People protested in the streets and parks outside the Democratic convention in Chicago and, for their troubles, had their heads broken by police night sticks. An economy overheated by competing tugs of guns and butter had begun to fibrillate. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society was grating badly, and a rehabilitated Richard Nixon, proclaiming a secret plan for ending the war, was making his second run for the presidency. He would be successful despite the presence in the race of a third-party candidate purveying populist rhetoric with a Southern twang. Domestically, remarkably little.
Police still crack heads open, and a great city burns.
Citizens rendered grumpy by two years of economic despond toss out a tired administration and replace it with one brandishing a new set of promises. The gulf between black and white, rich and poor, the housed and the homeless grows. Or perhaps it shrinks, but not enough to put any social policy wonks out of business. And the amazing Richard Nixon, riding the crest of his latest resurrection, is the pundits' most quotable senior statesman. But if within American borders the more things change the more they stay the same, it's quite otherwise on the international stage.