Child of the Sixties Forever

Hubert Humphrey

"The stroke of midnight: Hubert Humphrey was ahead by a point in the popular vote, with four of ten returns counted. In Nixon's familiar old suite at the Waldorf, ... [Nixon was] scribbling on yellow pads, working the phones, puzzling out the nation's precincts, the labyrinth that he knew better than any other man alive, as the nation's will slowly, agonizingly revealed itself. "He knew it by 3:15 a.m."The networks weren't sure until well into the 9 a.m. hour."Humphrey didn't concede until eleven thirty. In fact, the victory wouldn't be certified for weeks. ..."[Nixon won] with something no other Republican presidential candidate, with minor exceptions, had ever had before: electoral votes from the South. Wallace took Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana. But Nixon got Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina--and Strom Thurmond's South Carolina."George Wallace sent a congratulatory telegram. Nixon never acknowledged it. It spoke to the agony of victory. For it was barely a victory. 301 electoral votes for Nixon and 191 for Humphrey, 46 for George Wallace--and, in the popular vote, 43.42 percent, 42.72 percent, and 13.53 percent. Nixon had received only five or so points more than Barry Goldwater's humiliating share in 1964. With George Wallace claiming that symbolically the victory belonged as much to him as to Nixon: 'Mr. Nixon said the same thing we said,' he declared. If he hadn't, was Wallace's point, Nixon wouldn't have won. And indeed, a few thousand more votes for Wallace in North Carolina and Tennessee, a shift of 1 percent of the vote in New Jersey or Ohio from Nixon to Humphrey, and the election would have been thrown into the House of Representatives, because Nixon wouldn't have won an electoral college majority."

Julie Andrews

"My father, Ted Wells, became a full-time teacher at age twenty-four on Boxing Day, December 26, 1932. On the very same day, at St. Peter's Church in Hersham, he and my mother, Barbara, were married. My mother once told me that Granny Julia had said to her on her deathbed, 'Whatever you do, don't marry Ted Wells.' It was probably because he was so very poor. ... "Someone once asked me which parent I hated the most. It was a provocative question and an interesting one, because it suddenly became apparent to me which one I loved with all my being ... and that was my father. My mother was terribly important to me and I know how much I yearned for her in my youth, but I don't think I truly trusted her. ... My mother started going away for periods of time, working more regularly [to supplement our income], mostly playing at concert parties. ... In the summer of 1939, Mum played a series of concert parties for the Dazzle Company in the seaside town of Bognor Regis. It was there she became an accompanist for a young Canadian tenor by the name of Ted Andrews, who had just arrived in England. ... That September, World War II broke out. ..."My mother was now often away performing with Ted Andrews. ... My brother Johnny and I remained with Dad and Aunt Joan. Early in 1940, my mother signed on for ENSA, an organization set up to provide recreation for British armed forces personnel during the war. She went off with Ted to entertain troops in France. There were two children at home who needed her, but I think the compulsion to go with Ted was overwhelming. One particular day before she left is seared upon my memory."Mum took me out for a walk, which was unusual since she never had time to take walks with me. We strolled through the village, hand in hand, past the shops--and I saw a child's dress in a window. It was over-the-top, fluffy and pink, but I thought it was the prettiest I had ever seen. A day or so later, I came home from some outing and as I entered the house, I realized it was empty and that she had gone. She had not said good-bye. Though she had been away before, I sensed, the way children can, that she was not coming back."Feeling terribly sad, I went upstairs to my bedroom and discovered the fluffy pink dress spread out on the bed with a note. Nothing special--just 'With love, from Mummy' or some such thing. My heart full to bursting, I ached for her, loved her, missed her, knew that she had thought of me as she left--and I wept."

The Beatles Again

"GEORGE: After the Hamburg period we were driving up and down, doing gigs at the BBC in London a lot. ..."

RINGO: There are lots of driving stories. This is how a band gets close: in the van, going up and down the M1, freezing your balls off, fighting for the seats. ... There'd be the passenger seat for one of us, and the other three - whichever three, the rest of us - would sit behind on the bench seat, which was pretty miserable. ... I remember sliding all over Scotland. It was bloody freezing in the winter. ... "

JOHN: But we always got screams in Scotland. I suppose they haven't got much else to do up there. ..."

RINGO: We never stopped anywhere. If we were in Elgin on a Thursday, and needed to be in Portsmouth on Friday, we would just drive. ... One night I remember, when it was very, very cold, the three of us on the bench seat were lying on top of each other with a bottle of whisky. When the one on top got so cold that hypothermia was setting in, it would be his turn to get on the bottom. We'd warm each other up that way, keep swigging the whiskey, keep going home."

GEORGE: I had a good crash once. ... The accident had ripped the filler cap off and the petrol was pouring out. We got out and we had to shove T-shirts and things into the hole to try and stop the flow of petrol. ..."

RINGO: Another great van story was when George and Paul were both planning to drive the van. George got into the driving seat and Paul had the keys, and there was no way that one was going to help the other. We sat there for two hours. When you're touring, things can be pretty tense sometimes and the littlest thing can turn into a mountain. ..."

PAUL: There were a lot of laughs in the back of the car. ... I can't remember many deep conversations. There was a lot of giggling though."

The Beatles, The Beatles Anthology, Chronicle, 2000, p. 83.

Nixon's new approach

"The idea for Nixon's new approach to television 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. ...

"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. 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 [named] 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 Hampshire 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 [Advertising]. 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 press - 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. ..."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."