Freedom Writing: The Making of the President 1968

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

The Shooting of Robert Kennedy

Five years ago, just a few days before the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, I wrote of my memories of that time.

Today is the 45th anniversary of that event, and I have no new revelations about it to share. Neither, it seems, does anyone else, although I have been fascinated by the articles I have found on the subject.

Five years ago in Newsweek, for example, Evan Thomas wrote about the looming "what if" from 1968: What if Kennedy had not been killed? Would he have spared the nation the agony of Watergate?

Thomas never really answered that question. He wrote of the pros and cons of Kennedy's personality and candidacy — and he did point out some inconvenient historical truths. For example, Americans in the 21st century are conditioned to believe that presidential candidates win their party's nominations via the primary route, and Kennedy won many primaries in the spring of 1968 — but choosing delegates in primaries is a fairly recent political phenomenon.

In 1968, most convention delegates were still selected by party bosses, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey was the choice of the Democratic Party's establishment. It is by no means certain that Kennedy would have prevailed at the party's convention later that summer in Chicago.

To me, though, the fact that Thomas' question was even asked in 2008 seems to be proof of what Theodore H. White wrote in "The Making of the President 1968":

"The gash that Robert F. Kennedy tore in the story of 1968 aches still — aches in personal memory, but more in history itself. Of all the men who challenged for the presidency, he alone, by the assassin's bullets, was deprived of the final judgment of his party and people."

Clearly, the "gash," as White put it, still ached after four decades.

A year earlier, in The Independent, Liz Hoggard recounted the event as Emilio Estevez's movie "Bobby" was in theaters. That was interesting, but it really added nothing to what was known about the shooting.

Last year, Michael Martinez and Brad Johnson of CNN reported that a witness had told them there was a second shooter in the pantry that night.

To date, nothing seems to have come from that assertion.

An interesting addition to the story came from CBS recently. CBS reported the story of a black doctor who did what he could to save Kennedy's life.

That is interesting, as I say, but it really adds nothing to the tale. The doctor wasn't successful, and it provides no evidence of who else might have been involved.

A few days ago, Gina Logue of the Murfreesboro (Tenn.) Post wrote that Kennedy's assassination was the end of our national innocence.

I'm not so sure I buy that one, but I will agree that it was a traumatic event for the country.

A lot of things have been described as the end of our national innocence, but I'm inclined to think that there is some event like that for every generation.

I really began to think that five years ago. At the time, I was working for an online study guide. Two young women in their 20s were working with me. We wrote history and civics questions and lessons for students in subscribing school districts to use.

Around this time, I recall hearing one of them ask sort of general questions about Bobby Kennedy that told me she knew nothing about him — other than the fact that he had the same last name as the president who was killed here in Dallas nearly 50 years ago.

She had been affected more by Princess Diana's untimely death 10 years earlier. That was probably the major innocence–robbing event for her generation — at least until 9–11.

Folks in that age group really can't understand how different it was for my generation, who had only three TV networks (and no internet) — nor can my generation truly understand what it was like for our parents, who grew up with the radio and nothing else, not even a landline phone, in many homes.

There's no question that the shooting of Bobby Kennedy, like the shooting of Martin Luther King a couple of months earlier, had a profound effect on everyone. But, in a culture that had been rocked by the killing of a president, the murders of civil rights activists in Mississippi, race riots, a seemingly never–ending war, the fiery launching–pad deaths of three astronauts and King's shooting within the previous five years, it's hard to justify regarding it as a generational flash point.

More like one in a series of flash points.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

LBJ's Game Changer

My grandfather used to love to tell this story.

Grandpa was a Texan. In his retirement years, he belonged to a fishing club in rural east Texas, about two hours from his home in Dallas. The clubhouse was set up so that members and their guests could stay overnight, eat their meals in a big country dining room and keep their fishing boats and fishing equipment on the premises.

On the evening of March 31, 1968, Grandpa was at the fishing club. I don't know if my grandmother was with him on that occasion. She often came there with him, but I don't think she always did. Anyway, there was a TV in the dining room and Grandpa told me that was where he watched President Lyndon Johnson deliver a major speech on Vietnam — a speech that turned unexpectedly dramatic at the end.

It was a real game changer.

In his book "The Making of the President 1968," historian Theodore H. White wrote that there was speculation about Johnson's intentions within the administration that day but no certainty. He mentioned an anxious exchange between Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford and White House staffer Henry McPherson, who asked, "Clark, what's up? Is he going to say sayonara?"

