College students came “clean for Gene” in 1968, supporting Eugene
McCarthy, a principled, poetical anti-war Senator from Minnesota. McCarthy’s close second in New Hampshire Democratic
primary convinced President Johnson to withdraw. McCarthy kept the kid’s
attention only until Robert Kennedy sensed the opportunity and announced his candidacy.
Handsome, young, and with a whiff of
Camelot about him, the kids left Gene and hoped to go "all the way with RFK". After Bobby was murdered, Hubert Humphrey
was nominated in a fractious convention amid violent street protests. The Democrats never recovered. Humphrey was painted as a staid war-monger despite a lifetime of liberal achievements. Nixon’s henchmen (a fair characterization for
this crowd), probably ruined Johnson’s promising peace negotiations by promising
the South Vietnamese better conditions after the election. Richard Nixon was elected president. The war continued for another 6 years, with 30,000
American deaths, and untold numbers of wounded and dead Vietnamese.
Today, we see students excited about Senator Bernie Sanders,
who to his immense credit withstood the pressures and voted against the wrong
and disastrous Bush war against Iraq. (The measure authorized force, not exactly war, but everybody knew they were putting matches in the hands of neocon chicken-hawks). Bernie
also channels the deep frustration and anger against “Wall Street”, the big
banks that made huge fortunes on very risky bets that they ultimately lost, but were saved by the
government, only to continue their high risk semi-demi-criminal ways. Bernie’s
people are adamant that Hillary Clinton is complicit with the war and Wall
Street crowd, despite reasonable evidence that she has worked hard her whole
life for peace and fairness.
The Republicans seem to be settling on Senator Marco
Rubio. He’s no Nixon. For one thing, Nixon had a ton of experience:
as Senator – actually showing up for the job – and as Eisenhower’s Vice President
for 8 years. (Senator Cruz seems
a more Nixonian character, albeit wrapped in Goldwater extremism, and could probably
do Nixon’s both-arms-up-V-for-victory much better.) But Rubio shares Nixon’s lax personal
finances and coziness with big industry.
Are Democrats going
to divide and lose? Despite a sober
debate marked by a lot of agreement, in stark contrast to the rabid personal
attacks among the Republican candidates who can only agree that Obama is bad,
Bernie or at least his people are casting it as he-good-she-evil. The
stakes do not seem quite so high now as they were, in retrospect, in
Vietnam. But Rubio, striving to capture right
wingers, echoes Cruz’s call for indiscriminate bombing in the middle east,
Syria and Libya, which would put us very deep in a quagmire that could eclipse even
Vietnam in horror and loss.
Domestically, the Republicans are likely to reduce corporate and social responsibility,
leading to more outrages like the selfish Shkreli and disasters like the
poisoning of Flint. We must help bend the arc of history toward truth, justice, and freedom.
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