A busy week, the one that ended on the 13th of September in 1964.
We were right in the middle of Election ’64 – the race between the incumbent Lyndon Johnson and Senator Barry Goldwater.
President Lyndon B. Johnson and Senator Barry Goldwater each has crossed a great divide in their campaigning. Large and exuberant western crowds suggested the president, for better or for worse, no longer a Kennedy legatee but is recognized and enjoyed as Lyn-| don Johnson. The crowds did not gather to honor the presidency; they came as partisans to see and touch the tall Texan in person. In Goldwater the south was meeting the first presidential nominee of modern times who came not to buy its states rights doctrine but to praise it. The others have said they hated the sin of segregation but loved the sinners. Goldwater stuck to the doctrine and all its segregation overtones without regard for how it might echo in the rest of the country. Of both men it can be said they deliberately chose to run as themselves.
Johnson did not want to appear to owe that to another which providence has given him the opportunity to do for himself if he can. He rejected Robert F. Kennedy as vice president and, in effect, said to the country:”Take me as I am. The western results are excellent”. Similarly, Goldwater declined to dissemble.
Possibly it was in part a political judgment. Things have not been going well for him. The unfavorable polls and a wide range of Republican defections including the newspapers, The south he must have and the white backlash is an element of his appeal elsewhere. Yet he too is acting boldly and in character. His immediate audiences cheered wildly.
And there was Hurricane season to consider. Hurricane Dora Packing top winds of 115 miles an hour with its eye still 65 miles at sea, Dora slammed winds of hurricane force into St. Augustine, Fla., the nation’s oldest city. Some 3.- 000 persons were evacuated from St. Augustine Peninsula, a narrow strip across Matanzas Bay from the city proper, which has a population of 15,000. Hurricane and gale winds ranged over 200,000 square miles of the Atlantic an area 50.000 square miles larger than California, the nation’s third largest state.
And news from Vietnam was looking more uncertain each passing minute. Forces loyal to Premier Nguyen Khanh regained control of the South Vietnamese government today. The generals who staged an abortive coup d’etat later agreed to a declaration that “there was no coup.” Air Force Commodore Gen. Nguyen Cao Ky, who remained loyal to Khanh during the near upheaval, held a news conference with several of the rebel leaders including Maj. Gen. Doung Van Duc to announce that the Khanh government still was in power.
Ky said that the principal authors of the attempted coup “have agreed to rejoin their units to fight the Communists.’
A military confrontation appeared imminent when Ky barricaded his troops inside the Tan Son Nhut air base, 15 miles northwest of Saigon, and threatened a “massacre” if the rebels invaded the base. Rebel tanks and troops moved up to the gates of the base and then retreated. Ky was believed o have rallied military leaders and troops loyal to Khanh 1 to break the rebellion. There were no reports of military clashes, either the brief insurrection or during the reinstatement of the Khanh government. There was no comment on the new developments from Khanh, who returned here from the resort of Dalat 140 miles to the north. The chief of state in South Vietnam’s ruling triumvirate, Doung Van Minh, was reported at the resort of Cap St. Jacques, outside Saigon. Hugh Alexis Johnson, deputy U. S. ambassador to South Vietnam, conferred early today with Ky and Khanh. Ky told UPI that Johnson had conferred earlier with the rebel generals, but no details of their discussions were disclosed.
U.S. Ambassador Maxwell Taylor arrived here from Washington this morning and went directly to the embassy without meeting with reporters. Taylor had been in the United States for consultations but rushed back to Vietnam when the coup attempt was made.
And that’s just a sample of what went on in the world, this week ending September 13 in 1964 as presented by ABC’s Voices In The Headlines.
