Will We Ever Know the Truth About JFK?

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President and Mrs. Kennedy disembark in Dallas.

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In a little more than two months, it will be the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy here in Dallas.

It goes without saying that it was a traumatic event for this country — particularly so for this city (my grandmother always regarded it as a black eye for Dallas) — and I suppose many people have lived for years, probably decades, with a desire to know the real story of what happened that day. Perhaps they, like my grandmother, believe that whoever pulled the trigger couldn't possibly be local because, well, everybody knew that folks from Dallas wouldn't do that kind of thing — even though Dallas in general was known to be hostile to the administration.

Initially, I guess, a majority of Americans accepted the Warren Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman. That was how most Americans were raised in those days — to respect authority and accept its word on everything (the deceit of the Johnson and Nixon presidencies would go a long way toward eroding that inclination).

At the dawn of the 1960s, conformity was in fashion in America, just as it had been (and still was) in the European cultures from which many Americans' ancestors had come — and they, like all other immigrants before and since, brought their values with them.

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After the home movie that Abraham Zapruder made that day went public a few years later, suspicions rapidly grew among Americans that the Kennedy assassination had been part of some sort of conspiracy. America had been souring on the Vietnam war, and the pump was primed for conspiracy theories to flourish.

A general consensus arose that the true story had not been told, either by omission or commission, and that view gained some momentum in the mid–1970s when a special congressional committee evaluated the evidence from prominent assassinations in the 1960s — President Kennedy, his brother Bobby and Martin Luther King — and determined that it was probable that there had been more than one gunman in Dealey Plaza that day.

I guess that is the only thing that many Americans agreed on — and, I will admit, I was one of them. There is little agreement about who was responsible — some say the CIA, some say organized crime, others say Cubans, still others say right–wing extremists. Some of the more elaborate scenarios combine two or more.

I use the past tense — was — for myself not because I now believe the Warren Commission (I don't), but because I believe that, whether the Warren Commission was right or wrong, it doesn't matter now. Too much time has passed, too many material witnesses are deceased or suffering from dementia, and we will never know what the truth is.

Some people will never believe that. They will keep searching for the truth, and I do hope they find it, but I have strong doubts that anyone ever will.

Some people will insist that they already know the truth. I have dealt with such people all my life — on some subjects, I must admit, I am one of those people — and I have learned that it is usually futile to attempt to change their minds.

And who knows? They might be right — as one of my favorite journalists, H.L. Mencken, liked to say in letters to angry readers.

Perhaps Lee Harvey Oswald did shoot Kennedy. Perhaps he did act alone. I don't know. What I do know is that there have been unanswered questions from the start. Granted, some of the questions eventually received plausible answers, but it has often seemed in the Kennedy case that, whenever a single question has been answered, it has raised two new questions, and we seemed to drift farther from the truth than we were before.

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Not even the best mystery writer could invent as many red herrings and dead–end leads as there have been in this case over the years. It is alleged that many of these were the results of sloppy investigative work or human error or even coincidence.

If Oswald really did act alone, it is hard to imagine the investigation into the murder of any president being handled as sloppily — or as many coincidences occurring. There has been plenty of doubt about the number of shooters — heck, even the number of shots — in Dealey Plaza that day, and it did take the Dallas police an inexcusably long time to seal off the Texas Schoolbook Depository after the shots were fired and the consensus among witnesses was that at least some of those shots had been fired from that building.

Maybe there are simple explanations for things that appear to be so clearly sinister. I am a defender of our legal system in spite of its flaws, and I know things are not always how they seem — but, really, so many? It defies logic and common sense.

Suppose Oswald had not been killed but had lived to face trial. America's legal history is filled with cases where juries acted differently than many observers expected. How many times in your life have you heard of a verdict that was contrary to public opinion? That was one of the things I learned during my days on the police beat. You can never tell what a jury will do, but you can be sure that someone won't like it.

No one knows what a jury might have said about the case against Oswald. The closest we came was the case brought by Jim Garrison in New Orleans that was re–enacted in Oliver Stone's "JFK." That trial was only a few years after the assassination, when the trail presumably was still warm, and it resulted in an acquittal.

In 2013, it is a decidedly cold case, and I believe it will remain so.

In (almost) the words of a once–popular TV show, the truth may be out there. I just don't think that, at this stage, anyone will find it.

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The Chaos in Chicago

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"The confrontation was not created by the police; the confrontation was created by the people who charged the police.

"Gentlemen, let's get the thing straight, once and for all. The policeman isn't there to create disorder; the policeman is there to preserve disorder."

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley
August 1968

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I think it is fair to say that America in 1968 was a nation mired in a malaise.

It had not been an uplifting year. It began with the Tet offensive in Vietnam that showed everyone how easily the Viet Cong could penetrate the grounds of an American military post.

In the months ahead, first Martin Luther King and then Bobby Kennedy were assassinated and then, a week before the Democrats were scheduled to hold their convention and nominate their presidential candidate, Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia.

And through it all were the demonstrations. They never seemed to end. Most of the demonstrations were against the war in Vietnam, but others were focused on other things — racial injustice, sexual injustice, the "gap" between the generations.

If there was one thing on which the average American could depend, it was that each night's news report would have something about a demonstration for or against something somewhere.

There would be some uplifting moments later in the year, but 45 years ago today, there wasn't much for anyone to be happy about.

The Democrats were holding their 1968 national convention in Chicago. There was important business on the agenda — the nominations for president and vice president took center stage, but there was unrest in the land as well. A sizable portion of the population had soured on American involvement in Vietnam, crime seemed to be out of control, and racial discord could be seen in every major American city.

Perhaps no one summed up the scene better than historian Theodore H. White in his book, "The Making of the President 1968."

"A contagion of madness, a sense of helplessness, a sickening loss of control denying order and identity to all, had been spreading" prior to the start of the convention, he wrote.

By the second day of the convention — 45 years ago today — nearly all of Chicago "slept peacefully and went to work tranquilly," White observed, "[b]ut, politically, the contagion had begun to flush and agitate downtown Chicago with high fever."

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Chicago, in August 1968, was about to put on display, for the whole world to see, a microcosm of the division that gripped America.

It was probably inevitable that there would be a clash between the dissatisfied (i.e., radical) elements of American society and the Chicago police, who represented (in the public's eyes) the establishment. Both were moving into place like planets forming a celestial line, the immoveable object and the irresistible force.

Something had to give.

I watched it unfold on TV, I heard Abraham Ribicoff accuse the Chicago police of "Gestapo tactics," and I asked my parents what was happening, but they never found the words to explain it all. I guess it was too complicated for a child to comprehend.

Actually, it was pretty hard for adults to comprehend, too. My parents had trouble explaining it to me, and I always figured that meant they didn't understand everything, either.

I remember that my father got frustrated and stopped trying to explain. In hindsight, it seems like that scene was replayed in many households around that time. And that was the thing that stood out about the Vietnam era, I suppose — very little seemed to make sense, and, consequently, very little could be adequately explained.

To be sure, it was a surreal scene. There was chaos outside the convention hall, but there was chaos within as well. CBS newsmen Mike Wallace and Dan Rather were roughed up by security guards on live television. CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite observed, "I think we've got a bunch of thugs here."

Viewers clearly got the sense they were watching actual muggings — in living color, to use the popular broadcasters' phrase of the time.

Outside the hall, police were beating demonstrators in the streets. There was a lot of what appeared to be smoke, but it was probably tear gas. There was commotion in Grant Park, where Barack Obama would celebrate his first election as president 40 years later.

While the nation and the world watched on TV, demonstrators retreated to Grant Park and re–formed, chanting "Sieg heil" or "Stop the war!" over and over as they protested under the watchful eyes of the broadcast media.

