The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia

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Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you must know that there was a special election in Georgia's Sixth Congressional District this week.

The district has been in Republican hands for nearly 40 years.

Democrats have been eager to anoint the new House majority that they expect after the midterm elections in 2018, and every special election to fill a vacancy that was created when President Trump tapped someone to join his administration has been billed as a preview of coming attractions. After Democrat Jon Ossoff grabbed 48% of the vote in April's so–called "jungle primary" in the Georgia Sixth, millions of Democrat dollars flowed into the district from out of state, much of it from as far away as San Francisco, for the June 20 runoff.

There were high expectations. As it was in most of last year's Republican presidential primaries, Trump has emerged the winner in every special election so far. The margins have been narrow, but close doesn't count. Democrats were hungry for a victory.

And Democrats, who have gone into each contest convinced that public resistance to Trump and the Republicans was just waiting to rise up and be counted, are sounding like the fabled boy who cried "Wolf!"

They have awfully short memories.

I don't know if Tip O'Neill was the first to say "All politics is local," but I know he used the phrase as the foundation of his campaign strategy — and he knew what he was talking about.

O'Neill, a Democrat and five–term speaker of the House, represented a House district in Massachusetts for more than 30 years and rarely faced a serious challenge when he ran for re–election. In that sense, there was nothing particularly remarkable about his re–election in 1982.

But it was only two years, after all, since Ronald Reagan's landslide victory over Jimmy Carter, and the presidency wasn't the only thing the Democrats lost. After more than a quarter of a century of being in the majority in the Senate, Democrats had lost that majority, and their majority in the House was drastically reduced — by nearly three dozen seats. To say there was a certain amount of anxiety among Democrats at that time would be an understatement.

There needn't have been.

The elections in 1982 were the midterms of Reagan's first term as president — and a clear pattern of American political history is that midterms in general almost always favor the out–of–power party. We've grown accustomed in recent times to the possibility that a president's party might not lose ground in one or both of the chambers of Congress in a midterm election, but that is a rare phenomenon that usually requires unique circumstances.

George W. Bush's Republicans, for example, benefited in 2002 from the national mood following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, winning two Senate seats and eight House seats. It was the first time in nearly 70 years that a president's party gained ground in both chambers of Congress in a midterm election.

You have to go back to the 1930s — when America was in the grip of the Great Depression — to find the previous example of a time when the president's party prospered in both chambers in a midterm election. In 1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt's Democrats picked up 10 Senate seats (at a time when there were only 96 members of the Senate) and nine House seats. (FDR's midterms of 1938 and 1942 went against the president's party, and what would have been his fourth midterm, which he did not live to see, was a total disaster for his successor, Harry Truman, in 1946.)

While 9/11 is often compared to Pearl Harbor, FDR did not benefit the way Bush did 60 years later. In the 1942 midterms FDR's Democrats lost nine Senate seats and 45 House seats. In spite of what had happened in Hawaii less than a year earlier, voters were anxious about American involvement in World War II.

In the last century, a few presidents have seen their party make midterm gains in one chamber but not both.

Bill Clinton's Democrats benefited in 1998 from a national backlash against the Republicans' partisan impeachment proceedings. They neither won nor lost seats in the Senate, but they won four seats in the House.

Richard Nixon's Republicans lost 12 House seats but won two Senate seats in the midterms of 1970. There was still a certain amount of backlash against the Vietnam War and the Democrats' participation in its escalation.

In 1962 John F. Kennedy's Democrats gained ground in the Senate but lost ground in the House. The Cuban Missile Crisis, which occurred a few weeks before the election, may well have played a role.

In 1914, Woodrow Wilson's Democrats gained five seats in the Senate but lost a staggering 59 seats in the House. The Republicans were more united than they had been in 1912 — when the party's two factions, led by former Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft in the 1912 presidential election, reunited with a common purpose. They also gave themselves pats on the back for the booming economy — the result, they told the voters, of policies passed by Republicans in the previous quarter of a century.

Eight years before that, Teddy Roosevelt's Republicans gained seats in the Senate but lost seats in the House (although they retained a significant majority).

I could go on, but you get the idea, don't you? (Those were the best midterm years for incumbents in the last 110 years, and, in 2017, Democrats have seen the special elections to replace members of the House who were picked to join the Trump administration as targets of opportunity. Sort of a kickoff to the resounding rejection they are certain Republicans will receive next year. Only one real problem with that line of thinking — Republicans have won every special election this year. If you want to have a revolution, you have to have some victories.)

But back to O'Neill.

Even with that history, Democrats were edgy heading into the 1982 midterms. And O'Neill, facing a challenge from a Massachusetts lawyer whose campaign was being financed by out–of–state contributors (primarily oil interests in Oklahoma and Texas), emphasized that point in his campaign.

In November O'Neill won with 75% of the vote, and Democrats recaptured more than two dozen seats in the House, padding the majority they had held since 1955.

But going into that election year, Democrats were anxious. They had taken a beating two years earlier, and, even though O'Neill had won 15 straight congressional races, he was a consummate politician who knew all too well that Massachusetts — the only state to reject Nixon's bid for a second term in 1972 — had voted (narrowly) for Reagan in 1980 (Massachusetts voted for Reagan again in 1984). Was it a symptom of an emerging shift to the right in a state long known for its liberal politics?

Reagan's approval rating in late 1982 was hovering around 40%. It went up when the economy started roaring back to life, but that was after the midterms.

