October 4, 1968: Former (and future) Governor George Wallace of Alabama, running for President on a 3rd-party ticket, selects his Vice Presidential nominee: Former Air Force General Curtis LeMay. This would prove to be a big mistake.
Born in 1906 in Columbus, Ohio, LeMay graduated from Ohio State University, and joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. Rising through the ranks, he was known for relentlessly training the men under his command, believing that they would only perform their duties properly in combat if they were second nature to them. The men called him "Old Iron Pants" and, for his smoking, "The Big Cigar." He didn't mind either nickname.
He determined that a difference in weather meant that the kind of bombing that was done to Nazi Germany wasn't working on Imperial Japan, and changed the tactics. He led Operation Meetinghouse, the B-29 firebombing of Tokyo, describing it as follows: "The U.S. had finally stopped swatting at flies and gone after the manure pile." (That was for his official report. I suspect that, privately, he used a word other than "manure.")
Upon hearing his announcement as Wallace's running mate, Robert McNamara, who had recently resigned as Secretary of Defense to become Chairman of the World Bank, released a statement, saying of LeMay, "He was the finest combat commander of any service I came across in war. But he was extraordinarily belligerent, many thought brutal."
The U.S. Air Force was separated from the Army in 1947. LeMay became a full 4-star General in 1951, during the Korean War, and retired in 1965, early in the Vietnam War. Early in 1968, conservatives in California wanted him to challenge Senator Thomas Kuchel in the Republican Primary, but he declined. Kuchel was subsequently beaten in the Primary by Max Rafferty, the State's Superintendent of Schools, who then lost the general election to Democrat Alan Cranston, formerly the State's Controller.
Initially, LeMay supported Nixon in the 1968 election. Wallace had served under LeMay in 1947, and asked him to be his running mate. Twice, LeMay turned him down. Wallace's history as a segregationist didn't faze LeMay: He simply wanted Nixon to win, and thought Wallace would pull votes from him.
Wallace also asked FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who shared his beliefs about Communists and civil rights. Hoover turned him down. He also asked former Governor John Connally of Texas, a conservative Democrat who would later switch to the Republican Party. Connally also turned him down. At this point, instead of realizing that he, himself, might be the problem, Wallace asked LeMay a 3rd time, and he accepted.
At a press conference in Pittsburgh on October 4, Wallace announced LeMay as his running mate. LeMay spoke for 7 minutes, and undid all the work Wallace had put in to build himself up over the last 4 years. He said, "We seem to have a phobia about nuclear weapons." He added:
I think there are many times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons. However, the public opinion in this country and throughout the world throw up their hands in horror when you mention nuclear weapons, just because of the propaganda that's been fed to them. I don't believe the world would end if we exploded a nuclear weapon.
He also said, of the North Vietnamese, that American firepower could "bomb them back to the Stone Age." This was just 4 years after Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona was nominated for President by the Republicans, and scared the voters by saying that the tactical use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam should be considered. And he was accused of racism, for voting against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Voters thought him too extreme, and he got just 37 percent of the vote, the lowest total for a Republican nominee between 1936 and 1992.
Now, LeMay was making Wallace look like the "mad bomber" that Goldwater really wasn't, when Wallace was already the racist that Goldwater really wasn't. Just as Goldwater tried to qualify his remarks with, "I don't think we would ever use them," LeMay tried to backtrack a few days later, saying, "I never said we should bomb them back to the Stone Age. I said we had the capability to do it." It didn't help.
Many people who were supporting the populist, racist stances of Wallace were realizing that this ticket simply wasn't acceptable. The Democratic nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, started calling Wallace and LeMay "the Bombsy Twins." (As opposed to literary figures the Bobbsey Twins.) Nixon said nothing: He knew, contrary to what LeMay suspected, that, as long as Wallace was in the race, he would take more votes from Humphrey than from Nixon.
On October 24, Wallace headlined the 1st political rally at the new Madison Square Garden in New York, which had replaced "The Old Garden" the preceding February 11. The Garden, hosting George Wallace? Anything for a buck, I suppose. There were protesters, but they should have ignored Wallace, to let his campaign die of silence, and then have gone after Richard Nixon. It might, almost literally, have made all the difference in the world.
On November 5, Nixon won 301 Electoral Votes, with 43.4 percent of the popular vote. Humphrey won 191 Electoral Votes, with 42.7 percent of the vote. Wallace won 5 States -- Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, plus 1 Electoral Vote in South Carolina -- for 46 Electoral Votes, with 13.5 percent of the vote.
Wallace did not win the following States, but almost certainly threw them from Humphrey to Nixon: Alaska, California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Wisconsin. That's 197 Electoral Votes. If Humphrey had gotten even 40 percent of those, 79, he would have won, 270-222-46. LeMay probably didn't cost Wallace a single State. But did he, more than Wallace himself, throw any States from Humphrey to Nixon? Who knows.
LeMay never ran for office again, and died in 1990.
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October 4, 1968 was a Friday. Baseball was between Games 2 and 3 of the World Series, which the Detroit Tigers would win in 7 games. And it was too early for the NBA, ABA and NHL seasons. But there was one score on this historic day, in college football: The University of Houston, then ranked Number 12 in the country, beat the University of Cincinnati, 71-33 at the Astrodome in Houston. Yes, that's in football, not basketball.
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