As Tuesday became Wednesday, other groups joined with the original group — and the folks watching at home saw total mayhem in the streets and at the convention hall, which journalist Terry Southern described as "a military installation; barbed wire, checkpoints, the whole bit."

The Walker Report described what took place in Chicago as a "police riot."

And the sight of the chaos in the streets of Chicago — compared to the relative calm of the Republicans' convention in Miami a few weeks earlier — may well have played an important role in Richard Nixon's eventual victory in November.

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Burst of Joy

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In my career as a journalist, I have known several people who truly were gifted at photography.

Personally, I have never been much more than an aim–and–shoot photographer. When I was a reporter, I occasionally took a camera with me and returned with acceptable photographs that ran with my stories. But I never mastered the intricacies of photography. Never came close to snapping a photograph that was worth the proverbial 1,000 words or a Pulitzer Prize.

I've always been a little envious of those folks who had a photographer's eye. I've been told that I am a good writer, and one person even told me that my writing was like music, which appealed to me because I love music even though I'm not terribly musical.

Music is an art form, and I love the arts. I get that from my mother, I suppose. She was a first–grade teacher, and she used her classroom to spread her creative wings. In fact, after she died, we received a letter from an old friend of my parents. He said that he had long suspected that, if Mom had not gone into teaching, her artistic gifts would have drawn her to the stage.

Anyway, Mom always encouraged a love of the arts — and writing was one of them. Her encouragement sure worked on me. I have always loved to read, and writing has always been more pleasure than work for me.

But writing has never seemed that artistic to me. Maybe that is because it has always come easily to me, maybe too easily at times, and I've always felt that great art requires great effort — like giving birth.

But, for some people, maybe it doesn't require a great effort. Maybe it really is as effortless as it seems.

Maybe that is how it is with great photographers.

Great photography, like the theater, excels at capturing dramatic moments in life, and there have been few moments in my lifetime that were more dramatic than when American prisoners of war started coming home from Vietnam in 1973.

I saw many dramatic photographs in those days. In fact — in hindsight — 1973 was filled with dramatic moments. It was the year that Richard Nixon famously declared that he was not a crook — an astonishing assertion for a president to make — a few months after it was revealed that Nixon had been recording Oval Office and telephone conversations for a couple of years. It was the year that Rose Mary Woods tried to take the heat for her boss — and failed. Her re–creation of her alleged error was preserved by many photographers.

But the most dramatic photographs of that year came when the POWs began coming home from Vietnam.

For the most part, America's veterans were treated shabbily by their fellow Americans. To an extent, it was understandable that Americans behaved as they did. They were frustrated by the waste of the war, and they felt deceived by their government. Being unable to take out their frustrations on the people who were really responsible, they lashed out at the most visible and most accessible symbols of the war — the young men who fought in it.

That wasn't fair. Soldiers carry out orders. They don't make policy. Even so, many Americans — to their everlasting shame — greeted returning Vietnam vets in the vilest ways.

Not so at Travis Air Force Base in northern California on this day in 1973.

Associated Press photographer Sal Veder happened to be in the right spot at the right time to snap a photo (above) that came to be known as "Burst of Joy." Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm was greeted by his family after spending more than five years as a prisoner of war. His 15–year–old daughter led the way, her arms outstretched. Her brothers, sister and mother followed, each face glowing in a radiant smile.

When I first saw that photo, it seemed to be the perfect bookend for a painful chapter in American history. It took many photos to tell the story of the Vietnam war — the photo of Vietnamese children running from their burning schoolhouse showed a side of war that non–combatants seldom see, and the photo of a young girl kneeling over the body of a victim at Kent State illustrated the divisions at home.

"Burst of Joy" allowed Americans to feel good again after years of feeling bad.

But there is a truth behind pictures that can't be seen — and the truth behind "Burst of Joy" was the fact that Stirm, who had been released by North Vietnam only three days earlier, had received a letter from his wife on the day of his release telling him that their marriage was over.

I don't know if the children knew about this so their smiles may well have been genuine. But the smile on Loretta Stirm's face, at least, hid a darker truth about the price of war.

Veder won a Pulitzer Prize for the photo he shot of the homecoming, and copies of it are on display in each of the children's homes.

But the focal point of the photo, Lt. Col. Stirm, does not. For him, it is a painful reminder.

Nevertheless, "Burst of Joy" continues to be "part of the nation's collective consciousness, often serving as an uplifting postscript to Vietnam," wrote Carolyn Kleiner Butler for the Smithsonian magazine eight years ago. "That the moment was considerably more fraught than we first assumed makes it all the more poignant and reminds us that not all war casualties occur on the battlefield."

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No False Notes

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I guess one of the things that attracted me to the study of history was its little (and not so little) ironies.

Sometimes the ironies are poignant. Sometimes they are humorous. Sometimes they are, well, ironic (I just can't seem to think of an appropriate synonym).

Four years ago, it was ironic that Barack Obama delivered his acceptance speech at his party's convention 45 years to the day since Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

I don't think anyone believed Obama would be a failure if he did not surpass King's performance. In the long–term perspective of history, both men will stand as symbols of progress in America.

But there may have been certain expectations that Mitt Romney had for himself before his speech in Tampa tonight. And, while his address likely will not be remembered as one of the great speeches of the 21st century, it was a workmanlike performance for a country hungering for a workmanlike leader.

In 2012, I suppose the way — or even whether — one defines the irony of Mitt Romney's nomination for the presidency this week depends upon where one sits on the political spectrum.

You see, it was 45 years ago tomorrow that Mitt's father, Michigan Gov. George Romney, a candidate (temporarily) for the 1968 Republican nomination, made his infamous assertion that he had been a victim of "brainwashing" during his trip to Vietnam nearly two years earlier.

George Romney's intention was to make the point that he had been deceived, just as the nation had been deceived, on the subject of Vietnam. And, if he had put it that way, he might well have been his party's nominee.

But his selection of the word "brainwashing" doomed his candidacy. It made him appear weak, easily manipulated and ill–prepared to stand up to the bad guys of the world.

That really seems to be a problem for the Romneys, this tendency to insert a single false note into what would otherwise be, if not inspiring, certainly adequate and sincere discussions of the issues of the day — and some that became faux issues because of those linguistic shortcomings.

But, I must confess, I heard no false notes in tonight's acceptance speech by Mitt Romney. Perhaps he exorcised the ghost of his father's "brainwashing" remark. After all, if George Romney had not used that word 45 years ago, he, not Richard Nixon, might have been the GOP's standard bearer in 1968.

Just think of it. America might have been spared the Watergate scandal — if not for that word. Would George Romney have felt compelled to drop out of the race if he had claimed that he had been deceived by the administration? Or that he had been led to believe things that were not true?

That "brainwashing" remark ended forever George Romney's dream of being president.

Tonight his son may have reclaimed his father's dream.

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Ronald Reagan vs. Robert Kennedy

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In the 1980s, I had a Commodore 64 computer in my home, which I used primarily for two purposes — writing (using word processing software that probably can't be found anymore, even though, as I understand it, Commodore 64s and their accessories are still sold online) and playing the computer games of that time.

One of the games that I enjoyed playing was a presidential election game. You could use preprogrammed historical figures from 1960 to 1984, which meant you could re–create actual election contests or match other candidates in a kind of what–if scenario. You could also answer a series of questions on various issues and program yourself to be a candidate.

For that matter, you could alter the actual economic and foreign conditions. You could have a third–party candidate. It was really the ideal game for a political junkie like myself.

The computer could even manage any or all of the candidates.

