A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Gerald Ford (1974-1977)

Gerald Ford was the accidental President. He had not run for or been elected as President or Vice-President. However, he was selected as V.P. when Spiro Agnew resigned due to bribery accusations and then, when Nixon resigned due to his involvement with and cover up of the Watergate break in and associated dirty tricks, Ford was the next man up.

The name Ford was given at birth was actually Leslie Lynch King, Jr. However, due to abuse, Ford’s mother left her husband (Ford’s biological father) shortly after Ford’s birth. She went to live with her parents for a couple of years, and began a relationship with and married a man named Gerald Ford when (future President) Ford was two. They started calling the child Gerald Ford. He was never formally adopted and didn’t legally change his name until he was twenty-two years old. Ford was a gifted football player and played for the Michigan championship teams in 1932 and 1933. He passed on offers from the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers and, instead, went to law school at Yale.

Ford graduated in 1941 and opened a law office in May of that year, but after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of that  year, Ford enlisted in the Navy. Among other assignments, Ford served on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific theater.

In 1948, he married Betty Ford. He also ran for Congress for the first time that year. The wedding was apparently delayed because Betty had been divorced and had been a dancer. That raised the potential for scandal at the time. But, he won his election and would serve in the House of Representatives for 25 years. Ford described his philosophy as “a moderate in domestic affairs, an internationalist in foreign affairs, and a conservative in fiscal policy.” After LBJ’s landslide victory in 1964, Ford was selected to replace Indiana’s Charles Halleck as House Minority Leader.

When Agnew resigned the Vice-Presidency, Ford was the strong recommendation of Congressional leaders consulted by Nixon. Ford was confirmed by the Senate as the new Vice-President by a vote of 92-3 on November 27, 1973. On August 1, 1974, White House Chief of Staff, Alexander Haig told Ford that smoking gun evidence of Nixon’s involvement with the Watergate scandal had been found and that an impeachment or resignation was likely. Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, and Ford became President. As part of his speech upon taking office, Ford stated, “our long national nightmare is over.” He selected Nelson Rockefeller to be his Vice-President. Rockefeller’s top competitor for the position was apparently George H.W. Bush.

On September 8, 1974, Ford allowed Nixon to escape responsibility for his actions by giving him a full pardon “for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.” His rationale was that Nixon had suffered enough by being forced to resign and that prosecution would disrupt the tranquility of the United States. The move undermined Ford’s credibility and probably caused his loss in the 1976 election.  

Ford also introduced a conditional amnesty program, granting amnesty to draft dodgers conditioned upon their reaffirming their allegiance to the United States and serving two years working in a public service job. Later on, President Carter would grant a full pardon.  Ford replaced most of Nixon’s cabinet, keeping only Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Secretary of the Treasury William Simon. Among those chosen by Ford was Donald Rumsfeld who would be his Chief of Staff and then Secretary of Defense. Dick Cheney would take Rumsfeld’s place as Chief of Staff. Indiana’s Earl Butz was named Secretary of Agriculture. Butz was forced to resign after making some spectacularly racist comments.

The 1974 midterm elections were predictably bad for the Republicans, giving the Democrats a majority in the House with 291 out of the 435 seats and 61 seats in the Senate. Inflation had become a major concern, climbing to 12%. Ford urged citizens to reduce spending and consumption, advocated a one-time 5% increase in the corporate income tax, and a reduction of $4.1 billion in the federal budget. Unemployment reached 9% in 1975 and the country was experiencing its worst recession since the Great Depression. Reversing course, Ford sought to stimulate economic activity by advocating a tax cut.

Internationally, relations with the Soviet Union and China continued to thaw. Tensions remained high in the Middle East, and Kissinger’s efforts at peace negotiations were mostly ineffective. Following the peace accords negotiated by the Nixon administration, American forces were withdrawn from South Vietnam. On April 29-30, Americans and “at-risk” Vietnamese were evacuated from Saigon as the North Vietnamese were taking over the city. 130,000 Vietnamese refugees came to the United States in 1975.

