Stomping on Their Children's Dreams

Stomping on Their Children's Dreams

By Robert Parry

Created Feb 12 2008 - 9:04am

One painful irony of the Obama-Clinton showdown is that it could end up with

middle-aged women - who are determined to elect the first female president -

stomping on the dreams of their own children, who have shaken off years of

political apathy to rally behind Barack Obama.

What makes this dilemma particularly poignant is that many of these Hillary

Clinton supporters themselves experienced the stomping on their dreams four

decades ago in the pivotal election of 1968.

That presidential campaign took place before the backdrop of the Vietnam

War, with half a million U.S. soldiers committed to the bloody conflict and

with millions of young people across the United States protesting to stop

the war.

Hoping to redirect the country through the electoral process, many anti-war

students joined the campaign of Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who was making a

long-shot bid to challenge President Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic

nomination.

The anti-war cause was further galvanized by the stunning Tet offensive [1],

which began on Jan. 31, 1968, as Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops

launched ambitious - and even reckless - attacks across the length of South

Vietnam, puncturing the Johnson administration's optimistic war rhetoric.

Then, on March 12, 1968, McCarthy shocked the incumbent president by closing

to within seven percentage points in the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire

primary. Four days later, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy jumped into the race,

earning criticism from some McCarthy activists as "a Bobby come lately."

Kennedy's entrance, however, was the political death knell for Johnson. On

March 31, faced with a growing insurrection within his own party and a

growing casualty list from Vietnam, Johnson withdrew from the campaign to

dedicate his remaining time in office to bringing the war to an end.

In those heady days of early spring 1968, everything seemed possible. Young

Americans thought their enthusiasm and idealism could change the world.

Dark Days

However, those hopes were short-lived. On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a rifle shot to his throat.

Robert Kennedy learned of King's death just before he was to address a

campaign rally in Indianapolis.

"I have some very sad news for all of you, and I think sad news for all of

our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that

is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis,

Tennessee," Kennedy told the shocked crowd.

"In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's

perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want

to move in. For those of you who are black - considering the evidence

evidently is that there were white people who were responsible - you can be

filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.

"We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization - black

people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward

one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to

understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of

bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand,

compassion and love.

"For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and

mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would

only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I

had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.

"But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an

effort to understand, to get beyond these rather difficult times."

Kennedy continued: "My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: 'Even in

our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart,

until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful

grace of God.'

"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the

United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not

violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one

another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our

country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

"So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of

Martin Luther King, . but more importantly to say a prayer for our own

country, which all of us love - a prayer for understanding and that

compassion of which I spoke. .

"The vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in

this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life,

and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land. Let us

dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the

savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world."

Despite Kennedy's elegant appeal, race riots broke out in cities across

America. Divisions, distrust and hatreds deepened.

Fading Hope

Then, on June 5, 1968, as Kennedy appeared to be headed for the Democratic

nomination having just won the California primary, he, too, was killed by an

assassin's bullet.

The political vacuum that followed Kennedy's death turned the Democratic

convention in Chicago in late August into a violent free-for-all, with

hard-line Mayor Richard Daley unleashing his security and police forces

inside and outside the convention hall, beating up young demonstrators

outside and roughing up delegates and journalists inside.

Behind Daley's iron fist, the Democratic establishment controlled the

convention, which handed the presidential nomination to Vice President

Hubert Humphrey.

Suddenly, the anti-war youth were looking at a November match-up between two

representatives of the old guard, Humphrey and Republican Richard Nixon,

with the likelihood that the Vietnam War would continue no matter who won.

However, 1968 had one more cynical episode to add to its dark history,

albeit one that would be accomplished out of sight and not pierce the

public's

consciousness for decades to come.

As the days to the November election counted down, President Johnson mounted

a last-ditch effort to achieve a Vietnam peace deal with North Vietnam and

the Vietcong through negotiations in Paris. Besides starting to bring U.S.

troops home, the deal also might have given Humphrey the boost he needed to

edge out Nixon.

According to what is now an extensive body of evidence, the Nixon campaign

countered by dispatching Anna Chennault, an anti-communist Chinese leader,

to carry messages to the South Vietnamese government of Nguyen van Thieu.

Chennault's messages advised Thieu that a Nixon presidency would give him a

more favorable result than he would get from Johnson.

Journalist Seymour Hersh described the initiative sketchily in his biography

of Henry Kissinger, The Price of Power. Hersh reported that U.S.

intelligence "agencies had caught on that Chennault was the go-between

between Nixon and his people and President Thieu in Saigon. . The idea was

to bring things to a stop in Paris and prevent any show of progress."

In her own autobiography, The Education of Anna, Chennault acknowledged that

she was the courier. She quoted Nixon aide John Mitchell as calling her a

few days before the 1968 election and telling her: "I'm speaking on behalf

of Mr. Nixon. It's very important that our Vietnamese friends understand our

Republican position and I hope you made that clear to them."

