by Joe Courter
Some say, as a counterpoint to the oft-heard cliché, that “history doesn’t always repeat itself, but at times it does rhyme.”
I just read a book that took me back to those times of dynamic change, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “An Unfinished Love Story.” It is a book with first hand observations about trying to bring the idealism of the 60’s into reality through the core of young speech writers and advisors to JFK, LBJ and RFK in the period from 1959 to 1968.
The central source was the archives of her husband and life partner Dick Goodwin. I was a teenager watching the world with increasing interest and concern back then. I’d seen a president assassinated right before I turned 13, a younger guy with new ideas like the Peace Corp, and a vibrant spirit. Things seemed to be changing but I wasn’t really seeing HOW this was happening. The why seemed obvious … it was overdue! Blatant racism and voting rights denial were front page in the prior ten years, they were the scenes I grew up with. Goodwin’s book filled in so many gaps for me; I highly recommend it. The major takeaways were the important role advisors and speech writers had (and have), and the difficult dynamics of an unpopular war overwhelming the ability of a president to stay in office, however much good they were trying to do. This was especially shown in the dynamics of the campaign for the 1968 presidential election.
The Johnson administration in 1966 had the blame for the Viet Nam war overshadow all the good his JFK-inspired “Great Society” legislation was doing. (“Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids you kill today.”) The pictures and reality of the war became THE story. LBJ saw this, and in early 1968 he announced he would not run for re-election, leading to a contested primary for the Democratic nomination, the issue of ending the war in the forefront. Bobby Kennedy’s assassination in May 1968 and the police riot that subsumed the 1968 Chicago convention followed. The pro-peace impetus was lost, Humphrey got the nomination, and out of that turmoil we got Nixon, and the meat grinder of the Viet Nam war continued another six years.
Now we have another President facing the horrible pictures and reality of another war, even as he is doing a lot of good things, and a younger generation and allies recoiling in horror, and hanging it around his neck. The shocking photos of the My Lai massacre of ‘68 horrified many back then. Now with Gaza, almost every day shows similar horrors. Chants of “Genocide Joe” are heard. There was the appropriate response of voting “uncommitted” during the primaries as a means of sending a message. Was that message heard? How will this play out at the Democratic convention? (Which, by the way, is again in Chicago.)
As I write this, it is five months from the November election. Lots of things may change, so there isn’t a point to locking into hard positions or surrendering to hopelessness. It is now official that Trump is a convicted felon, with sentencing and endless appeals in the offing. It’s freakin’ ugly, and averting your eyes is understandable, but Nov. 5 will come, and what needs to be done then will become clear for the sake of this teetering representative democracy we share.
Getting back to where we started, two points to leave you with:
Who a president has around them is profoundly important and should be a very strong consideration when voting. Biden, for all his flaws, was made better by Bernie Sanders and other in his circles of influence, much like JFK, LBJ and RFK were. It is not, and should not be, a one-person job. True then, true now.
Second, it was those young people, many in their 20’s, those idealists under JFK and LBJ who brought some of the visions of the Declaration of Independence into reality in the 60s: civil rights, voting rights, housing rights, education funding. These achievements are now all under threat and in play with the current Republican Party, should they consolidate their power. Heck, they are trying to do it right now!
We can’t let that legacy be cast aside. We are the ultimate jury. It is up to us to render a verdict on Trump and on MAGA reactionary authoritarian madness. We need to organize and use the franchise that people have fought and died for: our vote!