Then, during the course of the game, you could budget your advertising and campaign appearances for each of nine rounds (weeks), followed by a realistic depiction of a minute–by–minute Election Night.

One scenario that I liked to play was a what–if scenario featuring New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and California Gov. Ronald Reagan as opponents in the 1968 election. Kennedy, of course, was assassinated while he campaigned for the Democratic nomination, and Reagan's 1968 campaign never really got off the ground.

But there was a time when a confrontation between the two was not only regarded as possible, it was even seen by some as probable.

I was an admirer of Kennedy, even though I really wasn't old enough in 1968 to understand much about him, other than, I suppose, the fact that I knew his name.

I didn't really know Reagan's name at the time, but a decade later, I sure did. And I had heard plenty of speculation over the years about how an election campaign between Kennedy and Reagan would have turned out.

So I often played the 1968 scenario managing Kennedy against Reagan. Sometimes I included George Wallace as a third–party candidate — as he was in real life.

Kennedy and Reagan tended to split the three–way scenarios. When it was just the two of them running against each other, Reagan won just about every time.

Like all the other what–ifs of history, the outcome of such an electoral confrontation will forever be a mystery. No one knows, for example, if Wallace would have mounted a third–party candidacy if Reagan had been the Republican nominee.

If he had, would he and Reagan have split the right–wing vote, permitting Kennedy to take a razor–thin victory?

And if Wallace had chosen not to run, would Reagan have won?

Forty–five years ago today, voters got a taste of what it might have been like.

On Monday night, May 15, 1967, Reagan and Kennedy met in a one–hour debate about the Vietnam War. Approximately 15 million Americans watched it on CBS.

Footage from that occasion is fascinating to watch today — in no small part because, even though there have been many books written about both men, I have seen very few references to that debate.

In fact, the only article I have seen about that debate — which was really more of a global town hall meeting — was Paul Kengor's piece in the National Review five years ago.

Kengor observed that the consensus that Reagan "won" the debate was virtually unanimous, and I have found no reason to dispute that.

If they had been their respective parties' nominees and had met in a series of debates in the fall of 1968, it seems logical to me that Reagan might have prevailed. He had a very folksy way of speaking when he was president that endeared him to people, even those who disagreed with him. Kennedy, on the other hand, had a reputation for being "ruthless" that turned off even those who supported him.

(In the debate 45 years ago tonight, however, the two seemed to switch roles. Reagan came across as the more ruthless while Kennedy seemed more amiable. At least, that is my impression from the clips I have seen.)

Also, the Democrats had held the White House for eight years, and the incumbent was very unpopular. On this occasion, though, as Kengor points out, Kennedy and Reagan "ended up debating the group of students" who questioned them, "not one another." A panel of "extremely rude" international students served as the questioners, and they "seemed to bask in their big chance to unleash their torrent of anger on the two available representatives of the country they despised."

Even if Kennedy and Reagan had run against each other, the debate in which they participated 45 years ago today might have been vastly different from the ones they would have had in their campaign.

If debates in 1968 resembled the ones that have been held since, the panel of questioners wouldn't have been students intent on challenging authority but professional journalists with expertise in the subjects about which the candidates were asked.

But it's difficult to say that because, in 1968, presidential debates were not the campaign fixtures they have become. The only models at the time were the debates between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy in 1960.

Who knows what the organizers might have done to the format in 1968?

And who knows what America would be like in 2012 if either Bobby Kennedy or Ronald Reagan had been elected president in 1968?

That would have meant that Richard Nixon probably never would have been elected president — hence, there would have been no Watergate. Would either Kennedy or Reagan have been finished in national politics if one had lost to the other in 1968 — however narrowly?

Would the winner have ended the Vietnam War years before it actually ended?

To be sure, it would be an alternate reality.

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The LBJ Factor

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I've watched the rapid descent of the popular image of Barack Obama since he took the oath of office.

And I've been intrigued by his apparent public evolution — from the early days of his presidency, when he was widely seen as the reincarnation of Lincoln, Washington and/or FDR, to the recent comparisons between the president and (at best) Bill Clinton following his party's disastrous losses in the 1994 midterms or (at worst) Jimmy Carter's one–term administration.

No one knows with absolute certainty what will happen between now and next November; consequently, no one knows if the voters will deny a second term to Obama or if they will re–elect him with a rousing vote of confidence.

Thus, all these comparisons — while each has certain valid points — are based largely on self–serving speculation.

Republicans would like everyone to believe we are witnessing Carter Redux — because that would mean we are on the brink of the ascendance of another Reagan.

Democrats would like everyone to believe that, in spite of criticism of Obama, we are witnessing a reprise of the Clinton years — and, in 2012, will see a reinvigorated president win a second term by approximately the same margin in the Electoral College that elected him the first time.

Time will tell if either scenario is correct — or if an entirely new paradigm is being written.

My money is on the latter — because, while history truly does repeat itself, it never seems to do things exactly the way it did before. Times change.

In other words, we might be witnessing a Republican resurgence similar to the one that overwhelmed Carter and the Democrats in 1980 — but it might not necessarily produce another Ronald Reagan.

And, even if it did, the times are different. This isn't like a TV rerun (outside of syndication, do they still do that anymore?) — or even a remake. The people would be different. The circumstances — and, hence, the decisions they must make — would be different.

Perhaps the differences would be subtle. Perhaps they wouldn't be so subtle.

Likewise, we could be witnessing another rebound of an embattled Democratic president whose party suffered massive midterm losses (or perhaps, as some Democrats have been suggesting with fondness, another "Dewey Defeats Truman" election in which the incumbent scores a completely unexpected victory), but it doesn't necessarily mean that Obama's second term would be more successful than his first.

(Actually, second terms often seem to be worse than the first. It's worth remembering that Truman's popularity really began to sink irreversibly after his inauguration in 1949, and, while Clinton was re–elected two years after the GOP seized both chambers of Congress, his second term was largely mired in his impeachment defense.)

At the moment, if I am inclined to compare Obama to anyone, it is Lyndon Johnson. I see several similarities/parallels between the two presidents.

At what may be the most basic level, Johnson was the last Democrat to carry states like Virginia and Indiana — until Obama in 2008 (Carter was the only other Democrat to win North Carolina; Carter and Clinton were the only other Democrats to carry Florida).

Both Johnson and Obama won landslide victories in the Electoral College — but so did Clinton (twice). He just didn't receive a majority of the popular vote.

Voting patterns, like poll results, are not infallible indicators of what to expect — but they do provide a certain amount of guidance in the right direction.

It is not in the voting patterns, though, that I see the most striking similarities between Obama and LBJ. It's in their priorities as president — and the public's response, via its approval ratings.

One could say many things about LBJ — and, without a doubt, most, if not all, the good and the bad, were true — but one that is absolutely undeniably true is that he was a great admirer of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

And LBJ wanted to leave his mark on domestic policy — as he believed FDR had. He wanted to exceed what his idol had accomplished.

Oh, sure, there were contemporaries of Roosevelt who would tell you that his skill in foreign affairs was evident in his handling of American participation in World War II — both before and after America officially entered the conflict.

But you can still see his hand behind many of the programs and policies that were created to battle the Great Depression of the 1930s — and still exist today.

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LBJ was raised in poverty. Such conditions strongly (and, often, adversely) affect how a man approaches the issues and relationships in his later life, and LBJ earnestly wanted to eliminate poverty. He appreciated FDR's courage in the face of a savage economy, which he witnessed as a young man in Texas and then as a member of the House. "[Roosevelt] was the one person I ever knew, anywhere, who was never afraid," he said after FDR's death in 1945.

When LBJ became president, his #1 goal was to expand on FDR's New Deal with his "Great Society."

