A Rendezvous With Destiny

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"If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth."

Ronald Reagan
Oct. 27, 1964

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It was 50 years ago today that Ronald Reagan gave the speech that is often credited with launching his political career — "A Time for Choosing."

"There are perhaps four speeches in American history that so electrified the public that they propelled their orators to the front rank of presidential politics overnight: Abraham Lincoln's Cooper Union Address of 1860, William Jennings Bryan's 'Cross of Gold' speech at the 1896 Democratic convention, Barack Obama's keynote address to the 2004 Democratic convention and Ronald Reagan's 'A Time for Choosing' speech," writes Steven F. Hayward in the Washington Post.

You may disagree with some — or all — of those choices. I certainly do. But all should be in the conversation.

Of course, there have been people whose political careers clearly began with a single speech or a single event, but, in my experience, most followed a gradual path to political prominence — if, indeed, it could be said that they achieved prominence. And Reagan certainly did, defeating a sitting president and winning re–election by a landslide four years later.

But most went into politics — or politically oriented fields — early in life. I suppose it is somewhat ambiguous in Reagan's case. He began his professional life as an actor and spent the better part of the next three decades making movies. His first political office, I guess, was in the early 1940s when he was an alternate to the Screen Actors Guild's board of directors. He later served as SAG's vice president and president.

Reagan was a Democrat early in his life and campaigned for Democrats, but the last Democrat he actively supported for the presidency was Harry Truman. He supported Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon before officially switching parties in 1962.

And 50 years ago today, he revealed his political ideology. It didn't help Republican nominee Barry Goldwater, who went on to lose to President Lyndon Johnson in one of the most lopsided landslides in American history, but it laid the foundation for Reagan's rise to the presidency.

"The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people," he said. "And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing."

If the emergence of modern conservatism can be traced to a single event, it is Reagan's speech. He put the choice in the starkest terms he could.

"This is the issue of this election," he said, "whether we believe in our capacity for self–government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far–distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves."

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American Rhetoric ranks the speech higher than any of Reagan's speeches as president — except the one he gave following the Challenger disaster.

But the speech that Reagan gave 50 years ago today was different, as Hayward (the Ronald Reagan distinguished visiting professor at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy) observes.

"The Reagan whom Americans saw ... was not the avuncular, optimistic Reagan of his film roles, or of his subsequent political career that emphasized 'morning in America' and the 'shining city on a hill,'" Hayward writes, "but a comparatively angry and serious Reagan."

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"In this vote–harvesting time, they use terms like the 'Great Society,' or as we were told a few days ago by the president, we must accept a greater government activity in the affairs of the people."

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When I read the text of Reagan's speech today, I cannot help but see stark parallels between that time and this one, particularly with an election only a week away — as it was when Reagan delivered his speech.

"This is the issue of this election," Reagan said. "Whether we believe in our capacity for self–government, or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far–distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves."

As he wrapped up his speech, Reagan told his listeners, "You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness."

A columnist for the Paris (Tenn.) Post–Intelligencer says Reagan's words "ring true to this day, though the magnitude of today's problems dwarf[s] those faced then."

That may or may not be an exaggeration. Every generation is warned that it is taking the path to destruction. It hasn't happened so far.

But the fact that it hasn't happened doesn't mean that it won't.

For that reason, I guess, messages like Reagan's "a time for choosing" will always find an audience, just as there will always be an audience for the message of "hope and change."

How loudly the message resonates depends upon the nature of the times — and the appeal of the messenger.

LBJ's Daisy Commercial Changed Everything

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Less than a year ago, I wrote that Lee Atwater deserved much of the credit for our present state of polarization, thanks to the way he ran George H.W. Bush's national campaign 26 years ago.

But I guess credit for the template for divisive modern political advertising goes to Lyndon Johnson and his 1964 campaign staff. They were responsible for a commercial that is remembered as the "daisy commercial." It had its one and only airing 50 years ago today.

It showed a little girl plucking the petals from a flower, as small children do, and counting. The girl who was shown in the commercial was 2 years old, and she was observed in a very serene, pastoral setting.

As she counted to 10 — haltingly and, at times, out of sequence, which is understandable with a child that age — an adult voice began a missile launch countdown in the background, and the camera zoomed in on the girl's face until the pupil of her eye filled the screen.

That was followed by a mushroom cloud — and a snippet from one of Lyndon Johnson's speeches.

"These are the stakes," Johnson said. "To make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die."

"Fifty years later, the visual is startling — even shocking," writes John Rash for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "But just as jarring are the words."

Another voice — I've heard it was sportscaster Chris Schenkel's (but I heard Schenkel call football games when I was growing up, and the voice in the commercial never sounded like his voice to me) — then said, "Vote for President Johnson on Nov. 3. The stakes are too high for you to stay home."

The message was clear. Johnson's opponent, Barry Goldwater, could not be trusted with nuclear weapons.

"You can love 'Daisy' for its power or hate it for its excess — I both love it and hate it — but it changed political advertising forever," wrote Drew Babb in the Washington Post.

It cannot be denied that the daisy commercial was an effective reminder that Goldwater had voted against the nuclear test ban treaty.

Babb, who teaches political advertising at American University and is president of the firm Drew Babb & Associates, went on to list the ways it changed political advertising. The logic is hard to fault.

• "It gave politicians a license to kill."
  
  Babb observed that "[e]arlier political commercials were overwhelmingly upbeat." He pointed out that, only four years earlier, an advertisement for John F. Kennedy featured Frank Sinatra singing a revised version of "High Hopes."
  
  Dwight Eisenhower's commercials were relentlessly upbeat.

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  Of course, television was still in its infancy then. As it grew up, it grew teeth. Fangs, in fact.
• "By all means, trash the tropes."
  
  The rules were clearly different. Johnson's ad agency was largely made up of "New York street brawlers" accustomed to competing over products, not politics, and they did what they knew.
• "Overreacting can boomerang."
  
  That is a fact that both parties should keep in mind today. Advertising has become much more sophisticated in half a century, but the experience of 1964 should not be forgotten. Republicans howled about the ad, and Johnson's campaign pulled it after its only showing 50 years ago today. But the networks reported on the Republican reaction and, so the viewers would know what the fuss was about, ran the ad over and over again.
  
  If they hadn't seen it when it aired as a commercial, they were bound to have seen it when it was shown repeatedly on the nightly news. Consequently, the message was reinforced — and almost certainly contributed to Johnson's landslide victory that fall.

Do you think the theme is outdated because America is the world's only remaining superpower? A group called Secure America doesn't. It recently unveiled a commercial called "Daisy 2," and it was clearly inspired by the commercial that ran 50 years ago.

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It pulls no punches. Here is what the narrator says:

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"These are the stakes. We either stand up to supporters of terrorism, or we and our allies risk losing the freedom we cherish. We must not let the jihadist government of Iran get a nuclear bomb. President Obama has an opportunity to stop it. But he is failing. Join with us. Let's secure America — now."

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When the Cheering Would Not Stop

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"When there were periods of crisis, you stood beside him. When there were periods of happiness, you laughed with him. And when there were periods of sorrow, you comforted him."

Robert F. Kennedy
Aug. 27, 1964

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It was the president's birthday, and he was scheduled to give a speech accepting his party's nomination that night. His newly anointed running mate also was scheduled to give a speech accepting his nomination.

