In his presidential inaugural address of January 1965, Lyndon Johnson offered an uplifting vision for America, one that would end poverty and racial injustice. Elected in a landslide over the conservative Republican Barry Goldwater and bolstered by the so-called liberal consensus, economic prosperity, and a strong wave of nostalgia for his martyred predecessor, John Kennedy, Johnson announced the most ambitious government agenda in decades. Three years later, everything had changed. Johnson’s approval ratings had plummeted; the liberal consensus was shattered; the war in Vietnam splintered the nation, and the politics of civil rights had created a fierce white backlash. A report from the National Committee for an Effective Congress warned of a “national nervous breakdown.” The election of 1968 was immediately caught up in a swirl of powerful forces, and the nine men who sought the nation’s highest office that year attempted to ride them to victory-or merely survive them. On the Democratic side, Eugene McCarthy energized the anti-war movement; George Wallace spoke to the working-class white backlash; Robert Kennedy took on the mantle of his slain brother. Entangled in Vietnam, Johnson, stunningly, opted not to run again, scrambling the odds. On the Republican side, 1968 saw the vindication of…