at my parents said about Nixon in particular. After all, it was clear that he had had a major influence on foreign policy, especially by traveling to China, and it seemed that he had also ended the war my parents so hated. Carter was not a President I remembered that well, given how young I was when he was in office, and Reagan seemed a major improvement. I had a vague awareness of the hostage crisis and a sense that it was Carter's fault and that Reagan had solved it, though I know now that the issue was not that simple.
My parents and I seemed drawn to different causes and different candidates in the early 1980s. I was too young to participate much, but I did have the feeling that my parents were too tied to the past and that the country was moving in a different direction. However, as I learned more about the era before mine and about some of the details I did not know before, I have started to see my parents' point of view more clearly. for one thing, as noted, the revelations made by McNamara in his book only proved that the war in Vietnam was being waged more for political than military reasons and that is was a mistake to get so involved in it in the first place. This is what liberal Democrats have been saying for some time, and the attitude offered by conservatives that the war could have been won if protesters had not undermined our national will is more and more in question. For another, the recent release of more of the Nixon tapes points out how cy
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