But the delegates at the Democratic National Convention 50 years ago tonight gave their longest, most sustained ovation to the attorney general and late president's brother, Robert F. Kennedy.

Kennedy was there to introduce a film honoring his brother, who had been assassinated about nine months earlier.

There was no love lost between Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Kennedy. Johnson feared having to put Kennedy on the ticket with him to placate party leaders; the bad blood between them predated John F. Kennedy's administration, and LBJ had worried, on the day of the assassination, that Bobby Kennedy, as attorney general, would find some way to deny him the presidency.

That did not happen, of course, but so intent was LBJ on preventing Kennedy from seizing power that he had announced, early in 1964, that no members of his Cabinet would be considered for running mate.

(In my studies of that time, I have yet to see any kind of evidence that Kennedy ever wanted to be Johnson's running mate.)

Of course, that didn't prevent Johnson from relying heavily on Kennedy to get the Civil Rights Act passed earlier in the summer of 1964. If he was nothing else, Johnson was a political creature, and he knew the P.R. value of at least appearing to be in Kennedy's good graces. But he feared being upstaged by Kennedy.

Kennedy originally was scheduled to introduce the film on Tuesday, Aug. 25, but Johnson wanted to push it back to Thursday night. He was worried that a movement to draft Kennedy, born of the emotion of the moment, could force him to put Kennedy on the ticket. Consequently, he wanted Kennedy to make his appearance on Thursday night, the last night of the convention — when the nominations would be done deals and all that remained would be the acceptance speeches.

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Even though it was supposed to be Johnson's night.

Even though it was Johnson's birthday.

"I stood on the floor in the midst of the thunderous ovation," wrote historian Arthur Schlesinger. "I had never seen anything like it. Ordinarily an organ in the background controls the pandemonium of a convention. This time they stopped the organ after a moment or so. But the demonstration roared on, reaching a new intensity every time that Robert Kennedy, standing with a wistful half–smile on his face, tried to bring it to an end."

The delegates' ovation was not a surprise. The duration and fervor of it was.

As Schlesinger noted, Kennedy tried, unsuccessfully, to quiet the crowd so he could speak. Henry Jackson of Washington reportedly told Kennedy to let the delegates have their demonstration. "Let them get it all out of their systems," he supposedly said. And, for the most part, Kennedy did.

When Kennedy finally did speak, there couldn't have been a dry eye in the convention hall, particularly when he closed with a quotation from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet:"

"When he shall die
Take him and cut him out in little stars
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun."

Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired

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"We didn't come all this way for no two seats 'cause all of us is tired."

Fannie Lou Hamer
Aug. 22, 1964

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I really must apologize. I intended to write about this on the actual anniversary, which was yesterday, but it was an unusually busy day for me. Even so, I didn't want the anniversary — the 50th — to pass without observation. I want to tell the story. Because it is a good story, one that should be remembered.

It's the story of Fannie Lou Hamer.

I didn't hear of Fannie Lou Hamer until well after the fact. I think my mother was the one who told me about her, but that isn't really important. She was a civil rights activist from Mississippi who was in the national headlines for a little while in the summer of 1964, then largely disappeared from national view.

She was involved in the planning of 1964's Freedom Summer, when blacks in Mississippi were being taught how to register to vote. It was an effort that went on throughout the South during the 1960s, actually, but it was far more dramatic in Mississippi, where blacks and whites had lived separately under a social and legal system that had been in place for generations. Other places in the South were integrated — to varying degrees — but Mississippi had earned a reputation for being a "closed society."

I've only seen film of her, but Fannie Lou Hamer has always reminded me of the black women I knew when I was a child in central Arkansas — and, I suppose, she was about the same age as they were, too. I never could tell how old they were. (Guess I'm not much better at guessing people's ages today than I was then.) I knew what I needed to know, I suppose. They were always friends of my mother — at least, I always met them through her — and they were older than she was. I knew that much.

I didn't know until later the extent of Fannie Lou Hamer's suffering in Mississippi, which was much more overtly racist than Arkansas in those days — still is, to a degree, I guess. She was sterilized without her consent — by a white doctor as part of a state–sponsored plan to reduce the number of poor blacks. In the summer of 1963, she and a group of activists were arrested on a false charge and beaten so badly in police custody that it took weeks to recover.

I could understand if such experiences made her angry, distrustful and bitter. But Fannie Lou Hamer looked and sounded like the women I knew in my hometown long after her moment in the spotlight. However unpleasant their experiences had been, they were unfailingly positive. They spoke of faith and "the movement" and registering blacks to vote. So did she.

Fannie Lou Hamer sometimes seemed sad, but she had a profound faith in God and what Martin Luther King called "the promised land" — even though I don't think that King used that expression until the famous speech he gave the night before his assassination.

I guess you could call her a realistic optimist — she believed a change was gonna come, but she doubted she would live to see it.

In the summer of 1964, she was 46 years old and regarded as something of a maternal figure by the primarily young people who had been recruited and trained in the North to challenge segregation in the South.

Fannie Lou Hamer participated in the civil rights movement in Mississippi. She was there — and, as a journalist, I reserve most of my admiration for people who were there, wherever there happened to be. That commands far more respect from me than those who report on events from afar — even though, for many, it is the only way they can report or comment on most events.

Fannie Lou Hamer was there.

(It's funny, but, for some reason, I can't seem to refer to her as "Hamer" on second reference, which would be in keeping with the AP Style that has influenced my writing since college. I simply have to use her full name.)

Fifty years ago, the Democrats were preparing to hold their national convention. They would nominate President Lyndon Johnson for a full term in office. They would nominate Hubert Humphrey to be his running mate. They would hear a brief speech from Robert F. Kennedy introducing a film about the recently assassinated John F. Kennedy. The delegates would hear a lot about domestic policy, about civil rights.

Fannie Lou Hamer and the Freedom Democratic Party of Mississippi gave the national Democratic Party an opportunity to do more than talk in the days leading up to the Democrats' national convention. The Freedom Democrats challenged the legitimacy of Mississippi's then–all–white Democratic Party, demanding to be seated.

The Freedom Democrats were careful to do all the things the national party required in order to send a slate of delegates to the national convention, including hold a statewide convention to select 68 delegates. That slate included four whites. Then the Freedom Democrats sent their delegates — by bus — to Atlantic City.

Read the words of historian Theodore White, who also was there.

"It is difficult to compress the emotion that the Freedom Democratic Party aroused at Atlantic City into the narrow proportions of importance it holds in the story of the convention," wrote White. "There was no moment when the convention machinery ... might not have imposed a solution. But the intensity of the emotion was so deep, and all other proceedings were so dull, that for three days the convention paused to consider its only excitement.

"One gets the flavor best," White continued, "not by considering the issues raised but by considering and listening to a voice. On Saturday afternoon, as the Convention Credentials Committee moved to consider the situation in Mississippi, a robust Negress rose to testify. She gave her name as Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer of ... Ruleville, Mississippi [in Sunflower County, northwestern Mississippi] ... Then she proceeded to tell her effort to register to vote, legally, going back as far as 1962; and as her fine, mellow voice rose, it began to chant with the grief and the sobbing that are the source of all the blues in the world. The hot, muggy room was electrified as she concluded her narrative of a Mississippi Negro's life when one attempts to register."

