing as hotter pace as it's ever been. More troops are being killed every week than in any time in the course of the war.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This weekend, the enemy stepped up attacks throughout South Vietnam.

HAYDEN: We knew that we would not be able to influence the Republicans on Vietnam, so we wanted to put massive pressure on the Democrats. I didn't think anything could happen with Vietnam without that challenge.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a CBS news campaign '68 convention special. What's going to happen in Chicago? On this eve of the beginning of the 35th Democratic National Convention, Chicago is nearly security tight. Perhaps the heaviest security ever provided for a political gathering in the free world.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The police, several thousand of them are now deployed. Soldiers have arrived in Chicago and are standing by.

HAYDEN: For the convention, the plan was to have a mass anti-war demonstration and a mass counter culture festival. We gathered in the parks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are going to march because we have a right to because that's what we came here to Chicago to do and no one is going to stop us. Thank you.

MORROW: There were many factions. They were united only by feeling that this is our moment. This is Carnegie Hall.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No more war. No more war.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are concerned about the build up of the forest because we think that anything that's built up like this is liable to be used.

CRONKITE: A Democratic convention is about to begin in a police state. There just doesn't seem to be any other way to say it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The people of Chicago and its mayor are proud to welcome a great political gathering of Americans who will come here to shape the future of a nation. And as long as I'm mayor of this town there would be law and order in Chicago.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The two men who most still believe this is all about arrived in Chicago today to begin their final drive for delegate vote.

STEINEM: Most of us were saying it just wasn't politically possible for McCarthy to overcome those who were pledged to Humphrey. So, there clearly needed to be another force.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Arriving now, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota.

KURLANSKY: McGovern got into the race because there was a bigger hole in the anti-war side and, you know, Bobby Kennedy had a lot of delegates

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: McCarthy said he didn't believe McGovern had enough strength to make any difference. And so McCarthy said he'll continue the fight for the nomination although it was clearly implied that his chances are very slim.

STEINHORN: Mayor Daley setup all of the conditions for a conflict in Chicago. He didn't give them permits to march but he knew that they were coming anyway.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Over 10,000 demonstrators were gathered in Chicago's Grant Park. The demonstrators are determined to march on Convention Hall tonight in protest. The police are at the park in place (ph).

HAYDEN: You can count on it that the police and the authorities will always unify what you can't unify by yourself.

RATHER: The tumultuousness of violence that was happening outside the home became reflected inside the home.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There seems to be some kind of battle going on over there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, directly under out booth here. They're carrying a man out.

RATHER: I got into O'Malley in the convention hall myself.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don't push me. Take your hands off of me unless you're trying to arrest me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, Walter as you can see ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know what's going on. I think we got a bunch of thugs here, Dan.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, Roger Mudd, I'm all right. It's all in today's work.

RATHER: It reflected for all the world to see the oppression inside the hall on what was supposed to be a Democratic Society of free people nominating someone to be president.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRINKLEY: Downtown. Downtown Chicago across from Grant Park beside the Hilton Hotel, there has been on progress for sometime a piece demonstration. The police have come to put it down. The national guard has been called to help.

HAYDEN: You create disorder, if you try to impose too much order with force. And that's what happened.

They were suppressing our Democratic rights in order to continue an undemocratic war.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People screaming, being dragged to the paddy wagons, a scene of well disorder on this, the night, of a presidential nomination at this Democratic convention.

STEINEM: It was a police riot. And I had never seen that before in my life. I had never seen groups of uniformed policemen going after civilians, there were pools of blood in Michigan Avenue.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The whole world is watching, a chance to (inaudible).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When George McGovern is president of the United States, we wouldn't have to have to stop (inaudible) in the street of Chicago.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you see what was happening downtown?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, I saw what the televisions say.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you think this is going to cause the Democrats the election in this -- what's happening here in Chicago this evening?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, I don't think there's any question. I think not only the party but the country would have. And I think they'll gear away from this distinction.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you very much Shirley MacLaine and Roosevelt Grier watching the television set in the back of the hall about what's going on downtown.

REP. CARL ALBERT, (D) OKLAHOMA: It is my high honor to present the new leader of our party, the next president of the United States, the honorable Hubert H. Humphrey.

HUMPHREY: I proudly accept the nomination of our party.

RUDD: And we got Hubert Humphrey as the candidate. Humphrey was an example of what we were fighting. He was a liberal who's going to betray our hopes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I see an HHH on your lapel. Does that mean you're for Humphrey all the way?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I wouldn't say all the way. I'm a Democrat and he's a nominee.

KURLANSKY: Now, it's true what George Wallace said, if the first job at hand is to end this war there isn't a dime of difference there between Humphrey and Nixon.

HARRY REASONER, CBS NEWS: Vice President Humphrey remains by any basis of measurement available a complete underdog.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My feeling is that if he could cut himself off from the president, be his own man that he has a chance of winning this election and it would make it very easy for all of us to support him.

SCHENKANN: Humphrey desperately needed to separate himself from the administration and he did.

HUMPHREY: Well, I think the greatest task of statesmanship is to find a way to conclude and bring that war in Southeast Asia to an end and to do it ...

NAFTALI: The public was so happy that there was some movement towards peace in Vietnam. Humphrey was back in the game and it was neck in neck.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: From NBC News election central.

HUNTLEY: Nixon is the one. That's the natural banner for any sprightly front page tonight. Ninety-four percent of the popular vote is counted. There are the numbers.

BRINKLEY: It was one of the closest elections in American history, closer even than when Nixon lost to Kennedy eight years ago.

HUMPHREY: I have done my best. I have lost. Mr. Nixon has won. The Democratic process has worked its wheel.

HUNTLEY: George Wallace counted five states, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In our judgment, the people who supported us have an impact on -- or in the two parties in a different direction and I do wish for Mr. Nixon the most success of any president in the history of our country.

NIXON: Having lost a close one eight years ago and having won a close one this year I can say this winning is a lot more fun.

MORROW: With Nixon's election, even though many people felt a sense of disappointment there was a sense that there maybe some normality over the horizon. People were exhausted so it was in part a sense of relief maybe thank God it's over.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I plan to spend Christmas in the states but I can't stand violence.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 1968 certainly has been one of the unhappiest years in American history.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In the end, it always comes down to what the people do. And this year the people like the events of 1968 are largely unpredictable.

RATHER: Our country was put to some enormous test in 1968. It was a bend if it wasn't a break.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The issues that were thrown open in 1968 who has authority, who deserves authority or what the limits of power are. Those are profound questions that continue to matter.

NIXON: This will be an open administration, open to new ideas, open to men and women of both parties, open to the critics as well as those who support us and I am confident that this past is one that we can undertake and one in which we will be successful.

(END VIDEO CLIP)