And when he won a full term on his own — with a share of the popular vote that surpassed anything that Roosevelt ever received — it was seen by many as an endorsement of his domestic agenda, whether it really was or not.

That part probably was irrelevant because the times forced the American people — as the times so often do — to re–focus their attention.

In the 1960s, that meant Vietnam.

It may have been Johnson's misfortune to become president right when fate made foreign affairs the topic that was increasingly of the most concern to Americans, but presidents don't get to choose what kind of world exists when they are in office.

When LBJ won by a landslide in 1964, Vietnam was still a faraway land that most Americans knew nothing about. The campaign did not focus on foreign policy, but, before long, Americans were dying at a terrifying pace in the jungles of Southeast Asia, and the Johnson administration seemed powerless to do anything about it.

Much may stem from the fact that Johnson's military experience was so limited. Born in 1908, he was too young to serve in World War I, and his early life was influenced by poverty, not the battlefield.

When America entered World War II, Johnson was in Congress. He became a commissioned officer in the Naval Reserve and asked for a combat assignment but was sent to inspect stateside shipyards instead. The closest he came to actual combat was his short–term assignment to a three–man observation team that was sent to look into conditions in the Southwest Pacific.

Two years after Johnson won more than 60% of the popular vote and about 90% of the electoral vote, his Democrats suffered a severe setback in the midterm election, losing 47 House seats. The war had been escalating and, in spite of his efforts to combat poverty, Johnson's domestic agenda didn't seem to be all that successful, either — with race riots occurring from coast to coast.

(Interestingly, one of the freshman Republicans elected to the House in 1966 was George H.W. Bush, the future president and father of another.)

LBJ's popularity dropped sharply, so sharply that, even though he could have run for another term in 1968, he decided not to.

It must have been a disappointing — not to mention dizzying — decline for LBJ. I really believe he wanted to be remembered as a great domestic president — and instead he was consumed by an ugly little war in Vietnam.

LBJ probably benefited enormously from the sympathy and good will of Americans following the assassination of President Kennedy. His popularity never dropped below 60 — and often was much higher — in his first two years as president — but then began its perilous decline in 1966 after Johnson said U.S. troops should remain in Vietnam until Communist aggression had been stopped there.

And when a president's approval numbers go in the tank and stay there for awhile, my experience is that it is really hard to pull them out.

We'll never know if Johnson could have overcome those numbers. By the end of April 1966, a quarter of a million American troops were in Vietnam, and Johnson's approval rating dropped below 50 for the first — but far from the last — time. Less than two years later, he dropped out of the race for the 1968 Democratic nomination.

Fast forward 40 years.

Obama is kind of Lyndon Johnson in reverse — at least when it comes to his policy preference. He wasn't interested in domestic policy. He certainly wasn't interested — or experienced — in economics. He wanted to be a foreign affairs president.

I'm not really sure what drove him to focus on foreign policy. Critics would say it was the political angle, that it was the topic everyone wanted to talk about in 2008. But I think it goes deeper than that.

He never served in the armed forces — but that isn't unusual for people in his age range or younger. Selective service was stopped at the conclusion of the Vietnam War, then registration resumed in 1980, but it's been an all–volunteer service ever since. The most Obama was obliged to do by law was register for a nonexistent draft after he turned 18.

Maybe it has something to do with the multicultural environments in which he grew up. Perhaps it is rooted in his biracial parentage. Whatever the influence was, he specialized in international relations when he studied political science at Columbia University in the early 1980s.

Clearly, that interest was there long before it may have been expedient for a presidential campaign. And it was reflected in his Senate committee assignments when he announced his intention to seek the presidency — Foreign Relations, Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, Veterans Affairs.

And recent polls suggest that it is one of the few areas in which Americans tend to give him positive marks.

But the times don't call for a foreign affairs president.

That doesn't mean foreign affairs isn't important. It is always important, and, most of the time, the need for an international leader is sudden and unexpected — after all, even with Osama bin Laden gone, who knows when or if another 9–11 will occur?

But poll after poll after poll reports that the voters are overwhelmingly concerned about pocketbook issues, and Obama brought no practical experience in that to the White House. When Obama entered the 2008 race, the unemployment rate was about half what it is today. There were — as there always are — economic naysayers who claimed that this policy or that one would lead the country to ruin.

No one really took that kind of talk seriously when Obama launched his seemingly quixotic campaign in February 2007. In fact, the other Democrats who were lining up to run for the 2008 nomination — including Obama — were intent upon foreign policy, too — specifically, ending American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But once again, fate intervened. In the month before the first primaries and caucuses of the 2008 election season, a recession began. It wasn't clear to most Americans how severe things would get, how many jobs would be lost in the months ahead, but a recession had begun that would gather momentum and plunge America into an abyss.

The frustration has grown.

Obama isn't going to bow out of the race the way LBJ did. I don't think he is that pragmatic. He probably still thinks he can win — and maybe he can. But I strongly doubt it.

In the early days of his presidency, polls showed Obama's approval in the 60s, but, with the exception of a brief uptick following the death of Osama bin Laden, his ratings have been below 50 in most surveys for a couple of years now.

The numbers aren't quite as bad as LBJ's — and they are comparable to Clinton's — but I can't help but think that, even if Obama fights it out to the end, he faces essentially the same fate as LBJ.

Perhaps their mutual legacy is that they and the times in which they served were mismatched.

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Everything Old Is New Again

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"Peace is at hand."

Henry Kissinger
October 1972

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A few hours ago, the president announced a tentative agreement in the debt ceiling debate.

Barack Obama told the nation that "both parties have found their way toward compromise," which will be good news, indeed — if it comes to fruition.

And that is the as–yet unanswered question. Will both sides agree to it? Or will support break down as each side has an opportunity to examine the deal more closely?

I am reminded of the day in October 1972 when, with Richard Nixon a week away from facing the voters in his bid for a second term, Henry Kissinger announced to the world that "peace is at hand" in Vietnam.

It was the original October surprise. It was what everyone wanted. And it was clearly what Nixon believed would secure a second term for him.

Based on Nixon's job approval numbers from 1972 — and the self–destructive nature of the Democratic ticket — that outcome probably was never in doubt.

But, when Nixon was at this point of his first term — July–August 1971 — his job approval numbers were about 10 percentage points lower than the share of the vote he received in November 1972. They were, essentially, at the break–even point, with roughly half of respondents approving of his performance, and much of it reflected public disappointment that Nixon's "secret plan" had failed to bring an end to the conflict in southeast Asia.

In the context of the times — and to be fair — there were, as there always are, economic issues that demanded the president's attention.

(In fact, August 15 will be the 40th anniversary of Nixon's imposition of a 90–day freeze on prices and wages following his announcement that America would no longer convert dollars to gold at a fixed rate, marking the end of the Bretton Woods financial management system.)

But those economic conditions — however severe they may have been and whatever role (if any) the actions that were taken then may have played in our current economic woes — were not the primary focus of attention.

Even Nixon's supporters probably would admit that he was one of the most paranoid men ever to sit in the Oval Office — and, after the Pentagon Papers were leaked in June 1971, I'm sure he must have sensed increased public scrutiny in his foreign policy.

In 1971, Nixon was vulnerable on that issue, after all his talk in the 1968 campaign about the need for new leadership to replace the failed leadership of the previous four years. By October 1972, he must have seen the rhetorical value of being able to say a deal for peace ("with honor," as he put it) was in the works.

Nixon did, as a matter of fact, sign such an agreement in January of 1973 — but the hostilities in Vietnam continued for more than two years (outlasting Nixon's presidency, which ended with his resignation in August 1974).

Similarly, Obama's presidency is vulnerable if this deal falls through and the United States winds up defaulting. That could wind up causing a chain reaction of economic events that no one can imagine — or wants.