At that point, most accounts I have read indicated that the majority of delegates would have voted to seat the Freedom Democrats, but other Southern delegations were threatening to walk out if that happened — and Lyndon Johnson, already fearful of the reaction in the South to the passage of the Civil Rights Act earlier that summer, did not want to lose additional Southern support.

So Johnson, with the assistance of his soon–to–be vice–presidential nominee and Humphrey's fellow Minnesotan Walter Mondale, worked out what was charitably called a "compromise" — two of the Freedom Democrats would be given at–large (and non–voting) seats.

The compromise was ludicrous, and the Freedom Democrats knew it. They rejected it, and Fannie Lou Hamer, who is probably best known for her statement that "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired"), summed things up beautifully.

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"We didn't come all this way for no two seats 'cause all of us is tired."

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By the way, Johnson's "compromise" didn't help him. He lost five Southern states and nearly lost a sixth. In the 50 years since, Jimmy Carter (in 1976) has been the only Democrat who carried more Southern states than he lost.

Half a Century Since an 'Historic Mistake'

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Fifty years ago, in August 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats reportedly attacked the American destroyer Maddox and, possibly, the Turner Joy in the Gulf of Tonkin.

See, there were (reportedly) two separate incidents. The first occurred on Aug. 2, 1964, and it seems pretty certain that one did happen. The Maddox was attacked, and a sea battle followed in which the Maddox fired nearly 300 rounds at the torpedo boats.

Two days later, the Turner Joy was reportedly fired on after it had moved into position to provide support for the Maddox. The evidence of that incident was shakier. It was initially reported as a sea battle, implying that both sides had been firing weapons, but it later emerged that the firing of Turner Joy's weapons may have been triggered (so to speak) by "Tonkin ghosts" — false radar images.

(An internal National Security Agency report, which was declassified in 2005, found that "[i]t is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night.")

Real or false, President Lyndon Johnson used the attacks as justification for escalating American involvement in Vietnam — and winning political support from some conservatives.

What most Americans did not know was that the Maddox had been sent to the Gulf of Tonkin on a special mission — to provoke the North Vietnamese into using their radar. The Americans would then track the radar — "the naval equivalent of spotting enemy artillery positions so that they can be destroyed by counterbattery fire," historian William Manchester wrote.

But the Americans apparently hadn't expected their presence to draw enemy fire.

The outcome was the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, a joint resolution approved by both chambers of Congress a week later. It gave Johnson the authority — without Congress' formal declaration of war — to use "conventional" military force.

The House approved the resolution 416–0. In the Senate, only two senators — Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska — voted against it.

"I believe this resolution to be a historic mistake," Morse told his colleagues. "I believe that, within the next century, future generations will look with dismay and great disappointment upon a Congress which is now about to make such a historic mistake."

It didn't even take that long.

By 1967, opposition to the war was growing and the rationale for American involvement was under close scrutiny by the public. A movement to repeal the resolution began to gather steam. The repeal was achieved as an attachment to the Foreign Military Sales Act of 1971, which was signed into law by Richard Nixon.

To further limit a president's war powers, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution of 1973 over Nixon's veto.

But there weren't many critical comments in August 1964.

It was perceived as the logical progression of the anti–appeasement policy that had been in style since World War II.

"President Johnson has earned the gratitude of the free world," wrote the Washington Post.

Fifty years later, The Hill calls it a "tragedy." To me, that seems more accurate than "historic mistake," although I guess both are correct.

And Johnson's response to the perceived aggression of the North Vietnamese apparently shored up his support on the right. In July, Gallup reported that 58% of respondents had been critical of his handling of the military effort in Vietnam, but in August, nearly three–fourths of respondents approved. That was an impressive shift. And, in November, Johnson won a full four–year term as president by the widest margin in history.

Whether legitimately or not, it is clear that Johnson reaped considerable immediate political benefits from what historian Theodore White called a "deft response" to a threat.

"For all I know," Johnson told a group of visitors in 1965, "our Navy was shooting at whales out there."

Extremism In the Defense of Liberty

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"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

Barry Goldwater
July 16, 1964

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He was called Mr. Conservative when he sought the presidency 50 years ago. Sixteen years later, when Ronald Reagan accepted the Republican nomination, he was called a "voice in the wilderness." Barry Goldwater's presidential nomination in 1964 was a "precursor" to Reagan's triumph in 1980, writes the Arizona Republic.

Fifty years ago tonight, Barry Goldwater accepted the Republican nomination to run against President Lyndon Johnson. As the Fairbanks (Alaska) Daily News–Miner wrote recently, "The Goldwater nomination, with its conservative revolution, pulled the GOP clearly to the right on the political spectrum. No more hanging at or near the center."

Until eight months earlier, he and everyone else expected the Democratic nominee to be President John F. Kennedy, but Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas.

1964 was "the year of Goldwater," historian William Manchester wrote. "In seven consecutive national conventions of the past ... Republican conservatives had suppressed their yearning for a presidential candidate from their own ranks. This time they did not suppress it. ... They wanted A Choice, Not An Echo, as their placards proclaimed, and on July 15 they nominated Barry Morris Goldwater, Arizona's senior senator and a denizen of deep right field."

The next night, when Goldwater was about to deliver his acceptance speech (which was ranked #62 of the Top 100 speeches of the 20th century by American Rhetoric), he was introduced by former Vice President Richard Nixon. 1964 would be the only time between 1952 and 1972 that Nixon was not on the Republican ticket. In fact, it would be the only time between 1952 and 2004 that a Nixon, Bush or Dole did not appear on the GOP ticket.

"Proclaiming himself 'a simple soldier in the ranks' of the party he had led four years before," historian Theodore White wrote, "Nixon pointed to the uplands where the Republicans must go, urged them to follow their new and great American leader, and concluded as he pointed, turning to the flag–draped catwalk that led to the speaker's rostrum, 'Down this corridor will walk a man into the pages of history.'

"For a moment, the thousands gathered in the Cow Palace held themselves in check," White wrote, "like a wave curling to surf. And then, as Barry Goldwater appeared, the surf burst."

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"From this moment, united and determined, we will go forward together," Goldwater told the delegates after acknowledging the prominent guests, Nixon among them — many of them had not supported him as he sought the nomination — "dedicated to the ultimate and undeniable greatness of the whole man. Together we will win."

The Republicans did not win that election, of course. "It was over before it began," White concluded in his book about the 1964 presidential campaign. "The issue had been decided long before — perhaps within minutes of the fatal shot at Dallas."

But, as insurgents always do at conventions when they have succeeded in toppling the establishment, the delegates in San Francisco cheered wildly for Goldwater and his conservative vision.

And, on this night 50 years ago, Goldwater may have reached his rhetorical peak.

At times, Goldwater was almost evangelical. "Our people have followed false prophets," he told the delegates at one point.

At others, he was pragmatic about what he perceived as the failures of the administration and the risks of those failures. "During four futile years," he said, "the administration which we shall replace has distorted and lost that vision. It has talked and talked and talked and talked the words of freedom, but it has failed and failed and failed in the works of freedom. ...

"Failures proclaim lost leadership, obscure purpose, weakening will and the risk of inciting our sworn enemies to new aggressions and to new excesses," he said.

