The Ghosts of 1968

For the past forty years I have felt that our country went in a direction quite different than where I believed our nation should be headed. To those of us who remember 1968 all seem to view that time in different ways. I was fifteen years old living in Vancouver Washington in a military family. By the end of the year I would be living in West Germany. We traveled across the country and saw cities and towns and a nation in turmoil. From that year on our nation lost an element of optimism and belief in our government. Presidents Carter Reagan and Clinton never recaptured what we had. I suppose we can even trace it back to November 1963. The night the promise of the nation died was June 5, 1968 with the assassination of Senator Robert Francis Kennedy. I was a news junkie from birth it seems as I recall looking at newspapers before I could read. The evening news was an event that we genuinely looked forward to daily along with the newspapers that would give depth to events. This was history unfolding and I would read whatever I could find to understand the social or political movements surrounding events. I was particularly impressed with Senator Kennedy’s intelligence and positions on the issues. I think what I saw in him was someone who could go to the ghetto and into the areas of our country that the riots of 1967 had laid waste. Racial hatred the year before was shocking to all of America but the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King made us feel that the country was slowly unraveling. Furthering that was the March 1968 speech by President Johnson stating he would not run for another term. The Tet offensive and other events were making the direction of our country uncertain for the first time in a very long time. Event after event made you wonder just what was happening. Senator Kennedy’s death made many believe that political leadership was gone. We all genuinely hurt inside. Through college I hurt and never felt that our leadership was among people I could trust or people up to the task of leading a great nation.

I was at work one day in early 2004 when it was announced that the Democratic party candidates would be holding a radio debate so I decided to tune in. I was familiar with some of the candidates, the usual round-up of legislative heavy hitters. I was unsure who to support but the Republican candidates were certainly not impressive. I heard the introductions and was unfamiliar with Barack Obama except to know somewhat of his legislative career from Chicago. I generally ignored Chicago politics as being in another state from the affairs of Champaign County. When I heard him speak I was transfixed. Who was this guy? He was unlike anything I had ever heard from any politician anywhere I had lived. I recalled that one other person had struck me that way about thirty years before – Congresswoman Barbara Jordan of Texas. Listening I was hooked. How do I get this man to the senate?

The election road to the senate was easy as Jack Ryan’s campaign self-destructed and Alan Keyes was brought in making a mockery of the Illinois electoral process (as if it wasn’t already a joke). We all knew Senator Obama had a future but events began to overtake that long-term view. The prospect of Hillary Clinton walking into the nomination was repugnant to many of us. Legacy presidencies were a thing of the past and Clinton’s assumption that she would be the candidate was obvious years before the campaign season began in 2007. The field of candidates was not broad enough for many of us and the prospect of Clinton II with the mismanagement and cronies that I had objected to in the 1990s was looming. When I thought of a candidate Senator Obama was the person but how? I then found a "Draft Obama" website and noticed that sentiment did exist within the state and outside Illinois for an Obama candidacy. 

When word came that Senator Obama was considering a run groups within the state sprang up - primarily driven by the young. It took me back to 1968 and how Senator Kennedy, another inexperienced idealist, had stepped forward. 

I did not support Senator Obama out of some sentimental attachment to Senator Kennedy. The attachment is more to responsible government, forward-looking policies, a responsible foreign policy and to stop the waste of an unnecessary war in Iraq. I have now lived long enough to witness that America had forgotten the lessons of Vietnam. We should have been more responsible.

I was walking among the revelers on Michigan Avenue at midnight after Senator Obama was elected and an older man asked me what I thought of all of this. I told him that the ghosts of 1968 from Grant Park and Chicago had been exorcised. Whether we are back on track or taking another side trip we will discover but our society has changed. 

Ray's photos from Grant Park and Michigan Avenue can be seen at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zaruka/sets/72157608720767557/