Nixonland. Part 15

The university stood still for days. The paralyzed administration feared a gang war between right-and left-wing students. They feared reinforcing mobs from Harlem. They also feared for their liberal self-regard. The New York Times New York Times grasped the nub of the dilemma: liberating Columbia from "hoodlum tactics" would take the kind of police tactics an Ivy League university was "properly reluctant" to apply. grasped the nub of the dilemma: liberating Columbia from "hoodlum tactics" would take the kind of police tactics an Ivy League university was "properly reluctant" to apply.

Some militants hoped hoped for repression. You started hearing a phrase in antiwar circles around the time of the Pentagon march: "Heighten the contradictions." Force Leviathan to show its "true," fascist, face. A revolutionary lectured female cadres, "And when they blow, they'll be there naked and the whole country will see the naked face, the naked a.s.s of fascism." Thus their ranks of sympathizers would grow. "What we are dealing with is a certain kind of Irish Catholic prudery," he instructed, "with a lot of sadism thrown in. We've seen these men before. They beat up black kids and take graft, but they get their rocks off with a priest once a week. So they have this crazy sense that they're guardians of morals. They're the kind of guys who have a hard time with s.e.x, a hard time getting hard is what I mean." for repression. You started hearing a phrase in antiwar circles around the time of the Pentagon march: "Heighten the contradictions." Force Leviathan to show its "true," fascist, face. A revolutionary lectured female cadres, "And when they blow, they'll be there naked and the whole country will see the naked face, the naked a.s.s of fascism." Thus their ranks of sympathizers would grow. "What we are dealing with is a certain kind of Irish Catholic prudery," he instructed, "with a lot of sadism thrown in. We've seen these men before. They beat up black kids and take graft, but they get their rocks off with a priest once a week. So they have this crazy sense that they're guardians of morals. They're the kind of guys who have a hard time with s.e.x, a hard time getting hard is what I mean."

(Funny. That was what Ronald Reagan said about hippies.) "So here's what we want to do.... Pick up your shirt. They won't know whether to jerk off or go blind.... Tell 'em their mother sucks black c.o.c.ks or takes black c.o.c.ks in the a.s.s. The important thing is you got to use these words. I know that can be tough. We aren't all completely liberated. But if we use words like suck suck about their mother, these f.u.c.king cops will blow like a balloon." about their mother, these f.u.c.king cops will blow like a balloon."

Working-cla.s.s cops had to stand there and watch as a young girl walked down the line of mediating professors shouting, "s.h.i.t! s.h.i.t! s.h.i.t! s.h.i.t!" and cried, "Go home and die, you old people, go home and die"-and think, how nice to be able to have have professors. Seven busloads of tactical police sat fondling batons. They a.s.sumed the kids were stockpiling Molotov c.o.c.ktails-they called themselves revolutionaries, didn't they? "If we had held them in that bus much longer, they would have hit professors. Seven busloads of tactical police sat fondling batons. They a.s.sumed the kids were stockpiling Molotov c.o.c.ktails-they called themselves revolutionaries, didn't they? "If we had held them in that bus much longer, they would have hit us, us," a mayoral aide recollected. Finally the police got the signal-and stained ivy walls in a b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.s arrest.

The last act at Columbia took place on May Day. A small number of policemen remained behind on campus to maintain order. One bent down to pick up his hat after a kid knocked it from his head. At that moment, someone leapt on his back from a second-floor window. The cop spent the next twelve weeks in the hospital.

The cops got the confrontation they wanted. The revolutionaries got the confrontation they wanted. Lo, a new crop of revolutionaries; lo, a new crop of vigilantes: Nixonland. Nixonland.

Richard Nixon added a stanza to his stump speech: Columbia was "the first major skirmish in a revolutionary struggle to seize the universities of this country and transform them into sanctuaries for radicals and vehicles for revolutionary political and social goals.... The eyes of every potential revolutionary or anarchist on an American campus are focused on Morningside Heights to see how the administration at Columbia deals with a naked attempt to subvert and discredit its authority and to seize its power." It was as the Chicago Tribune Chicago Tribune had concluded its April 9 editorial: holding the line against anarchy must "be the underpinnings of any Republican platform. This country will turn to a party and a man who resolutely stand up to the fomenters of strife and say: 'This far and no farther.'" had concluded its April 9 editorial: holding the line against anarchy must "be the underpinnings of any Republican platform. This country will turn to a party and a man who resolutely stand up to the fomenters of strife and say: 'This far and no farther.'"

Richard Nixon stood up. Ramsey Clark, he lectured, said crime had risen "a little bit, but there is no wave of crime in this country." Then Nixon would hurl forth a torrent of statistics: "murder up 34 percent, a.s.sault 67 percent, narcotics violations 165 percent, and home burglaries 187 percent." A President Nixon, he promised, would choose a new attorney general "to restore order and respect for law in this country."

He released a six-thousand-word position paper, "Toward Freedom from Fear," whose t.i.tle borrowed from Franklin Roosevelt's economic rhetoric: "If the present rate of new crime continues, the number of rapes and robberies and a.s.saults and thefts in the United States will double by the end of 1972. This is a prospect America cannot accept. If we allow it to happen, the city jungle will cease to be a metaphor, it will become a barbaric reality." Poverty "played a role," he allowed. But it was "grossly exaggerated" by LBJ. On the stump, Nixon said that doubling the conviction rate would do more to eliminate crime than quadrupling the funds for any government war on poverty-and when he said it, he had the crowd in the palm of his hand.

A new paperback campaign edition of To Seek a Newer World To Seek a Newer World had come out with a picture of Bobby Kennedy's soft-focused face cropped just so, to make the light behind him appear almost like a halo. Commentators increasingly rhapsodized about Kennedy as a youth-culture prophet-"a complete master of the style they themselves were trying to achieve...informal but authoritative, involved but cool." RFK posters showed up alongside Huey Newton's and Jim Morrison's on dorm-room walls; had come out with a picture of Bobby Kennedy's soft-focused face cropped just so, to make the light behind him appear almost like a halo. Commentators increasingly rhapsodized about Kennedy as a youth-culture prophet-"a complete master of the style they themselves were trying to achieve...informal but authoritative, involved but cool." RFK posters showed up alongside Huey Newton's and Jim Morrison's on dorm-room walls; BOBBY IS GROOVY, BOBBY IS GROOVY, read a sign spotted by a reporter in one ecstatic crowd. Reporters noted his friendship with peripatetic New Left radicals such as Tom Hayden. His campaign song was "This Land Is Your Land" by Bob Dylan's muse Woody Guthrie. read a sign spotted by a reporter in one ecstatic crowd. Reporters noted his friendship with peripatetic New Left radicals such as Tom Hayden. His campaign song was "This Land Is Your Land" by Bob Dylan's muse Woody Guthrie.