"And the speaker was leading his audience way out there into a new world, a crusader's world unexpressed in American politics for generations — the visionary prophet and the martial patriot alternating, first the prophet, then the patriot, over and over again," observed White.

"The good Lord raised this mighty Republic to be a home for the brave and to flourish as the land of the free," Goldwater said, "not to stagnate in the swampland of collectivism, not to cringe before the bullying of communism."

At the end of his speech came the "final, unforgettable thrust at the party moderates," wrote White.

"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

When he had finished, the 1964 Republican convention came to its conclusion.

It did not nominate a president, but it was historic in some ways.

The name of Sen. Margaret Chase Smith of Maine was placed in nomination. It was the first time a woman's name had been placed in nomination at a major party's convention. She only received the support of 27 delegates (out of 1,308), but she has that distinction in the history books.

We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident

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I know some people who believe — mistakenly — that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination of just about any kind, was passed in response to the murders of three young civil rights workers in Mississippi in June 1964.

That would be a nice story — inspiring, even — but that's all it is, a story.

Drawing up a bill and successfully leaping through all the committee hoops to pass both chambers of Congress in less than a couple of weeks — which is what it would have taken for the president to be signing it on this day in 1964 as he did — would have been achieved in record–shattering time — especially at that time in American history.

Congress is a deliberative body. It simply does not do things that quickly — not now, not then. Not ever.

The bill was originally proposed a year earlier by President John F. Kennedy. Shortly after Lyndon Johnson succeeded Kennedy in November 1963, he began speaking of passing the bill as a tribute to the fallen president and made it clear that he was making the bill's passage a priority of his administration.

In fact, Johnson had all but promised the bill's prompt passage when he addressed Congress for the first time as president on Nov. 27, 1963. "No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long," Johnson said. (American Rhetoric ranked his speech 96th among the 100 best speeches of the 20th century.)

By the time of his death, Kennedy had managed to guide the Civil Rights Act through the House Judiciary Committee to the House Rules Committee, but one has to wonder how far a Northern politician could have taken it from there. The chairman of the Rules Committee was Virginian Howard W. Smith, a staunch segregationist who had pledged to keep the bill bottled up. It was languishing there when Kennedy was shot in Dallas.

At Johnson's bidding, Judiciary Committee chairman Emanuel Celler filed a discharge petition to force the bill out of the Rules Committee and onto the House floor. A successful discharge petition is embarrassing to members of congressional leadership because it circumvents their authority. When the discharge petition appeared likely to get the signatures it needed to succeed (the history of discharge petitions is that they frequently don't succeed), Smith chose to avoid the expected humiliation and permitted the bill to pass the Rules Committee.

Things went better than expected in the House, which approved the bill by a 2–to–1 margin. But the House was a walk on the beach compared to the Senate.

At the time of his death, Kennedy's approval rating, as measured by Gallup, was at its lowest of his presidency. He still enjoyed majority support, but it was much lower than it had been through most of his presidency. So much of what happened politically in 1964 was an emotional byproduct of his assassination. If that had not happened, though, could he have done what had to be done to break the stalemate in the Senate?

My guess, as a student of American history, is it probably took a Southerner like Lyndon Johnson to take it the rest of the way — much like it took a fervent anti–communist like Richard Nixon to make historic ice–breaking trips to China and Russia.

The irony of that, though, is that Johnson, even with his legislative experience, didn't accomplish it alone.

"From the start," wrote historian Arthur Schlesinger, "the new president had left no doubt about his vigorous support of the civil rights bill," and he had given Bobby Kennedy's Department of Justice authority over its passage.

"[New York Times columnist] Anthony Lewis later asked how Kennedy explained Johnson's blank check," Schlesinger wrote. "Johnson, Kennedy replied, did not see how the bill could pass the Senate. ... And, if the bill failed, Johnson, Kennedy thought, did not want sole responsibility."

There was always a political angle in the Johnson equations.

Within 12 weeks of assuming the presidency, Johnson pushed the legislation through the House, using the skills he had polished as the Senate's majority leader — and his newly acquired bully pulpit.

According to procedure, such a bill, after passage in the House, would be referred to the Senate's Judiciary Committee, which was chaired at that time by Democrat James Eastland of Mississippi, and he was opposed to it. The expectation was that, if it went to Eastland's committee, it would never be referred to the whole Senate.

But Majority Leader Mike Mansfield had a creative parliamentary tactic to bypass the Judiciary Committee.

Earlier, he had waived a second reading of the bill immediately after the first reading, which would have sent it to the Judiciary Committee automatically; Mansfield gave it a second reading at a later date and then, because there was no precedent for procedure when a second reading did not immediately follow the first, proposed that the bill be sent directly to the Senate floor.

When the Civil Rights Act arrived on the Senate floor in late March 1964, the so–called "Southern bloc" of 18 Democrats and one Republican launched a filibuster that lasted for about 2½ months. They managed to hold the floor by working in three tag teams — while one team held the floor, the other two would rest and prepare for their shifts. It was a very organized opposition.

In May 1964, Senate leaders from both parties worked out a watered–down substitute bill that they hoped would draw the support of enough swing–vote senators to end the filibuster.

I say it was watered down because it was weaker than the original legislation regarding the government's power to regulate the management of private business, but the substitution was not weak enough to require the House to reconsider it. Not if a House–Senate conference committee agreed.

And that seemed all but assured.

"The morality and need of the bill were so clearly inescapable that no man of good conscience or good sense could oppose it," historian Theodore White wrote. But there were issues that had yet to be resolved.

"[W]hat would it do?" asked White. "What could it solve? How much could an act of Congress do to make the two races of America accept each other as friendly citizens? Whose demands did it satisfy? What other demands lay behind Martin Luther King's simple insistence on dignity and equality of opportunity? And what were all the communities of America, both North and South, ready to concede in compliance with the new law?"

We're still wrestling with some of those issues today. "Away from Congress," White wrote, "nothing was clear." It seldom is.

Majority Whip Hubert Humphrey believed he had enough votes to end the filibuster, and, as it turned out, he did — four more than necessary, as a matter of fact.

A 71–29 vote on June 10 ended the filibuster, and, on June 19, two days before the civil rights workers disappeared in Mississippi, the compromise bill passed the Senate by a 73–27 vote.

More than 82% of Republican senators voted for it; just under 70% of Democrats did.

Ralph Yarborough of Johnson's home state of Texas was the only Southern Democrat (out of 21) to support the bill. Robert Byrd of West Virginia — a member of the coalition that conducted the filibuster — was the only Northern Democrat to vote against it.

As is required when there are disagreements between bills that pass the House and Senate, a House–Senate conference committee met to discuss the differences between the two bills and quickly endorsed the Senate's version.

Once a bill has the approval of a conference committee, it is sent to the House and Senate floors for one more vote, this time with no amendments allowed. Ultimately, of course, both chambers must approve the same version of a bill before it can be sent to the Oval Office for the president's signature.

This can be a long, drawn–out process. Not this time.

Johnson signed the bill into law 50 years ago tomorrow.

Tomorrow's anniversary is, indeed, a "milestone," as the Miami Herald says. But it is also true, as the Youngstown (Ohio) Vindicator observes, that it is a work in progress.

