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hubert humphrey
How the Vietnam and Gaza Wars Shattered Young Illusions About US Leaders
Emerging generations learned that moral concerns about their country’s engagement in faraway wars meant little to policymakers in Washington.
Apr 30, 2025
Eight years before the U.S.-backed regime in South Vietnam collapsed, I stood with high school friends at Manhattan’s Penn Station on the night of April 15, 1967, waiting for a train back to Washington after attending the era’s largest anti-war protest so far. An early edition of the next day’s New York Times arrived on newsstands with a big headline at the top of the front page that said “100,000 Rally at U.N. Against Vietnam War.” I heard someone say, “Johnson will have to listen to us now.”
But President Lyndon Johnson dashed the hopes of those who marched from Central Park to the United Nations that day (with an actual turnout later estimated at 400,000). He kept escalating the war in Vietnam, while secretly also bombing Laos and Cambodia.
During the years that followed, anti-war demonstrations grew in thousands of communities across the United States. The decentralized Moratorium Day events on October 15, 1969 drew upward of 2 million people. But all forms of protest fell on deaf official ears. A song by the folksinger Donovan, recorded midway through the decade, became more accurate and powerful with each passing year: “The War Drags On.”
By remaining faithful to the war policies of the president they served, while discounting the opinions of young voters, two Democratic vice presidents—Hubert Humphrey and Kamala Harris—damaged their efforts to win the White House.
As the war continued, so did the fading of trust in the wisdom and morality of Johnson and his successor, Richard Nixon. Gallup polls gauged the steep credibility drop. In 1965, just 24% of Americans said involvement in the Vietnam War had been a mistake. By the spring of 1971, the figure was 61%.
The number of U.S. troops in Vietnam gradually diminished from the peak of 536,100 in 1968, but ground operations and massive U.S. bombing persisted until the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in late January 1973. American forces withdrew from Vietnam, but the war went on with U.S. support for 27 more months, until—on April 30, 1975—the final helicopter liftoff from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon signaled that the Vietnam War was indeed over.
By then, most Americans were majorly disillusioned. Optimism that public opinion would sway their government’s leaders on matters of war and peace had been steadily crushed while carnage in Southeast Asia continued. To many citizens, democracy had failed—and the failure seemed especially acute to students, whose views on the war had evolved way ahead of overall opinion.
At the end of the 1960s, Gallup found “significantly more opposition to President Richard Nixon’s Vietnam policies” among students at public and private colleges than in “a parallel survey of the U.S. general public: 44% vs. 25%, respectively.” The same poll “showed 69% of students in favor of slowing down or halting the fighting in Vietnam, while only 20% favored escalation. This was a sharp change from 1967, when more students favored escalation (49%) than deescalation (35%).”
Six decades later, it took much less time for young Americans to turn decisively against their government’s key role of arming Israel’s war on Gaza. By a wide margin, continuous huge shipments of weapons to the Israeli military swiftly convinced most young adults that the U.S. government was complicit in a relentless siege taking the lives of Palestinian civilians on a large scale.
A CBS News/YouGov poll in June 2024 found that Americans opposed sending “weapons and supplies to Israel” by 61-39%. Opposition to the arms shipments was even higher among young people. For adults under age 30, the ratio was 77-23.
Emerging generations learned that moral concerns about their country’s engagement in faraway wars meant little to policymakers in Washington. No civics textbook could prepare students for the realities of power that kept the nation’s war machine on a rampage, taking several million lives in Southeast Asia or supplying weapons making possible genocide in Gaza.
For vast numbers of Americans, disproportionately young, the monstrous warfare overseen by Presidents Johnson and Nixon caused the scales to fall from their eyes about the character of U.S. leadership. And like President Donald Trump now, President Joe Biden showed that nice-sounding rhetoric could serve as a tidy cover story for choosing to enable nonstop horrors without letup.
No campaign-trail platitudes about caring and joy could make up for a lack of decency. By remaining faithful to the war policies of the president they served, while discounting the opinions of young voters, two Democratic vice presidents—Hubert Humphrey and Kamala Harris—damaged their efforts to win the White House.
A pair of exchanges on network television, 56 years apart, are eerily similar.
In August 1968, appearing on the NBC program “Meet the Press,” Humphrey was asked, “On what points, if any, do you disagree with the Vietnam policies of President Johnson?”
“I think that the policies that the president has pursued are basically sound,” Humphrey replied.
In October 2024, appearing on the ABC program “The View,” Harris was asked: “Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?”