But in Indiana, people noticed his hair looking suspiciously shorter.

Tom Hayden had been one of the outside agitators who'd camped out in Mathematics Hall during the Columbia strike. He then wrote, "Students at Columbia discovered that barricades are only the beginning of what they call 'bringing the war home.'" Kennedy aides now spent hours puzzling over how their man's a.s.sociation with even a b.u.t.toned-down version of the psychedelic zeitgeist would fly with the Eastern European immigrants who worked in the steel mills outside Chicago and Dixie migrants along the Ohio River. Black people loved him ("I knew knew you'd be the first to come here," a woman told him in Washington, D.C., as he toured the ravaged ghetto streets the Sunday after the a.s.sa.s.sination, calling him her "darling"); for that very reason, white people hated him ( you'd be the first to come here," a woman told him in Washington, D.C., as he toured the ravaged ghetto streets the Sunday after the a.s.sa.s.sination, calling him her "darling"); for that very reason, white people hated him (YOU PUNK read the sign of one man who, when Kennedy reached to shake his hand, squeezed Kennedy's as if he were trying to do permanent damage). read the sign of one man who, when Kennedy reached to shake his hand, squeezed Kennedy's as if he were trying to do permanent damage).

The last straw might have been a cartoon in the Indianapolis Star Indianapolis Star depicting Bobby and wife Ethel as Bonnie and Clyde. The liberal who'd said after Watts, "There is no point in telling Negroes to obey the law," started criticizing "welfare handouts" and boasting of his record fighting "lawlessness and violence" as attorney general. Ronald Reagan said Bobby was "talking more and more like me." Which was slightly unfair, as a group of students found out who heard Kennedy call for greater Medicare and Social Security benefits in a speech at the Indiana University medical school. depicting Bobby and wife Ethel as Bonnie and Clyde. The liberal who'd said after Watts, "There is no point in telling Negroes to obey the law," started criticizing "welfare handouts" and boasting of his record fighting "lawlessness and violence" as attorney general. Ronald Reagan said Bobby was "talking more and more like me." Which was slightly unfair, as a group of students found out who heard Kennedy call for greater Medicare and Social Security benefits in a speech at the Indiana University medical school.

"Where are you going to get all the money for these federally subsidized programs you're talking about?" one inquired in a put-upon tone.

"From you," the candidate shot back, and pointed out how few black faces he saw. "You are the privileged ones.... You sit here as white medical students, while black people carry the burden of fighting in Vietnam."

The messy Kennedy ideology mirrored a messy presidential field. By May there were two more candidates. Vice President Hubert Humphrey was not groovy. Nor was he at all cool. The keynote of his character was his exuberance-a Happy Warrior. In 1966 he had enraged the right when he said if he lived in a slum he'd "lead a mighty good revolt." That was his boyish exuberance running away with him. In 1968 he enraged liberals when he posed for a photograph beaming and embracing Lester Maddox. That was his exuberance talking, too.

His Achilles' heel came from a failure to exuberate: when challenged by his president, he cowered. Everybody knew it; Bob Hope made jokes about it-when LBJ's daughter Lynda Bird and her new groom left the White House, "LBJ threw a pair of old shoes at them. Unfortunately, Hubert was still in them." The president had toyed with Humphrey mercilessly before naming him his vice-presidential candidate in 1964. Then, before the swearing in, when Humphrey told the press that he expected to influence the administration as an education policy expert, Lyndon Johnson made it clear to him that he would have no influence at all, calling in reporters to the White House to regale them with tales of how he had Hubert's "p.e.c.k.e.r in my pocket." In February of 1965 Humphrey made some tough-minded observations about the political dangers of the "graduated pressure" doctrine in Vietnam. The president rewarded him by removing him from the foreign policy loop. "I want real loyalty," Johnson liked to say. "I want someone who will kiss my a.s.s in Macy's window and say it smells like roses." Which was more or less what Hubert had been doing since.

And now, announcing his candidacy during the Columbia strike, Humphrey expected to harvest his just reward. With so many delegates already committed to voting for him in Chicago out of loyalty to the administration, he wouldn't be campaigning in any primaries. He would put himself over the top via the thirty-three states where convention votes were controlled by regular Democratic organizations. He would hold his tongue concerning his doubts about Vietnam and expect his president to crack the whip for him.

What he didn't know was that he wasn't his president's favorite contender. Lyndon Johnson's preferred replacement, in fact, was the other new presidential candidate: Nelson Rockefeller.

Richard Nixon had offered William Safire an explanation for Nelson Rockefeller's baffling refusal to enter the race back in March: simple politics. He was twenty points behind in Oregon. "It's all over for him," Nixon said. "The only one who can stop us is Reagan." Then, on April 7, LBJ told the head of the 1964 Republicans for Johnson organization that he wouldn't mind if he led a Draft Rockefeller committee. Three days later, the president met with Rockefeller-after which Rockefeller announced his "availability" for such a draft. Two weeks after that, Rocky dined at the White House, where the president urged him outright to run and said he wouldn't campaign against him. Which meant he wouldn't campaign for Humphrey. ("He cries too much," he told reporters one day in the White House about his vice president. "That's it-he cries too much.") Rockefeller made his announcement April 30: he had had to run for president, because "the dramatic and unprecedented events of the past few weeks have revealed in most serious terms the gravity of the crisis we face as a people." to run for president, because "the dramatic and unprecedented events of the past few weeks have revealed in most serious terms the gravity of the crisis we face as a people."

By then he had already moved all in with a stupefyingly overwhelming organizational plan. That was the Rockefeller way. "Gentlemen," his press secretary joked to the press one afternoon, "my candidate will appear in two hours to address a huge crowd which is even now being expensively recruited." In New Orleans they got thousands of uproarious greeters by offering free beer in an ad in the Tulane campus newspaper.

The plan turned on polling. Polls, Rocky knew, could be self-fulfilling prophecies, shaping reality as much as they described it-especially if, like Rockefeller, you had millions to produce and publicize your own. All Nixon's hard work over the last two years was predicated on proving that "Nixon could win." Rockefeller would now endeavor to unprove unprove it. The blueprint was drawn up by a top New York City advertising agency. They chose thirteen "northern tier" states plus Texas, which together made up 60 percent of the population, in order to collect auspicious numbers to trumpet. They reserved 377 full-page ads in fifty-four newspapers in forty cities, 462 television commercials a week in one hundred stations in thirty cities to do the trumpeting. it. The blueprint was drawn up by a top New York City advertising agency. They chose thirteen "northern tier" states plus Texas, which together made up 60 percent of the population, in order to collect auspicious numbers to trumpet. They reserved 377 full-page ads in fifty-four newspapers in forty cities, 462 television commercials a week in one hundred stations in thirty cities to do the trumpeting.

