A Fleeting Wisp of Glory

MANIFESTO

While I'm ordinarily no fan of legacy candidates, I can't help noting that forty years ago today, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated moments after winning California's Democratic primary. Most of today's notable liberal bloggers weren't even alive for the incident, but it marked one of the low lights in my life.

Simply put, it pretty much forced the Democrats to put up the fustian Hubert Humphrey for election where, weighed down by LBJ's awful Vietnam policies, he was no match for Richard Nixon's "secret plan" to end a war in a country that had never threatened the US, had no resources the US was interested in, and was, in fact, involved in a civil war. (Those who opine that the Bushies are trying to win this war of forty years ago via their current foreign policies certainly seem to be on the right track.)

Overall, 1968 was a dreadful year. It included two catastrophic assassinations, blood running in the streets of many metropolitan areas, and an election that brought us the felonious excesses of the Nixonians.

It was the second Kennedy assassination, perhaps more than the first, that changed the US and ultimately brought us the horrid administrations of Reagan and the two Bushes. Perhaps the country can turn things around in the coming years, but it'll be—to borrow a phrase—a long hard slog.

UPDATE — dday at Hullabaloo has a great and very sobering post on the assassination's repercussions.