Framing the Sixties: The Use and Abuse of a Decade from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush

Introduction: Framing the Frame

1 Introduction FRAmInG The FRAme If you look back on the sixties and, on balance, you think there was more good than harm in it, you’re probably a Democrat, and if you think there was more harm than good, you’re probably a Republican. Bill Clinton (2004) “In case you missed it, a few days ago Senator Clinton tried to spend one million dollars on the Woodstock concert museum,” said Senator John mcCain, referring to hillary Clinton at a 2007 Republican presidential debate. “now, my friends, I wasn’t there,” mcCain said. “I’m sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was tied up at the time.” mcCain’s next words were drowned out by loud cheers and a sustained standing ovation from the partisan audience. mcCain was alluding to the fact that, as a navy pilot, he was captured after being shot down by the north Vietnamese in 1967, leading to more than five years’ captivity as a prisoner of war. his line about being “tied up” became the centerpiece of a campaign ad a few days later that juxtaposed shots of hippies at Woodstock with an image of mcCain strapped to a prison bed in hanoi.1 nor did mcCain stop there. Another campaign ad mocked Barack obama’s campaign theme of “hope” by painting the Illinois senator, who was only six years old in 1967, as having been in sync with the values of the counterculture. “It was a time of uncertainty, hope, and change, the Summer of Love,” the voiceover narrates. “half a world away, another kind of love, of country: John mcCain, shot down, bayoneted, tortured. offered early release, he said, ‘no.’ he’d sworn an oath.” mcCain’s credo as a public servant, it continued, was “Before party, polls, and self: America .” In the background were images of student protesters and embracing hippies followed by scenes from Vietnam, including mcCain photographed as a P.o.W. then and saluting from his crutches on returning to the United States.2 Introduction 2 Right before the 2008 Democratic national Convention a conservative group co-founded by a former mcCain aide ran nearly $3 million worth of ads seeking to link obama to a former 1960s radical, William Ayers. The spots compared the antiwar activities of Ayers’s Weather Underground with the attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and argued that obama’s “political career was launched” at the home of this “friend” of the senator.3 In an obama response ad a narrator asks, “With all of our problems, why is John mcCain talking about the 1960s, trying to link Barack obama to radical Bill Ayers?”4 Because it works, that’s why. Republicans have been campaigning against “the sixties” ever since the 1960s themselves. mcCain was following a time-tested strategy, employing a tactic used by every Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan. Reagan invented “the sixties” during the 1960s and was against “the sixties” even before the decade ended. his political career also marked the start of the Right’s active construction of a mythical alternative, a past that supposedly existed before “the sixties.” This book examines the ways in which four presidents—that is, political winners—used their own selective versions of the 1960s for political gain in the years from 1980 to 2004. It focuses on their conscious manipulation of five topics: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and the era of “the sixties” in general . each president during this twenty-four-year period offered his own conception of the decade and how Americans should remember it. Between 1980 and 2004 liberals and conservatives alike used selective memories of “the sixties,” a period I define as stretching from 1960 to 1974, to win votes.5 Liberals evoked the positive associations of the “good sixties” (1960–1963), while conservatives called up the specter of the “bad sixties” (1964–1974). The “good sixties” refers to the era of President Kennedy and conjures a time of strong national defense, a tough stance against communist expansion, peaceful civil rights protests, and the persistence of “traditional” standards of dress, expression, and family life. The “bad sixties,” conversely, refers to the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and Richard nixon, a time of urban riots, antiwar protests, difficulties in fighting the Vietnam War, increased incivility, crime, drug abuse, and social unrest. The “good sixties” and the “bad sixties” serve as convenient shorthand for the residual emotional...