Distractions II
And then there's World Progress, the four-times-a-year supplement to the New Standard Encyclopedia. For some reason, I have all four volumes from 1968, the year of my birth. Student unrest, Ramona the Pest, "Russians Invade Czechoslovokia," the discovery of the "long-lost city of Sybaris" ("ancient city of luxury," whence the term sybarite). And volume 4, featuring the newly elected Richard Milhous Nixon, 37th President of the United States.
Nixon got 43.4% of the vote, edging out Hubert H. Humphrey (with 42.7%). Which is to say, Nixon won the popular vote by under 500,000 votes. (Still, Kennedy had beaten Nixon in 1960 by only 120,000 votes.) Also in the race: George C. Wallace with 13.5% of the popular vote. The electoral-college results were much more clear-cut, but still interesting: Wallace took five states, for 45 electoral votes, including one elector who was supposed to vote for Nixon but voted for Wallace instead. I'd heard of Wallace, but only barely; I had no idea he'd made such a strong third-party showing.
But anyway, the main thing I thought was interesting was that Nixon announced his cabinet, assistants, and aides, a group of 22 white men between the ages of 41 and 67. ("Nixon had not elevated a Democrat or a Negro to cabinet rank. Offers had been made but not accepted." Presumably it would have been so unthinkable to elevate a woman to cabinet rank that the editors didn't consider that absence worth commenting on.) Two notable quotes:
- "The appointment of [Henry] Kissinger ... as assistant to the President for national security affairs ... was widely praised in academic circles.... He has tried to avoid labels like 'hard' or 'soft,' and his colleagues call him a 'realist' as opposed to a dogmatic 'defense intellectual.'"
- "Among Nixon's personal staff of White House aides, perhaps the most important is H. R. 'Bob' Haldeman, a former advertising executive who will decide which visitors—and which ideas—will reach the President. John Ehrlichman, a former Seattle lawyer, will be the President's link with cabinet members." There are pictures of all these people, by the way, and Haldeman looks a bit (to me) like a youngish Kevin Costner.
