Legal Commentary

Forty Years Ago

By Jack M. Balkin

March 1968. The Tet Offensive is still underway in Vietnam. Unnoticed at the time, the My Lai massacre occurs. In Washington there is a gold crisis, a run on the U.S. gold supply. The public increasingly doubts its leaders and the government's ability to manage. Senator Eugene McCarthy nearly wins the New Hampshire primary against an incumbent president (primary held on March 12!).

Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford remembered: "The pressure grew so intense that at times I felt the government itself might come apart at its seams. Leadership was fraying at its very center-- something very rare in a country with so stable a governmental structure. In later years, almost every one of the men who lived through the crisis claimed that he had reacted calmly to events. In fact, everyone, military and civilian, was profoundly affected. . .There was, for a brief time, something approaching paralysis, and a sense of everything spiraling out of of control of the nation's leaders."

From Richard Parker, John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics (2005).

Full post as published by Balkinization on March 23, 2008 (boomark / email).