But I'm not, never going to be; I'm not and I'm a crank to boot, and I'm increasingly tired of hearing about Boomer politics, the ghost of Vietnam's past which haunts the present elective process with some kind of psychic bad breath. I'm almost half-convinced that this election is really only about the Sixties, like there was some sort of Happy Daze consciousness about it, how the Sixties had archetypal events that everyone was magically involved in--and what's more, that everyone had the same kinds of opinions about it. That indeed what happened socio-culturally is a done deal, an agreement: There's the MTV view of the Sixties.

Is this election a referendum on our idea of the Sixties (those of us out there who are actually thinking about such things)? We've got the "good" Sixties vs. the "bad"--left-leaning, but not really. Maybe s--if you recently caught the series of articles on "W" and Al in college, Yale '68 and Harvard '69 respectively, you'd almost believe it was true. Constructed in each were useful Sixties stereotypes for each candidate (incidentally nearly contemporaries to the reporters and upper management these days). The contest, such as it is being spun, is really about the differences in style and approach between the well-connected partyhardy/republican/juicer/hawk jock vs. the earnest, thoughtful, left-of-center-leaning, dope-smoking democratic-head. Couldn't rightly tell from the photos though, matter of fact. In all honesty, they look like everyone else back then, 'cause the long-haired, paisley, tie-died, peace, and flower-powered Sixties didn't really pick up steam until "W" had graduated and didn't really become pandemic in the United States until after Woodstock (the media Sixties, that is).

Younger reporters who learned about the Sixties from their older brothers and sisters tend to forget that period before Purple Haze when the "scene" was pretty much underground, and that most kids who went to college back then looked a lot like "W" and Al Gore. You didn't wear your freak flag too much on the outside; back then it was all about camouflage, and a very important part of that subculture was using the Dylan dictum, "to live outside the law you must be honest". People got busted and went to jail, and deviance was not sanctified in the popular press as much as it is today. No stoner culture to speak of, just juice, lots of juice. Everyone was in deep camouflage--guys who looked like juicers sometimes were the biggest stoned heads and vice versa. Since the adult world hadn't been so completely overrun by high school taxonomies, it was far harder to figure out who the players were. College students were not uniformly radical. Politics was only one form of expression, and anyway there was always the conflict between the humanists and the politicos. Remember, too, that both "W" and Al Gore were species of campus politicos with slightly different styles. It wasn't until much later that politicos smoked dope. No, this was the era of Young Republicans and Young Democrats and especially Young Conservatives, and there is nothing more scarier in college than the Young Conservatives who didn't realize that they had a whole lifetime before they got over to that position. Only the fringe were committed Radicals.

I spent the center chunk of the Sixties, from 1963-1967, at Rutgers University, known as "Berkeley East", a public Ivy League school--but not of course to New jersey residents, who just considered it State U. Our campus political issues went from Civil Rights/Freedom Rides and the Kennedy Assassination to teach-ins on Vietnam and LSD. The year after I graduated from college, fraternity houses were buying dope in massive quantities for their members. There were probably more Democrats and Republicans still on campus than Socialists and Conservatives and Radicals combined, though in truth most of us were not politically active--until later, when it was a an issue involving our sorry asses and the Man in 'Nam. Much the same could be extrapolated from musical tastes--those into folk music were mildly Popular Frontish. On campus were folk rockers, blues enthusiasts, and guys who listened only to classical music, as well as budding ethno-musicologists who read about tales of beatnik glory and were transformed on the inside by the words and visions of William Blake and Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Delmore Schwartz, and Little T.S. Eliot. There were would-be jocks, and has-been heroes all working on their sainthood whatever it was at the time as they were changing--jocks, juicers heads, dopers, and jes' plain folks.

And there were also politicians who ran for student council or Inter-fraternity Council, those into government, even some former Boy's Staters who took on the protective coloration of whatever was going on at the time. There were the people who had the fast and furious fun of down-and-dirty capitalism, rich kids from good homes who were taking up space until there was a position ready for them in the family concern. And while they were going to school doing all the running for office, making speeches, being presidents of their fraternities (like "W" was at Delta Kappa Epsilon), there was THE WAR going on which at every turn kept getting more ominous and more threatening to the little bubble which college was at the time in the Sixties.

