My parents were liberal Democrats and had been since before I was born. They were products of the 1960s, a period of some social ferment and political upheaval, characterized in particular by growing opposition to the Vietnam War and by the view that the government was conducting that war with unnecessary secrecy and in opposition to the best interests of this country and Vietnam as well. They were also opposed to many of the policies carried through into the 1980s, and they were especially displeased with the presidency of Ronald Reagan. At the time, their continuing insistence on seeing the government as devious was a puzzle to me, since it seemed instead that Reagan and others were seeking to reduce the influence of government and so were opening the process in some way. However, subsequent events have made me reconsider as much of what my parents said about the Vietnam era have been shown to be true, notably with the self-serving revelations by Robert S. McNamara that he pursued the war even though he knew it was wrong and could not be won. In addition, I have since learned much more about the era of my childhood than I was aware of at the time.
Probably the most damaging event of my childhood from my parents' point of view was Watergate, and I was simply too young to know much of what was taking place at the time and saw my parents' disillusionment later as unfortunate and as something I could not readily understand. I learned about the Vietnam War and Watergate largely from watching television in the 1980s, and I heard a great deal from the Republican leadership at that time about how we lost the wear because the people stopped supporting the troops and that Watergate was a political fight more than a real crime. Protestations otherwise by liberal Democrats often sounded unconvincing. After all, they continued to look everywhere for some scandal that would damage the Reagan Administration, and I was skeptical about wh...