The ads featured testimonials from influential citizens testifying that in an age of riots, Rockefeller and only Rockefeller was the Republican who could speak to Negroes. His speeches retailed a sophisticated new Cold War doctrine, drafted by his national security expert, Henry Kissinger, to open negotiations with our mortal enemies: "In a subtle triangle with Communist China and the Soviet Union, we can ultimately improve our relations with each-as we test the will for peace of both. both." (Henry Kissinger also wooed potential female backers at dinners and teas, until he quit, groaning, "Don't you have any prospects under sixty and worth looking at?") Field men fanned out to beg politicians to hold off on making commitments, bearing polls showing that Rockefeller was ahead of Humphrey or McCarthy or Kennedy in their state. And that Nixon was still "the one who lost it for us in '60." Pick him, and watch it happen again.

Nixon probably had enough pledges by then to win a first-ballot nomination. But Rockefeller was horning in. In Ma.s.sachusetts, the day of his announcement, the only Republican name on the presidential primary ballot was Governor John Volpe's. But Volpe got less than half the votes; 25.8 percent wrote in Nixon-and 30 percent wrote in Nelson Rockefeller.

The public knew none of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans. Even Hubert Humphrey could only vaguely suspect the treachery of his boss. To the young Americans who'd been dancing in the streets on March 31, having forced the architect of an illegal and unjust war out of politics fair and square, the sight of the "old politics" Democratic Establishment falling in behind Humphrey was like watching a salamander grow a new tail when they thought they had killed off the beast. Some who were traveling to Chicago in August to plump for Kennedy or McCarthy, and to lobby delegates to pa.s.s an antiwar resolution, wondered whether they wouldn't be better off in the streets with the revolutionaries, heightening the contradictions.

On May 7 the Democrats of Indiana voted-the first contest in which Kennedy, McCarthy, and a pro-administration favorite-son governor were on the ballot together. Robert F. Kennedy thrashed Gene McCarthy, despite the six thousand McCarthy students who knocked on doors for two straight weekends. Humphrey's stand-in, Governor Branigan, got only 31 percent.

It wasn't only Kennedy, Branigan, and McCarthy ads that filled Indiana airwaves. There was also, in small markets during the most undesirable time slots, a crude TV film for a third-party candidate. And every time "The Wallace Story" ran, the money came in torrents-dollar bills, five-dollars bills, bags of wrinkled bills. "It's a gold mine," a backer said. In presidential polls where Wallace had scored 9 percent before the King riots, he now got 14 points. "They can laugh at George Wallace, but you can bet n.o.body is going to whisper in his ear," a Linotype operator in rural Pennsylvania told a Sat.u.r.day Evening Post Sat.u.r.day Evening Post reporter. "He is for America first." reporter. "He is for America first."

In Michigan, Alabama's first gentleman said his wife's cancer was "improving." She was actually shrunken down to eighty pounds and finally succ.u.mbed a couple days later. Twenty-five thousand mourners waited up to five hours to pay respects at a silver casket-open, at George Wallace's insistence, despite Lurleen's dying wish that it be closed-engraved with a line from her inaugural speech: "I am proud to be an Alabaman." The pageant left the pundits goggle-eyed. It left his supporters exhilarated-countersymbol to the presidentially sponsored outpouring of grief for the criminal Martin Luther King. "I didn't see any flags in the city of Newark lowered to half-mast when Governor Lurleen Wallace died," Tony Imperiale said. "Why not, when they could do it for that Martin Luther c.o.o.n c.o.o.n?"

The Wallace upsurge felt to pundits like America gone crazy. Then, the day after the Indiana primary, columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak reported a political miracle: "While Negro precincts were delivering around 90 percent for Kennedy, [Kennedy] was running 2 to 1 ahead in some Polish precincts"-the same ones, outside Chicago, where in the 1964 presidential primary George Wallace first scared liberals that he might someday win elections in the North. What Mark Rudd and Rap Brown had torn asunder-Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal coalition-the groovy one had joined together: he united "Black Power and Backlash," Joseph Kraft, the Washington Post Washington Post syndicated columnist, now proclaimed. syndicated columnist, now proclaimed.

There was only one problem: it may have been a statistical fallacy. In Gary, Indiana, only 15 percent of Kennedy's votes came from whites (who gave more votes to McCarthy). In white suburbs, he lost decisively. Forty-nine percent of Hoosiers said they didn't like Kennedy; 55 percent called him "too political." Indeed the harder he campaigned-the more the images of the frenetic mobs grasping at his garments showed up on television, as if in reminder of frenetic mobs at Columbia, urban riots, hippies cavorting at "love-ins"-the more he had driven white voters away. away. In the last three weeks, Kennedy lost eight points among undecided voters. They swung to the calmer choice: Gene McCarthy. In the last three weeks, Kennedy lost eight points among undecided voters. They swung to the calmer choice: Gene McCarthy.

The pundits said Kennedy was a uniter. The facts showed he was a divider. But to an Establishment hungry beyond measure for signs of consensus, the myth answered a psychic need. Moderates can be seized by ideological fever dreams as much as extremists; it has always been thus.

McCarthy prevailed in Pennsylvania and Ma.s.sachusetts. RFK won in Nebraska and South Dakota. It came down to Oregon on May 28 and California on June 5: the insurgent still standing would take on the Humphrey Machine. The drama was inescapable. The tousle-haired First Brother, traveling through Oregon in JFK's old bomber jacket with his brood of photogenic children and their c.o.c.ker spaniel, Freckles, scampering down the jet gangway ahead of Bobby and whatever local pol was by his side; the intense former college professor, the "man the people found" and the "Clean for Gene" hordes that followed him, a piercing wind of idealism in a low-down and dirty age. Shirley MacLaine, Sammy Davis, Bobby Darin, Peter Law-ford, Sonny and Cher, superstar Olympic decathlete Rafer Johnson, and football star Rosey Grier traveled with Kennedy. McCarthy campaigned with Elaine May, Tony Randall, Eli Wallach, and Robert Ryan-and as a reproach to Kennedy, who, McCarthy fan Mary McGrory wrote, "thinks the American youth belongs to him as the bequest of his brother," Dustin Hoffman, star of the anti-grown-up hit The Graduate. The Graduate.

Hubert Humphrey didn't travel with celebrities. He traveled to smoke-filled back rooms-where, presumably, he told delegates and the bosses who controlled them what miseries would await them if he became president and they had not played ball.