Fortunately, the Asian markets responded positively to the news of an impending deal, which should relieve some of the pressure on U.S. lawmakers.

Well, it buys them some time — a few hours, anyway.

But there isn't much time left.

Is peace really at hand?

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The Horror of War

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There is no time in my memory of my childhood when the war in Vietnam was not an ever–present fact of life.

When you thumbed through a newspaper or a magazine, you were bound to see articles about it. If you switched on your TV or your radio, you were almost sure to see or hear something about the war. All the prominent people of the time were talking about it.

It was everywhere.

As young as I was, I got the sense that most people still thought of war casualties in military terms. I know I did. When the nightly or weekly casualty counts were given on the network news, I thought of soldiers.

I guess the folks who had served in World War II and Korea should have known better than that. They had seen first hand the pain that had been inflicted upon civilians in those conflicts.

For that matter, I guess, the people of my parents' generation — who were too young to serve in WWII, too young even to get away with lying about their ages — should have known better, too. They had seen the footage of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They knew that soldiers weren't the only ones who got hurt or killed in war.

Nevertheless, non–veterans seemed to know nothing about the human face of war during the Vietnam era.

I was as naive as any, I suppose — until June of 1972, when the attached photograph was taken by a young Associated Press photojournalist named Nick Ut.

The photo showed a group of South Vietnamese children running from their village after a napalm attack on June 8, 1972. A young girl could be seen running naked along the road, her face twisted in pain.

Just from looking at the photo, it wasn't really possible to determine how extensive the girl's injuries were. Only if one read the caption that accompanied the photo — and usually made a vague reference to a napalm attack on the children's village — could one begin to get an idea of just how badly she had been hurt.

The girl in the photo had torn off her burning clothes, which allowed her to survive, but the damage had been done to her tiny body.

For many, this photo truly was worth a thousand words — at least. It was a haunting image that came to symbolize everything that had gone wrong in Vietnam — in large part because a South Vietnamese village had been napalmed by South Vietnamese forces. That was no accident. North Vietnam had captured the village earlier, and the South Vietnamese were trying to drive the North Vietnamese out of it.

The villagers were simply, as Timothy McVeigh put it a couple of decades later, collateral damage.

I remember vividly seeing that picture on the pages of my hometown newspaper a few days after it was taken. I had never heard of the village — Trang Bang. But the little girl in the photo was about my age, give or take a year or two, and that put a human face on the war for me.

I could look at her and see just about everyone I knew, everyone with whom I went to school, everyone with whom I played on a daily basis. That picture gave me nightmares for weeks.

There was no question it was a powerful photograph. It won a Pulitzer Prize and has become an iconic image of that time.

President Nixon, who was running for re–election, doubted the authenticity of the photo, as a tape of a conversation with his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, revealed.

Nixon had been elected president four years earlier in large part because of criticism over the way the Democrats had handled the war. His suggestion to Haldeman that he suspected the photo had been "fixed" may have stemmed from a fear that the photo could damage his political prospects.

(As it turned out, Nixon was more gravely wounded by something that happened a week later and much closer to home — the Watergate break–in.)

It wasn't until after the children had been examined at a Saigon hospital that it was concluded that the girl, whose name was Kim Phúc, had been burned so badly that she was not expected to survive. But she did.

I can only imagine the nightmares she must have lived with — that she may still be living with.

Today she lives with her husband and children in Canada. In 2008, she told NPR that she had forgiven those who hurt her.

"Forgiveness made me free from hatred," she said. "I still have many scars on my body and severe pain most days. But my heart is cleansed. Napalm is very powerful, but faith, forgiveness and love are much more powerful."

Her words are as powerful as the image from decades ago.

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The Wimp Factor

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I'm not really sure when "wimp" was introduced into presidential politics.

I suppose the concept has been around for a long time. The word "wimp" brings to mind a cowardly person, a poor leader, and that is something that I am sure has always been a concern for the voters — but there must have been other words for it.

"Wimp" is a term from the late 20th century, and it seems to conjure up images of appeasement — British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the Munich Agreement in the 1930s, for instance, but I don't think "wimp" was a synonym for coward in those days.

(There was, at the time, a character in the Popeye cartoons named "Wimpy" who was always trying to borrow money to buy a hamburger — but I doubt that he had much to do with the terminology in political campaigns.)

Today, the word "wimpy" tends to be associated with Democratic politicians.

I bring this up because the word "wimp" came to mind today when I was reading a Gallup report that said Americans were less likely to see Barack Obama as a strong leader now than they were when he took office.

This "stands in contrast to the stability in the trend for two other personal dimensions," says Gallup. Those two dimensions are concerned with his ability to empathize with his fellow Americans and whether he shares the values of his constituents.

In truth, Obama's standing in all three categories has declined since he took office, but the decline has been much more pronounced in his perception as a strong, decisive leader — and Democrats seem to have chosen to "accentuate the positive," as the old song says.

There has been less movement in the public's perception of Obama as being able to empathize with their problems or whether he shares their values. Hence, those ratings appear relatively stable.

And much of the emphasis that I have heard from Democrats who have been promoting the re–election of the president has centered on those two things — he understands what you're up against and he believes the same things you do.

At first glance, that might seem like a logical approach. But I believe it is the wrong approach to take. The poll numbers suggest that there has not been much movement in either of those categories. Those attitudes are set, and there is little to be gained. Those who disagree that Obama understands what they face every day or that he shares their values are in the minority, but they have felt that way all along.

There has been a lot of movement, however, on the question of whether Obama is a strong leader. People may think that you empathize with their problems and that you share their values, but if they think you aren't a strong leader, you might as well start packing your things.

The situation should be even more alarming for Obama because he has fallen from such heights. When he became president, Gallup reports, nearly three–quarters of Americans saw him as a strong leader. A year later, that rating was down to 60% and, today, it is down to 52%.

The growing crisis in the Middle East, along with the higher gas prices it has spawned, may force Obama to do things he doesn't want to do. It may alienate him from some on the far left. It might even lead to a challenge within Obama's party.

But the alternative is to risk being labeled a "wimp," and that has not been a good thing for Democrats in the past.

When I was a child, many Democrats in Congress were considered "hawks" because they supported Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam policy. That was a tough image, especially when compared with the equivalent term that was used for opponents of the Vietnam policy — "doves."

More and more, Democrats in general got a reputation for being doves, for being weak, indecisive, easily pushed around. I don't think it started in the 1960s.

I was pretty young during the 1968 campaign, and the Democratic nominee that year, Hubert Humphrey, had been LBJ's vice president. He was held accountable for Johnson's unpopular Vietnam policy, which could hardly be described as "wimpy."

It might have gotten its start when George McGovern was the party's nominee in 1972. But it wasn't mentioned much (if at all) in 1976, when Jimmy Carter was nominated for the first time. His opponent, President Ford, had his own problems trying to convince the voters that he hadn't made a deal with the man he succeeded and later pardoned, Richard Nixon.

But, when Carter sought re–election in 1980, the word "wimp" was being used to describe Democrats on a fairly regular basis — and the next couple of standard bearers, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, resorted to ridiculous measures to try to refute a negative.

Then, I guess, Republicans experienced something of a wimp backlash.

Ironically, it didn't really come in the field of foreign policy. In 1992, George H.W. Bush was on pretty solid ground following Operation Desert Storm.

No, the backlash came over the economy. Bush had gone back on his pledge not to raise taxes, and the economy was in a recession. It was nothing like what Americans have experienced in recent years, but, in the context of recent history, it was unsettling enough.

