Posted on 12/28/2003 9:56:20 AM PST by nwrep
DAVENPORT, Iowa -- Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean has a vision of where he'd like to take the nation. It turns out to be the 1960s.
In campaign stop after campaign stop, in overheated high school gyms and smoky union halls, Dean repeatedly offers this misty-eyed homage to that turbulent decade:
"When I was 21 years old," he says, "it was the end of the civil rights era, and America had paid an enormous price. Martin Luther King had been killed. Bobby Kennedy was dead. A lot of other people who are less well-known, including four little girls in a Birmingham church, had died so that we could have equal rights under the law for all Americans.
"But it was also a time of great hope. Medicare had passed. Head Start had passed. The Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the first African American justice [was appointed to] the United States Supreme Court. We felt like we were all in it together, that we all had responsibility for this country. . . . That [strong schools and communities were] everybody's responsibility. That if one person was left behind, then America wasn't as strong or as good as it could be or as it should be. That's the kind of country that I want back."
It is a stirring piece of rhetoric, and one that inevitably draws cheers and sustained applause for the former Vermont governor as he campaigns through this state, which holds its first-in-the-nation Democratic caucus in three weeks. In this part of the farm belt last week, Dean used it as his closer almost every place he spoke.
His references to the '60s, Dean makes clear in an interview, are something personal. "We felt the possibilities were unlimited then," he said last week. "We were making such enormous progress. It resonates with a lot of people my age. People my age really felt that way."
As history, however, Dean's memories of the era are selective. Rather than the time of great national unity and purpose he describes, the 1960s were a period of great upheaval, and surely rank among the most divisive for America in the 20th century.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Well, Jimmy Carter fixed all that in the 70's.
I thought we just ran out of the really good dope
Vice-president Hubert H. Humphrey had been campaigning for delegates in non-primary states and won the nomination at a combative Democratic National Convention taking place in Chicago on August 26-29, 1968. Some three-thousand anti-war demonstrators stood outside the convention hall. Here, McCarthy was beaten by Humphrey. That same day, the delegates to the Democratic convention voted down a Vietnam peace plan by a 1500-1000 vote.(From Woodstock to Watergate, 47)
The response to the rejected Vietnam peace plan was horrific. The three-thousand anti-war demonstrators, along with an equal amount of police and Illinois National Guardsmen fought a bloody, free-for-all battle that lasted all night. The police and Guardsmen also lead an assault in downtown Chicago on the headquarters of the Democratic National Convention. There were mass arrests and three-hundred injured as the police clubbed the defenseless demonstrators. Later, on Election Day, Hubert Humphrey lost the Presidential election to Richard Nixon.(From Watergate to Woodstock, 60-64)
(I was trying to be funny too... Let's not quit our day jobs.) :)
Conservatives can celebrate a decade of real accomplishment.
Liberals celebrate a decade of violence, disunity and surrender.
Go, Howie, GO!
More like the spirit of Nov. Dec. and Jan. of 2000-01 and during which they were deprived of the prize.
I am sooooooooooo glad I wasn't born until 1970. I'm just sorry my dear, sweet parents had to live through that crappy nightmare of a decade, the '60s.
ROFL!
You didn't miss a thing, Tony!! ;-)
This was the Clintons' schtick. Been there, done that (twice) and it only gets worse. I think we're all over that, Ho'.
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