Word: defeatism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Hayden thinks Kennedy would have won the Democratic nomination in 1968 and then gone on to defeat Richard Nixon in November and served two terms in the White House, leaving office in January 1977. Richard Goodwin worked as an adviser and speechwriter for both John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. He remembers talking to Bobby on the night he was killed. "He believed," recalls Goodwin, "that he probably wouldn't get the nomination. He was sure that Johnson would do anything to stop him." Goodwin shared Kennedy's pessimism at the time, but now, 20 years later, says the nomination could...
Then, as often happened in Viet Nam, one murderous mirage overtook another. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces launched their general offensive during the lunar New Year, called Tet. Militarily, Tet was a defeat for the Communists. But once again in Viet Nam and in the American mind, illusion triumphed over reality. America, and much of the rest of the world, regarded Tet as shocking proof that the war was a disaster for the U.S., unwinnable...
...corner of the historic former capital at Hue. Communists penetrated the heart of Saigon. They attacked the U.S. embassy, the presidential palace, the government radio station. All this was the work of an enemy that the Johnson Administration had reported to be "struggling to stave off military defeat...
...contribution -- and it was immense -- was the protection of the biggest secret of the war: the fact that the British, with the help of the Poles, had broken the German code; they could read Hitler's mail. The information gathered through the Ultra secret helped the R.A.F., for example, defeat the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain and enabled Montgomery to overpower Rommel in the North African desert...
...understand why a Senator might vote for him. A Senator can't abstain from voting," said Dershowitz, who advised senators on how to defeat Bork. "But a citizen can abstain, and I think abstention may the proper course of action when a bad president names a mediocre nominee to an already bad court...