The Making of the President 1968 by Theodore H. White

With that material and from that perspective, he, like Woodward, did a useful job, particularly in 1960 and '64 when the most radical grassroots movement out there consisted of those who gave Barry Goldwater his nomination and failed candidacy. Like today's Woodward, he was a reportorial insider to the Establishment, personally acquainted with many of the luminaries he covers, concerned about sources and their retention, careful to be polite and considerate. White misses all of this-or, more properly, he regards all this as an outsider. We, the crazy kids opposed to the wars in Southeast Asia and against drugs, the supporters of Gene McCarthy and George McGovern and, yes, even the Vietnamese nationalists fighting 'our boys'-who were, as ever, 'over there' killing and maiming people-had, variously, been trying to hear Joan Baez and Phil Ochs over at the Grant Park Bandshell when the police attacked or, like me, been trying to put on a demonstration for McCarthy in front of the Hilton Hotel on Michigan Avenue before the television trucks retired for the night when, just as they had left, the police attacked. Having given 'the Establishment' one more chance, I was in sportcoat with tie while hiding out in an abandoned building from the troop phalanxes patrolling the streets with the 'crazies' and other scared kids similarly attired. who'd been working hard for Eugene McCarthy since the New Hampshire primary. I myself was one of the kids, a member of the S.D.S. There were, of course, crazy kids out there in Lincoln Park and at the Hilton in Chicago during the convention, but they were kids, not spokespersons or ideological leaders.

Unlike its author, however, I identified with what he calls the 'extremists' of the left at the time and still do if by that one were to mean people like Tom Hayden, David Dellinger, Benjamin Spock, Phil Ochs, Rennie Davis and Fred Hampton at that time and movements like the Greens today. I concur with the critique given in the appended description of the book.

The Making of the President 1968 by Theodore H. White