Perhaps
the single best piece for conveying the sense of social upheaval associated
with the late 1960s, this is simultaneously a harbinger of the world in which
social order and cultural values would frequently upstage economic welfare and
foreign affairs as campaign concerns. From the campaign of Republican Richard
Nixon against Democrat Hubert Humphrey in 1968, it also represents a powerful
implicit argument about the need to change partisan control of the White House.
Major-party campaign ads were already headed toward the modern thirty-second
format in 1968, and they would rarely ever again reach the size and scope of
this one. The piece is further distinguished by the identity of the voice-over,
the candidate himself, who is never identified.
