Fifty years ago, on March 31, 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson appeared on national television and announced that he was partially halting the U.S. bombing of Vietnam, and that he had decided not to seek his party’s nomination for president. “There is division in the American house now,” Johnson declared.
The news that the President had refused to seek re-election sent waves of shock and elation through a stunned electorate. At the same time, his withdrawal from the race crystallized the nature of the conflicts that had split the country along ideological, racial, and class lines so deeply. But within days it became all too apparent that no single act of political sacrifice could repair the divisions in the country. Johnson’s presidency was a symbol and a reflection of the nation’s fissures, but it was not ultimately its root cause.