Fifty Years Since the Freedom Summer Murders

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"Mississippi seems almost too small a state to torment the conscience of the nation so deeply. Two little communities live there, entirely separated, hating and fearing each other in a condition of total lawlessness and immorality. ... [F]or three centuries, they have had only animal relations with each other, and all politics, all decision, is magnetized by the primordial fact of race hatred."

Theodore H. White
"The Making of the President 1964"

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In 1964, Ole Miss history professor James Silver labeled Mississippi the "closed society," and, as historian William Manchester observed, "it became clear as the 1960s progressed that an astonishing number of its people, white and black, were actually unaware of the civil rights movement. There were no attacks on the freedom riders there because the state police did not allow them the freedom of movement necessary to be mobbed."

As hard as it may be for most 21st–century people, even those living in Mississippi, to understand, Mississippi seemed to exist under a huge bubble in those days. If they weren't aware of the civil rights movement before, though, Mississippians started to become aware of it 50 years ago tomorrow.

It was on that day in 1964 that three civil rights activists — two Northern white men and a Mississippi black man — went missing in Neshoba County, Miss. After training in Ohio for what was being called "Freedom Summer" — and being given explicit instructions for what to do if they encountered any local resistance — more than 200 volunteers departed for the South on June 19 and arrived on June 21.

"Almost immediately," wrote Manchester, "three of them were reported missing."

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In hindsight, the scenarios that were suggested while the three were officially missing — their bodies were found about six weeks after their disappearance — may seem outlandish, but, at the time, they probably seemed thoroughly plausible to white Southerners who were openly fearful of intervention by "outside agitators."

While the search went on, as lakes and rivers were being dragged and helicopters were doing aerial reconnaissance, rumors were spread that the three had actually gone to Cuba or Chicago, where they were laughing at all the fuss their "disappearance" had caused.

If only that had been true.

In reality, what had happened was that the three were taken into custody that afternoon for allegedly speeding. They were held for about six hours while the execution squad was assembled, then they were released after reportedly paying a fine. They were never seen alive again.

Here is what happened, according to the story that emerged after their bodies were found.

Shortly after their release, the men were stopped by the execution squad. They were taken to a remote location and shot at point–blank range; the black man was savagely beaten before he was shot. Their bodies were buried near the base of a dam and not found for weeks; their car was burned and left on an abandoned logging road. It was found the day after the three disappeared.

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In the early weeks of the search for the three missing civil rights workers, the prevailing opinion among white Mississippians, Manchester wrote, was that the searchers "had no expectation of finding the youths. They were there ... to win Negro votes for President Johnson" in his campaign against Arizona Republican Barry Goldwater.

(That wouldn't help in Mississippi. Comparatively few blacks voted in Mississippi in those days — but, since Mississippi gave Goldwater more than 87% of its vote, Johnson probably didn't expect to carry Mississippi, anyway.)

Eventually the searchers did find the bodies after the case had drawn national attention. In the account of the killings that emerged, the deputy sheriff addressed the men after the bodies were buried. "You've struck a blow for the white man," he said. "Mississippi can be proud of you." Then he warned them all to remain silent — or risk certain death.

Three years later, the case led to the conviction in federal court of seven members of the execution squad for depriving the men of their rights.

It was the first successful prosecution of a civil rights case in Mississippi.

If you're one of the so–called "millennials," that might not seem so special. But let's put it into some perspective.

When America was founded, the Founding Fathers wanted the states to have most of the say over how things were done within their state boundaries. Thus, most criminal charges, like homicide and theft, were — and still are — state charges. The federal courts get involved only when an alleged crime involves a federal law or cases reach the federal level in the appeals process.

These murders were committed at a time when juries in Mississippi — and most of the South, for that matter — routinely acquitted white defendants charged with killing blacks.

Federal authorities knew this so they used the strategy of prosecuting in federal court with the strongest charge in their arsenal — depriving the victims of their civil rights.

Compared to depriving someone of life, that may not seem like much, but it was that or nothing. Prosecutors operated on the belief that something was better than nothing.

An Unheeded Cry for Help

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Fifty years ago today, a young woman named Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death a short distance from her home in Queens, N.Y.

By itself, that isn't too noteworthy, but there were unusual circumstances that made the case stand out, primarily the fact that more than three dozen of her neighbors apparently heard her screaming for help — but did nothing to assist the 5–foot–1, 105–pound woman.

Why? It was probably explained best in a simple comment one of the neighbors made to a New York Times reporter: "I didn't want to get involved."

The attack lasted roughly 30 minutes. The assailant apparently selected Genovese at random and was chased off twice after he started stabbing her — the first time when a neighbor shouted from his apartment window, "Hey, let that girl alone!" and the second time when other windows started opening and the attacker decided to go move his car — but returned twice, the last time to finish off the semiconscious victim, who had managed to get inside one of the buildings.

Her killer found her by following the trail of blood she left behind. He finished her off, then raped her corpse.

About 40–45 minutes after the attack began, one of the neighbors called the police — after first calling a friend for advice on what to do. The police arrived in a couple of minutes; in the course of their investigation, they found 38 witnesses who had heard or seen at least a portion of the attack.

He suggested the witnesses may have been confused by what they were seeing and hearing.

An investigator told the press that Genovese might have survived if the police had been summoned when the attack began; otherwise, there didn't seem to be anything too unusual about the murder at first. It received scant coverage in the newspapers, and little was said in the investigators' report.

"This tendency to shy away from reporting crimes is a common one," the deputy police commissioner said at the time — and, in fact, the case drew no special attention.

Until two weeks later, when the New York Times ran an article with the headline "37 Who Saw Murder Didn't Call."

The case was troubling for many people who wondered how civilized humans could stand by and do nothing while a young woman was being brutally murdered. Some offered the explanation that they thought it was a lovers' quarrel, and they didn't want to interfere.

One psychiatrist said the failure of the witnesses to act promptly may have been at least partly because of television. "We underestimate the damage that these accumulated images do to the brain," he said. "The immediate effect can be delusional, equivalent to a sort of post–hypnotic suggestion."

There were numerous theories offered to explain why no one did anything, but none was satisfactory. The Times, in a hand–wringing editorial, wondered why that was. "Seldom has The Times published a more horrifying story," the editorial said, "than its account of how 38 respectable, law–abiding, middle class Queens citizens watched a killer stalk his young woman victim ... without one of them making a call to the Police Department that might have saved her life."

Fear was a plausible reason, I suppose. The city of Boston, about 200 miles to the northeast of New York, had been gripped by the fear of the "Boston strangler" killings around that time. The thought of that may have intimidated some of the witnesses.

But, in the end, it was still hard to rationalize what had happened.

Folks are still trying to make sense of it. Karen Matthews writes for the Associated Press that the case still fascinates people half a century later.

"Kitty Genovese's screams for help couldn't save her on the night she was murdered outside her apartment in 1964," Matthews writes. "Fifty years later, those screams still echo, a symbol of urban breakdown and city dwellers' seeming callousness toward their neighbors."

There are those who, much like the folks who deny the Holocaust, argue that Genovese's murder was not quite what it has been made out to be. Some people, including author Kevin Cook who just published a book on the subject, take issue with various parts of the story, including the number of witnesses.

