Yesterday a diary by don mikulecky cited Chris Hedges saying he believes we are in a revolutionary moment.
A revolutionary moment! Here I'm required by statute to insert a word from Charles Dickens on another revolutionary moment:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us...
I don't know what Dickens would have known about the zeitgeist of the French Revolution, seeing as he was born in England in 1812, but he really nailed how some people felt in 1968. The winter of despair and the spring of hope both.
Over 11,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War in 1967; almost 17,000 would die in 1968 (Vietnamese casualties weren't as important to the US government, which did not count them accurately, but probably a million Vietnamese civilians and soldiers died between 1965 and 1972). In the fall of 1967, antiwar activists urged both Senators Robert Kennedy and George McGovern to run against President Johnson. They declined. But Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy, a former teacher and seminarian, agreed. He announced his candidacy in November 1967.
In February and March, 1968, the Tet Offensive cost the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam (a/k/a Viet Cong) over 45,000 lives. But it shook the U.S. military, which had been telling itself and America that its opponents were on the run.
On March 12, McCarthy astonished the Western political world when he came in a strong second (49% to 42%) in the New Hampshire primary to a sitting President. Lyndon Johnson had won election four years earlier by 486 electoral votes to 52.
McCarthy's strong finish in New Hampshire changed the electoral calculus. Kennedy changed his mind and announced his candidacy on March 16, 1968. It split the antiwar movement and naturally infuriated McCarthy. But it also put more pressure on LBJ.
On March 31, President Johnson shocked the nation when he announced that he would not seek reelection. Was he concerned about his health? Afraid of losing? Remorseful about his decision to go all in on Vietnam? Did he know about the massacre at My Lai? It occurred on March 16 and word was swirling around the military, although it wouldn't become public for a year and a half until Seymour Hirsch broke it on November 12, 1969.
FIVE DAYS after LBJ's announcement, on April 4, Martin Luther King was assassinated. It horrified the world. But there was more anger and grief than surprise. An awful lot of people way more powerful than the convicted assassin, James Earl Ray, had wanted him dead, and all the more so when he denounced the U.S. involvement in Vietnam exactly a year earlier, on April 4, 1967,and began talking about poverty as well as race.
Vice President Hubert Humphrey scrambled, planned, politicked, and finally announced his candidacy on April 27, 1968. It was too late for him to enter any primaries; he began to gather delegates from states where they were awarded by party bosses, and he courted favorite sons who would win their states' delegates. Meanwhile McCarthy and Kennedy fought it out in the primary states.
McCarthy relied on voters, particularly students, for whom the war was the overriding issue. He was generally (I believe) perceived as cool, intellectual, pure, honest. Kennedy drew his support from some antiwar activists but also from civil rights organizations and some labor leaders. He had a far more complex record than McCarthy; for example, as Attorney General he had authorized wiretaps of Dr. King's telephone (a limited authorization that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover went to town with, but still). On the other hand, he had extensive contact with and involvement in the civil rights movement; far more than this brother John.
And where McCarthy was cool, Kennedy was hot. He had edge to burn. Like his brothers John and Teddy, he loved to engage. Here he is at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, on April 4, 1968, a few hours before Dr. King was assassinated:
We happen to be fortunate enough to be born in the United States of America. We have to be, happen to be fortunate enough to be able to attend a high school and then go on to a university. But what did we do in our lives that gives us that right, instead of being born in northeast Brazil and not even living until your first birthday? Or being born in East Africa or Tanzania where ninety-seven percent of the people are illiterate....
Let me just, let me just ask you how many...I’ll ask you about whether you, what you think. I’ll ask you two questions: how many are in favor of student deferments and how many are opposed to them. First, how many are in favor of student deferments? [yells and applause] Second, how many are opposed to them? [fewer yells and applause] I’m just, I’m just going to go into this in a little bit more detail. I think that, eh, as I made it clear, I’m with the second group, which is a minority. And I’ll tell you why I’m with them. Because, once again, I think that this is a heavy burden, this war. There are men that are dying on behalf of all of us as we stay here and while men go to school. Now, there are many places in the United States where you can’t go on to a college. There are many places in the United States you can’t go on to a university. So there are many places in the United States where you cannot get a draft deferment by going to a university. Now, is that person, that individual that lives in one town and for one reason or another he doesn’t go on to a college or a university, he has to go be drafted and go and fight in Vietnam and possibly be killed, while somebody else goes on to a college or university and doesn’t have to go... If you are a Negro, and you’re eligible for the draft, you’re twice as much likely to be drafted as a white person. [scattered applause] Let me just say to you again, this is a war in which men are getting, being killed at the rate of, lately, up to four, five hundred a week. There are, up at least to the Tet Offensive—and I haven’t seen the statistics up to that—only ten percent of our population is Negro, yet more than twenty percent of those who are killed and wounded in Vietnam are Negroes. [scattered applause] The Mexican-American, who again is poor in the United States, poorer than the Negro, is carrying even a greater burden. The Indians carry a greater burden; the Puerto Ricans carry a greater burden. The burden of the conflict, the burden of the fighting and the war, is being carried by the poor and those who can’t go to a university or a college.... How can we say that is fair? How can we say that is just?
The edge, the combativeness, the charisma -- the air crackled around Bobby. People hated him or loved him or both. He didn't elicit neutral reactions. Clyde Tolson, Associate Director of the FBI and reportedly J. Edgar Hoover's lover, is supposed to have
said about Sentaor Kennedy: "I hope someone shoots and kills the son of a bitch." Even right after the assassination, McCarthy allegedly
described him (privately) as "demagoguing to the last."
On May 28 McCarthy won the Oregon primary handily, 44% to 38%.
On June 4, California and South Dakota held their primaries. Kennedy won both. He won California clearly, but not in a blowout, by 46% to 42%.
The polls in California closed at 8:00 PM. The results weren't clear until midnight. Then Kennedy gave a victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel. It's a workmanlike speech by a candidate who has been working hard, who's tired, who's won a significant victory, and who is looking ahead to bigger challenges. He talked about debating Humphrey. He ends with:
And now, on to Chicago!
To many Angelenos, this echoed Vin Scully's exultant call in 9/29/1959 when the Dodgers beat the then Milwaukee Braves to win the pennant:
And we go to Chicago!
especially because Bobby begins his
speech congratulating Dodger pitcher Don Drysdale on his sixth consecutive shutout. He joked about his dog Freckles, who he said had gone to bed earlier, convinced of victory. He thanked his wife Ethel, Cesar Chavez, other supporters. And a few minutes later Sirhan Sirhan, a student at Pasadena Community College -- which my son attended for the last two years -- shot him in a hallway at the hotel, allegedly over his support for military aid to Israel. Mr. Emmet's best friend knew Sirhan slightly; they used to discuss politics at the student center way back then.
There's video too. I won't link to it. I haven't even tried to find clips of the press secretary, Frank Mankiewicz, giving ashen-faced updates until Bobby died on June 6.
Kennedy was right, but not in the way he meant, about "On to Chicago!" And in November, Richard Nixon was elected president. Henry Kissinger took control killing people for realpolitik.
I'm not saying that peace and love would have broken out if Robert Kennedy had not been shot. He was a complex man with many flaws. But what would have happened? What did we lose with his death? What did we lose with Martin Luther King's death?
It was a revolutionary moment.