On May 17, a new antiwar faction flamed into the news: the "ultraresistance." Catholic priests and nuns burst into a Knights of Columbus hall in Catonsville, Maryland, that housed the town selective service office and ignited draft files with napalm they'd concocted from a recipe in a military handbook: "We confront the Catholic Church, other Christian bodies, and the synagogues of America with their silence and cowardice in the face of our country's crimes."

Sympathy actions erupted in a dozen cities. "Certain property has no right to exist," the ultraresistance proclaimed: "concentration camps, slums, and 1-A files." They had an ally in Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston: "Would it be too much to suggest this Easter that we empty our jails of all the protesters-the guilty and the innocent-without judging them; call back from over the border and around the world the young men who are called 'deserters'; drop the cases that are still awaiting judgment on our college youth?"

On May 23, McCarthy won Oregon, a state that had elected an antiwar Republican governor and one of the two senators to vote in 1964 against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. McCarthy had pointed up Kennedy's implication in the original Vietnam escalation, and muckraker Drew Pearson's scoop that Kennedy had approved FBI wiretapping of Martin Luther King. ("Senator Kennedy has never discussed individual cases and isn't going to now," his press secretary, Pierre Salinger, responded, reminding voters of his candidate's ruthless lineage.) Kennedy stepped in it himself by soliciting a testimonial from Robert McNamara-at the end of the most violent two-week period in the history of the war, double the U.S. casualty rate of the Tet period. Oregon was in no mood for wobbly antiwarriors. It was the first political loss in Kennedy family history.

California: sunshine, s...o...b..z, freneticism, melodrama. Kennedy attended the Easter Sunday ma.s.s where Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers ended a twenty-five-day fast on behalf of striking grape pickers with a Communion wafer. Then Kennedy reclaimed his status as the existential risk-taker by promising that this one would be do or die: if he lost California, he'd withdraw from the presidential race. In a statewide poll, 61 percent said Robert F. Kennedy "spends most of his time courting minority groups." So on TV he played the sheriff, a.s.suring the nervous womenfolk he knew how to contain riots: "Cordon off the area in which the rioting or disturbances take place, move in rapidly with sufficient force to deal with it, and cut it off from the community." A print ad listed, on one-half of the page, all his proposals for "Law Enforcement and the Cities"-and left McCarthy's side of the page blank.

McCarthy won a tactical battle. Kennedy had been refusing the Minnesotan's entreaties to debate. After the Oregon setback, Kennedy relented, agreeing to appear in a joint-appearance broadcast from a San Francisco station. The discussion turned to reviving the inner cities. Kennedy laid out a highly technical plan: job training, tax incentives, reconstruction funds. McCarthy said solving the problem would require a ma.s.s transit system so that the ghetto unemployed could find their way to where the jobs were, spoke movingly of "a kind of apartheid in this country, a practical apartheid," and said that "housing has got to go out of the ghetto so there is a distribution of the races."

Now it was RFK's turn to play hardball.

"I am all in favor of moving people out of the ghettos," he began, then disingenuously questioned the practicality of McCarthy's "plan" to relocate them to the suburbs: "I mean, when you say you are going to take ten thousand black people and move them into Orange County..."

Kennedy's last day was marathon parades through San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles. In Watts the motorcade speeded down side streets. Reporters debated whether it was because they were trying to make up lost time or avoiding giving the TV cameras too many chances to record Kennedy courting minority groups.

The win was narrower than the Kennedy people expected, but decisive enough to proclaim it to his followers before midnight in a ballroom at L.A.'s Amba.s.sador Hotel. He piggybacked upon the myth launched by Evans and Novak that his campaign was uniting every opposite: "The vote in South Dakota-the most rural state-and in California-the most urban state-indicates we can end the division within the United States."

Then he indicated his speech was coming to a close with a sidewise jab at an old adversary: "Mayor Yorty has just sent me a message that we have been here too long already."

Hearty, satisfied laughs, the kind warriors share after a brutal but successful battle. It wasn't terribly interesting stuff, but anything Bobby Kennedy did was newsworthy, so the ABC producer kept the camera rolling.

"So my thanks to all of you, and on to Chicago, and let's win there."

He shyly thrust his hand skyward in the two-fingered V-salute, embodying every RFK ambiguity: was this the V-for-victory salute trademarked by General Eisenhower, appropriated by Richard Nixon? Or was it the peace salute beloved of hippies and antiwar activists?

A moment of ambiguity before all ambiguity was erased.

He was led to exit through a kitchen corridor. The six shots came fast enough that they sounded like three.

"My G.o.d, he's been shot!"

"Get a doctor!"

"Get the gun! Get the gun!"

"Kill him! Kill him!"

"Kill the b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

"No, don't kill this one!"

"Oh, my G.o.d, they've shot Kennedy!"

"Kneel down and pray! Kneel down and pray! Say your rosary!"

Rosey Grier and Rafer Johnson fought off the mob that lunged to tear the swarthy gunman limb from limb.

People wondered what kind of country America would become, now that enforcing political opinion at the point of a gun appeared to be becoming routine. The man who legend said could heal all wounds was dead, so how could the wounds be healed?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Violence.

"HAS VIOLENCE BECOME AN A AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE?"NEWSWEEK'S cover story asked. cover story asked. Time Time's cover pointed a stark black handgun at the reader. "The country does not work anymore," a young columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer Philadelphia Inquirer wrote. "All that money and power have produced has been a bunch of people so filled with fear and hate that when a man tries to tell them they must do more for other men, instead of listening they shoot him in the head." wrote. "All that money and power have produced has been a bunch of people so filled with fear and hate that when a man tries to tell them they must do more for other men, instead of listening they shoot him in the head."

That same week, a madwoman named Valerie Solanas shot Andy Warhol. (She had a manifesto: "Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, inst.i.tute complete automation, and destroy the male s.e.x.") Three days after that, with Kennedy's killer in custody-his name was Sirhan Sirhan, and he had acted out of some mysterious grievance involving Israel and Palestine-James Earl Ray was apprehended in London.

