The 1967 Game

One of our more popular features last year was The 1966 Game.

The idea was simple. Given my presumption that we’re at the same point in our political cycle as we were in 1966, map figures of that time to figures of today.

Now it’s 2007, which means that in terms of our political cycle we’re at 1967. And 1931. And 1895. And 1859.

Rather than just playing games with people I want to help you identify the real similarities between the America of today and our political past.

I’ve already given you the most important one. The Nixon Thesis of Conflict, which first attained power here in 1968, is dead. It still governs, but not only is the Bush Administration (which follows that thesis) failing to offer us answers, it’s not even asking the right questions.

This realization has already dawned on the vast majority of Americans. It drove the results of the last election — just as the failure of the FDR Thesis of Unity broke down in 1966, and the Progressive Thesis broke down in 1930, and the Civil War Thesis broke down in 1894, and the Jackson Thesis broke down in 1858.

We know what’s broken but we don’t know what’s coming.

So let’s start there.

First, identify the feeling most evident in the national mood today, the same feeling that dominated middle class dinner tables at this time 40 years ago, and 76 years ago, and 112 years ago, even 148 years ago?

Then identify an event from 1967 that symbolized the mood.

Despair.

Perhaps no event symbolized this despair quite so much as the Apollo 1 disaster, 40 years ago this month.

Why did it happen?

 Complacency and incompetance was abound and in the wake of the
Apollo I disaster a drive to improve things wholesale saw a lot of
heads roll. With the Vietnam war and civil rights concerning the
public, people were asking if the space program was worth it.

There was an assumption at NASA that they could do anything, just as there was an assumption within the Johnson Administration that it could buy both guns and butter, win both the War in Vietnam and the War on Poverty.

Assumptions arise out of a combination of myths and values that I call a political thesis. The FDR Thesis could be summed up in two words — can do. But we couldn’t. Not any more.

The Apollo 1 disaster shocked middle class America to its soul. With everything else under question, the space program had become a rock on which we built our mental church. Now it all lay in ruins.

Are things that bad now, in 2007? For those who have believed in the political myths and values that came to power with Richard Nixon, the answer, I believe, is yes.

What might be an equivalent event, something to shake people today as Apollo 1 shook our parents?

Look out the window.