Ford was the subject of two assassination attempts. On September 5, 1975, in Sacramento, Charles Manson follower, “Squeaky” Fromme attempted to shoot President Ford with a Colt-45 pistol but was thwarted by the Secret Service. On September 22, 1975, in San Francisco, Sara Jane Moore took a shot at the President. The first shot missed and a retired marine in the crowd grabbed her gun as she fired off a second shot which also, consequently, missed the President.

The election of 1976 was a tough one for Ford. He lost, but kept it surprisingly close given the circumstances – losing by 2% in the popular vote and 57 electoral votes. He faced a conservative insurgency from the Republican right in the campaign of Ronald Reagan. Ford dumped the more liberal Rockefeller and chose Bob Dole as a running mate. The nomination still seemed to be up in the air by the time of the Republican convention, but Ford got a narrow majority on the first ballot. In addition to party opposition also had to contend with high inflation, high unemployment, the loss of Vietnam, and (less seriously) Chevy Chase caricaturing him on Saturday Night Live as a klutz due to a couple of stumbles Ford had taken. However, he also benefited from the imagery of being the incumbent President during extensive Bicentennial celebrations. Ultimately, however, he was defeated by the outsider campaign of Jimmy Carter.

Living to age 93, Ford would go on to enjoy one of the longest post-Presidencies to date — at 29 years, second to only Jimmy Carter (35 years) and Herbert Hoover (31 years).

One of Nixon’s foreign policy breakthroughs was a trip to China. China had turned communist in 1949. Initially, there was cooperation between China and the Soviety Union which necessarily meant that relations with the U.S. were poor. Nixon had a reputation as being strong against communism which led to the expression, “only Nixon could go to China.” (In other words, if someone who hadn’t made a career out of red-baiting had gone to China, Nixon’s supporters would have raised hell.)  Improved relations with China, in turn, led to improved relations with the Soviet Union — the Soviets were concerned about being entirely frozen out if the U.S. and China became too friendly.

The war in Vietnam wore on, and Nixon was convinced it could not be won. Protests were widespread in the United States and sometimes violent. However, there was some increased activity – including massive bombing and ground wars in Laos and Cambodia during the Nixon administration. By 1973, however, conscription ended and the Paris Peace Accords were signed. The U.S. pulled out, and in 1975, North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam.

In 1973, the Yom Kippur War triggered an international crisis and an oil shortage in the U.S. An Arab coalition with Soviet arms invaded Israel. Israel initially suffered losses, but with U.S. assistance reversed the situation and began to rout the Egyptians and Syrians. The changing balance of the war made peace negotiations volatile. Nixon ordered the U.S. military to DEFCON 3, pulling the world as close as it had been to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Arab OPEC nations retaliated against the U.S. support of Israel with an oil embargo. The resulting spike in the price of oil set off recessions and inflation that persisted until the early 80s. Oil prices would remain elevated until 1986. Oil producing nations in the Middle East began to accumulate great wealth. This helped fund Saudi Arabia’s export of its fundamentalist version of Islam, Wahabbism and fund extremist organizations such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Domestically, at 4.7%, inflation was as high as it had been since the Korean War in the 50s. This was in part due to government expenditures connected with Johnson’s Great Society program and the Vietnam War. Nixon imposed wage and price controls and took the U.S. off the gold standard. These policies dampened inflation in the short term but probably exacerbated it over the long term. The controls produced food shortages and “farmers drowned chickens rather than sell them at a loss.”  Price controls were not the only way in which Nixon was far away from what serves as conservative orthodoxy today. His initiatives helped create the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air Act, and the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA). “In 1974, Nixon proposed more comprehensive health insurance reform—a private health insurance employer mandate and replacement of Medicaid by state-run health insurance plans available to all, with income-based premiums and cost-sharing.” While nothing like a full-throated supporter, Nixon also expressed support for the Equal Rights Amendment and made some efforts to enforce school desegregation orders issued by the courts. However, at the same time, Nixon was mindful of his intent to pursue a Southern Strategy that would cater to white southerners and attempt to bring them into the Republican fold. White Southerners had been solidly Democratic since the Civil War. But the passage of the Civil Rights Act and support for civil rights by northern Democrats had alienated them from the Democratic Party.

