I don't know because I don't know any of the Rolling Stones.
But I do remember these lyrics:
You can't always get what you want
But if you try
sometimes you just might find
You get what you need
So, goodbye to those readers who only read what they think they agree with.
And welcome to those readers who only read what they think they agree with.
But a special welcome to those readers who read because they are curious (unlike #43).
There seems to be some chatter starting about opposing Obama in the primary or even the possibility of him declining to seek another term.
What would that mean? Fortunately we can open the big history book and get an idea.
The above lyrics are from my favorite Rolling Stones album, "Let It Bleed". It came out in late 1969, about a year after the election of Nixon. The music and the title fit those times exceedingly well.
If you think about it, "let it bleed" is a hell of an aphorism as long as you aren't bleeding out from a severe arterial injury. Blood is a symbol of struggle; the flags of labor movements have always been red to symbolize the struggle. The shedding of blood is a symbol and a statement of your commitment. You don't stop to bind yourself up until the fighting is over (except in the case of the aforesaid severe arterial injury) and afterward the blood is a badge of courage. At least Stephen Crane seemed to think so.
Anyway, let's look back at the election of 1968. At that point Democrats had occupied the White House for 28 of the last 36 years, the only exception being the 8 year tenure of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Hardly a bloody-meat conservative, his farewell address warned of the consequences of the military-industrial complex.
After the 1968 election, the Republicans controlled the White House for 28 of the next 40 years. Sounds like a pivot point to me. Lets take a look at what happened.
John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960 in a squeaker over Richard M. Nixon, the Vice-President of DDE. Nixon had been slightly tainted by a scandal involving a dog named Checkers (the details are not worth mentioning since it had nothing to do with sex acts) and he looked bad in the very first televised Presidential debates on that new-fangled TV thingy. Some say that Mayor Richard J. Daley (Mayor Daley the First) of Chicago threw the election in Illinois to win the Presidency for JFK. Whatever.
Before he was assassinated in November 1963, JFK had been ramping up military advisors in a little far-off country called Vietnam. It had been a French colony, but after World War II France needed help controlling the populace. Some of the Vietnamese apparently felt that they should govern themselves. The British began helping the French with their problems which were centered in the north of Vietnam near the Chinese border. After the communists won the Chinese civil war in 1949, they began backing the Viet Minh "rebels" against the "white devils". So the Americans, riding a national craze over the game of Dominos, decided to help "advise" the French as well. The French had their lunch handed to them by the Viet Minh in a very embarrassing fashion at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
The French had had enough. They granted independence to their Southeastern Asia colonies of Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia. In the fashion of the day (see Korean War), Vietnam was "divided" by an imaginary line called the "17th parallel", with the godless communists to the north and the Buddhists dominated by a Catholic oligarchy to the south. I guess it sounded like a plan to somebody. That Catholic oligarchy lasted until Buddhist monks began burning themselves alive in 1963. Then the Vietnamese military took over. Who could have foreseen that the "military action" would intensify after that?
An aside: I was sitting in a Catholic school classroom the day that Kennedy was assassinated. Catholics were devastated by the assassination of the first Catholic President. A nod to the good Sisters who made sure that I would be able to read and write effectively when the big internet came along.
Lyndon B. Johnson succeeded JFK. He escalated the fighting against the godless communists and the Vietnam War became his legacy despite historic legislation for civil rights, Medicare, Medicaid, environmental protection, public broadcasting, and the War on Poverty. All of this pushed through by one of the most adept and ruthless legislators ever, Johnson himself. But by 1968 he was reviled by his own party for the "other" war in Vietnam. As we used to say when I worked for Ronnie: "All it takes is one 'oh, crap!' to wipe out a whole pile of 'attaboys!'".
I know it's not nice to make jokes that involve war or death or suicide or anything else around here, apparently. OK, I get it. I despised Johnson because of the war, just like everybody else that had a conscience back then. Mea culpa. I make jokes to avoid crying, OK?
