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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Richard Nixon presidential campaign, 1968/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was archived by Graham Beards via FACBot (talk) 07:09, 15 August 2015 [1].

Richard Nixon presidential campaign, 1968 edit

Nominator(s): Spartan7W § 17:03, 30 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This articles covers the 1968 campaign of Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the United States. A figure subject to great interest to this day, the article discusses Nixon's second bid for the Presidency, briefly outlining his background as a politician, events leading up to the campaign, and the campaign itself. It details the strategy and events which the campaign experienced during the pre-primary months, the primary season, and the general election. Unlike the article covering the 1968 election itself, this article covers many areas specific to the future president which would be excessive on an article covering all three candidates' sides of the election. It was made a GA-class article in 2010, and has remained very stable since, with few major changes (none affecting its GA-quality) prior to my Featured Article preparation efforts. Spartan7W § 17:03, 30 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

  • Map caption needs editing for grammar
Fixed Added simple caption for map image, previous wording was the alt source, also fixed Spartan7W § 23:14, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • File:Richard_Nixon_campaigning_for_Senate_1950.jpg: source link is dead. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:02, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed Found updated link to original National Parks Service website Spartan7W § 23:14, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Due to these victories, and pledged delegate support from states not holding primaries, he secured nomination on the first ballot.... a little clunky. Why not, "These victories, and pledged delegate support from states not holding primaries, secured him the nomination on the first ballot..."
Fixed Replaced with superior line as suggested above
Nixon spoke extemporaneously - why not just, "out of turn"?
Fixed
Is what is meant that he spoke without a prepared text, as he often did in 1968? In that case, likely "extemporaneously" is what is meant. You might want to link to Wiktionary.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:28, 7 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
he had not yet "locked up" the nomination. - why is this in quotes?
Fixed Air quotes removed

Looks ok apart from that. I think we're ok on comprehensiveness and prose.....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:37, 7 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion taken and executed upon Spartan7W § 14:44, 7 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Overall, tentative support on comprehensiveness and prose - no other prose-clangers are jumping out at me and I can't see anything missing...Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 21:24, 7 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments writing this during a first reading so no view on article as a whole yet.

Lede

  • " that a halt in bombing of Vietnam had been achieved." suggest "agreed" for "achieved". Whether or not what Johnson did was a good thing can be argued on both sides, and the word "achieved" connotes positively.
Done "negotiated" is a good phrase
  • State names that are not directly relevant to the subject of the article probably don't need to be linked.
Done Each 'Governor' links to the specific office in each state. State links removed, readers likely know about New York and California.
  • If I recall correctly, Nixon's home state for his 1968 candidacy was New York. This should likely be mentioned in lede or infobox.
Done Mentioned + mention of return to CA registration in '72
  • It may be worth a mention that Nixon is the only former VP to be elected president.
Done Reworded sentence to say first VP to become POTUS since Van Buren, only not to do so while not incumbent

Background

  • Image caption: "Senatorial" should be lower case. You may want to check the MOS on whether "President", "Vice President", when not used preceding a name should be capped.
Fixed
The lead line of the 'Background' section states his election to Senate in 1950. Worked in the '46 Congressional beforehand, the '50 Senate was already there (in text and caption)
  • "uncomfortable disposition" I think you should be clearer about this. Many readers will probably already know and be expecting to hear about it.
Done Unhealthy appearance is what I used. He had staph infection, banged his knee hard, was sweaty and stiff.
  • Nixon's role at the 1964 convention and in the 1966 campaign might be worth a mention as it helped him rebuild his reputation in the Republican Party. Also some mention of the people at Mudge Rose who later became important in the campaign and administration. You should adopt some shortened form of that name after the first mention. I suggest "Mudge Rose" as it avoids using Nixon's name, which could cause confusion.
Early stages
  • "Nixon leading Governor George Romney of Michigan, his closest rival, 52% to 40%" I would strike "his closest rival" It's a bit obvious no one else is really in the same ballpark, given that there's only 8 percent left to distribute to the rest of the field.
Done
  • Goldwater's comment seems inconsistent with his expressed support. Am I missing something here?
Re-worded this sentence. However, Goldwater wasn't an ardent Nixon supporter
More later.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:22, 7 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Taken and acted upon. Thanks @Wehwalt: Thank you Spartan7W § 23:58, 7 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Back to the lede. I'd delete the sentence about George being Mitt's father, it's extraneous to the subject of the article, which should be the intense focus of the lede. Similarly, I'd ditch the bit about 1972 and California.
Done My trivia-oriented mind liked this too much. Its gone.
  • The second paragraph of the lede should have the word "presidential", referring to Nixon's campaign, somewhere in there. At the present time, if the reader read the paragraph in isolation, he could not be certain if Nixon was running for president or had a hankering to be veep again.
Done
  • I see you piped to the 1950 election article, but if you pipe simply from the word "election", the reader may think the link is to take him to an article on elections in general. I would pipe to "election to the Senate" or perhaps "in 1950".
Done
  • On the Goldwater supporting Nixon sentence, if you read the sentence literally, you are saying that Nixon said those words, not Goldwater.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:02, 8 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Done I moved this into a ref text, as its inclusion does undermine the quality of the endorsement. Spartan7W § 23:03, 10 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Somewhere in 1967
  • You should probably mention by around the time Nixon announces his candidacy when the NH primary will be. These days, they've barely pulled off their New Year's hats before Dixville Notch is voting.
Primary
  • "Wallace" was he the AIP candidate at this point, yet?
  • " Nixon spoke out of turn, receiving numerous interruptions of applause." Despite what Cas said, I think that "extemporaneously" is meant for "out of turn". They do not mean the same thing in American English. I've viewed the speech files at the Nixon Library as part of my research into "Bring Us Together". Nixon often made ad lib speeches during the '68 campaign, and the media would be given a list of themes he planned to cover.
General comments
  • How are the sources reliable? I see that most are newspaper articles from relatively minor newspapers, I assume AP or UPI pickups, but do contemporary sources know all the facts regarding Nixon's campaign, really? Additionally, I see, for example, footnote 102 is sourced to Black's bio of Nixon ... the entire volume. I also see McGinniss's book, ditto. Also, how are news articles from the time really better than, say, more recent Nixon biographies, of which there are several? (independent of the source review below, but coming to the same conclusions). Not all of them seem pure news articles, Evans & Novak were more of a Washington insider column; do they pass WP:RS? Some of the accessdates are day month year though most are month day year.--Wehwalt (talk) 04:29, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm really concerned that the sourcing and comprehensiveness issues are going to overwhelm this FAC. Possibly they can be fixed during the course of this, but I don't know. One difficulty with the present sourcing is that newspapers are necessarily limited to what they may know from scanty sources at the time, and they are sometimes wrong. Much of the use of newspapers here for the details of the campaign that might escape a biographer is admirable, but I'm worried that, as Wasted Time R, some of the "big picture" (the aides, Haldeman, etc., that when as unclear to the public then as, say, who the inside mover and shakers of Hillary Clinton's campaign now and what they are advising her (perhaps more so then). I should add that, whatever is done, I will be happy to continue to offer feedback and make copyedits.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:40, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments.