There was a war going on which was steadily sucking more and more people into its maw and spitting them out broken, damaged, or dead. There was a war, a nice little simple war to protect the world from godless Communism and the domino theory. Vietnam insidiously ate into this flowering of post-war prosperity and good times--it started as a background noise, faint and then more insistent. So good students, questing college students, started asking questions about the nature of American democracy after a while, and what were we doing interfering with a war of national self-determination? Student consciousness had been pre-honed by the nascent civil rights movement and the Freedom marches in the South. Those who were possibly into folk music and read the papers took it as their right as citizens to be informed. Thinking and reflection was the "in" thing--it was cool to be smart, and you were encouraged in every way.

So when you gaze upon those precious pictures of "W" and Al in school, remember that they were just human beings who happened to be politicians--indistinguishable from everyone. Truth was that just as many guys who looked like "W" were stone freaks on the inside as not, because remember back in those days the object was to be cool, not draw attention to oneself. It was only after the Sixties were invented as the myth of the Woodstock Nation that there was supposed to be some form of dress, manner, lingo, and sociology appended. As for "the war", here was the deal--students who furthered their education could defer their service, certain professions (engineers, doctors) gained automatic deferments. This was euphemistically known as "channeling" by the draft board, and it insured that there was a steady supply of technicians of various sorts for the war effort. Flunk out and you were dead meat, humping the boonies within three months.

By 1967, the issue of the draft overrode everything and everyone, and men of privilege, connected young men like "W" and Al Gore, also had their choices to make, because there were larger issues to deal with if you were born and bred. Lots of energy, maybe too much energy, was given over to how to get through the draft in one piece, dodge it lawfully (no blame, no foul), become a conscientious objector (very difficult road, only for the ideologically pure of heart), join the reserves and pray to dodge the bullet (join the National like "W" did, do your draft time at your pace, and if politically-connected have a good time serving your country). One could leave for Canada, and many did for a time. One could also opt to become an officer, go to OCS (Officer Candidate School) and do the best one could do (I tried that route, and flunked NAVY OCS tests--though I did see a good friend of mine form high school there). One could do the Alice's Restaurant route, try for a 4-F. Consider who and what "W" and Al Gore were back then, and consider their options.

Corner a vet, one who hasn't been damaged by the war and they'll tell you that if they knew then what they subsequently learned, they would also have tried to legally evade service. It was no blame, no foul, in legally evading and avoiding the draft--that was within the parameters of being a citizen. As much as people bitched and complained about Clinton and what he did, he wasn't that much different from a whole generation of young people. Had the war in Vietnam been fought for more "noble" purposes like WWII, this might not have been the case. It wasn't. In fact, the country had an increasingly difficult job "selling" the war as the Sixties rolled on. If the logic of fighting Communism in Southeast Asia was so overwhelmingly brilliant, good, clear-headed, if indeed there was a real palpable threat to the American Way of Life, quotas would have been filled. But nevertheless, the War was what hung over the generation, the higher the draft quotas went, the more tense things became even to "W" and Al.

Over in '75, THE WAR is still being fought, and if not the tactics, then it's the perceived response as time has gone on, as it has been filtered through countless subsequent re-thinkings and re-evaluations, as that particular historical drama recedes and a new drama attempts to take its place. Vietnam recedes into memory, the vets get older. We already had a decade more or less of symbolic generational shadow-boxing in which Bill Clinton was one kind of Sixties mytho-poetic figure, the hard-driving draft-dodging man, defeating the button down UR-Republican Skull and Bones establishmentarian, George Bush, the World War II pilot warrior. Now we have another referendum between the Sixties-style mutation of the latter, and a more soberly-upright version of Sixties political liberalism, a Harvard man no less, who more nearly reflects the predominant political mindset of the youth at the time to contend with, to choose between.

So this is the new species of leadership material, and how are we to choose between them? What criteria is provided for us? I'd like to think that there is a choice to be made, issues that are potent and revealing, life-threatening or life-affirming. There aren't any, not so far. I'd hate to think that the electorate is awaiting the conventions to hear the platforms so that whatever issues are will be solidified and ossified for the American public. It doesn't seem that anyone is particularly passionate about anything this time around, or maybe that's due to the stupefying amount of soft money raised by special interests which is placing both candidates' campaigns on auto pilot. Warren Beatty was right--we don't need a third party, we really need a second party. There's the party of "W" and Al and everyone else. Unfortunately "everyone else" doesn't have a voice yet, and maybe that's something we can work on this time around. Perhaps it won't be white, male, prep, or Ivy, but you never can tell.


© 2000 - David Walley