President Johnson’s withdrawal from the presidential race is the last of a series of withdrawals that caught the mass media totally and completely be surprise: Governor [George] Romney’s sudden pullout while campaigning in New Hampshire, and Governor [Nelson] Rockefeller’s decision to withdraw from the race after all his friends and associates were assured that he would enter. In every case, the withdrawer proclaimed the reason to be his desire to “unify” the party and/or the country.

Lyndon Johnson’s April Fool peace offensive was, as Senator [William J.] Fulbright had the enormous courage to point out, a phony. Hanoi had repeatedly said that it would not negotiate until the United States unconditionally and permanently halted the bombing of North Vietnam. Johnson’s bombing announcement fooled many people into believing that this is what Johnson had decided to do; instead Johnson continued to bomb North Vietnam up to 200 miles north of the border and, in fact, he bombed this large zone much more intensely after the “bombing halt” than he had done before.

The great debate that raged during the post-King-funeral riots, and will continue to rage in the wave of ghetto rioting this summer, is: Should looters be shot?

Many defenders of property rights are backing the position of Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley that looters would be shot by the police, and are criticizing such officials as New York’s Mayor John Lindsay, who maintains that his police will not shoot children for looting stores. The issue is being posed: the lives of the looters vs. the property rights of the merchants.

Anyone who has anything to do with the nation’s campuses knows that the atmosphere has changed drastically over the last couple of years; even over the last few months. The signs are everywhere.

The presidential campaign of Senator Eugene McCarthy has tapped a great deal of enthusiasm among considerable segments of American life. Particularly is this true of the nation’s campuses, for students and faculty alike. His lone courage in launching the race against overwhelming odds and against the displeasure of the President, combined with his opposition to the Vietnam war and his scholarly tone and style, have won the hearts of almost the entire American college community, as well as other middle-class Americans.

On April 29, 1968, in the dead of a night that will live in infamy in the annals of education in this country, Columbia University President Grayson Kirk and Vice President David Truman ordered onto the campus 1,000 cops, who proceeded to club, pummel, and drag into paddy wagons 720 students and faculty, as well as to brutalize thousands of innocent onlookers.

A remarkable thing has happened: Let the Pueblo be seized by North Korea, and every man-on-the-street becomes an international law “expert.” “An outrage!” “An act of piracy!” “Nothing like this has happened since 1815!” The air is filled with declamations on the law of the sea; I expect at any time to hark back to the eighteenth century and find the press teeming with discussions of the law of capture, contraband theory, and how many puffs at the hornpipe are required for a party to board ship.

As I write, the news comes that the Viet Cong (the Army of National Liberation of South Vietnam) has won its mightiest victory of the war. After suddenly, simultaneously, and successfully invading seven of the leading cities of South Vietnam (and the cities are the last strongholds of pro-U.S. forces), the V.C. have invaded Saigon itself, even unto the heart of the American embassy.

For nine days the garbagemen of New York City were out on strike, and the streets were piled high with putrefying mounds of garbage. The press and the public have been infuriated by the strike but, as in so many matters, the fury has been sadly misplaced. Government actions, backed by the public, have been the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Johnson administration is sinking every deeper into its quagmire of lies about the war in Vietnam. Now, as these lies come into ever greater confrontation with reality, they are becoming more openly ludicrous. Is there anyone left who really believes that the latest phase of remarkable Viet Cong victories represents the “last convulsive gasp” of the virtually defeated enemy?