“There is not a thing that comes to mind,” Harris replied.
Young people’s votes for Harris last fall were just 54%, compared with 60% that they provided to Biden four years earlier.
Many young eyes recognized the war policy positions of Hubert Humphrey and Kamala Harris as immoral. Their decisions to stay on a war train clashed with youthful idealism. And while hardboiled political strategists opted to discount such idealism as beside the electoral point, the consequences have been truly tragic—and largely foreseeable.
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Why I Regret My Antiwar Protest Vote in 1968
While I see many parallels with the choice we faced back then, I now think differently about how to register my opposition to war.
Nov 02, 2024
In 1968, I was a full-time anti-Vietnam War organizer and voted for a third-party candidate. I now regret that protest vote, which has led me to think differently this time around.
I certainly sympathize with many progressives who intend to either sit out this election or vote for the Green Party’s Jill Stein or Cornel West. Kamala Harris’s continuing support for Israel’s war on Gaza and now Lebanon is abhorrent to anyone opposing war. For the past year the Biden-Harris administration has functioned as a willing ally and enabler of Israel’s genocide. Though not a self-proclaimed Zionist like the president, Harris parrots Israel’s talking points and lies about the war on Gaza. At the Democratic convention, she didn’t even permit a Palestinian representative to speak for five minutes from the platform.
But come election day, I won’t be casting a protest vote as I did in 1968 — even though I see so many parallels with the choice we faced then.
Like Harris, that year’s Democratic candidate, Hubert Humphrey, served as vice president, standing loyally by as Lyndon Johnson sent more than a half-million U.S. troops to Vietnam, hundreds of whom were dying every week in 1968. Far from distinguishing himself from the war hawks, Humphrey made speeches supporting the U.S. and its South Vietnamese allies as thousands of American soldiers were killed and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were slaughtered.
When it comes to radically transforming the two major political parties it’s going to take a lot more than one election cycle.
Adding to this outrage, Humphrey was nominated at the infamous Democratic convention in Chicago where the local cops brutally assaulted antiwar demonstrators in what was later described as a “police riot.” I was one of those protesters and was jailed for my efforts. Many antiwarriors demonstrated against Humphrey during the subsequent campaign, often chanting “Dump the Hump.” So, when election day came, I just couldn’t bring myself to vote for someone I considered a war criminal and cast my ballot for comedian Dick Gregory, who was running on a third-party ticket.
What I did not consider, however, was Humphrey’s opponent — Richard Nixon. At the time, I considered the parties as Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Both seemed indistinguishable on Vietnam. And both reflected the same Cold War anticommunist mentality that underlay the American imperialist project and the growing military-industrial state.
I ignored, however, the profound differences between the two candidates on a host of other issues. For example, Nixon’s campaign revolved around what he called a Southern strategy. By using thinly disguised racist “law-and-order” rhetoric, he hoped to peel away white Southern and Northern white working-class voters from the Democrats. Ronald Reagan and later Republican administrations have solidified their appeal to white voters to effectively roll back the hard-won gains of the civil rights movement, especially on voting rights.
Today, the differences between the two parties are even more stark on a wide variety of issues – from women’s and LGBTQ+ rights to the climate and consumer protections to electoral integrity. The evidence can be found in Project 2025, the Republican blueprint for a new Trump presidency. Or in what Trump proclaims at his rallies. Earlier this month, he declared that he intends to use the military against protesters whom he considers “the enemy within.”
This kind of authoritarian rule is happening around the world, including Erdogan’s Turkey, Orban’s Hungary and Putin’s Russia. There is very little to protect it from happening here. We certainly can’t rely on the current Supreme Court.
In the face of such a prospect, shouldn’t we do whatever is possible to forestall an autocratic regime? I no longer see casting a symbolic protest ballot — or sitting on the sidelines — as an act of conscience. Real acts of conscience imply taking a risk and being willing to accept the consequences.
Still, some might argue that it’s worth voting for the Green Party’s Jill Stein to send a message to the Democrats that they can’t literally get away with murder in Gaza. But would it convey that message?
In 2016, when Stein last ran for president, she received more votes than Trump’s margin of victory in three key states: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In this election, that could be enough to help him retake the White House. Trump’s solution to the Gaza war: Netanyahu should “finish the job.” Is that something that would help the Palestinians?
More than anything, they need us to continue challenging the U.S.-Israeli genocide by street actions, by supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, and by educating our fellow citizens about the reality of the Zionist settler-colonial project. When it comes to radically transforming the two major political parties it’s going to take a lot more than one election cycle. It will require building powerful movements that address systemic issues like racism, poverty, ecological devastation, and war and militarism.
