Will 2024 Be 1968 Redux?

‘Happy New Year and welcome to 1968 all over again.” With war abroad, chaos and crime at home, and political dysfunction in Washington, all against the backdrop of a consequential presidential election, commentator Hugh Hewitt began 2024 with a sober reminder of today’s parallels with a terrible year in American politics.

In every contentious election season, commentators and politicians alike return to 1968 to remind us of how quickly things can fall apart. But it turns out that, for 56 years, we’ve been getting much of the well-known history of that year wrong. That’s the conclusion of historian Luke Nichter’s The Year That Broke Politics: Chaos and Collusion in the Presidential Election of 1968. Nichter reveals that what may be the most famous political contest of the 20th century could also be its least understood, and that even when American politics seems broken, it often works.

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Wilson Shirley

Wilson Shirley served in the Office of Policy Planning as a speechwriter to the U.S. secretary of state and is a former U.S. Senate staffer.

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‘Happy New Year and welcome to 1968 all over again.” With war abroad, chaos and crime at home, and political dysfunction in Washington, all against the backdrop of a consequential presidential election, commentator Hugh Hewitt began 2024 with a sober reminder of today’s parallels with a terrible year in American politics.

In every contentious election season, commentators and politicians alike return to 1968 to remind us of how quickly things can fall apart. But it turns out that, for 56 years, we’ve been getting much of the well-known history of that year wrong. That’s the conclusion of historian Luke Nichter’s The Year That Broke Politics: Chaos and Collusion in the Presidential Election of 1968. Nichter reveals that what may be the most famous political contest of the 20th century could also be its least understood, and that even when American politics seems broken, it often works.