1968 was a year of turmoil, a year of tragedy, a year of change. It was the year of the Tet Offensive, the year two important figures in politics and civil rights were cut down in their prime, the year when America's tolerance for social unrest and civil disobedience snapped, leading to Richard Nixon's win in the presidential elections. I was born a few weeks after Nixon won the White House, November 27th to be exact. I was just one of many that year, a new generation that would emerge on the scene during the late eighties and nineties with our own values, music, and standards.
1968 was simply the year I was born in, a year whose events seemed remote to my daily reality. Yet, my generation was as much affected by the events of 1968 as those who lived through that year. When we are born, the times in which we are born into, somehow don't define who we are and what we'll become. Rather, it is when we come of age, when we shed our innocence and emerge awkwardly into young adulthood that the possibilities of our futures are molded and shaped. The times in which we grow into are as inextricably linked to this growth process as the homes or environments we grow up in. The same can be said of America.
The United States came of age in 1968. And everything that happened afterward, who we are as a country, can be traced back to that year, to the events which shaped our moral character, our fears and desires, and our visions of what should and could be possible in this country.
1968 was a year of losses, both personal and political. It seemed as though there was a conspiracy at foot, all these events leading to one inevitable conclusion: Nixon's win and the ascendancy of the conservative movement began a few years earlier with Barry Goldwater's presidential run in 1964. The year began with a win, but, in the eyes of Americans, it symbolized the losses this country has suffered since our engagement in Vietnam began. The Tet Offensive, timed during the lunar new year in Vietnam, was a crowning failure for the North Vietnamese, who failed to achieve all but one of their objectives. The North Vietnamese officers were beaten back by the ARVN and U.S. troops and suffered major casualties. But their attacks against more than 100 towns and cities, including Saigon, surprised South Vietnamese and U.S. military planners.
Back in the United States, the public was growing weary of combat losses and the continuation of a conflict that showed no end in sight and began turning against the war. A majority of Americans now thought the military engagement in Vietnam was a mistake, and opposition to the war was growing steadily, polarizing citizens. President Johnson's approval ratings suffered the greatest hit. Though Johnson tried to convince the American public that the Tet Offensive was a loss to the Communists, his earlier claims that the win in Vietnam would be decisive for the Americans made it difficult for him to get his message across to a public that was increasingly distrustful of his administration.
The Tet Offensive was a turning point in the war, but it was a turning point in the political and social climate in the United States as well. As Johnson's approval ratings continued to plummet, the perceptions that the war in Vietnam was unwinnable was rising. CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, long trusted by the public, turned against the war, criticizing leaders both in Vietnam and Washington for abusing the American faith. Johnson, who watched Cronkite's broadcast, reportedly said: "If I've lost Cronkite, then I've lost the American people."
Military and conservative leaders have long insisted that the media lost the war for the U.S., claiming that their lack of support influenced the public, but there is no evidence of a causal relationship between the way the media covered the war and the public's approval. During much of the war, the media, both broadcast and press, was overwhelmingly supportive of the conflict in Vietnam even as public support began to dwindle. The fact that military leaders were stunned by the surprise attacks during the Tet Offensive was a colossal failure of military intelligence in Vietnam. The attacks also proved that the North Vietnamese were still capable of launching an insurgency of this nature despite the massive aerial bombings during the earlier Rolling Thunder operation. Both of these facts, and the continued losses of combat troops, were major reasons for the growing opposition against the war. If the media coverage changed after Tet, it was only because political leaders back in Washington changed political and military strategies, a reflection of the mainstream media's willingness to follow the lead of the political climate rather than to question it. Still, the perception that the media caused the U.S. to lose in Vietnam is prevalent today and is a direct cause for the way the Pentagon planned and manipulated media information during the Gulf War and the War in Iraq.