During the Nixon administration, on July 20, 1969, humans — specifically Americans — set foot on the moon. We had met Kennedy’s goal of landing on the moon by the end of the decade. As the centuries or millennia pass, if the United States should cease to exist (and assuming humans continue to exist), this is the achievement that seems most likely to be remembered by future generations. We were the first to set foot on land beyond the Earth. As Neil Armstrong said, “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

But that historic event is not the one for which Nixon will be most remembered. Instead it is his  resignation in advance of impeachment. In 1972, Nixon beat George McGovern in a historic landslide victory. McGovern had a variety of problems. He was behind most of the election, was painted as soft on war and drugs, and he ditched his vice-presidential running mate, Thomas Eagleton, when it turned out he had mental health issues. During the election, the Committee to Re-Elect President Nixon was involved in a variety of unsavory activities, among which was breaking into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C.

In 1973, his vice-president, Spiro Agnew resigned and took a plea deal related to accepting over $100,000 in bribes while he was governor of Maryland.  Nixon chose Gerald Ford, the House Minority Leader from Michigan to be appointed as Vice-President.  Throughout that year, a series of revelations brought the Watergate scandals to light. “The scandal grew to involve a slew of additional allegations against the President, ranging from the improper use of government agencies to accepting gifts in office and his personal finances and taxes; Nixon repeatedly stated his willingness to pay any outstanding taxes due, and paid $465,000 in back taxes in 1974.” Nixon’s efforts to cover up his and the White House’s involvement hurt him as much as the underlying crimes and misdeeds. A tape came to light showing that he had been informed of the misdeeds and was involved in plans to thwart the investigation. Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. Gerald Ford who had been elected neither as President or Vice-President became the new President following Nixon’s resignation.

Richard M. Nixon (1969 – 1974)

Richard M. Nixon was, of course, our first President to resign from office. Like I mentioned earlier, this was a turbulent time for the Presidency. From 1933 to 1961, we had had only three Presidents. We had that many in the period from 1974 to 1977.

Nixon was a Quaker from California, born in 1913. Much of his early life was spent in the Los Angeles suburb of Whittier. In his teens, he’d get up at 4 a.m., travel to Los Angeles to get vegetables at the market, then clean them and display them at the family grocery store before heading to school. He graduated high in his high school class then went to Whittier College. He continued to work at the family store, participated in the debate society, and developed a reputation as a very hard worker. He attributed a quote to Eisenhower with which he identified, “We were poor, but the glory of it was that we didn’t know it.”

He caught a break inasmuch as Duke University’s law school was new and offered a number of scholarships in an effort to attract top students. The scholarship availability was apparently more limited for second and third year students, making competition fierce. Nixon held on to his scholarship and graduated third in his law school class.

He tried unsuccessfully after law school for a post with the FBI. He was approved but, due to budget cuts, the offer was never extended; and Nixon headed back to Whittier where he got into private practice, working for corporations and drawing up wills. Nixon met his wife, Pat, while participating in community theater. Trying to improve his prospects, Nixon went to work for the federal government, but only briefly as an attorney. After World War II broke out, he enlisted in the Naval Reserve, and then sought and obtained a logistical post in the South Pacific. In 1945, he was appointed to a post where he assisted with terminating war contracts.

After the war, in 1946, Nixon ran to unseat an incumbent Democrat from his Congressional seat. He won after intense campaigning and after painting his opponent as being tied to communist groups. He supported passage of the Taft-Hartley Act which limited the power of unions and supported the Marshall Plan to give financial aid to Europe. In 1948, as a member of the House Un-American Activities Commission (HUAC), Nixon helped break the Algier Hiss case — Hiss was accused of being a spy for the Soviets. Much doubt has been cast on that allegation due to the manner in which the investigation was conducted and the future conduct of HUAC and Senator McCarthy with respect to trampling the rights of citizens and generally attempting to profit from anti-Communist hysteria. That said, the growing consensus seems to be that Hiss was, in fact, engaged in espionage. In any event, Nixon’s political star rose on account of his spy hunting.

