Why did George Romney lose in 1968?

May 21, 2007 10:21 AM

Why did George Romney get outed from the 1968 presidential race?

I understand George Romney was a serious contender for the presidency 1968, but apparently lost most of his favor when he called out some generals for trying to brainwash him in Vietnam. But, as far as I can tell, wasn't that pretty accurate? Why did that essentially kick him out of the race?

posted by freddymungo to law & government (7 comments total)

From his obit:Mr. Romney was among the luminaries of the national Republican Party after his 1966 election to a third consecutive term as governor of Michigan with a 570,000-vote plurality. But he abandoned his bid for the party's presidential nomination two weeks before the 1968 New Hampshire primary. That was after a three-month campaign that was dogged by his nationally televised comment attributing his initial support for the Vietnam War to his being "brainwashed" by the U.S. military during a tour of the Southeast Asian country. He would later call U.S. participation in the war "the most tragic foreign policy mistake in the nation's history."

In a 1989 interview with the Associated Press, Mr. Romney insisted his comments about having been brainwashed had nothing to do with his withdrawal from the presidential race. "It was because Nelson Rockefeller became a candidate, and there was no way I could get the nomination fighting both Rockefeller and Richard Nixon," he said.
posted by hortense at 10:29 AM on May 21, 2007

haha, that was quick, thorough, and helpful-- thanks
posted by freddymungo at 10:34 AM on May 21, 2007

Ousted? Outing politicians is something else.
posted by crabintheocean at 11:30 AM on May 21, 2007

He made his "brainwashing" comment on the Lou Gordon Program. Lou Gordon was sort of Detroit's answer to Mike Wallace, he'd get in an interviewee's face when he got riled up - he once questioned George Wallace's sanity on the air, causing Wallace to storm off the set.
posted by Oriole Adams at 11:56 AM on May 21, 2007

Can anyone spell this out a bit more?

When you read the quote in context, it's perfectly sensible. "Brainwashed" didn't mean they held a watch in front of his face and hypnotized him, for gosh sakes, it meant that he deferred excessively to claims that turned out not to be true.

How did the coverage of this quote chase him from the race?
posted by ibmcginty at 2:28 PM on May 21, 2007

The word "brainwashed" made the headlines, but it was more complex than that -- it was more that he got out in front of the issue, at least one and perhaps two years before the public was ready, and he got approximately zero political support for his comments.

It cut him two ways -- either it made him seem weak-willed and easily persuaded, or it made him seem to be disrespecting the uniform (as he attributed the snow job to "the generals", not to LBJ flacks). This quote:

Either he's a most naive man or he lacks judgment

...came from a fellow governor from the same junket.

I'm sure there were some mouth-breathers who took the word "brainwashed" more literally than he intended. This wasn't long after The Manchurian Candidate, mind you, and there were regular demonstrations on TV dramas (e.g. Mission Impossible) that trivialized the process. Factor that in there. Today, the regular use of hypnosis for everything from quitting smoking to saving marriages has de-mystified the idea for most people, but that wasn't at all true in 1967.

With hindsight, Vietnam was a colossal fuck-up. In 1967, there was still substantial support for the war.
posted by dhartung at 4:38 PM on May 21, 2007

Thanks, dhartung-- that is just what I was wondering about.

I also gather that his religion was not as big an issue as it is for his son. There's a lot more overt religiosity expected of candidates these days, and with it comes more scrutiny of private beliefs.
posted by ibmcginty at 1:20 PM on May 22, 2007