President Johnson's Victory

Abstract

The results of the elections in the United States on November 3, 1964, were among the most decisive in American history, yet seasoned political observers have been more bewildered than enlightened as they have read the shattering returns. The victory is so overwhelming, so obviously a repudiation of an ineffective and untrusted candidate, that it can disclose few answers, except of the most general kind, about the course which the triumphant administration will follow or about the forces that will be predominant in it. Despite Mr. Goldwater's claim that a conservative ticket would elucidate national issues, his candidacy precluded any real debate on serious questions, and there was none. An administration elected by the narrowest possible margin in 1960 was given a smashing confirmation in office without having to go beyond platitudes in defending its record or in exposing its plans for the future. In the process party alignments throughout the country were left in an almost unrecognizable state of disarray, yet it was impossible to say whether the political map would keep its new contours or return to the traditional ones. In short, in the weeks between the elections and the beginning of the new administration and Congress there was a large measure of uncertainty enveloped within the promise of continuity. The dimensions of the victory are so vast that only their general outlines can readily be grasped. The President received the largest popular vote, quantitatively and proportionately, in American history, doing even better in this respect than his hero and mentor, Franklin Roosevelt, did in 1936. If, as was often said during the campaign, the allies of the United States needed assurance that the American people remained firmly loyal to the main features of the Truman-EisenhowerKennedy foreign policy, the vote provided that assurance in abundance. Since foreign policy was not an issue in the few southern states won by Goldwater, and since a great many so-called brass collar Republicans would have voted for any candidate put up by their party (even, as someone said, if his name had been Walter Reuther), Goldwater's 26,000,000 votes do not represent any dangerous defection by Americans from the basic policy followed since 1947. Here the mandate for continuity is clear, unassailable and nationwide. Moreover, like Roosevelt, Mr. Johnson carried his party with him, something Eisenhower could not do in his easy win of 1956. The Democrats confirmed their two to one control of the Senate and added forty seats to their numbers in the House. Yet perhaps the most striking results were in the state elections. The Republicans stemmed the tide fairly well in the governorship races, but they suffered disas-