In hindsight it is easy to see the uphill climb that was facing the Republicans in 1982, but it wasn't so easy to see from ground level at the time.

O'Neill took the campaign to the voters. The people who are backing the Republican in this race, he told the voters, don't live here, but they think they can tell you what to do. And he addressed the district's kitchen–table concerns while his opponent — and his opponent's backers — spoke about more national themes.

Does that sound familiar? Democrats wanted to make the Georgia election about cultural issues. The Republicans and their candidate, Karen Handel, wanted to make it about the issues that affected the daily lives of Georgians — taxes and jobs.

On top of that, Ossoff didn't even live in the district.

It wasn't surprising that he received about the same share of the vote that he received in the first vote.

Many Democrats were fooled into believing Ossoff had a good chance to win by his showing in that first vote. The previous congressman, now–Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, was re–elected there last year with more than 61% of the vote. Ossoff already had done better than any of Price's challengers.

Except in his first election.

Price needed a runoff to win the GOP nomination when his predecessor, now–Sen. Johnny Isakson, decided to run for the Senate. After winning the runoff, Price was unopposed in the general election. He won all his re–election bids without breaking a sweat.

And that is really what is so deceptive about special elections. They are held to fill vacancies — which means there is no incumbent.

Incumbents are notoriously difficult to defeat. They have all the advantages of incumbency at their disposal. Their primary obligation is to be aware of and responsive to the needs of a typically concentrated geographical area. As long as they do that, they tend to win re–election with little trouble.

The best chance to "flip" a House district usually comes when the seat is open.

I have heard all the talk of how Handel will face another tough challenge when she seeks a full term next year, but as long as she keeps her focus on her district, I predict that she will win re–election easily.

It's the way it is.

Remembering JFK

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It is hard to imagine John F. Kennedy at 100, but that is what he would be if he still lived on this day in 2017.

Of course, Kennedy is not still living. He has been dead nearly 54 years. He was assassinated in the streets of this very city.

His image is frozen in memory, a vivid yet moving figure for those old enough to remember him, a youthful image in the history books for those who are not. He is still 46 years old and will continue to be 46 years old for all who study history — even though all who are 46 now or will be 46 in the future were born after he died.

He will always be youthful, a naturally dark–haired president with two young children and a beautiful young wife. But that wife and one of those children are dead now, and the surviving child will be 60 later this year.

Time certainly does march on.

I observed on the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination that so much has been written about that event in American history that it is hard to think of anything new to add. It is the same with the 100th anniversary of Kennedy's birth. (Excuse a little musing here, but since today is the centennial of JFK's birth, wouldn't it make sense, for consistency's sake, to call the 2013 anniversary of his assassination a semicentennial?)

Only a few months before her own death, Marilyn Monroe serenaded the president with a breathy rendition of "Happy Birthday." Even though he is not with us, perhaps that is the best we can do — wish him a "Happy Birthday" in absentia.

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It is easy to think of the Kennedy highlights — his inspirational speeches, his vigorous and reassuring demeanor. It is tougher to challenge preconceived notions about Kennedy that have had decades to harden in the public mind.

So without wasting much time on discussions (bordering on debates) of his strengths or weaknesses, it is probably best to remember that John F. Kennedy was a man. He wasn't perfect and certainly didn't seem so to the people of his time, but no president has been, even those presidents we honor and admire today — like Washington or Lincoln. He had his flaws, like all of us, but he also had a moral compass, like most of us, and it was to the great fortune of this nation that his compass did not mislead either him or us.

As today is Memorial Day, I would just like to observe that all who serve our country are deserving of our gratitude — from those who serve in the Oval Office to those who serve on the battlefield and all those who serve and have served in between. Man of them are also in absentia.

To those presidents like Kennedy who served in both the Oval Office and the battlefield, we owe a special debt for their service.

The Fine Art of Compromise ... and Lost Opportunity

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"The trusts and combinations — the communism of pelf — whose machinations have prevented us from reaching the success we deserve should not be forgotten nor forgiven."

Letter from Grover Cleveland to Rep. Thomas C. Catchings (D–Miss.)
August 27, 1894

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I have mentioned here that I have been studying the presidency most of my life.

And Grover Cleveland has always fascinated me. He always stood out because he was — and still is — the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms. (He was also president half a century before presidents were limited to two terms — so, presumably, he could have sought a third term in 1896, but his party repudiated him. More on that in a minute.)

I have found it fascinating, too, to observe all the different presidents in American history to whom Barack Obama has been compared.

That didn't really begin with Obama. Incoming presidents are almost always compared to presidents from the past. I don't know why. Maybe to try to get an idea of what to expect. There have been no other black presidents so Obama couldn't be compared to anyone on a racial level.

When he was about to take the oath of office for the first time, Obama was compared, at different times and for different reasons, to great presidents from American history like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Lincoln, of course, was a natural, having presided over the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation. There were some comparisons, as well, to Franklin D. Roosevelt, mostly because FDR had taken office during the most perilous economic period in the nation's history, even to John F. Kennedy, perhaps because both were young and their elections made history.

Over the course of his presidency, Obama has been compared to less accomplished presidents. In recent years, it has frequently been asked if he is more incompetent than Jimmy Carter, who is generally regarded as the most incompetent president in recent memory.

Six years ago, about three weeks before Obama took the oath of office the first time, political scientist Michael Barone suggested that Dwight Eisenhower might be the more appropriate comparison, and I wrote about that.

