Even as Johnson scored legislative victories, the country endured large-scale race riots in the streets of its larger cities, along with a generational revolt of young people and violent debates over foreign policy.

Adding to the national crisis, on April 4, 1968, civil rights movement leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, igniting riots of grief and anger across the country.

The national news media began to focus on the high costs and ambiguous results of escalation, despite Johnson's repeated efforts to downplay the seriousness of the situation.

Shortly thereafter, the North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive, in which they and Communist forces of Vietcong undertook simultaneous attacks on all government strongholds across South Vietnam.

Although the uprising ended in a U.S. military victory, the scale of the Tet offensive led many Americans to question whether the war could be won, or was worth the costs to the United States.

The Secret Service refused to let the president visit American colleges and universities, and prevented him from appearing at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, because it could not guarantee his safety.

[9] The following candidates were frequently interviewed by major broadcast networks, were listed in publicly published national polls, or ran a campaign that extended beyond their flying home delegation in the case of favorite sons.

[12] Senator Charles Percy was considered another potential threat to Nixon, and had planned on waging an active campaign after securing a role as Illinois's favorite son.

As the 1968 Republican National Convention opened on August 5 in Miami Beach, Florida, the Associated Press estimated that Nixon had 656 delegate votes – 11 short of the number he needed to win the nomination.

[15][page needed] He selected dark horse Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew as his running mate, a choice which Nixon believed would unite the party, appealing to both Northern moderates and Southerners disaffected with the Democrats.

The following candidates were frequently interviewed by major broadcast networks, were listed in publicly published national polls, or ran a campaign that extended beyond their home delegation in the case of favorite sons.

He was boosted by thousands of young college students, led by youth coordinator Sam Brown,[22] who shaved their beards and cut their hair to be "Clean for Gene".

On March 31, 1968, following the New Hampshire primary and Kennedy's entry into the election, the president made a televised speech to the nation and said that he was suspending all bombing of North Vietnam in favor of peace talks.

[30] In 2009, an AP reporter said that Johnson decided to end his re-election bid after CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, who was influential, turned against the president's policy in Vietnam.

They said that members of Johnson's inner circle, who had watched the editorial with the president, including presidential aide George Christian and journalist Bill Moyers, later confirmed the accuracy of the quote to them.

[35] However, Johnson's January 27, 1968, phone conversion with Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley revealed that the two were trying to feed Robert Kennedy's ego so he would stay in the race, convincing him that the Democratic Party was undergoing a "revolution".

Dallek concludes that Nixon's advice to Saigon made no difference, and that Humphrey was so closely identified with Johnson's unpopular policies that no last-minute deal with Hanoi could have affected the election.

Kennedy was successful in four state primaries (Indiana, Nebraska, South Dakota, and California), and McCarthy won six (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Oregon, New Jersey, and Illinois).

Some historians, such as Theodore H. White and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., have argued that Kennedy's broad appeal and famed charisma would have convinced the party bosses at the Democratic Convention to give him the nomination.

[58] Other considerations included ABC newscaster Paul Harvey of Oklahoma, former Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson of Utah, former Governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus, and even Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Colonel Sanders.

He repeatedly – and unsuccessfully – challenged Nixon to a televised debate, and he often compared his campaign to the successful underdog effort of President Harry Truman, another Democrat who had trailed in the polls, in the 1948 presidential election.

[88] Nixon campaigned on a theme to restore "law and order",[89] which appealed to many voters angry with the hundreds of violent riots that had taken place across the country in the previous few years.

According to Time magazine, "The old Democratic coalition was disintegrating, with untold numbers of blue-collar workers responding to Wallace's blandishments, Negroes threatening to sit out the election, liberals disaffected over the Vietnam War, the South lost.

In October, Humphrey—who was rising sharply in the polls due to the decline of Wallace began to distance himself publicly from the Johnson administration on the Vietnam War, calling for a bombing halt.

The key turning point for Humphrey's campaign came when President Johnson officially announced a bombing halt, and even a possible peace deal, the weekend before the election.

In addition, Senator Eugene McCarthy finally endorsed a vote for Humphrey in late October after previously refusing to do so, and by election day the polls were reporting a dead heat.

Nixon told campaign aide and his future White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman to put a "monkey wrench" into an early end to the war.

While Kissinger may have "hinted that his advice was based on contacts with the Paris delegation", this sort of "self-promotion ... is at worst a minor and not uncommon practice, quite different from getting and reporting real secrets".

[112] The claim of sabotage of peace talks between the United States and South Vietnam from Nixon has been disputed by historian Luke Nichter in his 2023 book The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968.

Had he carried only two of them or just California among them, George Wallace would have succeeded in his aim of preventing an Electoral College majority for any candidate, and the decision would have been given to the House of Representatives, at the time controlled by the Democratic Party.