Who were were these loners who shot great men, who always seemed to succeed despite their manifest oafishness of character? Truman Capote went on NBC's these loners who shot great men, who always seemed to succeed despite their manifest oafishness of character? Truman Capote went on NBC's Tonight Tonight show and said they were patsies brainwashed by plotters determined to bring America to its knees. show and said they were patsies brainwashed by plotters determined to bring America to its knees. Time, Time, which used to rush to debunk any JFK conspiracy theory, pa.s.sed on Capote's thoughts without criticism, noting that "a cheap crook with Ray's dismal record of bargain-bas.e.m.e.nt villainy could not have traveled so far without extensive help from experts." In a cover essay in which used to rush to debunk any JFK conspiracy theory, pa.s.sed on Capote's thoughts without criticism, noting that "a cheap crook with Ray's dismal record of bargain-bas.e.m.e.nt villainy could not have traveled so far without extensive help from experts." In a cover essay in Life, Life, a psychiatrist blamed it on a surfeit of images that "arouse susceptible people to violent acts." The piece was ill.u.s.trated with stills of the death throes of Bonnie and Clyde. Said William F. Buckley, "In a civilized nation it is not expected that public figures should be considered proper targets for casual gunmen. But in civilized nations of the past it has not been customary for parents to allow their children to do what they feel like; for students to seize their schools and smash their equipment; for police to be ordered to stand by while looters empty stores and arsonists burn down buildings." a psychiatrist blamed it on a surfeit of images that "arouse susceptible people to violent acts." The piece was ill.u.s.trated with stills of the death throes of Bonnie and Clyde. Said William F. Buckley, "In a civilized nation it is not expected that public figures should be considered proper targets for casual gunmen. But in civilized nations of the past it has not been customary for parents to allow their children to do what they feel like; for students to seize their schools and smash their equipment; for police to be ordered to stand by while looters empty stores and arsonists burn down buildings."

The countercultural journalist Hunter S. Thompson recalled that after the abdication of Johnson, "n.o.body knew what would come next, but we all understood that whatever happened would somehow be a product of the 'New Consciousness.' By May it was clear that the next President would be either Gene McCarthy or Bobby Kennedy, and the War would be over by Christmas." Now, farewell to all that.

The drama of the second Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sination obscured another kind of New Consciousness. The Tonight Tonight show and show and Newsweek Newsweek and the rest of the national media paid little attention to it. But the Republican side of the California primary was as portentous in its way for the future of American politics as the short rise and tragic fall of the presidential ambitions of Robert F. Kennedy. Tom Kuchel of California, a liberal Republican, had only recently been presumed one of the most popular members of the Senate. But in that same California primary, he had the Republican nomination taken from him by a man further to the right than Barry Goldwater. and the rest of the national media paid little attention to it. But the Republican side of the California primary was as portentous in its way for the future of American politics as the short rise and tragic fall of the presidential ambitions of Robert F. Kennedy. Tom Kuchel of California, a liberal Republican, had only recently been presumed one of the most popular members of the Senate. But in that same California primary, he had the Republican nomination taken from him by a man further to the right than Barry Goldwater.

The gra.s.sroots right-wing army that had lost with Goldwater in 1964 had survived to fight a thousand battles more. For instance, since 1966, they'd been battling the toxic eighth-grade history textbook Land of the Free Land of the Free by John Hope Franklin, circulating a filmstrip that alternated pa.s.sages from the book with readings from the by John Hope Franklin, circulating a filmstrip that alternated pa.s.sages from the book with readings from the Communist Manifesto, Communist Manifesto, and putting out pamphlets by FACTS in Education-the acronym stood for Fundamental issues, Americanism, Const.i.tutional government, Truth, and Spiritual values-tut-tutting the book's favorable mention of Martin Luther King despite his "record of 60 Communist front organizations." One parent said he'd sooner go to jail than let his daughter be in the same room with the book. and putting out pamphlets by FACTS in Education-the acronym stood for Fundamental issues, Americanism, Const.i.tutional government, Truth, and Spiritual values-tut-tutting the book's favorable mention of Martin Luther King despite his "record of 60 Communist front organizations." One parent said he'd sooner go to jail than let his daughter be in the same room with the book.

Thomas Kuchel was the Senate Republican whip. By one estimate, he voted with the president 61 percent of the time, and excoriating the excesses of the right was one of his signature issues. No one who counted took his conservative critics seriously; Kuchel hadn't lost a campaign in nine tries. His Republican challengers in 1962 had only embarra.s.sed themselves; two years later, they embarra.s.sed themselves again when, after Kuchel turned his back on Barry Goldwater, three men forged an affidavit claiming Kuchel had been arrested during an act of s.e.xual perversion, and Kuchel successfully sued them within an inch of their lives. In 1966, when Kuchel endorsed Brown for governor over Reagan and became one of only three Republicans to vote against Everett Dirksen's school prayer amendment, conservatives floated the name of John Wayne as a challenger. Then they started talking about General Curtis LeMay, an inspiration for Dr. Strangelove. Dr. Strangelove. It all seemed like a bad joke. "The state gets twenty-five percent of its gross product from the federal government," an L.A. power broker pointed out when asked whether California Republicans were crazy enough to turn out a Senate whip with eighteen years of seniority. "Conservative businessmen are realists. They understand that Kuchel works well with the powers in the Senate and knows his way around the federal Establishment." It all seemed like a bad joke. "The state gets twenty-five percent of its gross product from the federal government," an L.A. power broker pointed out when asked whether California Republicans were crazy enough to turn out a Senate whip with eighteen years of seniority. "Conservative businessmen are realists. They understand that Kuchel works well with the powers in the Senate and knows his way around the federal Establishment."

Kuchel himself knew enough to be worried. After the Goldwater crusade, his enemies now controlled the California Republican Party. In 1966 he called in Richard Nixon to broker a series of peace meetings with conservatives. It wasn't enough. Someone more formidable than John Wayne arose to challenge him: the man who led the campaign against Land of the Free. Land of the Free. For saving their children from what he called the "sick sixties," California conservatives loved Max Rafferty more than Watts Negroes loved RFK. For saving their children from what he called the "sick sixties," California conservatives loved Max Rafferty more than Watts Negroes loved RFK.

The Louisiana native and son of an autoworker had been an obscure school administrator in 1961 when he was invited to address a school board meeting in his new district outside Pasadena. He chose not to dilate upon the topic of his dissertation, "Personnel-Pupil Ratios in Certain California Elementary School Districts"; instead he excoriated activists who "seem to spend every waking moment agitating against ROTC, booing authorized congressional committees, and parading in support of Fidel Castro.... This sizable minority of spineless, luxury-loving, spiritless characters came right out of our cla.s.srooms. They played in our kindergartens, went on field trips to the bakery and studied things called 'social living' and 'language arts' in our junior high schools. They were 'adjusted to their peer groups.' They were taught that compet.i.tion was bad. They were told little about modern democratic capitalism. They were persuaded that the world was very shortly to become one big, happy family. They were taught to be kind and democratic and peaceful."

What they were not not taught were the immortal words of Decatur: "our country, right or wrong!" "The results," Rafferty went on (the words were toned down when reprinted in taught were the immortal words of Decatur: "our country, right or wrong!" "The results," Rafferty went on (the words were toned down when reprinted in Reader's Digest Reader's Digest), "are plain for all to see: the worst of our youngsters growing up to become booted, sideburned, duck-tailed, unwashed, leather-jacketed slobs, whose favorite sport is ravaging little girls and stomping polio victims to death."

