Playing with Fire

June 15, 2017

Host of MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, the author offers both a history of an election that radically changed American politics and a lesson in how elections now work in this country. It's all here, from the challenges Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy threw President Lyndon Johnson to Richard Nixon's smooth outmaneuvering of his opponents to the assassinations of RFK and Martin Luther King Jr. and riots at the Democratic Convention.

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Starred review from August 1, 2017
An excellent account of the 1968 presidential race, a political season of spoilers, outsiders, and broken machines eerily like our own time.It makes for a fascinating thought experiment to imagine what might have become of America and the world had Robert F. Kennedy been elected president in 1968. He was, after all, the only Democrat who could "beat President Johnson, and then beat any Republican"--good reason, as MSNBC political commentator O'Donnell (Deadly Force: The True Story of How a Badge Can Become a License to Kill, 1983) recounts in this sharp, nuanced account of the election cycle, for Democratic leaders to press an initially reluctant Kennedy to run. When they did, they effectively betrayed party stalwart Eugene McCarthy, whose "legions of antiwar student supporters were sounding angry at the possibility of Bobby trying to steal Gene's thunder" and who distinguished himself as an "antiwar candidate credibly challenging a war-making president." But Kennedy was assassinated, the Democratic Party splintered into liberal and conservative wings, and Richard Nixon maneuvered his way to the Republican candidacy past a green but definitely interested Ronald Reagan, who had "won the governorship [of California] by beating the man who beat Richard Nixon for the governorship." Nixon was helped along by an emerging TV executive named Roger Ailes, who would soon perfect a brand of yellow journalism that runs strong today and who recognized that "the most powerful force blocking Nixon's path to the White House was television," with its remorseless attention to darting eyes, mutters, and five o'clock shadows. Notes O'Donnell, "Ailes became more influential in Republican politics than Nixon ever was," giving the 1968 campaign a dimension of continuing influence--for if no Nixon, then no Trump, who shares with the disgraced president more than unprecedentedly huge armies of protestors at their respective inaugurations. A careful, circumstantial study that compares favorably to Theodore H. White's presidents series and that politics junkies will find irresistible.

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October 2, 2017
O’Donnell, the host of MSNBC’s The Last Word, turns to print with an in-depth examination of the tumultuous 1968 election year. Supporting his work with credible sources, O’Donnell argues that 1968 forever changed the direction of American politics. The year was marked by President Lyndon Johnson’s extraordinary decision to decline a second term, the divisive and violent 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and bitter nomination fights at both parties’ nominating conventions, all put into high relief by the Vietnam War and the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. O’Donnell also posits that Nixon’s defeat of the more liberal Nelson Rockefeller for the Republican nomination sounded the death knell of that party’s liberal wing. Offering a unique thesis on what drove the year’s events, O’Donnell advances the idea that Eugene McCarthy’s decision to run against Johnson led to Johnson’s decision not to run, which spurred R.F.K. into the race and earned Hubert Humphrey the Democratic nomination. O’Donnell further speculates that, had McCarthy not run and Johnson stood for a second term, regardless of who won the 1968 election, R.F.K. would have been elected president in 1972. Instead there was Nixon and Watergate. O’Donnell untangles the many forces that made 1968’s election a watershed event.

October 15, 2017

Nearly a half century has passed since the 1968 election that put Richard Nixon in the White House, setting in motion waves of political forces that have yet to ebb. Here, O'Donnell, host of MSNBC'S The Last Word and former producer/writer for The West Wing, crafts a smoothly written history of the 1968 campaign, beginning with congressman Eugene McCarthy's shocking decision to challenge Lyndon B. Johnson for the nomination. O'Donnell provides background information on people such as presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy, businessman and politician Nelson Rockefeller, former vice president Hubert Humphrey, and Alabama governor George Wallace, among many others. The author also provides insight on debates between intellectuals Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, Jr., which shaped convention coverage in 1968. While O'Donnell covers familiar territory, he tells the story exceedingly well. Appropriately, there is nothing dull about this book, just as there was nothing dull about this specific election or period in American history. VERDICT Recent studies such as Michael Nelson's Resilient America or Michael A. Cohen's American Maelstrom offer more research, but O'Donnell writes accessibly for all readers, creating a beneficial work for anyone interested in modern political history.--Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.