Barone's point was that Eisenhower had done little to help his fellow Republicans, many of whom "grumbled that Ike ... was selfish.

"Eisenhower, I suspect, regarded himself as a unique national figure," Barone wrote, "and believed that maximizing his popularity far beyond his party's was in the national interest."

I was reminded of that tonight when I heard Obama's speech on immigration. Many congressional Democrats are supporting the president — publicly, at least — but some are not. Regardless of the negative ramifications of his executive order — and a poll conducted Wednesday night indicates that nearly half of respondents oppose Obama's acting via executive order — Obama seems determined to prove that he is still relevant.

Coming a mere two weeks after Democrats lost control of the U.S. Senate in the midterm elections, it seems to me a president who was more concerned about his party's future than his own would act more prudently. Bill Clinton, after all, lost control of both chambers of Congress in the midterms of 1994, and Democrats didn't regain the majority in either chamber for 12 years.

Clinton did manage to retake some his party's lost ground when he ran for re–election in 1996 and then again after surviving an attempt by the Republicans to impeach him before the 1998 midterms, defying all logic.

I've always felt that a lot of that was because Clinton was appropriately chastened by his party's massive losses in the midterms. I felt, at the time, that many of the voters who had voted Republican in 1994 believed Clinton had learned an important lesson and were more open to supporting him and the members of his party in 1996.

Obama has now been through two disastrous midterm elections, and he has emerged from the second not chastened but defiant. He appears to be entirely ready to do everything on his own, completely ignoring the role that the Founding Fathers intended for Congress to play. An opportunity to let compromise and cooperation be what the Founding Fathers envisioned in their fledgling republic is being squandered.

Once such an opportunity is lost, once such a president takes this kind of approach, it is hard, if not impossible, to establish a rapport with the other side.

Obama isn't the first to do this, which brings me back to Grover Cleveland. A little background information is called for here.

Cleveland was first elected president in 1884. He was the first Democrat elected to the office in more than a quarter of a century — in spite of the revelation that Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock. It was close, but Cleveland managed to pull it off.

Four years later, when Cleveland sought a second term, conditions were good. The nation was at peace, and the economy was doing pretty well, but there was division over the issue of tariff policy. The election was another cliffhanger. Cleveland again won the popular vote by a narrow margin, but his opponent, Benjamin Harrison, received enough electoral votes to win.

So Cleveland left the White House in March 1889, but he returned as the Democratic nominee in 1892 and defeated Harrison. It was the second time a major party nominated someone for president three straight times. The first one, Andrew Jackson, also won the popular vote all three times; like Cleveland, though, he was denied the presidency once because he lost the electoral vote.

Perhaps it was the experience of having been returned to the White House after losing the electoral vote four years earlier that contributed to Cleveland's messianic complex. To be fair, it would be hard not to feel that there was an element of historical inevitability at work.

But that doesn't really excuse how Cleveland approached the outcome of the 1894 midterms.

One cannot tell the story of the 1894 midterms without telling the story of the Panic of 1893 for it defined Cleveland's second term as well as the midterms. It was the worst economic depression the United States had experienced up to that time. Unemployment in America was about 3% when Cleveland was elected in 1892. After a series of bank failures, it ballooned into double figures in 1893 and stayed there for the remainder of Cleveland's term.

The depression was a key factor in the debate over bimetallism in 1894. Cleveland and his wing of the Democratic Party were known as "bourbon Democrats," supporters of a kind of laissez–faire capitalism. They supported the gold standard and opposed bimetallism, in which both gold and silver are legal tender.

The economy was already the main topic of the campaign, and a major coal strike in the spring didn't help. In fact, it hammered the fragile economies of the states in the Midwest and the Northeast. Republicans blamed Democrats for the poor economy, and the argument found a receptive audience.

Republicans gained House seats just about everywhere except the Southern states, which remained solidly Democratic, and states where Republicans already held all the House seats. Democrats went from a 220–106 advantage to a 104–226 deficit. It remains the most massive shift in House party division in U.S. history.

Under circumstances such as these, a president has two choices — he can be conciliatory and try to move to the political center, as Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan did, or he can dig in his heels and be even more intransigent.

Much as Obama is doing 120 years later, Cleveland chose the latter approach after the midterms in 1894. Perhaps he felt he had no allies in Washington anymore, but I've always felt his go–it–alone approach was a big reason why he was repudiated by the Democrats in 1896. The fragmented party chose instead to go with William Jennings Bryan, who would be nominated three times and lose each time. In fact, with the exception of the Woodrow Wilson presidency, no Democrat would win the White House for the next 36 years.

For that matter, they didn't regain the majority in the House until the 1910 midterms, but they lost that majority six years later in spite of the fact that President Wilson was at the top of the ballot. It took the stock market crash of 1929 to restore Democrats to majority status in the House in the midterms of 1930.

That is one cautionary tale that emerges from this year's midterms. Another is the exaggerated importance given to the turnout. I know it is a popular excuse to use after a party has been slammed in the midterms, but it is misleading.

In 2006, when Democrats retook the majority in both chambers for the first time in 12 years, they treated it as a mandate for change. But roughly the same number of voters participated in 2006 as participated in 2014. Granted, there has been an increase in the overall population in those eight years so the share of registered voters who participated is different, but the overall numbers are the same.

Republicans, too, pointed to low turnout in 2006. My advice to them would be not to duplicate the Democrats' mistake. They believed their success was permanent — and it never is in politics.

