Few decades in American history have been as tense, tumultuous, and troubling as the 1960s. In this brief span, the nation's social fabric was torn apart by three assassinations of major national leaders, widespread racial disorder, numerous student rebellions, a disastrous ground war in Asia, and government duplicity on such a scale that Americans began to distrust their leaders. It appeared for a time that the center might not hold.

Although a civil insurrection was avoided, the 1960s left their mark on the country's psyche and took their toll on the dominant political party. Except for Eisenhower's two terms as president, liberal Democrats had ruled the land from the depths of the Great Depression in 1932 through 1968. In addition to enacting such progressive legislation as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and successfully prosecuting World War II, liberals gained crucially important civil rights for Southern blacks, who had been denied them since Reconstruction. It was a stunning achievement.

Yet the shattering events of the 1960s began the meltdown from which liberalism and the Democratic Party have never fully recovered. The formulas for change embodied in the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and the Great Society had not reached down deeply enough into the smoldering ghettoes. Malcolm X, perhaps the most prominent of a new class of black militants, warned in January 1964 that the “streets are going to run with blood.”