50 years after darkness of 1968, young people give us new hope

We are remembering several 50 year anniversaries in 2018 but, for me, none is more poignant than June 4, the day five decades ago that Robert F. Kennedy won the California Democratic presidential primary and was shot and killed that night following his victory celebration.

I was an eighth grade student at John F. Kennedy Middle School on the San Francisco peninsula and had enjoyed my very first taste of presidential politics. I woke up early that day and went out in the dark to hang ballot reminders on doors in my precinct. My parents let me stay up late to watch RFK’s victory speech, which I cheered.

{mosads}My classmates and I were divided and debated the merits of Bobby versus Gene McCarthy, but I was a Kennedy guy through and through. I went to bed a happy kid. The next morning, my parents, who had stayed up late, quietly came in and told me Senator Kennedy had been shot and was lingering near death. I believe that was my wake up call for the cost and joy of being committed to political activism.

It reminds me of what one of my future bosses, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, said to Washington columnist Mary McGrory upon news of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, “Mary, to be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.” Yes, McGrory apparently said, “But we’ll never laugh again.” To which Moynihan said, “Oh Mary, we will laugh again. We’ll just never be young again.”

Admittedly, those are all paraphrases, but they capture something that I think about a lot these days. In 1968 and beyond, those of us who are now aging baby boomers entered politics and public service determined to make a difference and commit ourselves to working within our political system to achieve changes we believed would make America better, maybe even great, again.

We fought against a war we considered illegitimate. We rallied for civil rights and against segregation and discrimination. We began a serious movement to raise concern about our environment, and we joined as brothers and sisters to give women full and equal rights in our society. We also won the right to vote for 18 year olds which allowed me, in 1972, to cast my first vote for president.

Now, we can rightfully be accused of having made a mess of things. We allowed our politics to become dysfunctional and polarized. Older voters my age are divided into hyperpartisan camps. We do not promote places and platforms where common ground can be discussed and used to build consensus on a national agenda. We also continue to demand our right to certain “entitlement” payments from social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare while simultaneously refusing to pay the taxes necessary to support those programs.

Young people have warrant to roll their eyes at us and wish for a time when they can provide new and more vibrant leadership for the country, just like we did in 1968. I suspect that the generational change coming in our politics will be positive. Young people the age of my own children seem more pragmatic and less rigid in partisan politics. They look for ideas that make sense and solutions that seem to work.  

Note that I have not mentioned Donald Trump here. I could have plenty to say about him and the way he has disgraced the office of the presidency. But that is beside my point. In the end, he will not leave any lasting legacy on our country. It will be our children who take command of their futures and invent a new politics that is worthy of our great country.

My generation did some of this, too, and should get some credit for what we accomplished in those years, but we also bear the responsibility of moving aside now to let a new generation do what they are capable of doing, which is to make America truly great again.

Mike McCurry served as White House press secretary to President Clinton from 1994 to 1998. He is now a communications consultant and a partner at Public Strategies Washington. He is also a distinguished professor of public theology at Wesley Theological Seminary and a member of the board of directors of the Commission on Presidential Debates.