In 1950, at the age of 37, Nixon ran for the U.S. Senate. He successfully painted his opponent as a communist-sympathizer and won by 20%. It was during this campaign, he earned the appellation “Tricky Dick.” In the Senate, Nixon was friendly with Joe McCarthy but was able to keep a bit of distance from the inflammatory Senator. “[Nixon] supported statehood for Alaska and Hawaii, voted in favor of civil rights for minorities, and supported federal disaster relief for India and Yugoslavia. He voted against price controls and other monetary restrictions, benefits for illegal immigrants, and public power.”

In 1952, Eisenhower was in the process of being nominated for President. He did not have much of a preference for Vice-President, and Nixon was selected because he was young, had a base in electoral-vote rich California, and had a reputation as strongly anti-communist. There was a bump in the road when it was found out that there was a legal but politically questionable fund set up by Nixon’s political supporters that helped pay for political expenses. Nixon went on air and gave the notorious “Checker’s” speech which was widely watched and well-received. Nixon remained on the ticket.  

In 1960, after having served as vice-president for eight years under Eisenhower, Nixon ran for President in his own right. It was a close campaign, but ultimately, he lost out to John F. Kennedy. Then, in 1962, he ran a lackluster campaign against Pat Brown to be governor of California which he lost by 5%. Complaining about the media, Nixon said, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” The timing was politically fortuitous. He mostly sat out the 1964 Goldwater campaign and, when the Republicans got crushed that year, Nixon escaped blame. He helped other Republicans campaign in 1966 and received some of the credit for the positive results the Republicans enjoyed that year. With Democrats splintered over the Vietnam War, Nixon thought his prospects were good, and he decided to run again.

The Democratic side was chaotic. Johnson decided not to run after an unexpected loss in New Hampshire. Robert Kennedy was assassinated just moments after winning the California primary. Nixon’s main opponent was Michigan’s George Romney. Amid the chaos, Nixon attempted to project an image of stability, claiming to represent the silent majority against the counterculture – hippies and war protesters. He had a secret plan for “Peace with Honor” in Vietnam, and campaigned as a “law and order” candidate, contending that crime was too high. Ultimately, Nixon carried the day. He won 43.4% of the vote, Hubert Humphrey won 42.7% of the vote, and segregationist George Wallace took 13.5% of the vote. Despite getting only 0.7% more than Humphrey in the popular vote, Nixon had 301 electoral votes to Humphrey’s 191 and Wallace’s 46. Nixon’s win in California, Illinois, and Ohio was narrow. Had California gone the other way or Illinois & Ohio together, the vote would have gone to the House of Representatives.

Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969)

Born in 1908, LBJ was a Democrat from Texas. He was a U.S. Representative from 1937 to 1949 and Senator from 1949 to 1961. In 1961, he was JFK’s Vice-President and became President when Kennedy was assassinated.

Johnson had worked his way through school and then became a teacher in 1930. While he was a teacher, Johnson was politically active — working on a Congressional campaign and becoming a legislative secretary to Congressman Richard Kleberg. There were some powerful Texan politicians who Johnson got to know — including Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn and Vice-President John Nance Garner.

During World War II, Johnson was originally in the Naval Reserve but was called to active duty after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Despite requesting active duty, he was sent to inspect domestic shipyard facilities. However, in 1942, Roosevelt assigned Johnson — a trusted political aide — as part of a survey team to provide information to Roosevelt in the Southwest Pacific. Roosevelt wanted more direct information than was flowing through MacArthur. Johnson lobbied for more resources directed to this theater of the war, calling the conditions deplorable. After coming under fire during observation of a bombing mission, Johnson was awarded the Silver Star.