Someone in the audience stood up on his chair and shouted, "You're preaching hatred!" Another leapt up and answered, "This man is a patriot, shut up and hear him!" A conservative hero had been born.

In 1962 Rafferty won statewide election for superintendent of public instruction. He turned the powerless position into a bully pulpit-a "lobbyist for the children." Certain school libraries, it arrived, were stocking the Dictionary of American Slang. Dictionary of American Slang. Said slang included obscenities. Announced Rafferty, "This sort of p.o.r.nography is just as dangerous to the morals and minds and souls of our children as cholera bacillus would be to their bodies." His supporters sent twenty thousand pieces of hate mail to Rafferty's most prominent critic, the liberal board of education president Tom Braden-a "Com-symp," a "h.o.m.os.e.xual," "not fit to a.s.sociate with children." Rafferty became a nationally syndicated columnist, expanding his targets to include the juvenile crime rate ("so much the highest in the world that it has become an object of shuddering horror to the rest of the human race"), busing and the "survival of the neighborhood school," and Lyndon Johnson's budget (a "rathole"). He won reelection on a platform of prayer in the cla.s.sroom and teaching biblical creationism alongside evolution, as competing theories. He went on to savage the student uprisings at Berkeley-where professors taught a "four-year course in s.e.x, drugs, and treason" and "encouraged and egged on the student rebellion in order to make the regents look ridiculous." Said slang included obscenities. Announced Rafferty, "This sort of p.o.r.nography is just as dangerous to the morals and minds and souls of our children as cholera bacillus would be to their bodies." His supporters sent twenty thousand pieces of hate mail to Rafferty's most prominent critic, the liberal board of education president Tom Braden-a "Com-symp," a "h.o.m.os.e.xual," "not fit to a.s.sociate with children." Rafferty became a nationally syndicated columnist, expanding his targets to include the juvenile crime rate ("so much the highest in the world that it has become an object of shuddering horror to the rest of the human race"), busing and the "survival of the neighborhood school," and Lyndon Johnson's budget (a "rathole"). He won reelection on a platform of prayer in the cla.s.sroom and teaching biblical creationism alongside evolution, as competing theories. He went on to savage the student uprisings at Berkeley-where professors taught a "four-year course in s.e.x, drugs, and treason" and "encouraged and egged on the student rebellion in order to make the regents look ridiculous."

On the Senate campaign trail in 1968, he added another count to the "sick sixties" indictment: the cowardice of young men who refused to fight in Vietnam-tying it all to progressive education, the "fraud of the century." And soon he was on his way to the Senate from the most populous state in the union, with an impressive come-from-behind victory the day of RFK's a.s.sa.s.sination. He received an astonishing seventy-three thousand financial donations, of an average of $13 each.

California, always on the cutting edge. Now that blade had two edges, and one of them was right-wing reaction to everything Eugene McCarthy and RFK represented. But few noticed.

Richard Nixon noticed. An intellectually ambitious memo by a new kid, Kevin Phillips, a former aide to the right-wing Bronx congressman Paul Fino, "Middle America and the Emerging Republican Majority," was circulating among the Nixon strategists. The language was new, but the theory was as old as the crusade against Alger Hiss: elections were won by focusing people's resentments. The New Deal coalition rose by directing people's resentment of economic elites, Phillips argued. But the new hated elite, as the likes of Rafferty and Reagan grasped, was cultural cultural-the "toryhood of change," condescending and self-serving liberals "who make their money out of plans, ideas, communication, social upheaval, happenings, excitement," at the psychic expense of "the great, ordinary, Lawrence Welkish ma.s.s of Americans from Maine to Hawaii."

Nixon groped toward giving that Lawrence Welkish ma.s.s a name and a n.o.bility of purpose in a May 16 national radio address. William Safire took special delight in poaching the keynote from a liberal. Paul Douglas once gave a speech labeling all those millions of Americans condescended to by their economic overlords the "silent center." Nixon described the "silent center" as "the millions of people in the middle of the American political spectrum who do not demonstrate, who do not picket or protest loudly." They They were loud. were loud. You You were quiet. were quiet. They They proclaimed their virtue. proclaimed their virtue. You, You, simply, lived virtuously. Thus Nixon made political capital of a certain experience of humiliation: the humiliation of having to defend values that seemed to you self-evident, then finding you had no words to defend them, precisely because they seemed so self-evident. Nixon gave you the words. "A great many quiet Americans have become committed to answers to social problems that preserve personal freedom," he said. "As this silent center has become a part of the new alignment, it has transformed it from a minority into a majority." simply, lived virtuously. Thus Nixon made political capital of a certain experience of humiliation: the humiliation of having to defend values that seemed to you self-evident, then finding you had no words to defend them, precisely because they seemed so self-evident. Nixon gave you the words. "A great many quiet Americans have become committed to answers to social problems that preserve personal freedom," he said. "As this silent center has become a part of the new alignment, it has transformed it from a minority into a majority."

This story of a "silenced" majority was also told in a new hit movie. In the opening scene, a public lecture at Fort Bragg, a Negro Special Forces officer explains Communist tactics in Vietnam: "extermination of a civilian leadership," "torture of innocent children." A woman stands up to ask, "Sergeant, I'm Gladys Cooper, a housewife. It's strange that we haven't read of this in the newspaper." A bulldog-looking officer answers the housewife, "Well, that's newspapers for you, ma'am. You can fill volumes with what you don't don't read in 'em." The movie, read in 'em." The movie, The Green Berets, The Green Berets, produced with extensive Pentagon help, was the first studio picture about the Vietnam War. Who got to speak and who was silenced was a major theme. produced with extensive Pentagon help, was the first studio picture about the Vietnam War. Who got to speak and who was silenced was a major theme.

Who could oppose a war against an enemy that tortured little children? The elite media, it turns out. "I'm not convinced," a reporter played by a nerdy David Janssen tells the Green Berets' commander, played by none other than John Wayne. He calls the sergeant he just heard "brainwashed." Wayne invites him to join the company as they ship out to Vietnam. There, Janssen all but demands that rat-faced VC infiltrators be read their Miranda rights, then realizes the truth only after the Communists slaughter a darling little Vietnamese girl he has taken into his care. Now he understands: he he is the one who was brainwashed-by his fellow liberals. His only fear going forward, he says, is "if I say what I feel, I may be out of a job." is the one who was brainwashed-by his fellow liberals. His only fear going forward, he says, is "if I say what I feel, I may be out of a job."

