THERE WAS little in the turning of the year to warn of the tumultuous events that were to give 1968 its special place in American history. On New Year's Eve, Waterville, N.H., skiers made their last run; while farther to the north, in Berlin, young men and women walked though lightly falling snow, knocking on friendly rural doors, talking to the residents about an unknown United States senator, Eugene McCarthy.
Then came the guns of January; explosions shattered the streets of nearly every major city in South Vietnam. Americans began to question not the war itself, but whether it was worth the deaths, the economic dislocations, the domestic divisions. And what about all the promises of imminent victory made by the leaders of the country. Did they know? Or were they lying?
A month later, as battles in Vietnam still raged, I sat at breakfast in my Boston home, read of the devastation of the once majestic city of Hue. It was madness. I put down the paper, ceased my reflections. "The hell with it. I'm going to New Hampshire to join McCarthy's campaign." I didn't think he had a chance. He had only 15 percent in the polls. But I had served two presidents in the White House - John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. And perhaps my experience might contribute to his doomed effort. That afternoon I quit my teaching job at MIT, put some clothes and an electric typewriter in the trunk of my car, and headed north to New Hampshire.
Shortly after my arrival, McCarthy and I entered the dining room of the Sheraton Wayfarer hotel in Manchester. With the primary only a few weeks away, no one appeared to recognize McCarthy. Not a single person came over to our table as we ate.
My first intimation that something might be possible came later that night when I inspected the volunteer field operation. I had never seen anything like it in politics. Young men and women, captained by Sam Brown and Curt Gans, were coming by the thousands, from all parts of the country; on weekends when classes were not in session, their numbers rose to 4,000 or 5,000. This was no alien hippie invasion, but the boy or girl next door impressed into a disciplined, systematic effort to bring McCarthy's antiwar message to every Democratic household in the state. Their slogan was "neat and clean for Gene." Many who had not seen the inside of a barber shop, or even a razor, for many months compliantly consented to be shorn for the "movement"; young women searched neighboring stores for long skirts to replace the unacceptably provocative miniskirts in which they had arrived. I saw at once that this component of the campaign had no need of my "professional expertise."
Later that night I was shown some material for newspaper, radio, and television ads, which had been prepared by a New York advertising agency. There were pictures of freshly fried Vietnamese babies, clips of bombs tumbling from the swollen bellies of American planes. I was appalled. The people who were against the war - no more than 20 percent at that time - were already for McCarthy. The challenge was to move beyond the war to talk about the shaky economy, rising inflation, the underlying sense that things were getting out of control. It was the task of the campaign to tap this discontent with American leadership, to persuade voters that McCarthy's candidacy gave them a chance to express their desire for a change. There I could be of help.
It was not necessary for voters to believe that McCarthy would be president, only that he could be president, that his candidacy was not a joke. In all that followed - speeches, radio, television, and press interviews - we focused not only on the issues but on the qualities of the man and his capacity to occupy the presidential office. Day after day, in personal appearances and on television, voters came to see this calm, unthreatening Midwesterner, quietly rational in his presentation. Clearly the man was no radical.
Then, with less than 72 hours to go, we withdrew all our radio spots that addressed a multiplicity of issues and replaced them with a single spot, which was to be replayed repeatedly on every radio station. "Think what you will feel like if you wake up Wednesday morning to find that Eugene McCarthy has won the New Hampshire primary and New Hampshire has once again changed the course of America."
We knew this would appeal to the natural New Hampshire inclination to go against the prevailing opinion, as they had years earlier rejecting President Harry Truman, in a primary that sealed his decision not to run for reelection.
Primary day. Tuesday, March 12. What a great country, I thought, when the fate of the leader of the free world was in the hands of denim-clad workers, high-booted farmers, housewives stopping on their way to the supermarket. Toward the end of the afternoon, our excitement mounted. The voting was heavy. Before the evening ended, as returns became final, McCarthy had received a stunning 42 percent of the vote, Johnson 48 percent. We had not won the primary, but we had achieved a far more significant victory. We had unmasked the subterranean discontent with the president and his policies, revealed how intense and widespread the desire for change was. I was now certain that whatever McCarthy's personal destiny, Lyndon Johnson would not be the next president.
At midnight, McCarthy strode into the ballroom. "People have remarked," he began, "that this campaign has brought young people back into the system. But it's the other way around. The young people have brought the country back into the system."
We did not know, could not have suspected in those heady hours, that the sense of renewed hope, of enormous possibilities, would survive only a few more months, brought to an end with the assassination of Robert Kennedy, McCarthy's defeat for the nomination by Hubert Humphrey, and the election of Richard Nixon.
Richard N. Goodwin was a speechwriter for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
