Reflections from the late ’60’s

I’ve been watching the antics of this group in Denver, “Recreate 1968.” And it has welled up some memories from that era for me. We were overseas in 1968, the year of all the fun in Chicago, but spent the summer of 1969 stateside.

Friday, July 19, 1969 was a typical summer day in Washington D.C. – hot and sticky. Walking back from my grandfather’s house to the hotel we were staying in off Dupont Circle, the hippies had taken to stripping naked and swimming in the fountain in the middle of the circle and mother told me and my sister to look the other way as we passed. The next day we would re-trace our steps late in the afternoon to watch Neil Armstrong step out of the Eagle lunar lander and utter his famous phrase. We watched in awe as a flickering black and white screen illuminated my grandfather’s den. America at her peak, even though at home we were reeling.

We were home on one of our periodic “home-leaves” in the process of moving to Sapporo, Japan from Tokyo in our tri-annual shift of domicile dictated by the Department of State. We truly lived like gypsies, but loved it! For me, a Texan by birth, my hometowns became Washington DC and Marianna, Florida, two guaranteed stops on the home-leave circuit.

The summer of 1969 saw DC as a city on edge. Large sections of the city had been burned in the race riots of the previous April in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. As I recall, the National Guard was still visible at certain intersections. I remember how different the sirens of the American ambulances and police cars sounded to ears that had grown up listening to their Japanese counterparts.

Bobby Kennedy had been shot in June the year before too. My best buddy, Roddy Moore, and I had sat out on the porch of our apartment at the Grew House in the Embassy Compound in Tokyo listening to the Armed Forces Radio on my little Sony AM Radio. We had both developed the idea that the war in Vietnam should end and Bobby was going to end it, so we were crushed. My political views were poorly developed, but I remember from dinner table conversations the wisdom of my father. He was convinced that we didn’t have the will to win the war – to do what needed to be done to win – and thus we should pull out. Don’t get me wrong, he wanted us to win – felt that the consequences of not winning were dire, but the alternative of slow blood-letting was accomplishing nothing. I am confident he wasn’t a Kennedy man, but he did understand military affairs. A lot of my friends’ parents were Kennedy folks so it seemed OK with me. But Bobby was gone.

Humphrey, McCarthy and McGovern were the Democrat choices and Nixon was the Republican candidate. But the Democrat party was badly torn. Huge factions on the left and radical left wanted either McCarthy or McGovern – big anti-war candidates – to win. From what I have read, there were not a few on the Democratic side that wanted a weaker candidate put forward in the hopes that they would lose to Nixon setting up the dream match-up: Nixon vs. Kennedy II. Nixon did ultimately prevail so the die was cast.

Kennedy II? Yup, Teddy. He was only 36 in 1968, but he was already a Senator and was being groomed to assume the mantle of destiny that all Kennedys wore. And this brings me back to July 19, 1969. The night before, the future king, left a party with Mary Jo Kopechne (below), turned onto the Dike Road of Chappaquiddick Island, attempted to navigate onto the Dike Bridge and ended up in the water. The car sank, upside down. Teddy swam to the surface and walked away. Police were notified the following day. Mary Jo was left to drown. Compassion. How ironic that in introducing Teddy last night at the convention in Denver his voice over the film begins with “the sea is an allegory for life.” Yes, senator, death too.

The night of July 19, my parents went to supper with high-school classmate Jack (those of you close to us, know who I am talking about, I choose to respect his anonymity here) and his wife. I remember drifting off to sleep and hearing those unusual sirens in the distance. Shortly after midnight, I was awakened by a commotion in the living room of our little embassy apartment. Jack was raising hell as news of what had happened in Massachussetts earlier that day was breaking. This was long before instant-24-hour-news. Jack was a believer. Like so many other Roman Catholics of the time, the Kennedys represented the long-overdue acceptance of Catholics in national politics. They were willing to side step the obvious, though well concealed flaws, of the Kennedy Clan in exchange for their moment in the sunshine. I don’t know what Jack’s involvement with the whole Kennedy business was, but I do know that he, like my father and me had attended Georgetown Prep, a Jesuit boys school that prepared young men to get into the best schools so they could eventually run things. Strands for the strings of power were woven there and the Kennedy mystique was writ large.

I don’t know what we were thinking. Catholics were duped. We thought if one of ours was elected that somehow we would get something out of it. The Kennedys thumbed their noses at the Church and got away with it. And they continue to get away with it today. Ted went on to recover from the Chappaquiddick incident to remain in office as the senior Senator from Massachussetts and now sports a voting record that is antithetical to the most fundamental teachings of the Baltimore Catechism. I have sympathy for any man suffering from the affliction he now bears, but I have a hard time not imagining that his final resting place will be quite warm. I have a harder time watching adoring throngs getting misty eyed over a stumbling speech that endorses the new Kennedy – Barrack Obama. The blacks that are turning out in much higher numbers than previous contests are being duped like the Catholics of 1960. B.O. only wants them around as long as they are useful…God knows he doesn’t want to live with them! Hello Hyde Park!