It can last longer, though, if you lead.

The Day the Wall Fell Down

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Unless you are at least 60 years old today, you probably had no memory on this day in 1989 of a time when the Berlin Wall did not exist. It was 25 years ago today that the wall was brought down, fulfilling Ronald Reagan's famous 1987 challenge to "tear down this wall."

If you are under 30, you almost certainly have no memory of a time when the Berlin Wall did exist.

But, for anyone who remembers most or all of the years between 1961 and 1989, the Berlin Wall was a constant reminder of the tensions between East and West.

It was a fact of life for seven presidents, from John F. Kennedy, whose administration witnessed the construction of the wall in the summer of 1961, to George H.W. Bush, whose administration saw it fall 25 years ago today.

Most Americans — regardless of age — probably had no idea the wall was about to fall, probably had no understanding of the events in that part of the world that were leading to this day. My memory is that it caught most Americans by surprise. They had heard Reagan's plea a couple of years earlier — if they were old enough, they remembered Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in the shadow of the wall two years after its construction — but such speeches were mostly regarded as symbolic, valuable as propaganda for stirring up the masses. Just as the wall itself was a symbol. I guess Americans were conditioned to believe the wall would always exist. The Berlin Wall took on the same kind of mythical aura as the Great Wall of China — with the added value of armed guards. It was there. It would continue to be there. Never mind that it had not always been there.

("Whatever happened to the kind of inspirational presidential oratory that helped bring down that wall — and Soviet communism?" wonders USA Today's Rick Hamson.)

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After it happened, it was easy to see — as it always is — the progression of events that led to that moment. But, before it happened, the collapse of the Berlin Wall was seen as, at best, wishful thinking and, at worst, delusional fantasy.

Personally, I never thought it would happen. I couldn't imagine a world with a unified Berlin. And today I can't imagine a world in which the wall could be resurrected — yet, with Russian aggression in the Ukraine and militant Muslim aggression in the Middle East, one can only wonder if the last 25 years have been merely an interlude.

Freedom, the adage says, isn't free.

Is it possible there could be another wall — perhaps not in Berlin but somewhere else?

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."

The Son Who Was Meant to be King

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Seventy years ago today, Joseph Kennedy Jr. was killed in action in World War II.

He was the oldest of nine children born to Joseph and Rose Kennedy — and he was the son Joe Sr. always expected to be president. Joe Jr. had three brothers, and each sought the Democratic Party's presidential nomination — and one was nominated and elected — but Joe Jr. died before he could attempt to fulfill his father's dream for him.

In fact, he died before his political career ever began although he clearly had political ambitions for his post–war life. He dropped out of Harvard's law school to enlist in the Navy, where he became a bomber pilot, but he and his father had begun making preparations for his political career. The plan was that he would seek the U.S. representative seat from Massachusetts' 11th district in 1946.

But he didn't live to do that.

Seventy years ago today, Joe Kennedy Jr. was part of a two–man mission to fly a plane over targets in northern France, activate a remote control system that would arm the detonators of the explosives on board and bail out of the plane before it crashed into its target. The plan was that they would parachute into the English Channel, where they would be picked up by an Allied boat.

Things didn't go according to plan. The explosives went off prematurely, and Kennedy and his co–pilot were killed.

Consequently, it was the second son, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who ran for and won the congressional seat from Massachusetts' 11th district in 1946. He held it for six years — until he sought a U.S. Senate seat in 1952. He won, was re–elected in 1958 and went on to be elected president in 1960.

It might have been Joe Jr.

John served in World War II like his brother did, but he survived and Joe didn't.

Historians have spoken in glowing terms of JFK's talents, but, from all the accounts I have read, Joe Jr. had even better people skills than JFK.

From the perspective of an historian, even an amateur one such as myself, it is natural to wonder if Joe Jr. might have beaten Nixon handily enough to prevent his ever seeking the presidency again — thus sparing the country the anguish of Watergate.

But Joe Jr. died almost 30 years to the day before Nixon's resignation, the 40th anniversary of which was only a few days ago.

His brother's win over Nixon was, of course, razor thin. Rumors persist to this day that the Democrats stole the election, thanks to falsified vote returns in places like Illinois, where Mayor Daley and his cronies were well known for fraud of all kinds, especially in elections.

So add one more to history's intriguing "what–if" list.

What if Joseph Kennedy Jr. had survived World War II and started his political career as expected?

The world might never have heard of John F. Kennedy — or he might have been known as an adviser to his brother, as Bobby was known to be for him.

Intriguing, isn't it?

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.

Burying Kennedy

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On this day 50 years ago, America said goodbye to the 35th president of the United States.

The numbing shock of the events of the previous Friday had worn off enough for the grief to set in, kind of like when the novocaine wears off and your jaw starts to hurt, and it was time to mourn for John F. Kennedy, the youngest man to be elected president and the youngest president to die.

On Saturday, Nov. 23, the president's flag–draped coffin was placed in the East Room for 24 hours. The next day, it was carried on a horse-–drawn caisson to the Capitol to lie in state.

The new president, Lyndon Johnson, proclaimed Monday, Nov. 25, a national day of mourning. A requiem mass was held for Kennedy at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, with the archbishop of Boston, Richard Cardinal Cushing, presiding, then Kennedy was buried in Arlington Cemetery. Representatives of more than 90 countries attended the funeral.

