Reflections of a City Attorney (Part 2)

Preface: This series of articles, detailing reflections from over the years, will appear over the next two weeks. There was not always a convenient point to break these up. Some may be shorter than others. There were many more things I wanted to say, but this was not the time nor was there the space to do that now. Hopefully, you will still find them interesting. I welcome any feedback. .

Part 2. The 50s and 60s. Republican presidents then would not be welcome in the Republican Party of today.

I was a kid in the 1950s. Even though the 50s seems to have been eclipsed by the 1960s and the political turmoil caused by the Vietnam War, the decade of the 50s was remarkable in many respects.

The 50s was the decade after America exited the Second World War and moved forward. It did so in spite of the burgeoning Cold War with Russia and an actual war with North Korea.

It was the decade when the stories of the growth of the suburbs, the appearance of the first colored televisions, and the caught everyone’s fascination.

America was manufacturing machines and producing products. The labels on clothes did not say "Made in China," India, or elsewhere. Those Maytag or Sears washing machines were made in America and not in Mexico. There was optimism and pride across the country.

A middle class was born as the backbone of America. The American sense of greatness was neither dampened by fear of a nuclear war nor by any other challenges. America was growing. All of this growth and sense of general well-being was not stifled by the 80- to 90-percent tax rate for the highest income earners.

All was not perfect or without concern. The Cold War with Russia was already in full bloom. And Russia was a million times the threat Al Qaeda or Iran could ever dream of being.

When Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency ended, he warned Americans about the potential threat to our democracy from the military industrial complex. Those were prescient words coming from a former war hero and Republican president.

It was also said at a time when it was generally considered dishonorable if high ranking military officers retired from the armed services and then took jobs with corporations that produced military products. Nor did these career military officers become lobbyists.

It was not long after the Eisenhower presidency that America became embroiled in combatting Communism in Asia. China was being seen as another threat. Enough American politicians, even though very few actually understood China, communism, or the internal affairs of the countries in Southeast Asia, were determined to halt the spread of communism in Southeast Asia.

Nevertheless, times were good. Housing and higher education were available and relatively inexpensive. America was moving forward.

The 60s ushered in a new era and a Democratic president, John F. Kennedy. America had the glow of Camelot. Kennedy introduced his presidency with the noteworthy words, “Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.”

JFK created the Peace Corp in 1961. Young Americans volunteered up to two years to perform public service around the globe. America was spreading its spirit and good will in ways it never had before. The 60s also brought a variety of challenges.

Ninety miles south of the Florida Keys, the people of the little island of Cuba decided they had enough of the Batista dictatorship that was brought to power in the 50s through the efforts of the United States. The Cuban Revolution confronted America with a so-called communist country in our hemisphere.

The Cuban missile crisis and a nuclear war between the world’s two greatest superpowers was narrowly avoided. The Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev removed what was going to be the installation of Russian missiles capable of delivering nuclear payloads from Cuban soil.

I still remember having nuclear war drills at the school I attended in Washington, D.C. It was naively similar to the earthquake drills where students are told to get under tables or desks and the like.

By the mid-60s, the military intervention in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam was growing. These incursions into the affairs of other countries were not well publicized in the United States. It really was not until 1964, when the U.S. government falsely claimed that the USS Maddox was attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin by North Vietnamese naval forces, that the United States formally committed military troops in South Vietnam in what is known as the Vietnam War.

Cloaked in the typical language of preventing the spread of communism, the U.S. dispatched military forces to protect the dictatorships in South Vietnam. This military misadventure resulted in the deaths of over 65,000 young soldiers and countless others wounded and scarred. It took many years of protests by an increasing number of Americans before the politicians concluded that the war did not have the support of the American population.

Domestically, the country was also undergoing a well spring of change. Martin Luther King Jr. became a household name in August of 1963 when he gave his “I Have a Dream” speech before a crowd of over 200,000 people at the Washington Monument. Although most thought of him as an advocate for civil rights, before his assassination in 1968, he was a Vietnam War critic and an advocate for economic fairness and equality for the poor, both white and black Americans.

After JFK was assassinated in November 1963, Lyndon Johnson succeeded to the presidency. A powerful southern Democrat from Texas, LBJ engineered the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He, as well as many others, realized that the civil rights of blacks in America needed to be guaranteed by laws and regulations that would end segregation in housing, schools and public facilities.

The time had come for America to come to grips with the lynchings, church burnings, murders of civil rights workers, and the despicable scourge of segregation. After all, our country fought the Civil War a hundred years earlier to put an end to slavery.

Johnson’s leadership to end this grotesque inequity also resulted in a realignment of the political parties that persists to this day. Historically, the southern segregationists were Democrats. Richard Nixon, who was elected in 1968, devised the southern strategy, which resulted in a realignment of segregationists moving over to the Republican Party. This realignment persists to this day.

When I in the fall of 1967, the Vietnam War protests had hit the streets. With crowds estimated to be over 100,000, Washington, D.C., became ground zero for the protest movement.

Over the next seven years, protests grew in frequency and size, reaching what some estimate were crowds of over several hundred thousand. Protests were held at both the Democratic and Republican conventions. The most violent occurred at the Democratic convention that was held in Chicago.  

President Nixon’s Republican agenda in 1968 would not have endeared him to the Republicans of today. President Nixon initiated efforts to protect the environment from degradation. He signed into law the National Environmental Policy Act on the first day of 1970, and thereby created the Environmental Protection Agency.

A bipartisan Congress soon thereafter passed the Clean Air Act, a complex regulatory scheme to protect the nation’s air. California, during this same time, passed the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

Across America there was a realization that our water, air, ground and living environment needed to be protected from degradation cause by industrial and commercial development. Life seemed good in the seventies. People seemed optimistic.

During the 60s and into the 70s, the Federal income tax rate for the highest earners ranged between 91 percent to 50 percent. Very few people were heard to say that these tax rates stifled investment or were inappropriate.

Return Wednesday for Part 3. Miss Part 1? .