A New York Times New York Times film reviewer, twenty-nine-year-old Renata Adler, found film reviewer, twenty-nine-year-old Renata Adler, found The Green Berets The Green Berets "vile and insane." (Indeed, in reality, enemy atrocities were the second-most common news report out of Vietnam.) Her review was the subject of a peroration on the floor of the Senate by Nixon's friend Strom Thurmond. "I have not yet had the opportunity to see this movie," he drawled. But "I have become convinced that this must be one of the most admirable movies of our generation, after reading the review which appeared last week in the "vile and insane." (Indeed, in reality, enemy atrocities were the second-most common news report out of Vietnam.) Her review was the subject of a peroration on the floor of the Senate by Nixon's friend Strom Thurmond. "I have not yet had the opportunity to see this movie," he drawled. But "I have become convinced that this must be one of the most admirable movies of our generation, after reading the review which appeared last week in the New York Times. New York Times....That set me to wondering what on earth the standards of criticism are that are current in the New York Times New York Times for a film which is patriotic and pro-American." for a film which is patriotic and pro-American."

He read from another Times Times review, of a Broadway show: review, of a Broadway show: What is so likable about "Hair," that tribal rock musical that Monday completed its trek from downtown, via a discotheque, and landed, positively panting with love and smelling of sweat and flowers, at the Biltmore Theatre? I think it is simply that it's so likable. So new, so fresh, and so una.s.suming, even in its pretensions....

A great many four-letter words, such as "love," are used very frequently. At one point a number of men and women (I should have counted) are seen totally nude and full, as it were, face.

Frequent references-frequent approving references-are made to the expanding benefits of drugs. h.o.m.os.e.xuality is not frowned upon.... The American flag is not desecrated-that would be a Federal offense, wouldn't it?-but it is used in a manner that not everyone would call respectful. Christian ritual also comes in for a bad time.... So there-you have been warned. Oh yes, they also hand out flowers.

Senator Thurmond: "We have come to the point described by Orwell in 1984, 1984, where he talks about Newspeak. In Newspeak, words are used to mean the opposite of the commonly accepted meaning. where he talks about Newspeak. In Newspeak, words are used to mean the opposite of the commonly accepted meaning. Love Love means 'hate,' means 'hate,' peace peace means 'war,' and so forth. We are now at the point where depravity is fresh and likable, whereas virtue is apparently false and insane." means 'war,' and so forth. We are now at the point where depravity is fresh and likable, whereas virtue is apparently false and insane."

In New York, The Green Berets The Green Berets was playing at a two-thousand-seat cinema on that selfsame Broadway, between Forty-seventh and Forty-eighth streets. Outside, protesters bore Vietnam flags and placards reading was playing at a two-thousand-seat cinema on that selfsame Broadway, between Forty-seventh and Forty-eighth streets. Outside, protesters bore Vietnam flags and placards reading UP AGAINST THE WALL, JOHN WAYNE UP AGAINST THE WALL, JOHN WAYNE and and GREEN BERETS-SAGA OF FASCIST TERROR GREEN BERETS-SAGA OF FASCIST TERROR. The theater was guarded by armed police. Playing a block down at the New Emba.s.sy on Forty-sixth was Wild in the Streets Wild in the Streets-"by far the best film of the year so far," Adler of the Times Times said-a fantasia about a rock star who organizes to give fourteen-year-olds the vote, becomes president of the United States, and sentences the over-thirty to concentration camps where they are force-fed LSD. said-a fantasia about a rock star who organizes to give fourteen-year-olds the vote, becomes president of the United States, and sentences the over-thirty to concentration camps where they are force-fed LSD.

It was coming to this: insurgents and patriots paying good money to watch the other side silenced and humiliated.

The two sides were not symmetrical. Only one had the power to put the other in jail.

For years Dr. Benjamin Spock had watched mysterious men in slouch hats take notes wherever he spoke; "one Dr. Spock is more dangerous to the war effort than 1,000 draft-card burners," the Nation Nation pointed out. In January 1968, Spock was indicted for criminal conspiracy to interfere with the draft laws, along with four others who had signed a pet.i.tion counseling draft resistance before the Pentagon protest. The trial of the "Boston 5" began at the same time Nixon was lecturing Orthogonians about their place in a new majority, John Wayne was lecturing them about the media's perversion of the n.o.ble Vietnam War, and seventy-three thousand Californians were rushing checks to Max Rafferty. The jury was told the government needn't prove these "conspirators" were ever in the same room, or even in on the same phone conversations-only that "a meeting of the minds" had taken place. pointed out. In January 1968, Spock was indicted for criminal conspiracy to interfere with the draft laws, along with four others who had signed a pet.i.tion counseling draft resistance before the Pentagon protest. The trial of the "Boston 5" began at the same time Nixon was lecturing Orthogonians about their place in a new majority, John Wayne was lecturing them about the media's perversion of the n.o.ble Vietnam War, and seventy-three thousand Californians were rushing checks to Max Rafferty. The jury was told the government needn't prove these "conspirators" were ever in the same room, or even in on the same phone conversations-only that "a meeting of the minds" had taken place.

Hundreds had signed the same doc.u.ment. Why had the government chosen these five? Mitch.e.l.l Goodman was the forty-four-year-old novelist who had shouted, "We are burning children in Vietnam!" during Hubert Humphrey's appearance at the National Book Awards. Marcus Raskin was a thirty-three-year-old former Kennedy administration defense official. The Reverend William Sloane Coffin was the forty-four-year-old chaplain of Yale University, a former CIA officer. Only one, a twenty-three-year-old Harvard graduate student of no particular public reputation named Michael Ferber, resembled a typical antiwar activist. The state was on the lookout for gurus: "teachers, preachers, and politicians," as Nixon had put it in Reader's Digest, Reader's Digest, who led children astray. Our children were the symbol and substance of American innocence. The thought that they'd come to insurrectionist conclusions on their own was too painful for some to bear. Their Svengalis had to be punished. who led children astray. Our children were the symbol and substance of American innocence. The thought that they'd come to insurrectionist conclusions on their own was too painful for some to bear. Their Svengalis had to be punished.

Svengalis were in patriots' sights everywhere. On May 13, 112 Americans died in Vietnam, of an average age of twenty-two. An American delegation in Paris led by Amba.s.sador-at-Large Averell Harriman began peace talks with the North Vietnamese. The next week, students overran Paris and set fire to the stock market, sparking a general strike that almost brought down the government. "Sous les paves, la plage" "Sous les paves, la plage" was one of their slogans ("Underneath the paving stones, the beach"); "Marx Mao Marcuse" was another. Everyone knew who Marx and Mao were. But who was this Marcuse? Imagine the shock upon discovery that he was a teacher at the San Diego campus of the University of California. was one of their slogans ("Underneath the paving stones, the beach"); "Marx Mao Marcuse" was another. Everyone knew who Marx and Mao were. But who was this Marcuse? Imagine the shock upon discovery that he was a teacher at the San Diego campus of the University of California.