In 1948, Johnson ran for and won a Texas seat. The Democratic nomination was controversial. He ran in a three way race. A former governor, Coke Stevenson, won the initial vote, but lacked a majority. Johnson campaigned hard and won the runoff by 87 votes out of nearly 1 million cast. There were allegations of voter fraud involving Johnson’s campaign manager, future governor John Connally. Johnson’s skill at navigating the Senate was legendary. From the outset, he was able to court older, influential Senators. He proved adept at committee work and managing the press. In 1953, he became the youngest majority leader the Senate had seen. He worked well with Representative Rayburn and President Eisenhower in getting Eisenhower’s agenda passed.  

He was a phenomenal gather of information about where his colleagues stood, their hopes, their fears, their prejudices, and their philosophies. He was known for giving those he would persuade, “the Treatment,” described as follows:

The Treatment could last ten minutes or four hours. It came, enveloping its target, at the Johnson Ranch swimming pool, in one of Johnson’s offices, in the Senate cloakroom, on the floor of the Senate itself—wherever Johnson might find a fellow Senator within his reach.

Its tone could be supplication, accusation, cajolery, exuberance, scorn, tears, complaint, and the hint of threat. It was all of these together. It ran the gamut of human emotions. Its velocity was breathtaking, and it was all in one direction. Interjections from the target were rare. Johnson anticipated them before they could be spoken. He moved in close, his face a scant millimeter from his target, his eyes widening and narrowing, his eyebrows rising and falling. From his pockets poured clippings, memos, statistics. Mimicry, humor, and the genius of analogy made The Treatment an almost hypnotic experience and rendered the target stunned and helpless.

In 1960, Johnson sought the Democratic nomination but lost to Kennedy. Accounts differ as to how he became the vice presidential nominee. However, generally speaking, even though Johnson was not well liked by the liberal wing of the party or members of labor, but he was seen as necessary or at least desirable for bringing votes from the South in what was anticipated to be a close general election against Richard Nixon.

The election was close, but Kennedy & Johnson got the victory. Johnson sought to be an active Vice President. The folks in the Kennedy administration, particularly, Robert, didn’t much care for Johnson. However, John recognized that Johnson would be a bad enemy to have, so he tried to keep him busy and relatively happy. Among other things, he was tasked with evaluating U.S. options to catch up with the Soviets in the space race. Johnson made the recommendation that the U.S. try to reach the moon by the end of the 60s.

When Kennedy was murdered, Johnson was sworn-in very quickly — just over 2 hours after the assassination. Johnson moved quickly on his legislative agenda. In the days following the assassination, Lyndon B. Johnson made an address to Congress saying that “No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory than the earliest possible passage of the Civil Rights Bill for which he fought so long.” Some found Johnson’s haste to assume power unseemly. In passing the Civil Rights legislation, Johnson’s legislative savvy was instrumental – as was his ability to convince Republican leader Everett Dirksen to help overcome a filibuster in the Senate. It probably helped that the parties were in transition. Conservative Southerners had not switched from Democrat to Republican. There were still plenty of progressive, northern Republicans. The fact that the opposition to racial equality was not unified in one party meant that divisions within parties could be exploited to move legislation. This bill probably accelerated the transition. After passing the Civil Rights legislation, legend has it that Johnson said, “We have lost the South for a generation,” anticipating that southern whites would move away from the Democratic party due to the backlash.

Following the passage of the Civil Rights Act, there were a series of “long hot summers,” where urban riots took place from 1964 through 1971, including the Watts riots in 1965 and riots in over a hundred cities in 1968 after Martin Luther King was assassinated. With respect to the riots, Johnson is reported to have said, “What did you expect? I don’t know why we’re so surprised. When you put your foot on a man’s neck and hold him down for three hundred years, and then you let him up, what’s he going to do? He’s going to knock your block off.”

Johnson also moved quickly to move on Kennedy’s tax cut initiative, negotiating a budget that was less than $100 billion, and also moved on a “War on Poverty” initiative, recruiting Sargent Shriver for the effort.