I have always felt it played more of a role in Bush's defeat that year than Ross Perot's presence on the ballot — no matter how much Republicans wanted to blame Perot.

Thus, I suppose, it can be said that Bush was seen as something of a wimp when it came to domestic issues. The idea was that he was weak and indecisive on economic issues. At the very least, it could be said that he was out of touch.

In the last 20 years, Democrats have appeared increasingly eager to take positions that are in contrast to their unfavorable image. During the Clinton years, the White House often found itself involved in conflicts abroad — and it was not always clear whether American involvement was legitimate.

There were those who contended Clinton was simply using situations to manipulate public opinion. Perhaps he did, at times, but, if he did, he wasn't the first — and no one ever satisfactorily demonstrated that he was guilty of that kind of manipulation, anyway.

Democrats were sensitive to the charge, though. In 1998, when much of the talk about Clinton centered on his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, American plans to strike where Osama bin Laden was believed to be staying were ultimately abandoned for a couple of reasons — in public, the administration said children's toys had been seen in surveillance footage and there were concerns that civilians and their children might be hurt or killed, but, in private, the administration was concerned about public relations and the perception that the actions were intended to divert attention from the president's relationship with an intern.

A few years later, bin Laden put the wimp factor right back on the political map with the September 11 attacks. In 2004, Democrats were so concerned about the need to look strong and decisive that they nominated a Vietnam veteran to run for president — even though, upon his return from southeast Asia, John Kerry made a name for himself speaking out against the war.

In the early 1970s, that was a courageous position for Kerry to take, but, 30 years later, in the aftermath of a coordinated and unprovoked attack on both civilian and military targets in early 21st century America, it was seen as weak, appeasing, compromising.

If it hadn't been for the economic collapse in September 2008, Obama might have had to defend himself against charges of being a wimp as well. His campaign began before the recession did, and, at that time, it was widely expected that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would dominate the 2008 race.

But, instead, the economy dominated, and Obama won, in large part because he was the anti–Bush.

Fast forward about 2½ years. The economy is still struggling, but the Democrats apparently have settled on the updated version of their strategy from 2008. They plan to remind people that it is George W. Bush's fault — unless there is a sudden and, at this point, completely unexpected drop in unemployment, in which case (in keeping with an old American tradition) the administration will take full credit for it.

Perhaps, if you are running for re–election and your economic policies have not improved the situation, that is your only option, your only excuse — especially when your party also enjoyed majorities in Congress that made just about any legislative initiatives possible for roughly six months.

But the Democrats didn't seize their opportunity. That was their fault.

I think it is a mistake to continue to point fingers. It comes across as whining. Part of being a strong leader is being willing to take responsibility when things don't go well.

Americans liked it when John F. Kennedy said, after the Bay of Pigs disaster, "Victory has a hundred fathers, but defeat is an orphan" and told them he would take responsibility for the setback, even though the plan had been put in motion during his predecessor's presidency — and he had been president for only a few months.

They liked it, too, when Harry Truman put a sign on his desk that said "The Buck Stops Here." They don't like it when presidents pass the buck. And they don't like would–be presidents who seem likely to pass the buck.

They like it when you "feel their pain," as Clinton put it. That was part of George H.W. Bush's problem in 1992. Too many Americans thought he had no clue what life was like for most Americans. And they like it when you share their values.

But they'll trade both of those things for a president who isn't a wimp, who will stand up for America.

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Thoughts on King's Day

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"If only we would see and respect our shared humanity, so much of what ails America could be healed.

"That was the essence of the message of Martin Luther King Jr. It was the underlying theme of President Obama's speech last week in Tucson.

"It was, as well, the heart of a lovely letter first lady Michelle Obama wrote last week to the parents of America's children about the tragedy in Tucson.

"If only we would acknowledge our shared humanity, our common desire to do what is right by our best lights, we might learn to listen and trust and work out our differences on firmer ground."

Chicago Sun–Times
Jan. 17, 2011

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Today is, of course, Martin Luther King Day.

If you have today off from work, you may already know that this holiday encountered some obstacles along the way to becoming a federal holiday. Ronald Reagan signed it into law in 1983, and it was first observed 25 years ago this Thursday. But it has only been recognized in all 50 states in the last decade.

King has been dead now for more than 40 years, but his memory is still vibrant for those who remember when he walked the earth, his words still speak to what Lincoln called the "the better angels of our nature."

Many people are putting their own spin on King's words today. Some are on target; others, not so much. The validity of one's interpretation depends, I suppose, on those who are doing the interpreting.

Well, people have been known to interpret and re–interpret things for years, generations, even centuries. They're still interpreting the Constitution in the courts.

But, today, I would just like to let King's words speak for themselves.

And I want to focus on three of his speeches that are considered among the Top 100 speeches of the 20th century by AmericanRhetoric.com.

King's "I Have a Dream" speech is, of course, at the very top of the list.

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And the speech he gave the night before his assassination, in which he proclaimed that he had "been to the mountaintop" and almost seemed to know that his life would end soon, is considered the 15th best speech of the 20th century.

I don't think that speech exists in its entirety on video. At least, I haven't seen it if it does — only clips like the one above. But if you want to read the text of the speech, you can find it here.

And then there was a great speech that is often overlooked by people but holds a unique significance in the story of King's life — "A Time to Break Silence" — that King delivered exactly one year before he was killed.

On April 4, 1967, King spoke out against the war in Vietnam. It was a costly decision for him. Many white Americans who had been his allies when he confined his activities to the pursuit of civil rights turned against him when he spoke against the war. The Washington Post editorialized that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."

I've heard some people speculate that, because King made that speech, powerful white Americans who had protected him to that point stepped to one side and let the conspirators hatch the plan that resulted in King's death.

I don't know if there is any truth to that.

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But I know that the words King spoke that day still resonate with us today.

"A time comes when silence is betrayal," King said. "And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam."

Many white Americans turned against King after he spoke those words. But not my mother. She always admired King and his nonviolent approach to social change, and she was a devout supporter of civil rights. When he spoke against the war, he spoke about another issue that was important to her.

And she grieved when he died.

But the things he stood for did not die with him.

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Uncovering a Coverup

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When I was a boy, the Vietnam War ripped apart the fabric of American life.

There was a time, early in America's involvement in the conflict, when the majority of Americans supported the U.S. effort. But public opinion gradually turned against the war and the president who oversaw it, eventually forcing Lyndon Johnson to abandon his pursuit of another term.

About two weeks before Johnson withdrew from the race, something happened in a tiny hamlet in South Vietnam that changed the dynamics of the public's perception of what was being done in its name halfway around the world.

I don't know if it played a role in Johnson's decision. I don't know if Johnson was even aware that it had happened. But it certainly played a prominent role in the first years of the next presidency.

On March 16, 1968, between 350 and 500 South Vietnamese civilians, most of them women, children and the elderly, were killed by members of a unit of the U.S. Army at a place called My Lai. Many of the victims were sexually abused. Some were beaten and/or tortured. Some were mutilated after they died.

It was not long after North Vietnamese forces had humiliated the Americans with their much–heralded Tet offensive in January 1968, which may explain, in part, the vicious nature of the Americans' attack, but it could never justify it.

I mean, how could anyone consider wiping out a tiny hamlet in South Vietnam any kind of payback for what the North Vietnamese had done? Only those, I suppose, who had been conditioned to regard all Asians as "gooks."

Initially, details were sketchy, as I recall, but I was just a child and not aware of much of what was happening in the world.

But the story that the American public was given was simply that — a story.

In fact, a coverup began virtually the moment the gunfire stopped on the day of the massacre. Official accounts spoke of a great victory, and Stars & Stripes said it had been a "bloody day–long battle" in which communist casualties outnumbered American, 128 to 1, but there were those in the Army who knew differently.

