The Politics of Tightrope

The 1960s were a schizophrenic decade. During the first five years there were difficult struggles, but there was also a mood of hope, of possibility. The bloody exception was, of course, the assassination of John F. Kennedy. But even that horror had some positive consequences. It made Americans more sensitive to the best proposals that Kennedy had put forward and thereby was a major factor in the legislative victories of Lyndon Johnson.

Then, in 1965, came the massive escalation of the unconscionable war in Vietnam. There followed more than 40,000 American deaths, and the killing, maiming, and uprooting of millions of Vietnamese. In the United States, the war put an end to the hopes for a “Great Society,” forced the ef...