In 1968, the country was a mess. Although we were defeating the North Vietnamese in the field, we were not allowed to prosecute the war beyond the DMZ. The United States Military is very good at killing people and breaking things. Sitting still and waiting for the enemy to circle around behind you? Not so much. The social fabric of the country was tearing – college kids, the first fruits of the greatest generation were showing their gratitude by burning buildings, taking over administrative offices and doing about anything except studying. It seemed that the racial divide of the country would erupt into all out war. Leaders were being gunned down. The Soviets were on the move, rolling into Czechoslovakia uncontested. Freedom around the world was on the wane.

In 2008, the country is not a mess. We are winning the Iraqi War. Our college kids are drinking heavily and having more sex than we did in the late seventies, but still going to class. Overall, blacks and whites get along pretty well. The Russian bear has re-emerged in Georgia, but has also largely pulled out under international pressure. Freedom is the currency of the civilized world and where it flourishes, the people do well. If you took your clothes off to cool off in the fountain at Dupont Circle today, you would go to jail. Unfortunately, people are still being duped…they long for a new messiah, a new camelot, someone that will give them something. They long for enslavement – it’s so much easier. The task at hand is to educate them and hopefully prevent their messianic vision from coming to pass.

What we are witnessing in Denver this week is the gathering of the masses of the duped and a spectacular power play writ large. Teddy, as I said, recovered from 1968 and over the course of the next two and half decades with his clan and cronies, became the center of gravity for the Democratic party. In pure liberal ideology, he railed against the likes of Bob Bork and Clarence Thomas. He attempted every form of liberal programmatic takeover of sections of our economy from education to health care. This last item seems to be his twilight song. He made the Democrat party his bitch and she answered. Out in Chicago, the Daley machine which had given Teddy’s older brother the election in 1960, continued apace.

But then came the “man from Hope.” Bill Clinton famously triangulated and beat a hapless George H.W. Bush for the Presidency in 1992 and an even more hapless Bob Dole in 1996. He lip-synched the leftist agenda when he was around the loons and made the moderates believe he wasn’t a wild-eyed crazy. And, let’s face it – he was eloquent and fun to have around! But he wrested the control of the Democrat party from the Kennedy clan. And despite all the public lovey-dovey between the two factions, a simmering war has been brewing for years.

It erupted into full view this year as the Daley machine, ever loyal to the Kennedys presented their young star to a dazed public. Behind a teleprompter, Barrack the Great can do no wrong. His wife, freshly minted last night, the daughter of a Daley ward boss, harbored the same resentment for America that many on the left bear…it’s just not fair! Barry, I am convinced, is a pretty empty vessel, able to regurgitate in sing-song silky tones about anything that is poured in. But, he’s black, different, telegenic and great behind the teleprompt.

But this was the year of Hillary! This was the return of the Clinton triangulation to power after eight years of the dreaded Bush! But who did Teddy endorse- and endorse early? Yup – the same guy he called “Osama” when Barry first went to the Senate. The Kennedys pushed all their chips into the middle of the table like James Bond in Casino Royale and said “call.” B.O., returning the favor, selected none other than Caroline Kennedy to head his VP selection committee. The circle was complete. The Biden pick will have to wait for another post, but Caroline was in place to introduce her Uncle and draw comparisons of Barry O to her father. And the masses swooned. If there is Greek tragedy in this, it is that at the moment the Kennedys regain the helm of that rickety sailboat of a Democrat party he may be shedding these earthly coils.

But the battle is joined in Denver and although Barry will prevail and we will have another Riefenstahl moment there is a very good chance he will die the death of a thousand nail swipes as the Hillary! folks extract their due between now and the election. They don’t want Obama to win and they probably want him to be defeated more than the most hard-core Republican! The stars, barring a huge gaff on McCain’s part, are lining up in his favor.

On a trip to Washington a few years ago, I popped off the Metro at Dupont Circle and walked around. I sat on a park bench and admired the fountain. It was the work of Daniel Chester French and Henry Bacon, the same folks that carved the Lincoln Memorial. The fountain was placed there in 1921, replacing the statue of Admiral Dupont of Civil War fame. How nice to be able to just sit and listen to the fountain! The crazy left doesn’t allow that kind of freedom…in fact, freedom in general is eschewed for orthodoxy. “Freedom,” as Ronald Reagan said years ago, “is the natural condition of man.” It is good and must be ferociously defended…and my sense is that in early November of this year, good common sensical Americans, tired of the rhetoric without substance will go behind the curtain and do the right thing.

Rumble on!