1968 Sucked. Big Time. Not for me personally, but for this country, and the world. I'm not saying that 1968 was worse than one of the years where the world suffered from Plague or Pandemic Flu, or a World War. But, 1968 sucked.
I have only recently decided that 1968 was a particularly bad year. It was the year of the Tet Offensive, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Saddam Hussein's coup d'état, rioting in streets, and Richard Nixon's defeat of Hubert Humphrey. It was also the year that Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assinated. All of these were bad things, and I knew it when they occured. But I have decided that one of these was worse than I knew at the time: Richard Nixon was elected President of the United States.
It doesn't take much imagination to see that the deviation of the Republican Party from "Goldwater Republican" through the "Reagan Republican" to the "DeLay Republican" began in 1968.
According to Wikipedia:
The U.S. presidential election of 1968 was a wrenching national experience, and included the assassination of liberal Democratic candidate Robert F. Kennedy, the violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, as well as widespread demonstrations against the Vietnam War across American university and college campuses. In the end, Richard M. Nixon would win the election on a campaign of "law and order". The 1968 election is sometimes considered to be a realigning election...
John Mitchell, the first United States Attorney General ever to be convicted of illegal activities and imprisoned, was appointed to that office by Nixon. That was arguably the first indication of events that would result in what we now call the Culture of corruption.
Henry Kissinger, Nixon's National Security Advisor and Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford, is limited in his foreign travels as "France, Brazil, Chile, Spain, and Argentina have sought him for questioning in connection with suspected war crimes such as Operation Condor." I think that several officials in the current Bush Administration will face similar limitations once they return to private life.
Dick Cheney was appointed as a Nixon Administration intern in 1969, and later as a special assistant to Donald Rumsfeld, who was then Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity. Cheney later became Gerald Ford's Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense under George H. W. Bush. He is currently serving as President-Vice-President in the George W. Bush Administration.
Nixon appointed George H. W. Bush as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in 1971, moving him onto the national political stage - which led to him later being elected President. If George H. W. Bush had not been elevated to a prominent position by Nixon, I seriously doubt that there would have ever been a Bush Administration - I or II.
Don Rumsfeld was appointed as Director of the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity and Assistant to the President by Richard Nixon. Gerald Ford appointed him White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense. He was later appointed Defense Secretary by George W. Bush.
Nixon also appointed William Rehnquist to the Supreme Court in 1971. Rehnquist was moved to the Chief Justice chair by Ronald Reagan. Rehnquist was a staunch conservative and federalist, known for advocating states rights - except for his vote in the 2000 Bush v. Gore case. He is credited (or blamed) by many people for the conservative shift in Supreme Court.
George Schultz, Labor & Treasury Secretary under Nixon, was a "senior member of the so-called "Vulcans," and "has been called the father of the Bush Doctrine, because of his advocacy of Preventive war." George Schultz was President of Bechtel Corporation while Caspar Weinberger vice president and general counsel.
Weinberger died in 2006, leaving a legacy of SDI/Star Wars and having been indicted by Lawrence Walsh for lying about the Iran-Contra scandal. George H.W. Bush stepped in with a Presidential pardon before Cap could be brought to trial. Nixon brought Weinberger to Washington in January 1970 as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission and later appointed him as Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. Reagan later made him Secretary of Defense.
Paul O'Neill, former Secretary of the Treasury under Bush II was deputy director of OMB from 1974 to 1977.
John W. Snow, former Secretary of the Treasury under Bush II, was General Counsel for the Department of Transportation in 1973-74, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy, Plans and International Affairs in 1974-75, Deputy Undersecretary of the Department of Transportation in 1976.
Henry Paulson, current Secretary of the Treasury, was Assistant Secretary of Defense at The Pentagon from 1970 to 1972 and assistant to John Ehrlichman (Nixon's White House Counsel and convicted felon) from 1972 to 1973.
Karl Rove is also a product of the Nixon years. He dropped out of the University of Utah in June 1971 to take a paid position as the Executive Director of the College Republican National Committee. Nixon White House Counsel John Dean said, "Based on my review of the files, it appears the Watergate prosecutors were interested in Rove's activities in 1972, but because they had bigger fish to fry they did not aggressively investigate him."
The point of this diary is that most, if not all, of the crap we are currently dealing with is the result of Richard Nixon being elected President in 1968. That is why I say 1968 Sucked. Big Time.