Ronald Reagan and the Tet Offensive

Exactly fifty years ago, on Jan. 30, 1968, Americans turned on their evening television news shows and received their second shock of the week. Barely seven days earlier, the North Koreans had hijacked the USS Pueblo. Now, North Vietnam and the Viet Cong had launched a surprise attack — the Tet Offensive.

In this time period, Americans had no idea that news hosts were giving the news their own biased, liberal slants. CBS' Walter Cronkite bemoaned the first reports out of the conflict, saying the American and South Vietnamese war efforts were doomed and thus succeeded in handing a huge psychological victory to America's and South Vietnam's enemies. In 1968, without any conservative media to tell the other side, the ultimate fact that Tet turned out to be a huge military defeat for the Viet Cong and North Vietnam never made it into the American psyche. Liberals in the media of 1968 had succeeded with their own version of the Fake News of the future Trump era.

During that tumultuous spring, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., was completing his political metamorphosis. In the early 1960s when he had been his brother's advisor and attorney general, he and JFK had been staunch supporters of South Vietnam. But by 1967, RFK had been turning away from the policies of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

On May 15, 1967, RFK had debated Vietnam in an internationally-broadcast televised forum. His Republican debate opponent knew his facts and wanted to win the war — it was first time presidential candidate Ronald Reagan. All RFK did in the debate was apologize for America's policies. Reagan won that debate resoundingly, as even the liberal media had to admit at the time.

By March 1968, RFK said he was considering running for the presidency as an anti-war candidate now officially against the policies of his slain brother's successor, Lyndon Johnson. After Johnson stunned the world by announcing he would not seek re-election, RFK formally proclaimed his candidacy.