Forty Years On

My theory for years--since at least 2000-—is that the oughts are the 60’s, only more so. It’s really rather that the ‘60’s were a kind of foreshadowing of what is happening now, at the millennium, the symbolic dawning of the Age of Aquarius. But the 60’s were by their nature, as a foreshadowing, also abortive. Things went wrong; they had to, for it was not yet time. It was all seen through a glass darkly.

The parallels multiply. George W. Bush is JFK, following Reagan as FDR. We now see what would have happened had Kennedy not been assassinated—for better and for worse. Kennedy’s assassination was part of the abortion; now we see what the young scion would have been like. 9-11 was the equivalent of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The War in Iraq was the War in Vietnam. But instead of Tet, or following it, we get the successful surge. This time, it looks like, it will be followed through to a US victory. Now we’ll see what this means.

We are currently in the campaign of 1968. Some might think Hillary Clinton is Richard Nixon in lipstick, but that’s too partisan and too cruel. Al Gore was Nixon; he’s retired happily and successfully this time to other projects. Clinton is more like Humphrey, the party establishment warhorse, unexciting but solid, trying to straddle the war issue. Obama is a happy blend of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King—with a Kennedy-Harvard charisma, but also the incarnation of King’s 1960’s dream. Obama and Clinton are in about the same relative positions at the moment that Humphrey and Kennedy were at the same point in that ‘68 race. Now the California primary is upon us: we are about to see what might have happened had RFK not been assassinated.

Romney is back as Romney. But this time his campaign was not aborted by a foolish gaffe; this time Nixon is not running; and this time he is the hope of the conservative, not the liberal, wing of his party. John Lindsay, mayor of New York, is back as Rudy Giuliani, and has lost again in similar fashion, despite good prospects. He was always more popular with the general public than within his party.

Fred Thompson reprised Ronald Reagan’s half-hearted ‘68 campaign, and like Reagan lost—this time. Mike Huckabee stands in about the same relation to the rest of his party and to the general public as George Wallace did at that time—although his populist message is a happier and a more blessed one. It is a sign of how much better things have become in the South.

And this time the McCarthy figure, the lone man of principle, the party maverick, looks likely to take the nomination. Though he’s changed his name to McCain, become a Republican, and is now for war, not peace.

I expect McCain/McCarthy to do well on Super Tuesday, well enough to make his lead insurmountable. On the Democratic side, I expect a closer race. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. Just maybe this time Kennedy wins.

But I expect a wild convention. I remember Chicago.