Some observe that Times metro editor A.M. Rosenthal had lunch with the city's police commissioner about 10 days after the murder, and the commissioner mentioned the case, prompting Rosenthal to send a reporter out to Queens to get a compelling story.

And the reporter came back with a compelling story.

The Genovese case was responsible, I think, for the designation "the bystander effect," a psychological phenomenon in which the more witnesses there are, the less likely people are to help an individual in distress. They conclude that someone else is sure to call the authorities, that such a call may already have been made.

In the long story of human history, I'm sure something similar must have happened before Genovese was slain, but, for whatever reason, it never caught the public's attention the way the Genovese case did.

If you want to find something good that came from the case, Matthews points out that "[i]t has been credited with spurring adoption of the 911 system in 1968 as well as 'Good Samaritan' laws that give legal protection to people who help those in trouble." And that is good.

The emergence of mobile technology makes it easier for people to reach out for assistance as well.

So I suppose the question is: Can a Genovese case happen in the 21st century?

And my answer is: I don't know. Modern technology might not make a difference. I gather that most, if not all, of Genovese's neighbors had access to telephones.

The "bystander effect" might still apply, anyway, whether the phones were mobile or landline.

Insurgency in New Hampshire

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"On Tuesday, March 10, New Hampshire enjoyed an old–fashioned New England blizzard: up to 14 inches of snow from the Canadian to the Massachusetts border — snow crusting the kepis of the Union veterans, snow blocking Gov. John King's new state highways, snow slushing the streets of Manchester, snow over mill and factory and ski slope and farm. New Hampshire's polls closed at 7 p.m. ... By 7:18, Walter Cronkite announced over CBS that Henry Cabot Lodge had won New Hampshire."

Theodore H. White
"The Making of the President 1964"

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To say the least, it was an unexpected way to begin the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

In 1964, the Republican Party was divided between its conservatives and its moderates. Former Vice President Richard Nixon managed to bring the two groups together in 1960, but he wasn't a candidate in 1964. Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona was the favorite of the insurgent conservatives, and Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York was the candidate of the establishment moderates.

"By 1964, New Hampshire was not quite so rural, Yankee and insular as popular myth held it," recalls the Manchester (N.H.) Union–Leader. "Yet the 1964 primary provided a result so startling that the belief in the Yankee traits of independence and inscrutability would find new life."

Startling was probably a good way to describe 1964.

The assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963 cast a dark shadow over everything. It was a startling event — to put it mildly — and it changed the political landscape in 1964.

Historian Theodore White wrote that, until the assassination, Goldwater saw Kennedy as "history's perfect opponent." The two men would "debate the issues up and down the country, they would draw the line between the conservative and liberal philosophies," much as they had when they had been colleagues in the Senate. Goldwater expected to lose, but he also expected to do well enough to put the fledgling conservative movement in position for greater things in the future.

Goldwater genuinely liked Kennedy, White wrote. When they were in the Senate together, Goldwater often chided Kennedy with "Your father would have spanked you" for casting certain votes. They disagreed often, but they liked each other.

"And then came the assassination," White wrote. "The assassination shocked Goldwater as it shocked every American by its brutality and senselessness. ... Now, after the assassination, he was faced with running against another man, a Southerner, of an entirely different sort. "

Goldwater was heartsick, White wrote. He had received hundreds of hateful letters "as if he, personally, were responsible for the killing of the man he was so fond of." He thought of abandoning his campaign, then thought better of it.

When the campaign for the nomination began, Rockefeller was seen as the front–runner, but he lost considerable momentum due to a couple of related personal issues. First was the subject of his recent divorce. At the time, no president had ever been divorced, and that was enough of a social taboo by itself (at least until once–divorced Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980).

But then Rockefeller remarried in 1963. His bride, who was 15 years younger, had recently been divorced, too, and she had given up custody of her four children to her ex–husband. That was a double whammy.

"Have we come to the point in our life as a nation," asked Prescott Bush, the father and grandfather of presidents, "where the governor of a great state, one who perhaps aspires to the nomination for president of the United States, can desert a good wife, mother of his grown children, divorce her, then persuade a young mother of four youngsters to abandon her husband and their four children and marry the governor?"

So that was working against Rockefeller, who lost 20 percentage points among Republicans amid rumors that he had been having an affair with his bride while she was still married. The rumors were fueled by the rapid succession of events — her divorce quickly followed by her remarriage to Rockefeller. The appearance of it would cost Rockefeller the nomination, many said, although many also were not comfortable with Goldwater.

The race between Goldwater and Rockefeller was regarded as close when New Hampshire's voters went to the polls 50 years ago today. Both sides thought they would win, but neither one did.

They were undone by ex–Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, Nixon's 1960 running mate who won the primary as a write–in. Lodge received 36% of the vote to 22% for Goldwater, 21% for Rockefeller and 17% for Nixon.

To say the least, it was a surprising outcome. Some folks probably were shocked, and Lodge likely was one of them. The whole write–in movement had been the work of a small group of political novices; Lodge didn't think it would amount to much and made no effort to encourage the movement. In fact, he had renounced it two months earlier.

But former President Dwight Eisenhower had publicly urged Lodge to run in December, and moderate Republicans were encouraged the day before the primary when it was revealed that Lodge had not had his name removed from the ballot in Oregon, site of the next officially contested primary.

It was a time when delegates were still won in caucuses or state conventions, not primaries, and that was the path to the nomination for presidential hopefuls, but contested primary results were often viewed as evidence of a candidate's vote–getting ability (or lack thereof).

In the aftermath of the New Hampshire primary, all the attention was on Lodge. Without lifting a finger, he had won the first Republican primary. But there would be no more legitimate tests of vote–winning skills for a couple of months.

Illinois actually was next on the political calendar, but the state's party leadership was staunchly behind Goldwater. New Jersey's primary was a week later. No candidates had filed so all votes were write–ins.

Primaries were held in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania the week after that. No candidates appeared on the ballots in those states, either. The day before the primaries, Rockefeller called for air strikes in Laos and Cambodia to help South Vietnam. It was a controversial position. Lodge won Massachusetts, Pennsylvania voted for its governor, and Rockefeller received 9–10% of the vote in both.

Mostly uncontested primaries followed in Indiana, Nebraska, Ohio and West Virginia.

Lodge began to reconsider when the write–in campaign paid off with a victory in New Hampshire. So did the press and GOP elders.

Lodge won primaries in Massachusetts (the state he had represented in the U.S. Senate) and New Jersey, but then he decided that he really didn't want to be president and withdrew his name from consideration.

As the campaign moved West for the Oregon primary, White wrote, "Lodge's picture was on the magazine covers across the country; Lodge led every poll from coast to coast. ...

"In the aftermath of the New Hampshire primary," White wrote, "Oregon's Republicans shifted as the nation's Republicans shifted, and the first Harris (Poll) samplings showed thus: for Lodge, 46%; for Nixon, 17%; for Goldwater, 14%; for Rockefeller, 13%."

"For Rockefeller," wrote White, "the name of the game was now impact. From New Hampshire on, there was no longer any realistic chance of his becoming the Republican nominee. But to veto the choice of Goldwater, he must prove before the convention assembled that Republican voters would not have Goldwater on any terms."

That next round would belong to Rockefeller — but the nomination would go to Goldwater.

