The ghosts of 1968 are haunting America, and it will get more spooky

In this epochal year in America of political upheaval, the only thing we should not be shocked about is that there are huge shocks to the country. There will be more. Americans and everyone invested in that country’s future need to steel themselves for the events that will unfold.

Hotel busboy Juan Romero (right) comes to the aid of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, as he lies on the floor of the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles moments after he was shot.Credit: AP

Many acute observers have already drawn parallels with the last presidential election year of seismic eruptions: 1968. An unpopular Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson, under siege from an immensely tragic war with no end in sight and no path to victory in November, announced he was leaving the field. His vice president, Hubert Humphrey, took up the party’s mantle, only to be challenged by Robert F. Kennedy, brother of the president slain five years previously.

The country was engulfed in the civil rights and anti-war movements. On April 4, Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in Memphis. On June 5, Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles. The country, divided in despair, turned to former vice president Richard Nixon, who won the election. Nixon adopted the message on a sign carried by a young girl at a Nixon rally that read, “Bring us together again.”

The horrific events of 1968 inflicted immense damage on America’s political culture. It took years to recover. America would remain divided throughout the Nixon presidency, culminating in his resignation over the worst presidential scandal to that point in history, Watergate. Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976 with the slogan: “I’ll Never Lie To You”. Carter said he wanted “a government as good as its people”.

Joe Biden’s stepping aside was the obverse of Johnson’s fateful decision. Unlike the Democrats of 1968, the party gathered immediately behind Kamala Harris and is today united on par with the wave of enthusiasm and hope that carried Barack Obama to his landslide win in 2008.

Indeed, throughout Obama’s presidency, many had fears that it was only a matter of time before the first black president would find an assassin’s crosshairs. It never came to be. But the nightmare is resurrected by the presence on the political stage of Harris, who was immediately the victim of the ugliest barbs about her racial identity along with her gender.

The ghosts of 1968 live. In the back of the minds of many of us with lived experience of these events, it was not a surprise when Trump was attacked and came within a centimetre of death at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The only shock was the news, not the fact that bullets had been fired.

These fears gnaw at us. They are exacerbated by the huge divisiveness across the country. Trump’s army of supporters is welded onto him. He has not lost any votes to Harris. The closeness of the race is due to her recapturing millions who voted for Biden in 2020 but who were unenthusiastic about his campaign this year.

Whether Trump is leading a mass movement or cult, most of his supporters have complete buy-in to his dark conspiracy theories. After he was shot, Trump’s mood at first became more reflective, taking into account the enormity of the mortal threat. He reflected on God and his personal mission. Trump spoke movingly of unity at the Republican convention right after the shooting. But in subsequent days, as he absorbed the failure of the Secret Service to protect him, there emerged a view that the agency’s inexcusable lapse might have been part of a conspiracy from within the “deep state” to take Trump down.

The assassination attempt was an “inside job”, Trump has said. During last week’s debate with Harris, Trump said, referring to his opponents, “I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me.”

Sunday’s near attack in Florida, even though it was thwarted, will raise tensions that the threat is ongoing and will further congeal, just as occurred after the first attack in Pennsylvania, his personal support. Trump’s margin of approval over Biden went up after that attack.

Given the early bump in the polls Harris received after their debate, this means, for the immediate future, that this presidential race will remain tighter than ever. Which means in turn that the levels of anxiety, fear, divisiveness and angst will continue and intensify until election day in November.

There is no immediate antidote to salve the wounds in the country’s political culture. The best leadership right now is condemning any and all political violence. But that pales, in emotional terms, to the desire of each side to beat the other, with each side believing that only if they win can the country be set on the right course.

Trump’s are the politics of grievance. They are very hard to reconcile with the call from Harris, with her politics of hope and joy, to turn the page. This was tough enough before the shootings started. America today is stalked by near tragedy, if not tragedy itself.

Bruce Wolpe is a senior fellow at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre. He has served on the Democratic staff in the US Congress and as chief of staff to former prime minister Julia Gillard.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.