The vice president, Hubert Humphrey, conferred with Johnson that morning, but when he left on a scheduled trip to Mexico City later that day, White wrote, he "was still not sure that the president actually meant to give up at all." (After Johnson withdrew, Humphrey entered the race and went on to win the nomination at a time when most delegates still were chosen by party bosses, not primary voters.)

The first lady's press secretary and adviser to both the president and his wife, Liz Carpenter, who died earlier this month at the age of 89, spoke with Johnson after his meeting with Humphrey. White wrote that "she felt in her bones that the [re–election] campaign was on."

I don't know if the first lady herself knew Johnson's plans. If she had any suspicions, she did a good job of covering. Two days before the speech, White wrote, "Mrs. Johnson had come to a women's group of politicians and pledged herself, personally, to all of them to do whatever was needed to re–elect the president: to go anywhere, stump anywhere, appear anywhere."

I was far too young at the time to understand the complexities of the issues or the times. I knew that my parents were opposed to the war and supporters of Gene McCarthy, a writer (poet, really) and senator, the man whose insurgent campaign for the Democratic nomination received credit for toppling the Johnson presidency.

I'm not sure if McCarthy deserves credit for that. The momentum of the times and the growing opposition to the war in Vietnam had a lot to do with it. As far as I could see, McCarthy mostly amplified public disenchantment, but he did so exceedingly well. His platform was primarily anti–Vietnam War, but as his former colleague, George McGovern, wrote on the occasion of McCarthy's death (using a reference that McCarthy probably would have appreciated), he was an orator. "The ancient Roman rhetorician Quintilian defined an orator as 'a good man speaking well.' " McGovern wrote. "I give you Gene McCarthy — a good man who thought, wrote, spoke and quipped well."

In hindsight, I guess, much of what the president said was predictable. His policies on the war weren't significantly altered in the speech. But then he shocked the nation and the world.

"I have concluded that I should not permit the presidency to become involved in the partisan divisions that are developing in this political year. With America's sons in the fields far away, with America's future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world's hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office — the presidency of your country.

"Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president."

President Lyndon Johnson
March 31, 1968

With those words, LBJ ushered in a truly transitional year in America. A lot of years are labeled "transitional" — and, to an extent, many really are — but 1968 may have been the most momentous year in my lifetime. Less than a week after Johnson's speech, Dr. Martin Luther King was killed in Memphis. Two months later, Bobby Kennedy was killed in Los Angeles. When the Democrats convened in Chicago to nominate Humphrey, it was the riots in the streets that America saw on its TV sets — and remembered at the polls.

Those were probably the biggest stories in a year that seemed to have a new stunning development on a weekly basis.

And from that day until the day my grandfather died in 1969, on the occasions when my family met my grandparents at the fishing club, Grandpa would observe, as we sat down to eat in that dining room, that he watched Johnson's speech in that room with the owner of the fishing club, a fellow who was known to all as "Kit" Carson.

Whenever Grandpa mentioned Johnson's speech, it wasn't necessary to ask which speech he was talking about. Grandpa was a Texas Republican in the days when Republicans were in the minority in Texas. Oddly, his daughter (my mother) was about as far to the left as my grandfather was to the right. They were the embodiment of the generational divide that afflicted the nation in those days.

Anyway, when you acknowledge that Grandpa was a Republican, it is a logical — and accurate — conclusion that the only thing he had in common with Lyndon Johnson was their native state. Consequently, he was elated that LBJ would not be running for president again.

Well, by 1968, fewer and fewer Americans wanted Johnson to remain in the White House. My parents were glad he wasn't running again, too. In fact, shortly before Johnson announced his withdrawal from the race, Gallup reported that his approval rating had fallen to 36%, the lowest — to date — of his presidency.

It was already clear in January, with the Tet offensive that led Walter Cronkite to conclude that the Vietnam War was not winnable, that 1968 would be a year like no other, but Johnson's announcement really iced it.

And it seemed to set in motion a series of events that left America reeling. The extent may not have been clear until enough time had passed, but once that time had passed, White found the words to summarize it.

He observed that, after Johnson's speech, McCarthy, who had been campaigning in Wisconsin, spoke with many political correspondents, including the legendary Mary McGrory, with whom he "devoted himself entirely to poetry." He quoted Yeats and Robert Lowell and then quoted from some poetry he had written.

"There was little poetry in Washington that evening," wrote historian Theodore H. White, "for it was not part of the script of history that Lyndon Johnson of the Pedernales should be brought down by a poet from Watkins, Minnesota. Of Lyndon Johnson's evening in Washington, Yeats had already written:

" 'We are closed in, and the key is turned on our uncertainty.' "