My father and I usually have dinner together on Thursdays, and on more than one occasion he has observed that people are frozen in his memory as they were the last time he saw them. When I was growing up, he taught religion at a small college in central Arkansas. When he sees obituaries for old friends and colleagues that include pictures of them late in their lives, he can scarcely recognize them.

I guess it is like that for public figures.

Take John F. Kennedy Jr., for example. He was about to turn 3 when his father was killed, and, throughout his life, most people remembered his salute on this day 50 years ago. I can still remember my grandmother — who lived in Dallas most of her life and was not a Kennedy sympathizer — speaking of that "brave salute" that John–John gave his father's casket as it went by.

As an adult, he was recognizable because he had so much of the Kennedy look to him, but, right up until the time of his death in a plane crash in July 1999 — and even after — he lingered in the public's memory as little "John–John." Even though he went on to accomplish other things as an adult, the salute he gave his father's casket following the conclusion of the requiem mass was what most people remembered.

After he died, I remember reading obituaries that mentioned his childhood nickname in the lead paragraph. It was how most people probably remembered him, even though he had spent some time in the public eye as he launched a politically oriented magazine.

On this day in 1963, though, he and his sister were regarded as too young to attend the burial. John–John's salute, in addition to being an iconic image, was his final farewell to his father.

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Anyone who has ever lived through the sudden death of a loved one knows that it doesn't end with the funeral, that there are many unexpected issues to confront in the weeks, months, even years that follow. It is a journey, sometimes an arduous one. So it was with those who survived John F. Kennedy.

It was on this day in 1963 that the president's brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, truly embarked on what historian Arthur Schlesinger called the "corridors of grief" that he would have to navigate. To an extent, I guess, it was that way for all the Kennedys.

"[F]or those who believed in a universe infused by the Almighty with pattern and purpose — as the Kennedys did — Dallas brought on a philosophical as well as an emotional crisis," Schlesinger wrote. "Robert Kennedy in particular had to come to terms with his brother's death before he could truly resume his own existence."

The first steps on that journey began 50 years ago today.

Television's First Live Murder

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Fifty years ago, plans were being finalized in Washington for John F. Kennedy's funeral the next day.

Back in Texas, churches in Dallas were holding their usual Sunday services under most unusual circumstances. At Dallas' Northaven Methodist Church, Rev. Bill Holmes gave a sermon that is still talked about half a century later. Holmes told the congregation that Dallas could not avoid its own responsibility for the assassination even if only one man pulled the trigger.

As Holmes spoke, the suspect in Kennedy's assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, was gunned down while being transferred from police headquarters to Dallas County's jail. The TV networks provided live coverage so some folks who were watching their TVs instead of attending church to pray for the Kennedys saw Oswald get shot by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner.

"The killing occurred in the presence of 70 uniformed Dallas policemen," wrote historian William Manchester. "Because NBC was televising the transfer, it was also television's first live murder."

That shooting left a gaping wound in the American experience that probably will never heal.

Because Oswald's death meant some questions will remain unanswered — no matter what kind of evidence is uncovered. There were questions that only Oswald could have answered. Investigators might have been able to establish whether he spoke the truth or not. But without Oswald's testimony — like the forensic evidence that was lost when the limousine was cleaned of blood spatter and John Connally's suit was sent to the dry cleaners — the case will forever remain unresolved.

Nothing that has been uncovered in the last half–century has definitively established the guilt or innocence of anyone.

The killing of Oswald short–circuited the American judicial system. Admittedly, it doesn't always work, but it was the only hope to get Oswald's side of the story. Maybe he would have told the truth. Maybe he wouldn't. That is the kind of thing that juries must decide, and, most of the time, jurors simply have to hope that they have seen and heard enough evidence to reach the right conclusion.

That hope was snuffed out by Ruby, acting as judge, jury and executioner, 50 years ago today — but that is only if one accepts what he said at the time. Conspiracy theorists cite Ruby's organized crime connections and speculate he was sent to rub out Oswald to keep him from talking.

In the words of John Pope of the New Orleans Times–Picayune, Oswald's death "opened the floodgates to a tsunami of speculation about Kennedy's murder." Is it any wonder that JFK conspiracy theories have found a welcome audience from an America still seeking closure for what happened here 50 years ago?

Three previous American presidents had been killed by assassins. The American public managed to achieve closure with two of them when the accused assassins were arrested, charged and eventually convicted. The absence of an assassin to convict, to hold responsible leaves a wound that does not heal easily.

The first presidential assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was killed before he could be brought to trial, which was another supposed link between the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy (a list of such links has been making the rounds almost since the day Kennedy was killed, but many of the items on the list have been discredited). And, to a degree, I suppose, the assassination of Lincoln by a Southern sympathizer led to more than a decade of abuse, known to history as the Reconstruction era. Was that because there was no formal trial for Booth? I don't know.

No one disputed that Booth shot Lincoln. There was a theater full of witnesses who saw Booth leap from Lincoln's box after the shooting. I have heard of no credible witnesses who could identify Oswald as the man who fired at Kennedy from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.

"It would have been easier for the American people to accept any enemy, any conspiracy, any plot and then avenge John F. Kennedy," Theodore White wrote. "But what they had to face was an act of unreason, avenged by an individual act of obscenity."

That "act of obscenity" was witnessed by millions and captured on film. There was no doubt about who killed Oswald.

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But doubts about who killed John F. Kennedy have lingered now for half a century.

I believe they will linger forever.

JFK Assassination: Still No Answers

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Today is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I honestly cannot recall any anniversary being as anticipated as this one.

Well, perhaps with the exception of the American bicentennial in 1976 (for consistency's sake, perhaps this should be called the JFK semi–centennial). And maybe it only seems that way to me because I live in Dallas, and the city has been preparing for this anniversary all year (the behind–the–scenes preparations have been going on longer, I'm sure).

I suppose part of the reason it was so anticipated is the sense that, even after 50 years, the Kennedy assassination is an unsolved mystery, a cold case. The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald alone shot the president, but there were enough loose ends that conspiracy theories flourished, especially after the American public got to see the Zapruder film for the first time.

Doubts persist. A recent Gallup poll shows that more than three–fifths of respondents do not believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Gallup acknowledged that the number is the lowest in nearly 50 years. What Gallup did not point out is that a majority of Americans accepted the Warren Commission's findings until the Zapruder film became public.

Since then, a solid majority of Americans has believed that Oswald did not act alone — if he acted at all.

By modern standards, I suppose the Zapruder film is almost primitive in its quality. But it is the most detailed visual record of a presidential assassination that we have — and, after they saw it, most people had to conclude that the Warren Commission's findings were not supported by the photographic evidence. By the time the Zapruder film was released (more than three years after it was made), the Kennedy assassination was already regarded as the most photographed assassination ever.

(LIFE.com focuses on a different image, one that sums up the global reaction to what happened here 50 years ago today.)

I hope we never have another attempt on a president's life, but if we do, I have to think that will become the most photographed assassination ever, given the number of cell/camera phones that are sure to be in use.

Today in Dealey Plaza — where the shooting took place — there will be a crowd of people holding tickets for a special program planned to commemorate the exact moment on this day in 1963 when the first shot was fired. As it did on that day in 1963, the day has dawned with rain — but it is considerably colder here today than it was then, and the rain doesn't seem likely to clear by midday.

Regardless of how cold it is, these tickets have been as hot as Willy Wonka's golden tickets, and I'm sure there will be few if any no–shows. A monument commemorating the assassination will be unveiled at that time (an "X" already marks the spot in the street where Kennedy suffered the fatal head wound). My understanding is that the program will be televised locally. Portions of it will almost certainly be shown on the national newscasts tonight.

It seems that so much has been said and written about the Kennedy assassination that almost nothing more could possibly be said, but the 50th anniversary is an invitation for all kinds of things — even if they aren't entirely relevant, such as Professor Nicholas Burns' piece in the Boston Globe on the three lessons of the Kennedy presidency (which is a separate topic from his death — as it is and should be for all presidents — and would be a dandy topic on the 100th anniversary of Kennedy's birth, which will be in less than four years but isn't necessarily appropriate on this occasion).

Relevance (or lack thereof) hasn't kept publications like the Los Angeles Times and others from running eyewitness accounts that are interesting but really add nothing to public knowledge of what happened.

For that matter, we know what happened. We continue to obsess over the who (which is also irrelevant). We're still asking the same questions. United Press International, for example, ran a piece a few days ago wondering who was responsible for the assassination.

Such things are to be expected, I suppose, but it has always struck me as inexcusable that so much time and energy should be wasted on speculating about who was responsible without determining why Kennedy was killed. I am certainly not a criminal investigator, but it seems to me that, if you answer the why, the rest should fall into place.

Larry Sabato, of whom I have written here before, wrote last week about five persistent myths about Kennedy. Most, like his points that the 1960 Nixon–Kennedy debates did not propel Kennedy to victory in the election that year or that JFK was not the liberal he is perceived to have been, come as no surprise to anyone with an interest in history.

Likewise, Tricia Escobedo's piece for CNN.com purports to tell readers five things they don't know about the assassination.

But I've been studying the assassination for a long time, and I knew that Oswald wasn't arrested for killing Kennedy. I also knew that the TV networks suspended all other programming for four days to report exclusively on the assassination and related events. And I knew that Judge Sarah Hughes, who swore in Lyndon Johnson on board Air Force One that afternoon, was the first woman to swear in a president.

I also knew that, earlier in 1963, Oswald tried to kill General Edwin Walker, a critic of the Kennedy administration and integration, while Walker was inside his home.

I'm not sure, though, that I knew that assassinating a president was not a federal offense in 1963. Interesting to know — at least from an historian's perspective — but of no real value when trying to answer the still unanswered questions.

Fred Kaplan of Slate.com, a onetime believer in conspiracy theories, recently devoted his energies to debunking them even though he acknowledged that "[t]here's no space to launch a full rebuttal" — apparently not even in cyberspace.

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For a long time, whenever the Kennedy assassination has been the topic of conversation, the focus has been on whether it was the result of a conspiracy and who really fired the fatal shot.

America should have been asking why, not who. After half a century, I think it is too late.

Who Are You Gonna Believe, Me or Your Eyes and Ears?

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"People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got."

Richard Nixon
Nov. 17, 1973

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It seems more than a little ironic to me that Barack Obama should be insisting — at this particular time — that what he really said about people being able to keep their health care plans was not what he clearly did say in some two dozen video taped campaign moments last year alone.

But presidents — as much as we might wish to believe otherwise — don't always appreciate the irony of some of the things they say and do.

Forty years ago tonight, I remember watching in utter astonishment as Richard Nixon insisted in a televised statement that he was "not a crook."

I was a mere boy at the time, but it sounded odd to my young ears, a president who felt compelled to assert that he was honest. Don't know why I felt that way. I was old enough to know better. (I can only imagine how it must sound to young ears today to hear the president insist that what those ears heard him say over and over was not what he really said.)

I grew up in a Democrat household, and my parents routinely accused Nixon of being deceitful. I had vague memories of his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, but it wasn't until I was older that I realized the extent of Johnson's lies to the American public about the war in Vietnam.

I learned early that neither party has a monopoly on the truth — and that both parties routinely lie to the voters.

Still ...

Maybe I was naive — I probably was — but I thought it should go without saying that a president would tell the truth to the American people. (Maybe I was thinking of the early presidents, like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, not the modern ones.)

Nixon was speaking to a gathering of Associated Press managing editors in Orlando, Fla., at the time. I think it may have been the first time Nixon ever publicly denied his involvement in any illegal activity. (I have long thought what Nixon considered to be criminal behavior and what motivated it was revealing — as he saw it, it was an illegal act if it was for financial gain. Apparently, illegal acts for political gain were just part of the give and take of life in the arena.)

Before that, I believe, he allowed surrogates to do the dirty work, but, by November 1973, the existence of Nixon's Oval Office taping system had been revealed to the public, and he had fired the special Watergate prosecutor because he demanded access to the tapes (precipitating the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre") — and, before the month was over, the mysterious 18½–minute gap in the White House tapes would be discovered.

Nixon may have been feeling a lot of pressure at this time 40 years ago. He may have realized that the gap would be discovered soon. His attorneys had been reviewing the tapes, after all. If he had been aware of the gap — or if he had been responsible for the erasure — he may have figured it was only a matter of time, and he needed to make a pre—emptive strike.

Of course, I'm just spitballing here. I didn't know what went through Nixon's mind. That was a common problem in those days. No one really knew how much Nixon himself had known about the break–in or the coverup. Much of it — well, at least Nixon's state of mind — is still speculation, nearly 20 years after his death.

If there was one strength Nixon and his staff had at that time — and, until things really began to collapse around Nixon in 1973–74, there wasn't merely one thing but a whole bunch of things that could be considered Nixon's strengths — it was that they may have been early masters of what has come to be known as the art of spin.

It didn't seem to matter, in 1973 and into the early months of 1974, what kind of accusation was tossed at Nixon or how irrefutable it may have appeared. He and his staff always managed to come back with a justification. Most of these explanations were only barely plausible — if they were plausible at all — but they opened the window of doubt just enough.

Maybe it was that history of success — or semi–success — that led Nixon to believe that he could get away with simply protesting that he was honest and implying that it was ridiculous to believe otherwise. Obviously, it didn't work.

(Five years ago, TIME magazine ranked it #1 on its list of the "Top 10 Unfortunate Political One–Liners.")

It is tempting, I suppose, to speculate on such an occasion, coming, as it does, only days before the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Joel Rubinoff of The Record of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, writes that, among other things, the whole "I am not a crook" episode would never have happened if Kennedy had not been assassinated. Well, that was "one potential outcome," at least.

Rubinoff observes that "that's the thing about historical projections — there are no wrong answers. And no right ones either."

True, true.

On a short–term basis, I suppose, Nixon's strategy was successful. In a Gallup survey a couple of weeks later, Nixon's approval rating went up and his disapproval rating went down — by four points in both cases.

Unfortunately for Nixon, that survey was taken around the time that the 18½–minute gap in one of the tapes was revealed to the public.

And all bets were off.

Nixon's approval rating dipped below 30% in the next survey and never bounced back.

The First Unelected Vice President

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On this day 40 years ago, the vice presidency had been vacant for only a couple of days.

The former vice president, Spiro Agnew, had resigned, and there was much speculation about the identity of his replacement.

My family, as I have mentioned here before, was living in Nashville. My father was on a four–month sabbatical, and, on this day in 1973, we were roughly halfway through our time there. My parents decided that the family needed to get away for the weekend, and Oct. 12 in 1973 was on a Friday so, when my brother and I finished school for the day, my family loaded up our car and went somewhere that was about a two–hour drive from Nashville.

I don't remember where we went. It was some sort of rustic lodge–like compound on a body of water, probably a lake, and I seem to remember you could fish there, but, even though my father knew how to fish, I have no memory of him fishing that weekend.

That may have been because it rained most of that weekend. And my memory is that my mother and father and brother and I spent most of the weekend in that cabin watching TV when we weren't at the window watching the rain.

(We probably called that the "Goodloe luck," of which I have written before. It was our version of Murphy's law, I suppose; most of my memories of the "Goodloe luck" do seem to include rain spoiling camping trips and weekend getaways. So it was on that day in 1973.)

My most vivid memory is of that Friday night — 40 years ago tonight — when President Nixon came on TV to announce that he was nominating Gerald Ford to fill the vice presidential vacancy. And I remember the four of us watching him make that announcement.

It was an historic occasion, the first time the 25th Amendment, which clarified presidential succession, was invoked. It was also, as historian Theodore H. White wrote, "a ceremony marked by a tasteless cheerfulness." With so much suspicion and uncertainty swirling around him in October 1973, Nixon seemed oddly detached when he announced Ford's nomination. I honestly think that, on that day, he believed that he would serve the rest of his term, that he would beat the rap.