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The Consequences of the Choices We Will Make on Election Day
Some questions for those who rightly hold this Democratic administration responsible for genocide and want to punish the Democratic nominee for president.
Oct 29, 2024
This presidential contest has generated an intense debate within the Arab American community. If it were a normal election year, I’d be out in the field urging my community to vote for Democrats. I’d be warning Arab Americans that we needed to do everything we could to stop Donald Trump from re-entering the White House. I’d remind them of his racism, xenophobia, and anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant rhetoric. I’d point to the danger he poses to women’s rights, civil rights and civil liberties, the environment, health and safety protections in the workplace, health care, academic freedom, civil discourse, and the Constitution. It would be, as we say, “A slam dunk.” But this isn’t a normal election.
My community has been deeply traumatized by the genocide in Gaza and now the devastating war on Lebanon. They are justifiably furious at the Biden administration’s refusal to enforce U.S. laws that could rein in Israel’s unconscionable and illegal actions, and accuse them of enabling Israel’s impunity.
Given this, there’s been a significant decline in Arab American support for Democrats, an uptick in support for the GOP, and many saying that they want to punish Democrats by voting for a third-party candidate. I, too, feel this pain and am torn as to how to move forward. I wish it were different, but it just isn’t.
However, I have some questions for those who rightly hold this Democratic administration responsible for genocide and want to punish the Democratic nominee for president. When they say they are voting their conscience by supporting a third party, I ask them to explain how punishing Vice-President Harris and enabling Donald Trump to become president will end the genocide—especially as we have allies in the progressive side of the Democratic Party who support and have been working with us to advance our foreign and domestic policy concerns and will be with us to pressure a Harris White House?
I wish it were different, but it just isn’t.
Meanwhile, the party of Trump is dominated by hardline hawks who have little or no concern for Palestinians or our civil rights. Or how voting for parties that have been around for decades and struggle to gain even 1% of the vote will advance anything other than helping elect Donald Trump? Or how turning our backs on all of the groups who have been our allies in the struggles for our civil and political rights and for a just foreign policy adds up to “voting one’s conscience”?
It reminds me of a lesson I learned from the late Julian Bond in the aftermath of the 1968 election. A decade ago, I wrote a reflection on that lesson. I ask you to consider it again:
***
It was 1968 and the U.S. was reeling from the Vietnam War, urban unrest, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy.
In the wake of voter opposition to the war, President Lyndon Johnson had been forced to end his reelection bid in favor of his Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
All of this was in the air when Democrats met for their convention to formally nominate Humphrey. On the first night of the convention, there was a fight over whether to recognize the all-white Georgia delegation or the mixed black and white delegation led by a young Georgia civil rights leader Julian Bond. The mixed delegation won a partial victory. On the second night, the convention wrestled with an effort to amend the platform to oppose the continuation of the war. Bond was a leader in this fight too. The amendment lost.
On the third night, when the convention met to nominate Humphrey’s vice-presidential running mate, the anti-war delegates proposed Bond to run against the party leaders’ hand-picked choice, Senator Ed Muskie. When the party leaders couldn’t silence the anti-war opposition, they brought in the police who were televised beating delegates who were chanting Bond’s name.
On the final day of the convention, after Humphrey and Muskie gave their acceptance speeches, Julian Bond came on stage and in a show of unity held up Humphrey’s and Muskie’s hands. Many young activists, like myself, were devastated.
A few years later, I got to know Julian Bond, and asked him why he did that and told him how let down I had felt. In response, he told me that there were two types of people. Those who looked down at the evils of the world and said, “I’m going to stand on my principles because it’s got to get a lot worse before it gets better.” Then there are those who say, “I’ve got to get to work to see if I can make it at least a little bit better.”
He told me “I’m with the second group because if I took the first view, I’d be allowing too many people to continue to suffer while I maintained my purity and refused to do anything to help. At the convention, it wasn’t Julian Bond versus Ed Muskie. It was Hubert Humphrey versus Richard Nixon, and I had to make a choice as to who would help make life at least a little bit better.”
I never forgot that lesson and am challenged daily to apply it. It is the reason why I have so little patience for ideologues from the right or the left.
They often miss the muck of the reality in which most of us live and the tough, and often less-than-perfect, choices with which we are confronted in the never-ending challenge to make life a little bit better—whether in the struggle for human rights, improvements in the quality of life, or the provision of security for those who are most vulnerable.
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