On this day

1913 — Henry Ford instituted the moving assembly line.1935 — The Detroit Tigers beat the Chica-go Cubs in six games to win the 32nd World Series.1957 — “American Bandstand” premiered on television with Dick Clark as host.1960 — The second televised debate was held between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.1984 — Walter Payton passed Jim Brown as the NFL’s career rush-ing leader.

For the Democrats who also happened to be St. Louis Cardinals fans, it must have been a case of divided loyalties the day President Lyndon John-son came to town. That’s because on the same day, the Cardinals opened the 1964 World Series against the New York Yankees in a day game at Busch Stadium.

Or maybe they weren’t baseball fans at all. Either way, thousands of people chose to line up early to see Johnson make a campaign ap-pearance in Springfield when he sought election to his first full term as president. Just 11 months earlier, Vice President Johnson had become president after John F. Kennedy was assassinat-

ed in Dallas. Johnson was enor-

mously popular at that moment, possibly in part due to the wave of grief that still gripped the nation after Ken-nedy’s death. With the exception of Southern Democrats, a faction of the party that consisted of conservative white voters, he especially had support in his effort to carry on the fight for national civil rights legis-lation that Kennedy had begun.

Johnson’s opponent in the race was Sen. Barry Goldwater, an Arizona Republican. Known as “Mr. Conservative,” Goldwater couldn’t have been more different from Johnson. He fought against the legacy of the

New Deal, opposed labor unions and crusaded against the welfare state.

Johnson, by contrast, tried to sell his dream of the Great Society, which included federal aid to education, a wide-scale fight against poverty and introduction of Medicare and Medicaid.

Just four weeks be-fore his appearance in Springfield, the Johnson campaign used a televi-sion ad that portrayed a little girl in a field of flowers picking petals from a daisy, counting up to 10. Then a male voiceover counted down from 10 to zero followed by a visual of a nuclear bomb explosion. Known as the “Daisy Ad,” it was broadcast only one time but effectively associated a Goldwater administra-tion with the likelihood of nuclear war, and it became a deciding factor in the race.

Johnson won by one of the largest landslides in election history, and that day might have been the peak of his approval among voters.

During his presi-dency, Johnson greatly

increased American involvement in Vietnam.When Kennedy died, 16,000 military advisers were in Vietnam. By the time Johnson visited Springfield, the number had increased to more than 22,000. In March 1965, he committed ground troops to the war and by 1968, 550,000 American soldiers were in Vietnam.

The day he was in Springfield, Johnson told the crowd, “Our policy for peace rests on two foundations–strength and reason. We are today

the greatest military power on earth. So long as I am president, we shall never use this awesome strength to start a war.” He promised to uphold the policies of past administrations that had used (military) strength with resolution but never recklessness, with courage but never carelessness.

The administration’s handling of the war led to a backlash and outrage against the once popular president. By 1968, when he could have run for a second full term, he had

Despite the World Series, a crowd turns out for LBJ

FLASHBACK SPRINGFIELD — Oct. 8, 1964

Monday, August 12, 2013 THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER PXX

lost support of his own party and the American people. On March 31, he announced to the nation that he was ordering most of the bombing in North Vietnam to stop, that he would enter peace negotiations and that he would not seek election to another term.

— Rich SaalDownload this page at

www.sj-r.com/flashback.

President Johnson’s motorcade stopped briefly at Fifth Street and North Grand Avenue on its way to a rally on the courthouse square. Johnson talked with the crowd for about two minutes. FILE/THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER