Can we say good bye to 1968?

1968 is back in the news. Newsweek figures that the year rates a cover story. The History Channel is planning a special on 1968. Barack Obama has been campaigning on representing a new generation that won't be tied down to the battles from 40 years ago. But, as Newsweek recognizes, he has a hard time selling that he's so very different. And besides his gauzy promises about being able to bridge the divide between Republicans and Democrats as he did when he was in the Illinois legislature, we're still waiting to see how he's so very different. We've heard before about the promises of bridging the partisan divide - remember Bush's record of working with Democrats in Texas that he optimistically believed would translate to Washington.

Obama's promise—I am not the'60s—is heartfelt, but ultimately hard to believe. Just look at the gray-haired '60s idealists inside the senator's own brain trust who see him as the fulfillment of 40 years' worth of hard work. Or look at the throbbing crowds that mob the young senator, reminiscent in so many ways of the crowds that mobbed Bobby Kennedy 40 years ago. Or look at the Secret Service detail that trails Obama, a reminder of the old '60s lesson that assassination is a real threat. Obama is the '60s, whether he likes it or not.

John McCain is also the '60s. A former naval aviator who spent the latter part of the decade in a North Vietnamese POW camp, McCain uttered the best line of the 2008 presidential campaign last month in a Republican primary debate. "A few days ago, Senator Clinton tried to spend $1 million on the Woodstock Concert Museum," McCain announced. "Now, my friends, I wasn't there … I was tied up at the time." The Republican room erupted, not in laughter, but in applause. His campaign quickly took the debate clip and cut a television ad.

Daniel Henninger has a column today following up on Obama's statement that Hillary represented a tired out politics of another generation. Henninger sees the 1960s as giving voice to two groups who are still going at it today.

One side, which took to the streets in Chicago or occupied Columbia University, concluded from Vietnam and the race riots that America, in its relations with the world and its own citizens, was flawed and required big changes. Their defining document was the March 1968 Kerner Commission report, announcing "two societies," separate and unequal. The press, incidentally, emerged from Vietnam and the riots joined to this new, permanent template. That, too, has never stopped.

The other side was, well, insulted. It thought America was fundamentally good, though always able to improve. The Voting Rights Act passed in 1964 on a bipartisan vote, opposed mainly by southern Democrats. This side's standard-bearer called the U.S. "a shining city upon a hill." But after 1968, no Democratic presidential candidate would ever speak those words.

As long as there are different views of the nation and the path that would be best for that nation to take in domestic and foreign policy there will be debates and partisanship. 1968 was a historically tragic and eventful year, but the differences in viewpoint remain and aren't going away. And while 1968 stands out, we've had other momentous years in our history and differing views of the nation. It didn't begin in 1968 and it's not going to end with the election of any politician, no matter how appealing that dream might be.

Henninger has a short summary of the important events that happened in 1968 from the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour album to the election of Nixon. One correction: George Wallace wasn't shot dead in 1972, but survived until 1998.