As I wrote here a couple of years ago, the language of Article II of the Constitution was ambiguous on the subject of presidential succession, saying that, in the event of a vacancy (either temporary or permanent) in the presidency, the vice president should "act as [p]resident ... until the [d]isability be removed, or a president shall be elected."

Presidential succession apparently wasn't a pressing concern for the Founding Fathers. It was first put to the test about half a century after the Constitution was written when President William Henry Harrison died and his vice president, John Tyler, interpreted the Constitution and determined that he should be the actual president, not an acting president, and he took the oath of office, setting a precedent that was followed for more than a century.

But in 1967 the 25th Amendment was ratified, establishing a clear line of succession. And one of its provisions was that, in the event of a vacancy in the vice presidency, the president had to nominate a successor whose name would be sent to Congress for its approval.

Agnew's resignation was the first opportunity for a president to nominate a vice president under the amendment. When Lyndon Johnson became president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, the vice presidency was vacant for more than a year, but then it was filled by Hubert Humphrey, who was Johnson's running mate in the 1964 election — and, thus, the office was occupied when the 25th Amendment was adopted.

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And, on that night, we watched as all three networks covered Nixon's announcement that he wanted Gerald Ford to be his new vice president.

Only one other time since that day — nearly a year later, when Ford had to choose his own successor following Nixon's resignation — has a president been called upon to nominate someone to fill a vice presidential vacancy.

As unpopular as Nixon was at that time, I really believe that few, if any, people who watched him introduce Ford as Agnew's successor realized they were looking at the man who would be president within a year.

Fewer still probably realized we would witness the nomination of another unelected vice president within a year — and then not see it happen again for at least four decades.

That is how history works sometimes, with similar events lumped together in one short period of time, then nothing like it again for decades. Kind of like horse racing's Triple Crown.

'You're No Jack Kennedy'

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"Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

Lloyd Bentsen
Vice presidential debate
Oct. 5, 1988

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In the annals of vice presidential debates, there are few chapters — so the competition for the most memorable moment isn't too great.

But if I had to choose the most memorable moment in a vice presidential debate, I would have to pick the moment 25 years ago tonight when Democratic Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas told Republican Sen. Dan Quayle of Indiana that he was no Jack Kennedy.

As I say, there isn't much competition for most memorable moment from a vice presidential debate. I suppose you could include some moments from the 1992 debate — but they were really more noteworthy for what they said about the ill–prepared Admiral Stockdale, who mused, "Who am I? Why am I here?" and muttered something about a "ping pong match."

Otherwise, though, there really isn't much.

The Bentsen–Quayle debate remains famous — or infamous, depending upon one's point of view — because of one line — Bentsen's famous putdown of Quayle.

It was devastating.

My memory of that debate is not of the pre–debate expectations. Bentsen, more than a quarter of a century older than Quayle, had more than 20 years of congressional experience under his belt (and went on to serve as Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton); it was believed by many that he compensated for Michael Dukakis' relative lack of experience.

Quayle, on the other hand, had a little more than a decade of congressional experience, and there was a perception that he lacked the maturity to take over as president if necessary.

It was generally treated as a given that Bentsen was more qualified to be president than was Quayle. That was the elephant in the living room on this night 25 years ago. It made expectations impossibly high for Bentsen and absurdly low for Quayle.

Based on pre–debate comments I heard, all Quayle had to do was show up to exceed expectations while Bentsen needed to do something almost messianic to avoid being perceived a failure.

From the very start, Quayle was put on the defensive when he was asked why he had "not made a more substantial impression" on voters.

It was clear at times that he had prepared statements in advance that he planned to use when the topic of qualifications came up, and he used one early: "If qualifications alone are going to be the issue in this campaign, George Bush has more qualifications than Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen combined."

Of course, both candidates had lines they had been working on for their single debate. Quayle's qualification to be president had been a subject of discussion since Vice President George H.W. Bush chose him to be his running mate. Everyone knew that the issue of experience would dominate the questioning. And it did.

Bentsen was eager to fan the flames. "This debate tonight is not about the qualifications for the vice presidency," he said early. "The debate is whether or not Dan Quayle and Lloyd Bentsen are qualified to be president of the United States."

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The memorable moment came about halfway through when Tom Brokaw asked Quayle to "cite the experience that you had in Congress."

Quayle said he had as much congressional experience as John F. Kennedy had when he sought the presidency in 1960, which was technically correct, but it set up Bentsen better than he probably ever dreamed during his debate prep. In hindsight — possibly as soon as that moment — I concluded that Bentsen had that line ready, that it was not spontaneous, and he was planning to spring it — or something similar — when the time was right.

Quayle's comparison of himself to Kennedy was the right time. And Bentsen jumped on it like Babe Ruth swinging at an underhanded pitch. He probably couldn't believe his good fortune.

"You're no Jack Kennedy." The mind recalls the image of Quayle's face on the television screen as Bentsen's voice could be heard delivering the line. Quayle had that "caught in the headlights" look on his face — or, at least, that is how it was perceived at the time. My own opinion is that it was the look of one who knows the die has been cast.

Quayle protested that Bentsen's comment was uncalled for. Bentsen replied that it had been Quayle who invited the comparison.

Nothing else that was said that night mattered. Bentsen had won the debate. Print journalists had their lead paragraph, and broadcast journalists had their sound bite.

And Bentsen had his triumph, but it was Quayle who had the last laugh. A month later, the Bush–Quayle ticket defeated the Dukakis–Bentsen ticket in a landslide.

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.