The Anti-war Movement was in full swing in the fall of 1967. They asked Robert F. Kennedy and then George S. McGovern to primary against LBJ. Both declined. Eugene J. McCarthy was then approached and accepted. McCarthy, the first anti-war candidate, was riding a wave of opposition to the war and the back of a fanatical grassroots organization who went "Clean for Gene", transforming from "dirty hippies" by shaving their face hair and getting conventional (short) haircuts in order to function more effectively in more conservative states like, well, all of them back then.
After McCarthy finished a respectable second in New Hampshire on March 12, Robert F. Kennedy changed his mind about running and on March 16 became the second anti-war candidate. Two weeks later LBJ, always the astute politician and worried about his own health (literally, not figuratively), announced he would not seek another term.
Four days later Martin Luther King was assassinated.
Later that same month, Hubert H Humphrey, "The Happy Warrior", the sitting Vice-President and the founder of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota, entered the race.
By this time, elbows were flying. The McCarthy people were incensed that all their hard work was being usurped by RFK, who had initially spurned their advances. They despised Humphrey because he was part of the LBJ administration. If the internet had been around, the lines would have been blazing and people would have been writing in UPPER CASE.
In early June, two months after the assassination of MLK, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Just before the 1968 Democratic Convention in late August, George S. McGovern, after agonizing for two months, declared his candidacy to carry on the legacy of RFK. He had been an extremely close advisor and friend to RFK.
Sound like total chaos? It was. Riots were endemic by then. Over three decades of Democratic Party dominance of Washington was about to go down the tubes.
So, against a backdrop of unprecedented riots and unrest occurring throughout the country, amid bitter protests over the war and bombings for various reasons and "race riots" (whatever that meant - that was the term the media used constantly) and grief over assassinations, the 1968 Democratic Convention was held in Chicago. That whole mess is most succinctly described as a pitched battle (literally and figuratively) between the old pols and the young progressives and liberals that wanted their voice heard by the Democratic Party. The anti-war movement had fractured into three or four segments under the weight of multiple anti-war standard bearers. Mayor Daley bragged about beating the crap out of hippies on the streets. The Democratic Party in Chicago that summer became the symbol of dysfunction and "the whole world is watching" was engraved on their tombstone in anticipation of the election.
A musical aside: If you want to hear actual recordings of the demonstrations in Chicago and people chanting that phrase, go to your old vinyl and pull out Chicago's first album Chicago Transit Authority and go to Track 1 on Side 4, Prologue, August 29, 1968. For the kids that would be Track 10 on the CD.
The old pols won that battle but lost the war for the hearts and minds of America. Hubert Humphrey was nominated and lost to Richard M. Nixon thus beginning a long period of Republican domination of the nation, occupying the Presidency for 28 of the next 40 years and totally capturing the narrative spooned out to the American populace.
After the Chicago convention and the ensuing trials, the "progressives" and the "liberals" all but abandoned the Democratic Party. That got us Nixon. Here's how bad it was. I wasn't eligible to vote in 1968 - the 26th Amendment had not come along yet - but I was so ticked off at the Democratic Party that I would have voted for Nixon. After all he promised to end the Vietnam War.
That was the only important thing then. Nothing else mattered.
Sound familiar?
That didn't work out so well... been voting with the Democratic Party since then... guess I'll keep on doing that at least until there is another spectacle like Chicago. This stuff about the debt ceiling and all that sort-of pales in comparison to a national party stabbing itself repeatedly when "the whole world is watching".
So, I find myself puzzling over whether Obama's pile of attaboys has been cancelled out by all the times I've had to say "Oh, crap!"
And I go back to Side 2, Track 4 (kids, it's Track 9 for you) entitled "You Can't Always Get What You Want".
But have I gotten what I need?
Democrats. You can't live with 'em. You can't live without 'em.
So let's pivot (that word is so popular, isn't it?). I think I'll finish with words from the first Republican President. When he had to face up to unpopularity with the Civil War in 1864, Ol' Honest Abe had this to say to his party and his country:
"I do not allow myself to suppose that either the Convention or the league have concluded to decide that I am either the greatest or the best man in America, but rather they have concluded it is not best to swap horses while crossing the river, and have further concluded that I am not so poor a horse that they might not make a botch of it in trying to swap."
Think it over carefully, people. What you want is not necessarily what you need.