No “Sunday Story” today – just a look at history, repeating, rhyming, dooming or just irrelevant.
Teacher
I was a history teacher. One of the “classic” reasons that I gave my students for learning history, is the “past is prologue” to the future. For my middle schoolers, the line was simpler: “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it” (George Santayana). It all came down to this: we’ve had problems before, and if we know how they tried to solve them; good or bad, right or wrong, effective or worthless; we can make better choices THIS time.
My class didn’t memorize dates. Even when I started teaching forty-six years ago, at the very beginnings of personal computers and before the cell phone, I didn’t need my students to know the “big” American dates (1620, 1776, 1801, 1861, 1929, 1941). What I did want them to know is the “story” (his-story, now her-story as well; always our-story). The “story” of how guys like Jefferson lived with contradictions, balancing beliefs and principles against the economics of Southern life. Or the idea that compromise is as much a foundation of the Nation as is democracy. Or that, as Congressman James Clyburn likes to say so clearly, “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good (Voltaire)”.
Mapping
Past is prologue, but the past is not a “script” that must be repeated. In fact, it’s like that childhood warning: “Don’t put your hand on the stove to see if it’s hot.” America put its proverbial hand on the hot stove of history many times, and got burnt. We don’t HAVE to do it again. That’s why we learn history.
History is a guide, a map. As a former backpacker, I knew how to read the detailed topographic maps that led across the wilderness that still makes up a lot of America (produced by the US Geological Survey, a government agency). I could find the pathway across the mountains, even without a “GPS” (I used a compass, hand-held GPS didn’t exist when I was hiking). But I also realized that the map, like history, did not always “represent” the real geography I was trying to cross. Storms, floods, fires, “progress”; all might alter the landscape, or even make the intended route impassable. The map represented history, but history doesn’t always define the present.
Nixon?
So with all of that, are we repeating history in 2024? Is this just a sequel to 1968, a pivotal year in American politics? Is the stage set, the script written? The Democrats are going to Chicago, colleges campuses are filled with unrest, even Bobby Kennedy (this one alive and unhinged) is running as a candidate. Has history already written the outcome, with Joe Biden filling both the Johnson and Humphrey roles, and Donald Trump channeling Richard Nixon?
There certainly are similarities. There is a direct line from Nixon to Trump. Trump’s original political mentor was Roy Cohn, advisor to the historic “king of misinformation”, Senator Joe McCarthy of “McCarthyism” fame. Nixon gained national prominence through McCarthyism. And when Cohn died of aids in 1986, Trump turned to a Nixon “dirty-trickster” as his political advisor, Roger Stone (who literally has Nixon’s face tattooed to his back). Nixon to Stone to Trump – a straight line of political immorality. And while Trump never used the Nixon 1962 line; “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore”; he is a defeated President running for re-election.
Humphrey?
And Biden, is a President still seen as “weak” within his own Party, coming to Chicago with the Nation on the edges of two foreign wars, the Israeli debacle in Gaza, and the defense of Ukraine. Americans aren’t dying in Vietnam, but Americans can literally watch Palestinians dying in Gaza on their phones. Is that the “equivalent” of watching Vietnam on the evening news with Cronkite or Huntley/Brinkley?
The Democratic Party is divided between moderates and progressives, just as it was divided between pro-War and anti-War in 1968. But that’s where the comparison ends. There is a division over the Israeli actions in Gaza, but it isn’t the schism of 1968. Most, perhaps all, of the progressives of 2024, recognize that Biden isn’t “perfect”, but is “good”. And he’s definitely better than the Trump alternative.
And while Nixon was always kind of “shady”, he was not charged with crimes going into 1968. He did not daily face felony charges, and wasn’t the first Presidential candidate ever to look at a real chance of some kind of incarceration. And all of that means that the deciding “center” of America has a lot more to think about.
Chaos
And finally there is the 1968 “chaos” factor. I watched the Democratic Party in Chicago unable to find common ground in 1968. The “establishment” Party of the President, Lyndon Johnson, was using the full force of law enforcement to “put-down” the opposition. The protestors in the street weren’t just stopped or arrested, they were intentionally beaten. Mayor Daley made his message clear, “not in my city”. And it’s that “police riot”, combined with a party split down the middle, that made many Americans turn to a “stable” Republican candidate.
But the “chaos” factor today isn’t the Democrats, it’s the MAGA-Republicans. The four years of Trump were years of American disarray both at home and abroad. It culminated in a divisive and contradictory approach to a world pandemic. Trump was for vaccination, but his followers were opposed. Trump was for “prevention”, masks and distancing, until he was against it.
Many Americans have walled off their memories of the Covid years, but with a little prodding, it all comes flooding back. The Reagan question: are you better now than you were four years ago, is easily answered. Four years ago we were in the depths of the Covid epidemic. Hundreds of thousands were already dead. For the vast majority, we were NOT better.
Rhymes
Speaking of history, there is an historic controversy over who said the phrase: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” The quote is attributed to Mark Twain, but there is no written evidence that he actually said it. But it’s something that Twain could have said, and it sounds like him. So, we give him credit, whether it’s due or not.
We are a Nation dramatically divided in 2024, just as we were a Nation divided in 1968. And, conveniently, there is college campus unrest, and the Democrats are meeting in Chicago this summer. So history “rhymes”. But the issues of 1968 aren’t the conflicts of 2024. Americans face an even more fundamental choice. Biden is no Bobby Kennedy (one of his heroes) but he’s not Hubert Humphrey either. He’s moving the Nation beyond the economic impact of Covid, and made fundamental changes in our infrastructure and in protecting the environment. More like 2020, when Biden seemed kind of a Democratic after-thought, the Party will likely walk out of the Chicago convention united.
Big Deal
And Trump is no Nixon. Nixon, as personally corrupted as he turned out to be, was still committed to the American experiment. When he lost a close election in 1960, he conceded with grace. And in modern terms, Nixon was far more “moderate” than the current MAGA-Republican world allows.
Comparing Trump to Nixon isn’t setting a very high bar. And Trump doesn’t even reach that. While history may rhyme, there is no good historic analogy to 2024, even going back to the great schism of 1860. We face a new set of facts, a new set of lyrics to what sounds like a familiar tune. Some things rhyme, but 2024 presents the kind of crisis that nations’ face once a century, or maybe once in history. As Joe Biden (no Mark Twain) said – it’s a “big ‘F-ing’ Deal”.
