Book Review: Framing the Sixties  
by: Eleanor J. Bader, Truthout
April 17, 2011
http://www.truthout.org/framing-sixties-exposes-scapegoating-era/1303023600

Framing the Sixties: The Use and Abuse of a Decade from
Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush Bernard von Bothmer
University of Massachusetts Press, 2010

Bernard von Bothmer's fascinating look at the 1960's -
and the ways the decade has been portrayed by political
winners and wannabes - adds an important chapter to our
understanding of the domestic right wing. While
progressives have also called up images from this
beleaguered decade, conservatives have triumphed in
seven of the last 11 presidential elections - 1968 to
2008 - victories that can be partially attributed to
backlash against sixties excesses, both real and
imagined.

"Nostalgia," von Bothmer writes:

plays an integral part in contemporary American
political culture. For the right, the 1960s replaced an
earlier version of America in which the country was
moral and just. The 1960s elicited anger by questioning
this cherished notion - and arguing that the nation
needed to change. The 1960s rejection of traditional
values challenged the established view of American
exceptionalism, and in doing so eventually destroyed
liberalism and propelled the modern right to power.

Forget such pesky things as Jim Crow and equal rights
for women. All but the archest of archconservatives
will concede that tinkering was needed to correct
egregious racism and sexism. This shift led, von
Bothmer continues, to a bizarre splitting of the 1960's
into two parts: the good sixties and the bad sixties.

The good sixties, he writes, ran from 1960 to 1964 and
included John Fitzgerald and Robert Kennedy, the
nonviolent resistance of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.,
the Peace Corps, the Civil Rights Act, the 1963 March
on Washington and the activists who pushed for racial
integration as part of the beloved community.

On the flip side, he continues, are the bad sixties,
which ran from mid-decade to the fall of Saigon in
1975. Among the markers of this period: the sexual
revolution, Roe v. Wade, escalating protests against
the Vietnam War, the Stonewall Rebellion, urban riots
and the growing influence of groups such as the Black
Panthers and the Young Lords.

According to von Bothmer, the right wing places the
antipoverty policies of President Lyndon Baines Johnson
squarely atop the bad sixties heap. Johnson, he writes,
is blamed for fueling the so-called culture of poverty.
Worse, the safety net Johnson created is lambasted as
the worst thing the feds could possibly have done and
as fostering dependence on government instead of
self-sufficiency.

This theme was first voiced in Ronald Reagan's 1966 bid
for California's statehouse when the Great Communicator
argued that the "Creative Society," not the Great
Society, was what was needed. "The Great Society grows
greater every day," Reagan told the eager minions who
listened to his campaign speeches. "Greater in cost,
greater in inefficiency and greater in waste." His
solution? Volunteerism. Years later, in 1989, George
Bush Sr. would pick up this mantle in positing "A
Thousand Points of Light" as the solution to growing
social needs. But it was Reagan who planted the seeds,
arguing that government should reduce its scope and be
less involved in people's everyday lives. "Since the
nation has traditionally fought poverty without federal
interference," Reagan argued, "the Creative Society
marks a return to the people of the privilege of
self-government."

The residue of this "privilege" was seen in Bill
Clinton's "end of welfare as we know it," and in the
1996 scaling back of social programs that were created
in response to the political unrest of the 1960's.
Still, it was the United States' loss of the Vietnam
War that iced the cake of right-wing fury. Again,
Reagan was at the helm. 

Von Bothmer writes that:

At the 1980 Republican National Convention, running
against Carter's record and the assorted woes of the
1970s, Reagan emphasized, as he would during his
presidency, that the 1960s were at the root of many of
the nation's problems. During the era, he charged,
America had lost its way: The problems of the 1970s
were merely the outgrowth of the previous decade's
faulty policies.... He would return America to the
promise and prosperity of that happier time before the
1960s. Vowing to renew the American spirit and sense of
purpose, he called for a national crusade to make
America great again. A key part of this restoration
involved rebuilding a military demoralized after
Vietnam and restoring an assertive foreign policy.

"It's morning in America," Reagan announced. And, of
course, nothing says morning better than a swift,
victorious military action. As von Bothmer explains,
"One way Reagan addressed the Vietnam syndrome was
through an invasion of the tiny Caribbean island of
Grenada in October 1983 after a coup by the People's
Revolutionary Government, which Reagan saw as a Marxist
threat to American interests and security."
Orchestrated just two days after terrorists killed 241
US servicemen, the decisive incursion - launched
without consulting Congressional leadership - was
expected to eliminate some of the bitter aftereffects
of losing that conflict. Apparently, it worked: von
Bothmer reports that 63 percent of the US public
supported the aggressive foray.

Go figure.

The quick triumph, von Bothmer adds, cheered
disgruntled cold warriors and conservatives. Yet it was
just a first step. The US defeat in Vietnam continued
to rankle, and the right wing knew it had to construct
a new narrative to explain it. In the reconfigured
version, the military did not lose because it was
inferior; it lost because its soldiers "were denied
permission to win" by a government that was weak on
defense and that refused to see Vietnam as "a noble
cause."

"Americans must never again be sent to fight and die
unless we are prepared to let them win," Reagan railed.
Fabrications about soldiers returning to an ungrateful
nation became a fixture of his speeches. In addition,
ramped up patriotism served as an antidote to sixties
liberalism and its espousal of peace and love.

Nonetheless, Reagan did not work alone. Help in
countering the lingering effects of the bad 1960's came
from both major parties and politicians - from George
H.W. Bush, to Clinton, to Bush Junior - who have zeroed
in on the decade's failings.

In fact, W's faux folksiness and anti-intellectualism
were used as cudgels to beat what he - and Karl Rove -
called "the sixties symptoms still infecting America:
elitism, cynicism, anti-Americanism and self-absorption
enforced by a penchant for psychobabble."

By the 2004 presidential race, the 1960's were used to
blindside Democratic contender John Kerry. Relentless
smears were articulated in an attempt to link him to
the bad years, the period in which the decorated war
hero renounced his medals and became active in Vietnam
Veterans Against the War. "We did not want one of these
Woodstock characters in the White House," one
Republican told von Bothmer.

Bush, a man with a history of substance abuse who had
skirted active military service in Vietnam, was so
successful in tarnishing Kerry that he skated to
victory. By presenting himself as a God-fearing,
born-again Christian who was family-oriented and
believed in tradition, he represented the good,
nothing-to-fear years of pre-1960's mythology.

Obama, not born until 1961, represents a shift from
this good/bad dichotomy. That said, the right wing
continues to dredge up the sixties in its attempt to
blame them for every flaw in contemporary life. The
so-called culture wars continue to rage and, perhaps
nostalgic for the good 1960's - before queers took to
the streets, before women flooded the workforce and
before a family of color lived in the White House -
have taken on new urgency. Indeed, conservatives seem
ascendant.

At the same time, we need to remember that backlash
works both ways. It's now our turn. Yes, it is evening
in America, but there is much to be done before we
sleep.

___________________________________________

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