His 1964 Presidential campaign touted “The Great Society” which included elements of  “urban renewal, modern transportation, clean environment, anti-poverty, healthcare reform, crime control, and educational reform.”

Johnson also dramatically increased our involvement in Vietnam. In August 1964, there were ambiguous reports concerning an attack by North Vietnamese ships on a U.S. ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. Based on this incident, Johnson sought and obtained a resolution from Congress for the use of force in Southeast Asia. The Johnson administration relied on this resolution to rapidly escalate our military involvement in Vietnam.

In 1966-1967, there was growing disillusionment with the Johnson administration. Vietnam was not going well, and the press saw a credibility gap between what they were being told and what was actually happening. The Democratic governor of Missouri cited, “Frustration over Vietnam; too much federal spending and… taxation; no great public support for your Great Society programs; and … public disenchantment with the civil rights programs.”

The 1968 Presidential election resulted in unexpected opposition to Johnson. Initially, most Democrats did not have an appetite to challenge a sitting President from their party. Eugene McCarthy, an anti-war candidate, challenged him and did surprisingly well in the first primary — taking 42% of the vote in New Hampshire. Blood was in the water, and Robert Kennedy entered the race. Johnson lost control of the Democratic Party. There were four main factions that came to oppose one-another: labor and party bosses (Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Daley); students and intellectuals opposed to the war (Eugene McCarthy); Catholics, Hispanics, and African Americans (RFK); and segregationist white Southerners (George Wallace). In addition to losing control of the primary process, Johnson was concerned about his own health. He dropped out of the race. When Robert Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson’s support for Humphrey carried the nomination. However, the Democratic Party did not unite, and Nixon was able to win the election.

The Cold War dominated Kennedy’s foreign policy. The USSR erected the Berlin Wall. The Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in an effort to oust Fidel Castro was a debacle. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a game of chicken where the Soviets blinked first. They were attempting to put missiles in Cuba, and the U.S. regarded that as aggressive and put Cuba under naval quarantine, ultimately boarding a Soviet-flagged ship. The U.S. publicly agreed not to invade Cuba and privately agreed to remove missiles from Turkey. Kennedy began attempts to negotiate nuclear testing ban treaties.

Kennedy also created the Peace Corps and began providing support to the South Vietnamese.

In April 1963, Kennedy assessed the situation in Vietnam: “We don’t have a prayer of staying in Vietnam. Those people hate us. They are going to throw our asses out of there at any point. But I can’t give up that territory to the communists and get the American people to re-elect me.”

Kennedy is regarded as the founder of the special relationship between Israel and the U.S. “Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.”

Domestically, JFK’s proposals were branded “The New Frontier.” He wanted to reduce the top income bracket from 90% down to 65% and the corporate tax from 52 to 47%. He also wanted to increase federal funding for education, medical care for the elderly, economic aid to rural regions, and government intervention to halt the recession. He also wanted to end racial discrimination.

He ended a period of fiscal conservatism, his budget was the first to top $1 billion and to run a peacetime deficit, and the economy boomed:

GDP expanded by an average of 5.5% from early 1961 to late 1963,while inflation remained steady at around 1% and unemployment eased. Industrial production rose by 15% and motor vehicle sales rose by 40%. This rate of growth in GDP and industry continued until around 1969, and has yet to be repeated for such a sustained period of time.

Kennedy was committed to the civil rights movement. However, he did not act immediately in 1961, and he moved more slowly than civil rights activists such as Martin Luther King would have liked. Southern Democrats had the upper hand in Congress, and Jim Crow was still the law of the land. He did, however, appoint Thurgood Marshall to the federal judiciary. Brown v. Board of Education had been decided in 1954, declaring that separate schools based on race was unconstitutional. However, southern whites continued to resist.

Kennedy had, as a Senator, been opposed to the manned space program. As President, out of consideration for Lyndon Johnson – who supported the space program, JFK did not dismantle the program. However, Kennedy changed his tune when the Soviets made Yuri Gagarin the first man in space. On May 25, 1961, Kennedy gave a speech, saying:

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.

