2024 is the new 1968: The Lasting Impact of Assassination and Political Turmoil
By M. Sara Rosenthal, Ph.D.
Of the three presidential candidates running in the 2024 Presidential Election, each has a very clear memory of the tumultuous 1968 election that ultimately led to victory for Richard Nixon, who lost in 1960 to John F. Kennedy (assassinated in 1963) due to a poor television debate performance.
In spring 1968, the Vietnam War was in full swing. Donald Trump, a Baby Boomer (born June 14, 1946), was turning 22 years old. Joe Biden, a member of the Silent Generation (born November 20, 1942), was 26 years old. And RFK Jr., also a Baby Boomer (born January 15, 1954), was 14 years old. On March 15, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy announced he was running for President, creating a cloud over Lyndon B. Johnson’s re-election campaign. Historians and biographers have written extensively on RFK’s run to end the war, but he also championed a very progressive agenda, including gun reform in the aftermath of his brother’s death. By 1968, conspiracy theories had formed around the JFK assassination due to a non-credible Warren Report that gave rise to the infamous “single bullet/lone gunman” theory. In fact, the Warren Report helped birth the conspiracy theory culture we are living in today – an unhealthy social climate where no one accepts facts as the “truth” – exacerbated now by social media. On March 31st of that year, LBJ, as I mentioned in my July 5th article, declined to run for a second term due to his poor health.
America’s social location in 1968 was very fragile: it was just five years after the JFK assassination, which turned the rest of the 1960s into “The Sixties” -- a turbulent time of generational conflict and racial unrest, while the country was torn apart by the Vietnam War.
On April 4, 1968, just four years after passage of the Civil Rights Act and three years after the Voting Rights Act, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel – now the site of the Civil Rights Museum. This led to massive riots across the U.S.
On June 5, 1968, Trump and Biden would have likely been watching non-stop news coverage of Robert F. Kennedy say at a rally (after winning the California Primary): “Now it’s on to Chicago and let’s win there.” RFK was then shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian who was reportedly upset about RFK’s comments of support for Israel during the 1967 Six Day War. RFK’s son -- RFK Jr., currently running in 2024 as an Independent, was not with his father on that night; he was asleep in his dormitory at his prep school and woken up by a priest and taken to his father’s bedside while he was on life support. RFK Jr. then spent much of his adult life arguing that Sirhan Sirhan did not, in fact, kill RFK, and that it is all a conspiracy.
In August 1968, the Democratic convention was in chaos with LBJ not running and RFK assassinated. It led to the nomination of Hubert Humphrey a bland and weak nominee, while Richard Nixon was in the glory of a resurrection after his defeat in 1960. Nixon, and his Vice Presidential running mate, Spiro Agnew, the main character in the book and podcast Bagman won on a ticket pledging “law and order” and unity. In 1972, Nixon won a landslide re-election that all came to a halt 50 years ago on August 9, 1974, when Watergate and U.S. v. Nixon led to his resignation. But Nixon’s slide into Watergate was shaped by his own dates with destiny with both JFK and RFK. Nixon experts and biographers note that Nixon was consumed with resentment over what he thought was a stolen election in 1960. Then he was forgotten as he was living in the shadow of the JFK assassination. By 1968, he became a unifier, but became paranoid that Senator Ted Kennedy (1932-2009) would take it all away from him and run as the Democratic nominee in 1972.
It is 2024. We have three white men running for President who were shaped by 1968 in very different ways. Donald Trump, inspired by Nixon’s view of an imperial Presidency, has now experienced an assassination attempt himself by someone who is younger than he was in 1968 (a 20-year-old registered Republican with an AR-15). Will this change his message or inspire him to think about gun reform? Meanwhile, Joe Biden, embattled by questions about his aging, remembers clearly the 1968 Democratic convention, which is likely shaping his decisions now. He remembers how in 1968, the fabric of the Democratic Party fractured in an open convention torn apart by political violence, generational differences, and competing world views and values. In recent days, at a press conference watched by 28 million people (more than the Oscars), he clarified that he wanted to complete his agenda. But the Biden agenda is really the “lost dream agenda” of Democratic fantasies – for those Democrats who play the game “If RFK had lived…” – a progressive legislative agenda leading to the penultimate vision of American Democracy.
One thing I know for sure: Donald Trump and Joe Biden are running for President in the shadow -- and DNA -- of RFK.
Dr. M. Sara Rosenthal is Professor and Founding Director of the University of Kentucky Program for Bioethics and Oncology Ethics Program. She has expertise in bioethics, medical sociology, history of medicine, and American studies.