The Golden Anniversary of Times v. Sullivan

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When I was studying journalism in college, my professors all spoke of the landmark Supreme Court decision in the New York Times v. Sullivan case, and they did in reverent terms. Rightfully so.

Most of us students knew nothing about it — it had all happened before our time — but, within the context of my own experiences since college, I appreciate it more with each passing year. It reaffirms my faith in the First Amendment.

They told us that perhaps no other Supreme Court decision — certainly no modern–era decision — has been more important to the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and the press than the one in the Times v. Sullivan case, and they were right.

(Richard Labunski, for one, asserts without hesitation in the Providence (R.I.) Journal that it is the "most important First Amendment case in the nation's history." I'm inclined to agree.)

I teach journalism in the community college system here, and Sunday's 50th anniversary of the Times v. Sullivan decision makes me wish I could teach a class in communications law. I'm not a lawyer, though, which I suppose would prevent me from teaching such a class, but I think I understand that case well enough that I could discuss it with my students. I'm sure it would be a lively conversation.

Maybe it is enough to know that it is possible for me to tell my students so many other things because of the freedoms that decision affirmed and strengthened.

It probably would be helpful to give a little background information.

Nearly four years earlier, in 1960, the New York Times ran a full–page advertisement that had the appearance of an article but was actually an attempt to raise money for Martin Luther King Jr.'s legal defense against perjury charges in Alabama. In modern lingo, I suppose you would call it an advertorial.

At issue wasn't deception but inaccuracy and defamation. The article in the advertisement described actions that had been taken against civil rights activists in Alabama. Some of the descriptions were accurate, some were not — and some involved the police in Montgomery, Ala.

The article in the advertisement incorrectly reported that Alabama's state police had arrested King seven times; in fact, he had been arrested four times. Montgomery's public safety commissioner, L.B. Sullivan, considered the advertisement defamatory (to him because he supervised the police even though he was not mentioned by name) and demanded a retraction (which was a condition, under state law, for a public official to pursue punitive damages; he could do so if no retraction was forthcoming).

The Times refused, and Sullivan filed suit against the Times and four black ministers who were mentioned in the advertisement.

At this point, there were hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of libel actions pending against news outlets covering the civil rights movement in the South, which had kind of a paralyzing effect on many members of the press. The fear of legal action prevented many news organizations from being more aggressive in their coverage of civil rights in the South.

Half a million dollars was awarded to Sullivan by a Montgomery jury, and the Times appealed the decision. The appeal made its way to the Supreme Court, which overturned the decision by a 9–0 vote and, in the process, established the standard of actual malice.

The Alabama law was ruled to be unconstitutional because it had no provisions protecting freedom of speech and freedom of the press, which are required by the First and 14th Amendments. The Court also held that, even if such provisions had been made, the evidence did not support the judgment against the Times.

The Court's ruling imposed a new burden on public officials who are plaintiffs in a libel suit — actual malice. There must be proof that the defendant knowingly published false information or acted with "reckless disregard for the truth."

As Justice Hugo Black wrote, it is hard to prove or disprove malice. Well, it might be easier to prove today, what with the digital paper trail that is left through emails, text messages and the like. I don't know. Undoubtedly, that part of the law will be shaped and refined in the years ahead.

That's how it has worked in the last 50 years. Subsequent decisions and Supreme Court appeals have addressed elements of libel law and actual malice. For example, while the original Supreme Court ruling applied only to public officials, it has been extended to include public figures as well.

And it has had implications that went beyond the working press to include commentary, criticism, even satire as well as the definitions of concepts such as privacy, indecency and obscenity.

For advocates of the First Amendment (which should mean all Americans), the real hero in the decision was Justice William Brennan, who wrote about the critical role a free press plays in keeping the public informed and encouraging open debate. Even "caustic debate" is vital in a democracy, Brennan said.

Inevitably, Brennan observed, inaccurate statements will be made, and incomplete reports will be published in a dynamic democracy. Public debate must be "uninhibited, robust and wide open," and it "may well include vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials." Consequently, "breathing space" must be permitted.

The Supreme Court didn't have to hear the case. It always has the option of refusing to hear a case. But the Justices saw the First and 14th Amendment implications in the case, and the ruling that was issued half a century ago safeguards the "unfettered interchange of ideas" that continues to be defined.

Waging the War on Smoking

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of Dr. Luther Terry's published warning about the dangers of smoking.

That brought about some immediate changes in American life — i.e., the warning labels on cigarette packages and, a few years later, the ban on tobacco advertising on television — and set in motion some longer–term changes.

Sarah Boseley of The Guardian rightly observes that the war hasn't been won. While the smoking rate has gone down, the number of smokers actually has gone up.

In a world that has long worried about the "population explosion" (people were worried about that when I was a kid, probably before that), that isn't really surprising, is it?

So I guess it's a variation on that age–old question, is the glass half empty or half full?

"The war on tobacco is far from being won," Boseley writes from the half–empty corner. "More than half of men smoke every day in several countries ... (and) [m]ore than a quarter of all women smoke."

As a reformed smoker (nearly seven years now), I feel I have an understanding for both sides. Smokers see what they do as a legal, personal choice, and they resent being treated like criminals (or lepers) for doing it. Nonsmokers believe they have a right to breathe clean air that isn't polluted by cancer–causing smoke.

Irresistible force, meet immoveable object.

I agree with Boseley that the war is not won. But tobacco has a considerable jump on things. Its use on this continent goes back some 3,000 years, and a coordinated public effort to eradicate it has been going on (at some points, dragging) for only a handful of decades.

Yet, in that time, the smoking rate has been cut in half. That is encouraging. (Welcome to the half–full corner.)

"[T]he benefits from the drop in use, accumulated across so many lives, are incalculable," writes the Washington Post.

It's like a conversation I had with a friend in the early days of the Great Recession. He said unemployment was destined to remain high because the jobs that had been lost were not coming back.

(It was like listening to Timothy McVeigh speak of "collateral damage.")

Did that mean we should not even try? I asked. Well, no, he grudgingly admitted.

Just because the war on smoking hasn't been completely won does not mean we should stop fighting it. We just need to be smarter about how we do it.

In the war against smoking, the Post recommends increasing taxes on tobacco products to discourage their use. I'm not sure how I feel about that proposal. One of the arguments against smoking is that it disproportionately affects the poor, but isn't that who will be most adversely affected by increasing the taxes? Wealthy and middle–class smokers will pay the taxes. They may complain about it, but they will pay it, and they will continue to smoke. The poor will continue to smoke, too, but the additional taxes they pay will have a financial domino effect — taking away money the poor would have used for food, clothing, shelter.

I'm more inclined to support the proposal that the FDA exercise its authority and require tobacco companies to reduce the amount of nicotine in their products. That has the potential to give heavy smokers the help they need to break their addiction and keep lighter smokers from becoming addicted.

USA Today says the war on smoking is "one of the nation's greatest public health success stories — but not for everyone."

That's one of those lines that expresses so much more than its words actually do.

America is not a one–size–fits–all nation. We celebrate diversity here, but we don't seem to have as much regard for the diversity of diversity. I'll grant you that money can be a powerful disincentive to smoke, but that assumes that the addict can control his/her addiction — and the nature of addiction is that the affected person has no control over it.

