The night I turned twenty, March 31, 1968, was hardly a happy birthday. The death toll of U.S. troops in Vietnam hovered around five hundred, the Pentagon was asking for 200,000 additional troops, and Lyndon Johnson’s heels seemed dug in despite the surprise showing of anti-war Sen. Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire presidential primary.
With friends active in anti-war politics, I adjourned to a bar with TV set to watch LBJ address the nation. We expected to hear more misjudgments, additional empty promises. One buddy sang the anti-war ballad “Waste Deep in the Big Mudd,” which CBS censors had permitted Pete Seeger to sing on the Smothers Brothers comedy hour a month earlier.
We were astounded as Johnson concluded his speech with a surprise that became famous: “Therefore, I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President.” Cheers rang out. “The hawk is dead,” shouted a party member. We drank a bit. We drank a bit more. We mugged in the glass of a fish tank in the bar and joked about spearing the contents.
Defenders of the 36th president talked about Johnson making a noble sacrifice. Hah!
Polls show that McCarthy would clean his clock in the upcoming Wisconsin primary, one pegging Clean Gene at 64 percent of the vote. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy had entered the Democratic nomination race and was drawing enormous support (unlike his son in 2024). Johnson spared himself humiliation.
Our hope for the country soared that night. Alas, the country convulsed with a hemorrhaging that would last for years. Less than a week after Johnson announced his exit, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. A beautiful speech by RFK kept the lid on in Indianapolis, but riots and burning swept other cities and reached to within blocks of the White House. A month later, RFK fell victim to an assassin’s bullet. Party insiders rigged the process, turned back reformers, and assured that Vice President Hubert Humphrey would secure the Democratic nomination.
Humphrey prattled about “the politics of joy” while the war divided his country and party. The Democratic Convention in Chicago witnessed a brutal police riot. Demonstrators were gassed and beaten. So were reporters. Chicago’s Finest invaded McCarthy campaign suites and beat the staff. Sen. Abraham Ribicoff, from the convention podium, condemned “Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago.” Television cameras caught Mayor Richard J. Daley shouting the word “kike” and other obscenities at the Connecticut senator.
The fall campaign dimmed the prospects for healing and completed the dashing of hopes. Anti-war folk sat on their hands. Humphrey came out for a pause in bombing of North Vietnam, but too late. The Republican nominee passed word to South Vietnam’s leaders (through Mrs. Chenault) to sabotage peace negotiations.
Richard Nixon entered the White House under the theme, “Bring us Together”. Before long, he was decrying peaceful demonstrators as “bums” and expanding the war into Cambodia. When not accepting sacks of cash bribes in his office, Vice President Spiro Agnew was dispatched to demonize dissent.
Going for a second term, Nixon resorted to spying, “black bag” operations and dirty tricks. The perpetrators’ internal description for what they were doing was “ratfucking.” In a final escalation, between December 18th and 29th in 1972, Nixon sent B-52’s over Hanoi. The Bach Mai Hospital was reduced to rubble.
The agonizing, prolonged American melodrama would consume two U.S. presidencies, kill more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers and perhaps a million Vietnamese, undermine our Constitution, shake foundations of our democracy, and divide us for decades.
As Nixon resigned facing conviction and flew off to exile in California, new President Gerald Ford proclaimed: “Our long national nightmare is over.” Not by a long shot. Recriminations continued for decades. Societal ruptures did not heel.
The dashed hopes of those times offer a distant mirror on America’s current predicament. The “light at the end of the tunnel” turned out to be an oncoming train. A presidential candidate found his winning lane was to deepen divisions, not become a healing agent. The goal of politics became exclusively to hold power.
How to keep that from happening again? A few lessons from history, and memories of bad choices, can help this country avoid the dark side of the American dream. Here is one scribe’s list:
- The people, divided, will always be defeated. The progressive movement in America is forever hamstrung by feuds, rivalries and factions, sapping its strength and draining its influence. Of course, we’ve experienced strides in civil rights, women’s rights and environmental justice. But so much more would be possible with tolerance, forbearance, patience and planning.
- Start early and seize the moment: The political right, fueled by wealthy benefactors, has fixed on years-long goals, witness seizure and transformation of America’s judicial system. The Supreme Court’s radical rollback of rights did not take place overnight. Nor did successive tax cuts carving out additional benefits to the rich. Progressives need clear, affirming agendas. presented as making life better across the heartland as well as both coasts.
