Notes From D.R. | Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

Is this not the new 1968?

Racial tension. Political turmoil. Economic distress. It’s like we’ve entered some sort of time warp.

As was the case four decades ago, we have an unpopular war, an unpopular incumbent President, and an extremely bitter contest between the two men vying to replace him.

Like Hubert Humphrey, Barack Obama was the winner of one of the most contentious Democrat primaries of all time. The conflict between Obama and Hillary Clinton was every bit as vicious as the fight between Robert F. Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy. At times, the Democrat Party seemed at war with itself—and based on anecdotal evidence about Democrats dispirited with Obama, it appears that this silent war has yet to end.

Like Richard Nixon, John McCain failed in a prominent Presidential bid eight years ago, but is now running as a candidate who believes in unifying the country and placing the people’s interests ahead of partisan desires. He has been subjected to the same smears Nixon was subjected to four decades ago; just as Nixon was accused of exploiting racial fears to win the Presidency, so too has McCain been (falsely) charged with trafficking in bias in order to secure victory.

Joseph Biden is filling the old Edmund Muskie role from ’68: a Senator with “hardscrabble” roots who brought theoretical strength to the Democrat ticket. Muskie was also commonly seen as more qualified to be one heartbeat away from the Presidency than his GOP counterpart.

The GOP’s Vice Presidential nominee, Spiro Agnew, was the Sarah Palin of his era, a rising-star governor popular among conservatives and loathed by certain Republicans who wanted Michigan Governor George Romney to be Nixon’s second-in-command. Agnew complemented Nixon’s reformer image and played a crucial role in the former Vice President’s ultimate victory.

The ’68 election occurred during a time of vast social strife—and similar circumstances clearly exist in the ’08 election. Then as now, the country is divided over war, with Democrats advocating an expedited withdrawal from Vietnam/Iraq and Republicans opposed to the United States’ surrender. The gay rights movement has replaced the civil rights movement as the culture-war fault line, although racial politics have constantly surfaced in the ’08 campaign.

While the ’08 election has thankfully not witnessed the tragedies of the ’68 election, the social division of the past is still present in the present. The rhetorical attacks on Sarah Palin and the retrograde remarks on the Internet about Barack Obama have their roots in the racism and sexism of the ‘60s. The left-wing radicalism that began to take root in the Democrat Party in 1968 is in full flower in 2008. Conservative populism, which was on the rise in 1968, has become mainstream today.

We’re a better nation now than we were in 1968—but by how much? A truly progressive society would not have so many citizens spreading false stories about Obama’s religious affiliation. A truly advanced nation would not tolerate the raw misogyny that has been directed towards Palin, nor would it stand for the age-related sick jokes about McCain. (A truly tolerant society would have also rendered Biden a political outcast after his unfunny remarks about Indian immigrants in Delaware a few years back.)

From a conservative political standpoint, things are much better now than they were then. Obama is a figure to be reckoned with, to be sure, but he is not the statesman Humphrey was four decades ago. Comparing Biden to Muskie in terms of class and intelligence is like comparing Clay Aiken to Jackie Wilson in terms of musical ability. While the similarities between “McPalin” and Nixon-Agnew are obvious, there’s no evidence to suggest that McCain and Palin are as crooked as Nixon and Agnew proved to be.

It’s quite likely that the similarities between ’68 and ’08 will continue into Election Day itself. Between Obama’s staunch supporters and Palin’s proud promoters, between those who see McCain as another Bush and those who see Obama as another Carter, between those who don’t want Palin to be the next in line and those who think Biden is out of line, there’s a strong possibility that the winner could just barely beat the loser, as Nixon did in his razor-thin victory over Humphrey. Nixon’s victory failed to stop the boiling political tensions of the era, tensions that came to define the 1970s. If the winner of the ’08 election manages to prevent American society from similarly exploding in the next decade, that person will occupy a rare place in American history.