The year 1968 was certainly the most tumultuous in modern political history, and for many people of my generation it shaped our political involvement. At this point in that year, we had already gone through the Tet offensive, which drained away remaining popular support for the Vietnam war; the emergence of Eugene McCarthy’s insurgent candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination; McCarthy’s stunning performance in the New Hampshire primary against a sitting President; and Robert F. Kennedy’s entry into the race.

But none of the events of those first three months prepared us for this week. On Sunday night, March 31, at the end of one of his periodic TV addresses on the war, President Johnson announced that he wouldn’t seek nomination for another term. No President enjoyed the power of that office more than Johnson, and the spectacle of him giving it up was almost Shakespearean. Then, just four days later, on Thursday, the nation was convulsed by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis. 

We’re witnessing another exciting presidential contest in 2008 — but what are we going through that compares with 40 years ago? Up against 1968, kerfuffles like “Sniper-gate” and Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s sermons look like pseudo-controversies, ginned up and repeated endlessly to fill the cable networks’ 24/7 news holes.