by spliffd, Tue Oct 14, 2008 at 10:57:53 PM EDT
I don't know if RFK would've been elected president had he not been killed. I have no idea how much good MLK could have accomplished if he had not been struck down. Maybe both would've brought great hope and change to our country. MLK did bring much,but we still need him.
I do not know what the loss of those men could do to someone hopeful for the future of our country,but I'm sure it greatly demoralized the left,along with many others. I can't imagine what America would look like today had these men been left alive. Maybe RFK would've won and solidified America as a liberal nation.
What I do know is that the era of the selfish corrupt Republican presidents began in that year. Nixon,Ford,Reagan,Bush,and Bush jr. These men are reasons that democrats are so justifiably upset about the violent remarks that are being stirred up by the words of McCain-Palin.
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by Jerome Armstrong, Wed Aug 06, 2008 at 07:54:53 AM EDT
Rick Perlstein:
It reminds me of a Nixon masterpiece. The visuals for the Republican presidential candidate's most pathbreaking commercials in 1968 featured only mood-setting stills. The one that began with Nixon intoning, "It is time for an honest look at the problem of order in the United States," flashed pictures of burned out buildings--no black rioters, just the consequences of what rampaging blacks did. Then, finally, on a rubble-strewn street, a close-up of a mannequin that, if you weren't paying attention, could scan subconsciously as a naked white woman lying helpless in the middle of the street: Birth of a Nation time.
The genius FNB politics is that it can make those who diagnose it sound like barking moonbats. Sometimes you have a case. Sometimes, you're just being paranoid (Matt Druge says "Dems rumble in Hollywood jungle; Clinton-Obama throwdown"--Aha! Jungle!--and "Obama team takes a 'Lincoln Bedroom' shot"). And it's often only in retrospect that the game seems truly deliberate. In 1952, Nixon used the word "traitor" to describe Dean Acheson, Adlai Stevenson, and Harry Truman. Outrageous!, Democrats responded. Whatever do you mean?, Nixon said in wounded tones, claiming he'd been misunderstood; he only meant they were "traitors to the high principles in which many of the nation's Democrats believe." Today, it's obvious that he meant to suggest, you know, the crime of treason.
The bonus: His charge also revealed liberals as shrieking and hypersensitive. That's the problem with FNB politics, and Reagan showed it better than anyone. He used to make jokes: About Africans, "When they have a man for lunch, they really have him for lunch." So, when gubernatorial candidate Pat Brown distributed a pamphlet ("Ronald Reagan, Extremist Collaborator--An Exposé") of such quotations in 1966, it backfired. Reagan was making a joke! Why are these liberals so humorless?
On the note of the '68 campaign, a must read by Richard Bryne,
Selling it Short (which includes the commercials Rick mentions above).
I'm still reading Nixonland at home, but while I've been up this week for my son's "Rookie" camp at Ripken field, I've been reading the baseball/cultural book "October 1964" by David Halberstam.
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by elrod, Sun May 25, 2008 at 09:32:46 AM EDT
Though I am an Obama supporter I find the suggestion that Hillary Clinton was "hoping" for an assassination of Obama a ludicrous notion. I, like Barack Obama, take Hillary Clinton at her word: she brought up the RFK assassination in 1968 because it was an example of a race extending into June.
But that doesn't absolve what I believe is a far larger crime: invoking the year 1968 as an inspiring case for continuing the race.
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by futurebird, Fri Apr 04, 2008 at 06:50:59 AM EDT
I enjoy reading and learning about history, but I think there is a real danger in drawing too many parallels between the present and the past. I have no idea what it was like to be alive in the late 60s, my parents never talk about that time, and I get the impression that it was really scary. I get the impression some of the time that there are old grudges and old scores that were never settled that date all the way back to that time that have suddenly resurfaced as the subtext of some of the dialogues we're having today.
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by Toddwell, Thu Mar 20, 2008 at 09:50:01 PM EDT
The more I think about it, the more I see huge similarities between Richard Nixon in 1968 and Hillary Clinton in 2008. Both are figures that have a likeability problem and both would benefit from the unpopularity of the opposition party. Lyndon Johnson was very unpopular in 1968 and George W. Bush is very unpopular now because of unpopular wars. Despite these favorable conditions, Richard Nixon was only able to pull out a close 43%-42% victory in the fall over Johnson's VP, Hubert Humpherey. At the same time Republicans made almost no gains in Congress.
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