It is that very fact upon which tobacco companies have relied to make their fortunes: Get 'em on the hook, and they're yours.

Does that mean we shouldn't continue to fight the war? No. It does mean we should re–examine our tactics and never take our eyes off the ball.

"Anti–smoking forces have plenty to celebrate this week, having helped avert 8 million premature deaths in the past 50 years," writes USA Today. "But as long as 3,000 adolescents and teens take their first puff each day, the war is not won."

Has the War on Poverty Failed?

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"We do this, first of all, because it is right that we should. We do it also because helping some will increase the prosperity of all. Our fight against poverty will be an investment in the most valuable of our resources — the skills and strength of our people. It strikes at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty."

Lyndon B. Johnson
Jan. 8, 1964

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It was in Lyndon Johnson's first State of the Union address 50 years ago today that he proposed the "War on Poverty."

The War on Poverty was, as NPR observes, a personal thing for Johnson. He had been vice president under one of the wealthiest men ever to serve as president, but he had been brought up in poverty. He had known — firsthand — the "constant moments of humiliation ... and insecurity" of penury.

As Susan Page writes in USA Today, what followed was an "historic rush of legislation" — Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, food stamps.

It was a noble idea — still is, really, this idea of eliminating poverty. It was filled with good intentions, but, after half a century (or, since the Economic Opportunity Act wasn't really enacted until August 1964, nearly half a century), it is appropriate to ask a few questions about this war.

Like, what is (or was) the definition of victory?

We ask that of any conventional war that is proposed because we know a lot of money will be spent on it, but I cannot recall hearing such a definition expressed by any of the politicians who supported the legislation. Trillions of dollars have been spent in this war, but the poverty rate appears to be virtually unchanged since the legislation's passage.

At the time that Johnson proposed the War on Poverty, the poverty rate was in decline, falling from more than 22% in 1959 to around 19% in 1964. In its first year of existence, the Economic Opportunity Act may have contributed to the further decline of the poverty rate to around 15%, but it has leveled off and remained in that range ever since. At times, it has been a little lower, at other times it has been a little higher, but it has been consistent.

If the objective of the War on Poverty was to eliminate poverty, it has failed.

Victory (of a sort) probably could have been declared in 1965, but, after all these years, with the poverty rate remaining roughly the same, it would be hard to say the War on Poverty has been a success. In fact, it would be difficult to argue with Ronald Reagan's assertion that poverty won.

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Bill Clinton famously declared 18 years ago that the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 "end[ed] welfare as we know it."

From the perspective of 2014, it is clear that welfare "as we [knew] it" did end at that time, but the beast wasn't slain. Not really. A much larger beast emerged to take its place.

Which brings me to another question:

Did the War on Poverty succeed?

I'm inclined to say "no" because poverty has not been eliminated. Even if one was willing to accept the idea that poverty will always be with us, that the idea of eliminating it entirely was unrealistic and that partial elimination of poverty was an acceptable outcome, the War on Poverty still came up short because it created new, unexpected problems.

But, of course, victory was never defined.

It would be wise for us as a nation to ask ourselves some hard questions. I assume that most of us would like to see the ills of the world eliminated — but we need to act responsibly, honestly evaluate what has been done so we can have an idea what works and what doesn't and then focus on those areas where further progress can be made.

We can't continue to act as if there is an unending supply of money to throw at our problems, not with the economy still as shaky as it was when the current administration took over five years ago.

If any attention had been paid to encouraging job creation and putting Americans back to work, there might be more of a revenue reserve in the federal coffers, but unemployment has been permitted to languish unattended so the prudent thing to do is to recognize the economic limitations we face and make realistic, if modest, goals if we are going to entertain the idea of pursuing LBJ's dream in the 21st century.

As contradictory as it sounds, we have to remember that there was more prosperity in America when the War on Poverty was enacted than there is now. When the War on Poverty was signed into law, one income was usually enough to support a family; within a decade, most families needed two incomes just to get by, and the absence of parental supervision when the children got home from school caused new social problems.

Today, two incomes are seldom sufficient to support a family, and the pattern is perpetuated.

The experience with the War on Poverty — indeed, the entire welfare concept — showed us that, as much as we might wish it were otherwise, most things in life are not simple. Most things in life are, in fact, complex, and they deserve to be studied carefully — even exhaustively — before the government intervenes on a large scale.

The nature of unintended consequences being what it is, it simply isn't possible to avoid them entirely, but, when such a significant objective is undertaken, it is important to try to anticipate as many as possible and minimize them.

One need look no further than Obamacare's implementation to find ample cause for caution.

Stephanie Coontz writes at CNN.com that the work isn't done. Coontz says the War on Poverty was "abandoned" by the politicians in the 1980s and that more could have been done.

Perhaps she is right. But, like it or not, there are limits to what can be done in the absence of an economic boom.

The Day a Birmingham Church Was Bombed

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A couple of weeks ago, the nation paused to remember Dr. Martin Luther King's inspiring "I Have a Dream" speech that was given at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.

That was certainly a great moment — an uplifting moment — in American history. But 2½ weeks later, in the truest sense of Sir Isaac Newton's laws of physics, there was an equal and opposite reaction.

Fifty years ago today, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. — which had been used as a meeting place for King and other civil rights leaders (and a gathering place for civil rights rallies) — was bombed during the Sunday School hour. Four black girls were killed. Three were 14 years old, and one was 11.

As much credit as one may be tempted to give King for the legislative and judicial triumphs of the civil rights movement of the '60s, it is my opinion that what happened 50 years ago today was the movement's critical moment.

There were still a few places in America in 1963 — as there are today — that were thought to be safe places to be — home, school, church. To attack one of any of these was to attack all such places in America — and thus it was an affront to nearly all Americans, whether they supported or opposed the civil rights cause, because nearly all Americans have homes (however modest), attend school and/or frequent a house of worship.

Martyrs are often necessary for truly transformational movements to achieve their objectives, and I think it was that way with the civil rights movement. King's speech was a tremendous high for supporters of the movement, but, as such things often do, it seems to me that it may have created a sense of complacency. The momentum of the movement may have stalled.

I don't know. It was before my time.

But, based on what I have read, in books and newspaper accounts, it was far from certain, in the aftermath of King's speech, that the Civil Rights Act would pass. The bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church restored the movement's momentum.

Sympathetic Americans were probably tempted to believe, after seeing King's speech, that the movement's triumphs were coming at an historically rapid clip, which may have led many to assume that supporting civil rights and voting rights legislation were no–brainers — while unsympathetic Americans may have felt a sense of urgency to stop what was perceived as a threat to a way of life.

In the aftermath of the bombing, many newspapers in the North lamented that they hadn't taken the movement as seriously as they should have. The Milwaukee Sentinel, for one, wrote in an editorial that "the hour is late and the situation is critical."

The bombing had the effect of ratcheting up sympathy and support for civil rights. On July 2, 1964, the Civil Rights Act was enacted, winning congressional approval by better than 2–to–1 margins in both the House and Senate.

It probably wouldn't surprise many 21st–century observers to know that most of the opposition in both chambers came from Southerners.

But it might surprise those observers to know that most of those Southerners were Democrats.

And it might also surprise those observers to know that, outside the South, nearly as many Republicans as Democrats supported the passage of the Civil Rights Act.