Romney

The treatment of George Romney's campaign could use a little work. The first poll for the 1968 Republican nomination, taken in November 1966, showed Romney ahead of Nixon. Nixon considered Romney his chief opponent during these early stages. But Romney was a lousy campaigner at the presidential level; by January 1967 Romney fell about 10 points behind Nixon, which is about where he remained through August 1967. Then came Romney's "brainwashing" remark at the end of August, after which he fell 25 points or more behind. By the time Romney withdrew at the end of February 1968, his cause was hopeless. See George W. Romney (an FA article that I'm the primary contributer to) for a table showing the poll numbers and for the cites for all this. In terms of this article, I think you should include the first poll and Nixon's view of Romney as his chief opponent, and also clarify that the 'brainwashing' remark was not right before the New Hampshire primary, which is how it reads now. Wasted Time R (talk) 01:11, 11 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sources

The article sourcing is very newspaper-oriented. There's nothing wrong with newspaper accounts, but the omission of the 'standard' book account of the campaign, Theodore H. White's The Making of the President 1968, is surprising. Moreover, many biographies of Nixon have been written – Richard Nixon#Bibliography shows a number of them – but only a couple are referenced here and then only a handful of times. Books will often give a deeper perspective on campaigns than newspaper accounts.

Cites and formatting

The formatting of the cites has a few issues relative to usual FAC standards:
Book cite page number prefixed by "p." while newspaper cite page numbers are bare
Some all caps in story titles that should be normalized for our use
McGinnis book site inconsistent between footnote and Bibliography, should use long form/short form
No need for location in newspaper titles that already contain it (e.g. Los Angeles Times)
Mostly mdy dates but a few iso dates
Inconsistent formatting in External links section
Also a checklinks run shows some problems that are usually supposed to be resolved during FAC. Wasted Time R (talk) 02:24, 11 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Some missing or unsure things

Some coverage as aspects of the campaign seem to be missing or unsure, compared to what I would have expected:
No mention of the role this campaign played in the development of the "Southern strategy". The presence of Wallace complicates things a bit, but Nixon did win some of the southern states.
No section, or list in the infobox, or much of a discussion, of who the top campaign staff were. Campaign articles almost always include this. It's especially worth mentioning figures who later became well known like Haldeman, who gets a lot of mentions in the White 1968 book.
Same, for his policy team. It might be worth including that Kissinger was not one of them (he was a Rockefeller man).
I think the term 'October surprise' is an anachronism? I don't remember it being used until the 1980 election.
There needs to be more of a discussion of Nixon's proposed approach towards the Vietnam War. What was his attitude before the Tet Offensive? After? Legend has it that he said he had a "secret plan" to end the war – did he really say this and if so, how and when?
Did he really use the phrase "silent majority" during the campaign? This Nixon Library page says it came in November 1969, a year later. I don't see it in the August 16, 1968 Time magazine piece that's used as a cite.
Why is Senator Percy mentioned in the lead as a challenger? He wasn't. The White 1968 book barely mentions him. The only three challengers worth mentioning are Romney, Rockefeller, and Reagan.
The vice presidential selection discussion is disjointed and inadequate. In an earlier section it mentions Lindsay, Hatfield, Bush, and Percy as possibilities, then in the Convention section Agnew suddenly appears. It needs a better discussion than this, see White 1968 pp. 249–253. Robert Finch turned down a hard offer earlier, then the decision lingered until the final day of the convention, when Finch turned down another offer. John A. Volpe and Agnew were the last two left on the short list.
The word "percent" is missing two. In FAC level articles and per MOS:PERCENT, that should be used instead of "%", unless it's in a table or infobox.
Was any exit polling done of the general election? Are there any demographic breakdowns for how well Nixon did with men vs women, whites vs non-whites, young vs old, etc?
Where does Nixon's campaign and victory fit within the history of party nominations? 1968 is right around the inflection point of old-style nomination battles turning into primaries-dominated contests. The Cohen et al book The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform probably has some good material on this.
That's it for now. Wasted Time R (talk) 12:24, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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