Remembering 1968

We're nearly two weeks into the new year, and we've got about 50 weeks left to go.

And it seems like there will be a significant 40th anniversary almost every week.

This month, for example, brings the 40th anniversary of the Tet offensive. It was actually a three-pronged attack by the North Vietnamese that went on through much of the year, but it was launched at the end of January, timed to begin at the start of the lunar new year, from which it derives its name.

The Tet offensive did not achieve all its goals, but it had considerable influence on the conduct of the Vietnam war and the faith the American people had in their government. It persuaded CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite that America could not win in Vietnam, and many of his fellow citizens agreed.

Anyway, that was how 1968 began. It is perhaps one of the greatest understatements that one can make to say that many important things happened before 1968 came to an end.

Commemoration of 1968 began last month, when The History Channel ran a two-hour documentary on that year, hosted by TV journalist Tom Brokaw, who has written books on "The Greatest Generation" that grew up during the Great Depression and defeated the Nazis and the Japanese in World War II.

I expect more documentaries and commemorations in the year ahead. In April, we will mark the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination. In June, it will be 40 years since Robert Kennedy's assassination. In August, it will be the 40th anniversary of the riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago. Next Christmas, it will be 40 years since the Apollo mission that took man closer to the lunar surface than he had ever been before.

Those are just a few of the anniversaries that will be coming up in 2008. There are so many others.

About a week ago, Todd Gitlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote a column suggesting the best ways to remember 1968.

He feels we shouldn't romanticize 1968 nor should we too readily dismiss events as having less significance than has been attached to them. "[G]ive its complications their due," writes Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University. "History is the most crooked of timbers."

I guess no one knew that better than the man who was president in 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson.

Johnson became president under horrific circumstances, and he won a full term on his own less than a year later with perhaps the highest percentage of popular support that any presidential candidate will ever have.

Few, if any, presidents have had the influence on social justice in this country that Johnson had. That's the area where Johnson, touched by poverty as a boy, truly wanted to leave his mark as president.

And it led to a virtual explosion of domestic legislation. Most people remember the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, but Johnson also pushed a legislative agenda that included bills dealing with the environment, education, Medicaid, food stamps, consumer protection, the public broadcasting system and national public radio. American daily life still bears the stamp of the Johnson years, even though few realize it.

I don't believe Lyndon Johnson ever wanted to be a war president. But he will always be remembered for a failed war in Vietnam that actually had its roots in Harry Truman's policy of containment.

That's an example of the kind of twists that life can throw at a person. Those twists become magnified at the presidential level.

Few presidents began a term in office with higher hopes than Johnson did in 1965 -- or ended a term in office four years later with high hopes as thoroughly demolished as Johnson's were in 1969.

If nothing else, 1968 demonstrated how important it is to elect presidents who have common sense. No one knows what unexpected crisis looms in the future, or whether it will be in the president's area of expertise. A president has to be prepared to deal with just about anything.

That's a subject the current occupant of the White House, George W. Bush, knows something about. When he was elected president in 2000, his lack of knowledge of foreign leaders was regarded as endearing by many voters. The events of Sept. 11, 2001, changed that perception quickly.

The presidents who had the flexibility and the creativity to face an uncertain future were the ones history remembers.