Eventually, around the time of the TET offensive in 1966, as Nelson notes, an enormous backlash against LBJ's war in Vietnam engulfed his presidency. The backlash was so great that LBJ ultimately decided not to run for re-election in 1968. To this day, there is still a great divide among older Americans who supported the Vietnam War out of their anti-communist spirit and other older Americans who came not to support the Vietnam War.
However, even though anti-war protests roiled American culture in the 1960s and 1970s, the black civil rights movement, which LBJ's civil rights legislation supported, and the emerging feminist movement also contributed to the ferment of the 1960s and 1970s. To this day, anti-60s rhetoric helps define the conservative movement. See Philip Jenkins' book DECADE OF NIGHTMARES: THE END OF THE SIXTIES AND THE MAKING OF THE EIGHTIES (Oxford University Press, 2006).
But I would argue that Jenkins overlooks important points involving the election of Senator John F. Kennedy in 1960. Let me explain.
Historically, the prestige culture in American culture had been dominated for centuries by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs). WASPs tended to be anti-non-WASPs: anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-black, and so on. Moreover, there was a trickle-down influence of the anti-non-WASP spirit so that this spirit influenced not just the elite who might be big shots in the prestige culture, or at least candidates to be big shots, but also many ordinary WASPs who were not likely candidates to be big shots. Basically, WASPs were the in-group in American culture for centuries.
But the various groups of people who were not WASPs tended to stay with other people in their separate out-groups. The out-groups were separate from the other out-groups. But of course there were selected big shots in each out-group.
Occasionally, certain people from an out-group might make inroads into the certification and stratification system of the WASP in-group, as Joseph P. Kennedy and his two eldest sons did by graduating from Harvard. To this day, Harvard functions as one of the primary certification and stratification mechanisms in the prestige culture in American culture.
Because Senator Kennedy had graduated from Harvard, both elite WASPs and trickle-down WASPs probably assumed that he had been properly groomed and indoctrinated in, and had passed muster in the way that WASPs thought. But what if he hadn't swallowed his WASP indoctrination hook, line, and sinker? What if all of his WASP grooming had just given him a certain veneer? What if certain seeds of non-WASP thought were inextricably part of him and his make up? In effect, this is the line of thought that Douglass advances in his book mentioned above.
After all, Senator Kennedy, like his father and mother and brothers, was a Roman Catholic, and his religion was an issue in the 1960 presidential campaign. Fortunately for JFK, he did not receive his formal education in Roman Catholic institutions of education. For this reason, he had not been deeply indoctrinated in Roman Catholic thought. As a matter of fact, the American bishops in the Roman Catholic Church did not strongly support his candidacy in the 1960 presidential election. Nevertheless, Senator Kennedy's mother was noted for his piety, and so was he.
When Senator Kennedy was narrowly elected president in 1960, he became the first Irish American Roman Catholic to be elected president. Symbolically, his election should be viewed as a big crack in the dominance of the WASP in-group in the prestige culture in American culture. More to the point, did WASPs in government agencies such as the CIA like the idea of having an Irish American Roman Catholic as president -- and in theory, their boss in the government?
During the 1960 presidential campaign, Senator Kennedy famously called the wife of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to express his sympathy to her about Dr. King's being imprisoned. As a result, many blacks in the black out-group voted for Senator Kennedy, as did many Jews in the Jewish out-group.
Then after he was elected, President Kennedy supported the black civil rights movement, or at least made certain well-publicized moves to support it. As the 1964 election approached, the men on his staff told him about a sign they had seen: "Kennedy for King/ Goldwater for President." As mentioned above, President Kennedy was one member of the Roman Catholic out-group, and blacks were another out-group. Did WASPs in government agencies such as the CIA like the kinds of things that President Kennedy was doing to help support the black civil rights movement?
Now, if we assume that WASPs in government agencies such as the CIA had certain misgivings about how President Kennedy was conducting his presidency, what was the tipping point that led to the conspiracy to assassinate him? For a perceptive account of American foreign policy during the Cold War, see Stephen Kinzer's book THE BROTHERS: JOHN FOSTER DULLES, ALLEN DULLES, AND THEIR SECRET WAR (2013).
And don't forget about the military-industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned the country about in his farewell speech. How did the WASPs in the military-industrial complex react to President Kennedy's presidency? After all, President Johnson gave the military-industrial complex the Vietnam War that helped further enrich them.
Now, I would say that the anti-60s rhetoric that Jenkins writes about perceptively was and is designed to gather together both elite WASPs and trickle-down WASPs -- and their collaborators such as the Roman Catholic bishops. As Garry Wills has noted, an unholy alliance emerged in American culture after the 1973 ruling of the Supreme Court that legalized abortion in the first trimester -- the unholy alliance of anti-abortion Protestant zealots with the anti-abortion Roman Catholic zealots. (Even Jenkins' way of computing a decade, the decade to which he refers in the title of his book includes the 1973 Supreme Court ruling. I would agree that the anti-60s rhetoric of conservatives involves an expansive reference to the 1960s that does indeed include the 1973 Supreme Court ruling. In other words, Jenkins is not just making up this expansive sense of the decade of the 1960s.)
Of course the anti-60s rhetoric of conservatives includes anti-war protesters who made it impossible for President Johnson to run for re-election in 1968. Their anti-60s rhetoric also includes the feminist movement that emerged in the late 1960s and the 1970s.
In his second book Nelson makes sweeping claims about how we Americans today are still living with LBJ's legacy. Basically, I agree with Nelson about this. But he does not happen to advert explicitly to Jenkins' book about the anti-60s rhetoric of conservatives or to the larger dynamics in American culture that I have outlined here.
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