A soldier named Ronald Ridenhour who had heard of the massacre from friends gathered information on his own and sent letters about it to members of Congress and other officials about a year later.

In the annals of the My Lai massacre, It seems to me, that letter played much the same role as the letter from James McCord to the judge who presided over the original trial of the Watergate burglars a few years later.

Without that letter, the world probably never would have known the truth. It blew the lid off the coverup.

Journalist Seymour Hersh apparently got his hands on a copy of the letter and launched the investigation that would expose the dark side of the military's "body count" and "kill ratio" strategies. He published his findings with Dispatch News Service in November 1969.

About a week later, on Nov. 20, 1969, the media began to fill in the gaps. Time, Newsweek and Life gave considerable space to what Hersh had revealed.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer published explicit photos that had been taken at the scene — some of which can be seen in this post.

The coverup that had been successful for nearly two years came undone. And what had been originally praised by military leaders as an heroic chapter was transformed in the public's eyes into a despicable one.

It wasn't despicable because the media wrote about it. It was despicable because the media wrote the truth about what had happened.

It was a courageous thing to do, and I'm sure those who wrote for those publications faced their share of abuse for violating the code of silence that had kept well–connected violators from facing the consequences of their actions in the past.

Three members of a helicopter crew that had tried to intervene could sympathize.

They were denounced at the time by members of Congress. One died in Vietnam, but the other two received hate mail and death threats after they returned to the United States and were not recognized for what they had tried to do until three decades after the fact.

(I have often thought that it was such a cocoon of denial that must have permitted a serial killer nicknamed "Citizen X" to get away with his crimes in the Soviet Union as long as he did. Soviet officials refused to acknowledge that such a thing as serial murder was possible in their country, dismissing it as a "decadent, Western phenomenon."

(To their great chagrin, they learned that not only was such a thing possible in the Soviet Union but the killer actually had been in custody early in the investigation and was subsequently released. Based on the number of killings that had already been committed when he was arrested and the number with which he eventually was credited, it is possible that more than three dozen lives might have been spared if he had not been freed.

(We will never know if there were any other My Lais during America's lengthy involvement in Vietnam — although it seems to me there almost certainly must have been — or whether any might have been prevented if there had been a more forceful response from the U.S. government.)

More than two dozen soldiers ultimately were charged, but only one, Lt. William Calley, a platoon leader, was convicted of murder. Calley was given a life sentence, but, in what was a controversial move at the time, President Nixon decided to have Calley released, pending his appeal.

Eventually, Calley's sentence was adjusted, and he served 4½ months in a military prison. He was sentenced to — and could have ending up serving — a life sentence.

Nevertheless, his conviction only served to widen the gulf that existed between those who supported the war and those who opposed it.

Last year, more than 40 years after the massacre, Calley publicly apologized for the first time.

The revelation that babies had been among the victims at My Lai led many antiwar activists to label all Vietnam veterans "baby killers." That wasn't fair, but I guess it was the unavoidable legacy of the event combined with the deception the American public had come to associate with the war in Vietnam.

Tales of murdered infants from that case were so abundant at the time one might have thought that "My Lai" meant "nursery."

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I must admit that I have often wondered if the G.I. culture in Vietnam — as one soldier put it, "most people in our company didn't consider the Vietnamese human" — contributed not only to My Lai but other atrocities during the Vietnam era — like the napalm attack that led to the Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph of children fleeing from their burning village in 1972.

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Declaring War on Poverty

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If you look at an American history book today, you're likely to see Lyndon Johnson's name prominently linked with the Vietnam War.

There is certainly good reason for that. Like the mutually dependent tales of the Nixon presidency and the Watergate scandal, you can't tell the story of the Johnson presidency without telling the story of the Vietnam War — and vice versa.

Dig a little deeper in history's account of that administration, and you're likely to see Johnson's name mentioned in connection with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Indeed, Johnson was a major figure in those legislative acts as well, and it would be wrong for the history books not to mention his contributions to them.

It's interesting, isn't it, the things a president is remembered for — as opposed to what that president wanted to do when he took office? But the truth — as unpleasant as it often can be — is that the times define the president, not the other way around.

It's pretty well known that Johnson was an admirer of Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal," which should come as no real surprise since Johnson served in the U.S. House for the last two–thirds of FDR's presidency. But when LBJ became president, he had to lead a nation that was embroiled in a Cold War that never existed in Roosevelt's day. And the economy of the 1960s was in much better shape than the economy of the 1930s had been.

Johnson wanted to leave his mark on American daily life in a way that went beyond what FDR's presidency had achieved. When he left the White House, he wanted to leave behind a government that would offer to people not a handout but a hand up. He was ensnared by a war in a tiny Asian land few Americans knew existed, but he still had many domestic accomplishments, and he might well be remembered as one of America's 10 greatest presidents if not for that war in southeast Asia.

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Sometimes, I'm inclined to believe that LBJ may have felt more pressure to build on FDR's legacy than he felt to be worthy of being Kennedy's successor.

Nevertheless, on this day in 1964 — exactly six months after the assassination of John F. Kennedy — Johnson fired the first shot in the war on poverty.

He came to Ann Arbor, Mich., to address the graduates of the University of Michigan, and he took the opportunity to call upon them — and the rest of America's citizens — "to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society."

The "Great Society." That, Johnson apparently believed, would be the phrase that would conjure up memories of his presidency for future generations. The way "New Deal" summoned memories of FDR and the way "New Frontier" reminded listeners of JFK.

He pursued that goal because he had been personally touched by poverty when he was young in central Texas, touched by it in ways that patricians like Roosevelt and Kennedy never could have been.

He did not pursue it because powerful lobbyists encouraged him to do so. There are no lobbyists for the poor, the homeless, the uneducated. Nor were there many votes to be gained from legislation aimed at helping the needy.

He felt called upon to urge his countrymen "to lead America toward a new age." He genuinely wanted to help what the Bible called "the least of these."

Perhaps LBJ believed what Gandhi believed, that "[p]overty is the worst kind of violence." I don't know if he did or did not, but wouldn't it be ironic if Lyndon Johnson, whose name is cursed in the annals of history for America's long and bloody involvement in Vietnam, was driven in his quest for the Great Society by his revulsion to the violence of poverty?

"We have the power," he said, "to shape the civilization that we want. But we need your will and your labor and your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society."

And, in the days ahead, Johnson promoted — and pushed through Congress — enough domestic legislative accomplishments — among them, acts that created Head Start, food stamps, Work Study, Medicare, public broadcasting and Medicaid; acts that provided funds to support the arts and the beautification and conservation of the nation's natural wonders; acts that encouraged a higher standard of living for all — to make half a dozen administrations successful in the assessment of history.

Eradicating poverty was a worthy goal, but Johnson was not naive enough to think that it could be achieved in a few years. He warned his listeners that "the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor."

America, he knew, would always be a work in progress, and there are many challenges today that Johnson could not have anticipated 46 years ago. But, because of his efforts, when Johnson left office, the playing field had been leveled dramatically. In less than six years, Johnson brought the nation's poverty rate down from 22% to 13%.

In his speech at Ann Arbor, wrote historian Theodore H. White in "The Making of the President 1964," Johnson "was describing ... all the uplands of the new civilization to which America could be guided."

And, yes, there was a clear upside to it for LBJ when compared to his predecessor. "Kennedy had demanded sacrifice," wrote White. "Johnson promised happiness."

I recall once hearing George Carlin making fun of the tendency in America to "declare war" on anything we don't like, and then he recited a list of such wars — the wars on cancer, crime, poverty, drugs, etc.