"Marcuse Calls for Sabotage of U.S. Society," reported the San Diego Union San Diego Union after he appeared on a platform with H. Rap Brown, in a headline next to a cartoon of a rat-faced, bearded radical burrowing beneath "Our Universities and Colleges," poised to strike them with a dagger; "Marcuse Is 'Dad' of Student Revolt," trumpeted a Drew Pearson column. KCET-TV in Los Angeles ran a special, "Herbert Marcuse: Philosopher of the New Left." "How is it, Professor," a polite newsman asked the distinguished, graying gentleman as they strolled the bucolic campus, "in this country of unprecedented prosperity, that there can emerge so powerful a force of discontent?" "It after he appeared on a platform with H. Rap Brown, in a headline next to a cartoon of a rat-faced, bearded radical burrowing beneath "Our Universities and Colleges," poised to strike them with a dagger; "Marcuse Is 'Dad' of Student Revolt," trumpeted a Drew Pearson column. KCET-TV in Los Angeles ran a special, "Herbert Marcuse: Philosopher of the New Left." "How is it, Professor," a polite newsman asked the distinguished, graying gentleman as they strolled the bucolic campus, "in this country of unprecedented prosperity, that there can emerge so powerful a force of discontent?" "It ees ees precisely because of precisely because of zhis zhis prosperity that you have such a tremendous discontent," he replied. His theory, sketched in his key text, prosperity that you have such a tremendous discontent," he replied. His theory, sketched in his key text, One Dimensional-Man, One Dimensional-Man, was that Western industrial society waged "warfare against liberation, dulling the ma.s.ses by their very prosperity." Enlightened youth understood that total refusal- was that Western industrial society waged "warfare against liberation, dulling the ma.s.ses by their very prosperity." Enlightened youth understood that total refusal-sous les paves, la plage-was the only dialectical salvation, a rage all the greater for the ma.s.sive bulk of the official repression that suppressed it.

To right-wing conspiracy theorists, the children couldn't have conceived of such things as Columbia or Paris on their own; the likes of "Marcuse-a Dangerous Guru with a Bad Seed"-as one headline called him-had to be behind it. "They had riots in Paris, when the French had to bring out the troops and the tanks. Marcoo-see was there," the San Diego American Legion commander said on TV. "When they had the riots with the students in Berlin, Marcoo-see was there. It seems to me that wherever, uh, the radicals in this New Left, this so-called New Left, appear, this Marcoo-see is somewheres in the background. We are convinced that he has has to convey some of his ideas and thoughts to convey some of his ideas and thoughts directly directly to the students. And in this lies his danger to the University of California." to the students. And in this lies his danger to the University of California."

The commander tried to get Marcoo-see fired. That failing, the Legion tried raising $20,000 to buy out his contract. A vigilante cut the professor's telephone lines; another fired a shot at his garage. His graduate students started surrounding him in a cordon during his morning walks across campus. In July, he fled San Diego behind death threats: 72 hours more, Marcuse, and then we kill you. Ku Klux Klan. 72 hours more, Marcuse, and then we kill you. Ku Klux Klan. Also: Also: Hey, you worthless pig. I hope you are soon eliminated from this country and I hope the world, you anarchist atheist murderer being paid by the people of California to advocate bloodshed. Hey, you worthless pig. I hope you are soon eliminated from this country and I hope the world, you anarchist atheist murderer being paid by the people of California to advocate bloodshed.

The Establishment hated the gurus. Which was why they went after a far more prominent guru with even greater fury-the guru who was first among equals. "Is Dr. Spock to Blame?" asked the cover of Newsweek, Newsweek, next to an infant wearing b.u.t.tons reading next to an infant wearing b.u.t.tons reading UP AGAINST THE WALL, MOTHER UP AGAINST THE WALL, MOTHER and and DON'T TRUST ANYONE OVER 3. DON'T TRUST ANYONE OVER 3. The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care was the taproot of the new generation's insolence, said a friend of Richard Nixon's, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale: "Feed 'em whatever they want, don't let them cry, instant gratification of needs." And now Dr. Spock was fighting off jail. was the taproot of the new generation's insolence, said a friend of Richard Nixon's, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale: "Feed 'em whatever they want, don't let them cry, instant gratification of needs." And now Dr. Spock was fighting off jail.

It was all a little fantastic: Dr. Spock's actual prescriptions were only permissive in the context of a previous generation of baby books ("Infants should be kissed, if at all, upon the cheek or forehead, but the less of this the better" went the typical counsel). People needed scapegoats. "Liberal parenting" fit the bill. Like the parents, for example, of Mark Rudd. He was profiled on the front page of the May 19, 1968, New York Times: New York Times: "Mrs. Jacob Rudd pointed out the picture-window of her brick ranch house to a colorful rock garden.... 'My revolutionary helped me plant those tulips last November, my rebel,' she said with motherly pride.... On Mother's Day last weekend, his parents went to the Columbia campus and brought a veal parmigiana dinner, which the family ate in their parked car on Amsterdam Avenue." "Mrs. Jacob Rudd pointed out the picture-window of her brick ranch house to a colorful rock garden.... 'My revolutionary helped me plant those tulips last November, my rebel,' she said with motherly pride.... On Mother's Day last weekend, his parents went to the Columbia campus and brought a veal parmigiana dinner, which the family ate in their parked car on Amsterdam Avenue."

Marx, Mao, Marcuse, Mother: the rot could come from anywhere now. And such was the context, as spring became summer, within which Ronald Reagan's presidential bandwagon gathered speed.

The wealthy California businessmen who'd backed Ronald Reagan's entrance into politics had been pushing their man toward the presidency since before he was governor. Reagan himself proved diffident. "Ron honestly believes that G.o.d will arrange things for the best," a Republican told David Broder in January of 1968. "But some of the people who made him governor are willing to give G.o.d a hand in making him president, and they're not too happy with the slowdown." His backers' frustrations magnified as his cultural moment arrived.

His governorship was floundering. He proposed a budget that cut every department by 10 percent, which made as much sense as trying to lose 10 percent of one's body weight by extracting tissue from every organ; he didn't even know that much of the budget was set by statute. He never came within a mile of the goal. Then he pa.s.sed the largest tax increase in the history of a U.S. state. Meanwhile a cabal of aides, including Lyn Nofziger and Edwin Meese, plotted to overthrow his chief of staff by bugging hotel rooms to try to uncover evidence of gay s.e.x. They were so indiscreet about it that Drew Pearson reported speculation "whether the magic charm of Governor Ronald Reagan can survive the discovery that a h.o.m.os.e.xual ring has been operating in his office." Reagan was in way over his head. "Can anyone tell me what's in my legislative program?" he once plaintively asked aides in the middle of a press conference. It hardly mattered to those who wanted to see him president.