Reporter Daniel Schorr added fresh details in The Washington Post's Outlook

section on May 28, 1995. Schorr cited decoded cables that U.S. intelligence

had intercepted from the South Vietnamese embassy in Washington.

On Oct. 23, 1968, Ambassador Bui Dhien cabled Saigon with the message that

"many Republican friends have contacted me and encouraged me to stand firm."

On Oct. 27, he wrote, "The longer the present situation continues, the more

favorable for us. . I am regularly in touch with the Nixon entourage."

On Nov. 2, Thieu withdrew from his tentative agreement to sit down with the

Vietcong at the Paris peace talks, destroying Johnson's last hope for a

settlement. Though Johnson and his top advisers knew of Nixon's gambit, they

kept it secret.

Anthony Summers's 2000 book, The Arrogance of Power, provides the fullest

account of the Chennault initiative, including the debate within Democratic

circles about what to do with the evidence.

Both Johnson and Humphrey believed the information - if released to the

public - could assure Nixon's defeat.

"In the end, though, Johnson's advisers decided it was too late and too

potentially damaging to U.S. interests to uncover what had been going on,"

Summers wrote. "If Nixon should emerge as the victor, what would the

Chennault outrage do to his viability as an incoming president? And what

effect would it have on American opinion about the war?"

Summers quoted Johnson's assistant Harry McPherson, who said, "You couldn't

surface it. The country would be in terrible trouble."

Late Surge

As it turned out - even without disclosure of Nixon's apparent treachery - a

late surge brought Humphrey to the edge of victory. Nixon hung on to win by

only about 500,000 votes, or less than one percent of ballots cast. Johnson

and Humphrey went into retirement keeping their silence.

The direct U.S. role in the Vietnam War would continue for more than four

years during which American casualty lists swelled by an additional 20,763

dead and 111,230 wounded. Meanwhile, the bitterness over the war deeply

divided the country, in many cases turning children against their parents.

Though the adults who grew up in the Depression and won World War II are

often called the Greatest Generation, many of them let down their children

during the Vietnam War, as some 58,000 Americans died in a poorly conceived

conflict that caused long-term damage to the United States.

It was left to the young adults of that difficult time to grapple with the

unusual challenges of the Vietnam War. Should they serve in a war that many

of them considered immoral? Or should they oppose their own government - and

often their own parents - in resisting the war?

Through both violent tragedy and political intrigue, Election 1968 had been

transformed from a hopeful opportunity to change the country into an ugly

case study of how easy it is to snuff out idealism and decency.

In many ways, Election 1968 charted the course that the United States would

follow for most of the next four decades. On one side, there would be

aggressive, win-at-all-costs Republicans; on the other side, timid,

don't-get-too-rowdy

Democrats.

Not surprisingly, the youthful idealism of the 1960s devolved into

world-weary cynicism that would be passed down like some bitter legacy from

the Baby Boomers to their children: You can't really expect to beat the Man.

You need to just look out for No. 1.

The Obama Challenge

By and large, political apathy among the youth held sway - at least until

Campaign 2008 when a new generation was caught up in the inspirational

message of Barack Obama.

I first encountered the Obama phenomenon when I visited my youngest son,

Jeff, at Savannah College of Art and Design in spring 2007. At an arts

festival where a park was set aside for students to do chalk drawings on the

sidewalks, the only drawings of an American politician were of Obama.

The youth movement for Obama - this new children's crusade - has influenced

some prominent mothers to endorse the 46-year-old African-American senator

from Illinois. Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of the late President John F.

Kennedy, said it was her three children who convinced her to come out

publicly for Obama.

"I am happy that two of my own children are here with me," she said at

American University in Washington on Jan. 28, "because they were the first

people who made me realize that Barack Obama is the president we need. He is

already inspiring all Americans, young and old, to believe in ourselves,

tying that belief to our highest ideals - ideals of hope, justice,

opportunity and peace - and urging us to imagine that together we can do

great things."

But other mothers - especially white women over 50 who have been targeted as

a core constituency by Hillary Clinton's campaign - are making another

judgment. They believe it is time for a woman to be president and they don't

see another likely female contender on the horizon. So Sen. Clinton it is.

During the early primaries, these white middle-aged women have turned out in

large numbers to support Clinton, handing her a crucial early victory in New

Hampshire and serving as a bulwark for her campaign in several other states,

including Massachusetts and California.

They may prove to be the difference in other crucial states ahead, such as

Ohio and Pennsylvania. Yet, if they are successful, they may have to face a

sad and unintended consequence of a Hillary Clinton nomination, especially

if she wins in a bruising convention battle in Denver.

These women may have to watch the young enthusiastic Obama supporters -

sometimes their own children - suffer the kind of painful disillusionment

that an earlier generation of idealistic young Americans went through in

1968.

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their

spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their

government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are

suffering deeply in spirit,

and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public

debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have

patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning

back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at

stake."

-Thomas Jefferson