It was a funny bit, but I wonder, when I think of what Johnson achieved, whether it isn't necessary to call for an effort that is the moral equivalent of war on some things in order to bring the kind of serious attention and focus that is needed to make them realities?

Maybe it will take that kind of approach to finally rid the world of cancer. Maybe things like cancer can't be stopped until they are treated like the deadly adversaries they are.

And, perhaps, that brings us to another lesson from the Johnson/Vietnam years that can be applied to almost anything from the war on drugs to the prospect of a nuclear war:

Some wars cannot be won and must never be fought.

And some wars, like the war on poverty and the war on terrorism, are going to take a lot of commitment and sacrifice.

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Innocence Lost: Four Dead in Ohio

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In so many ways, May 4, 1970, seemed like a fairly typical spring day.

Then as now, young people were preparing for the end of the school year. On college campuses, students were anticipating final exams. Those who were about to graduate were thinking about their lives after school. Some were polishing their resumes and their references. Others — who had no well–placed connections or lacked the resources for graduate school to rescue them from the draft — expected to soon be on their way to the jungles of Southeast Asia.

I was a mere child at the time, looking forward to summer vacation, but I was well aware of what was happening on the other side of the globe. Like everyone else, I knew about the war in Vietnam. I saw reports about it every night on the evening news. I saw articles about it in the morning paper, whether I read them or not as I made my way to the comics.

And I heard the adults in my world talk about it. My father was a professor at a small college in Arkansas. He and his colleagues often spoke about what was happening. Sometimes their conversations turned to young people who had been in their classrooms and wound up dying in combat.

As I was growing up, I became friendly with several of my father's students. We lived in the country, and my father's students often came to perform odd jobs for him when he was landscaping our property. I came to regard them as surrogate older siblings, and it was through them that I came to appreciate the divisions of the day, even if I didn't always understand the issues.

There were many things tearing at the fabric of American society in those days, but the war in Vietnam, in which hundreds of Americans were dying every week, was the great demarcation line between the generations in the late 1960s and early 1970s. There were exceptions, of course, but, in general, young people were against the war and older people supported it.

That, however, was based on the assumption that everyone knew where and how the war was being waged. Americans had been lied to many times about the progress of the war effort during the Johnson presidency, but, until that time, the belief was that the hostilities were confined to North and South Vietnam.

But that changed in late April 1970. On April 30, President Nixon went on national television to announce the "Cambodian campaign," which came as a shock to many, regardless of whether they supported or opposed the war.

Less than two weeks earlier, Nixon had announced the planned withdrawal of 150,000 troops during that year. Although Nixon never actually said so, this withdrawal suggested that there would be no military action in Cambodia or other nearby countries like Laos and Thailand. His secretary of state had even assured the House Appropriations subcommittee that there were no plans to escalate the war.

But that assurance disappeared like a puff of smoke in a gust of wind when Nixon announced the Cambodian campaign.

An agonized outcry arose from college campuses across the nation, and angry demonstrations followed. As I recall, the National Guard was summoned to many campuses. That was hardly news. Guardsmen had been called out to restore the peace in many places in recent years as public opinion began to turn against the war in Vietnam. They had even been called upon to break up riots, and there had been times when their tactics were far from genteel. Thus, their presence on college campuses that weekend may have been unsettling to some, but it was hardly surprising.

In fact, there were even some opponents of the war who felt it was necessary for someone to restore order. Demonstrations that were sparked by Nixon's announcement turned violent in many places, including Kent, Ohio, the day after Nixon's speech. The wrath of the antiwar protesters soon turned on the ROTC building on the Kent State University campus.

Now, most people had never heard of Kent, Ohio, in early May 1970. Fewer were aware of the existence of Kent State. But that soon changed.

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On Monday, May 4, 1970, the Guardsmen opened fire on a crowd of protesters on the Kent State campus. Four students were killed, including a fellow named Jeffrey Miller, over whose body a young runaway knelt, her face contorted in anguish, as a photojournalism student named John Filo snapped a picture that later won a Pulitzer Prize.

That photo may have been the most prominent of many images that came to symbolize the Vietnam era for millions.

The events of May 4 — in only 13 seconds, 67 bullets were fired — had a profound influence on the people of the day. For many, I suppose, it was a loss of innocence — if much innocence was left to lose.

For me, I would have to say it was perhaps the strangest moment of my childhood.

I was in elementary school, and I have no memory of anything that was said there, by anyone, in the aftermath of that bloody confrontation. I don't remember any of the teachers mentioning it, nor do I remember talking about it with my classmates.

But I vividly remember watching the news reports and being aware of the fact that young people, the same age as the people who were enrolled in my father's classes, had been shot down while trying to exercise their rights. I had seen many disturbing images in my brief life, but Kent State was the most disturbing for me.

Perhaps the most disturbing part was what came after the four students had died and nine others had been treated for their wounds. I guess the only appropriate word for it would be "ghoulish."

Apparently, many people — presumably supporters of both Nixon and the war effort — found it necessary to malign the dead.

For example, two of the four dead students were female — and one wasn't even a participant in the protest, just happened to be walking to class when a bullet struck her in the neck. Their families probably hadn't had time to claim their remains before completely unsubstantiated rumors were circulating about all four victims but especially the girls.

The girls were filthy, infested with lice, the rumors said. Neither wore underwear — which probably surprised no one since other rumors contended they were sexually promiscuous and even pregnant with illegitimate progeny. One of the girls was said to have been sick with syphilis and would have died soon, anyway.

In fact, the rumors indicated that all four victims were dirty (in keeping with the popular image of the time of unclean "hippies"), even though photos from that day and in the months prior showed four young people who appeared to be clean and well groomed.

As outrageous as the stories were, there were those who believed them, and, in 40 years, I have been able to reach only one conclusion. Those who died were guiltless. It was necessary to vilify them as much as possible to justify their deaths because, if their deaths could not be justified, the blame for those deaths rested with society.

And there were many in American society who simply would not accept that blame. It was easier for them to accept the idea that the four young people had brought their deaths on themselves.

It was a confusing time. It was often difficult to know who — or what — to believe. But the vitriolic nature of the rumors was reprehensible.

Nixon often spoke of unidentified "agitators" who, supposedly, were intent upon undermining the war effort — but, in hindsight, it seems more likely that Nixon feared that antiwar demonstrations undermined him.

The governor of Ohio didn't help matters by insisting that the protesters were "worse than the brown shirts and the communist element and also the night riders and the vigilantes." In hindsight, that seems to have been part of the campaign of character assassination against the victims, to equate them with the worst figures of history.

I get the sense, looking back on that event, that a certain amount of radicalization occurred and continued to occur in an ever–expanding wave, the way that ripples from a tiny stone in a pond grow ever wider as they move away from Point Zero.

The extent of radicalization varied from one individual to the next, but I think it was the point where the younger generation of Americans began to realize that they had not always been told the truth by their elders, that there were some things in American life that were wrong and always would be wrong and that, if there was to be a change, it truly had to start with them.

Maybe they had inklings about that before, but most managed to rationalize some things that they could no longer rationalize after four people were killed by National Guardsmen at a place where young people believed they were safe.

If that wasn't true, what else had they been told that wasn't true?

Young white people of that time had been told that, all visible evidence to the contrary, things really were "separate but equal" for black citizens. Young males began to acknowledge that females of their own age were not being paid the same for doing the same job.

I think, on that day 40 years ago, the seeds were planted that made it possible for a black man and a white woman to battle for the presidential nomination in 2008.

The maturation process took awhile, but, perhaps, on May 4, 1970, young Americans began their journey to realizing what Thomas Jefferson really meant when he wrote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Maybe that is the legacy of Kent State.

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