- Boutique is not the same as equal bread and butter: Economic justice drove the prose in the union newspaper brought home by my machinist father. The labor movement made possible America’s middle class. ingredients being a living wage and time to enjoy it. I’ve been amazed at Democratic gatherings in Seattle, at squabbles over identity issues.
- Pick good leaders, do not pick on them: Some progressives forever raise the cry, “Sell out!”. They pick on their own. I recall Rep. Rick Larsen being booed at a Bellingham forum, a week before he voted against the resolution authorizing use of force in Iraq. Rep. Adam Smith found himself labeled a warmonger at the same time he was working to keep the Trump Administration from politicizing the Pentagon.
- Avoid self-indulgent tactics: The Seattle Liberation Front, and the Weathermen, did not fuel opposition to the Vietnam War by bombing the U.S. Capitol or breaking windows in downtown Seattle. Nor did protests after the George Floyd murder in which businesses were trashed and police cars burned. Legislation to end the filibuster was not aided by the demonstrators who followed Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona into a rest room. The menu for change is patient persuasion, the ballot box and peaceful protest.
- Finally, never walk away. The struggle to end the Vietnam War, and dumb policies crafted by our “best and brightest,” went on for half a decade after Lyndon Johnson’s speech that night. Change, often times, requires the patience of Job.
The political right has played a long game. Wherever young activists went in that spring of 1968, we saw and laughed at billboards proclaiming, “Nixon’s the One” showing a guy with a briefcase. Yet, by the following January and for four more years, he was the guy left standing.
Donald Trump has squeezed out one election, tried to steal another, and is back for a third try. Will 1968 be a distant harbinger for what happens in 2024? It doesn’t just depend on Kamala Harris. She’s depending on us.
Once again, well said. Thanks for reminding the progressive movement that progress takes time and perseverance. Seems that is the one thing the progressives continually forget. Ten minute solutions to 200 year problems. You don’t solve them overnight, and stomping your feet and bleating continually does not gain progress, only disdain. So put on your best hiking boots and prepare for the long haul. I’ve watched the right wing execute their well thought out plan over the last 50 years, one step at a time, starting at the local level and moving up the levels of government, consistently following that plan. We could be so much better off if we quit with the doom crying and coalesce around the new candidate. Kamala Harris may not be perfect, but the enthusiasm around her has an energy much like the rise of President Barack Obama. There is a chance we can evade the doom, gloom, and threat the Golden Haired BooBee represents if we just quit with the snipping and circle the wagons and quit with the idiotic cross-fire the progressive movement is so very good at. Thanks Joel – another right on!
I remember ’68, I was 11, but very aware! So much for the so-called “good ole Days”!
Joel, younger folks reading your excellent post may say to themselves, “Man, that guy must have done a lot of research to come up with all those history factoids,” but I figure you just have a good memory. Mine isn’t as detailed as yours, but I was also at university then, and I remember getting the shocking news about LBJ’s decision.
I lived in the DC area at the time, and later that day walked past the White House. There was a more or less constant vigil of anti-war protesters hanging out in front of the WH fence (in those simpler days that was possible — you could drive past on Pennsylvania Ave, too). I suppose there were smiling faces to be seen, along with a few glum LBJ loyalists.
While Lyndon was doubtless looking at the story his polls were sending, I think he was also realizing that it wasn’t just his campaign that was failing, he was becoming physically tired and frail. I imagine that the prospect of losing an election to Tricky Dick Nixon must have turned his stomach, but actually losing could have brought on a heart attack.
With perfect hindsight, it is easy to say that if Humphrey had read the signs, he would have realized that doing a 180 from Johnson’s policies would have given him a much better shot at defeating Nixon. It’s a shame that such a good, liberal pol’s last election hopes were sunk because he didn’t abandon ship.
Hubert’s mistake was not stepping up and saying he’d bring the war to an end. He then could have focused on LBJ’s remarkable accomplishments following Kennedy’s assassination – Civil Rights Act of 64 & 68, equal housing, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid and Head Start!!! And his vision for the country. Hubert was on the defensive throughout. When I sighed up for Medicare, I thanked LBJ in the comment box.