In another speech, on September 12, 1962, Kennedy said, “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Kennedy would not live to see Neil Armstrong step onto the Moon. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald. At the time, my Dad served in the Old Guard in Washington D.C. and, in that capacity, was present at Kennedy’s funeral as well as Johnson’s inauguration. In this picture during Kennedy’s funeral, my Dad is the one in the top-left corner. 

Indiana Bicentennial 11 (1961 – 1977)

With Indiana Bicentennial 11, we will be covering the 60s and 70s, into the nation’s bicentennial. Now we’re entering territory I was alive to see. As we approach the present, history has a way of insensibly turning into “news.” I’m not sure how I will approach the end-game of this project inasmuch as I don’t have a particular desire to, for example, spend a lot of time talking about the Pence administration — or even the Daniels administration, for that matter. I’m running out of time and, in any event, I covered those years contemporaneously with my regular blogging. I guess we’ll cross that bridge later. For now, I’ll follow my usual pattern — try to give an overview of the national scene and then head into the governors.

The Presidents were Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. We’ll see four Presidents over this 16 year period, which had to be fairly jarring for the country since it had only had four Presidents over the previous thirty-two years. The governors were Matthew Welsh, Roger Branigin, Edgar Whitcomb, and the first term of Otis Bowen.

This one may end up being a little shorter than in recent months. My schedule is a little challenging.

John F. Kennedy (1961-1963).

JFK was the son of the wealthy Joe Kennedy. The way I often heard it, Joe made his money through sketchy Wall Street practices, then after the Depression, was consulted to help the government guard against the schemes that made him rich. He got out of the market at an advantageous time, then plowed his profits into real estate during the Depression; turning a modern day net worth of $55 million into a modern day net worth of $3 billion within the space of 6 years.

JFK had a privileged childhood, but one that left him (despite a variety of health challenges) well-educated and well-traveled. During World War II, Kennedy served in the Navy. In April of 1943, Kennedy was commanding the PT-109 in the Solomon Islands when it was rammed by a Japanese Destroyer. Rather than surrender, the survivors swam to an island three miles away and was rescued about a week later. Kennedy had been rejected from the Navy on his first attempt due to a bad back, and he struggled with back issues during the war.

In 1946, Joe arranged to have a Congress seat in a strongly-Democratic Boston district open up, and John ran for that seat and won. He served in Congress for six years before running for the Senate and beating Henry Cabot Lodge II for that seat. Despite being absent due to health reasons for long stretches during his Senate term, Kennedy came in second in the Vice-Presidential ballot during the 1956 Democratic primaries.

When he ran for President in 1960, he broke new ground as a Catholic. He felt compelled to make a statement that he would not be beholden to the Catholic Church. As the nominee, Kennedy picked Lyndon Johnson as his running-mate over some internal opposition. He needed Johnson’s strength in the South in what was anticipated to be a close election. Nixon and Kennedy participated in the first televised Presidential debates. This is considered a milestone in the transition from radio dominated politics to television. The story goes that those who watched TV considered Kennedy the winner while those who listened to radio considered Nixon the winner. The common wisdom on this is that Kennedy was the better looking candidate, and it was form over substance when the debates were on TV. But, this is apparently more folklore than evidence-based. And, to the extent Nixon did do better with radio listeners, it could be a function of the demographics of radio owners versus TV owners at the time — for example, maybe TV was more prevalent in urban areas with more Catholics.

In any event, Kennedy beat Nixon by a narrow margin in 1960. In the popular vote he won by .2%. In the electoral college, his victory was more comfortable – 303 to 219. Some electors from the South refused to vote for Kennedy due to his support for Civil Rights legislation. In his inaugural address, Kennedy famously asked citizens to be active, saying “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

Returning to Governor Handley. After serving a term as lieutenant governor to the less conservative Governor Craig, Handley  sought nomination as the Republican candidate for governor in 1956. In an effort to undermine Governor Craig’s influence in the party, he blasted Craig for the scandal in the highway department (which Craig ultimately had no part in). Handley had the backing of Jenner and had Craig on his heels. So, Craig’s efforts to block Handley’s nomination were unsuccessful.  The general election was fairly easy in that Republican year, riding on the coat-tails of President Eisenhower’s re-election. Handley beat the Democratic nominee, Terre Haute mayor, Ralph Tucker with 55.6% of the vote, compared to Tucker’s 44%.

Because the General Assembly had spent the state’s surplus on a bonus for Korean War enlistments, in 1957 and 1958, the state was looking at a budget deficit. In order to deal with that problem, Handley advocated a 50% increase in the gasoline tax which was passed — earning him the nickname “High Tax Harold.” He also advocated a law that would allow employers to withhold the state income tax from an employee’s paycheck. This turned up  a large number of tax cheats, and produced an unexpected windfall for the state. In response Handley and the General Assembly repealed most of the state real estate taxes (the local ones remained in place.)

During his term, the General Assembly also passed a “right-to-work” law (later repealed) and also outlawed union shops which contributed to the decline of union influence in Indiana.   The right-to-work legislation in 1957 made it through the Indiana General Assembly on the strength of lieutenant governor, Crawford Parker’s “fast gavel” in the Senate. Since the Labor Committee chairman was almost certain to kill the right-to-work bill, the anti-labor forces engaged in a bit of procedural chicanery and sent it straight to the Senate floor where it passed 27 to 23.

The bill’s passage prompted a protest that drew 7,500 labor supporters to the Statehouse. One of their supporters from the corporate level was J. Irwin Miller, then the 47-year-old chairman of Cummins.

“The classic argument against the union shop,” he said, “is the right-to-work argument. The average American manager feels that there is a character known as the ‘loyal employee,’ and this is a fellow who is supposed to figure that joining the union is a fate worse than death.

“Well, this man is in the same category, in my opinion, as the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. I’ve never found him.”

. . .

[T]he new law was so unpopular that many Republicans were turned out at the polls in 1958. By the 1960s, Democrats controlled both chambers of the General Assembly and the governor’s office. And in 1965, they repealed the right-to-work law.

Construction of the Interstate Highway System also began. Accepting federal money for its construction was contrary to Handley’s position against federal involvement with the state, but Handley was willing to make an exception, given the amount of federal funding and the economic impact of Interstates. There was some debate over how the State would prefer that the federal government treat Indiana’s Toll Road. The federal Highway Act passed in 1956. Construction of the Toll Road in northern Indiana began in 1954 and was underway in earnest by 1955. When plans were being made for the national Interstate and Defense Highway network, Governor Handley opposed inclusion of the Toll Road in that network because he feared that, if the federal government bought the Toll Road, it would use up money that could be used for the construction of highways that were free to the public elsewhere.

In 1957, after William Jenner surprised the political establishment by announcing that he would not seek re-election to Congress, Governor Handley — only two years into his term — threw his hat into the ring, partly at Jenner’s urging. Initially, he and Jenners looked into a scheme whereby Jenners would resign early in 1958, and Lt. Governor Parker would appoint Handley to complete Jenner’s term in the Senate which expired in January 1959. Ultimately that did not happen. And, in fact, Handley’s decision to campaign for the Senate before he was even halfway through his term of governor was regarded as inappropriate. He was defeated in that campaign by the Democratic mayor of Evansville, Vance Hartke.   Hartke also hit Handley with charges concerning his tax increase, the right-to-work legislation, and unemployment in the state. Those issues combined with a national resurgence for the Democrats resulted in a defeat for Handley and a victory for Hartke.

After his term ended, Handley opened a public relations firm in Indianapolis. He also became an advocate for the intellectually disabled. In 1969 he served on the Constitutional Revision Commission where he was, among other contributions, in favor of repealing the constitutional provision that limited Indiana’s governors to one term. Governor Handley passed away on August 30, 1972, of a heart attack when he was on vacation in Rawlins, Wyoming.

That brings Indiana Bicentennial 10 to a close. Next time, in Indiana Bicentennial 11, we’ll head into the 1960s.