I will put off a postmortem of the 2024 presidential election until another time, after a decent interval for reflection. Instead, I devote this op-ed to something I have had plenty of time to reflect on, namely identifying the 10 most important events in my lifetime, since my arrival on the planet immediately after World War II.
I limit my analysis to the importance of events to my generation, the baby boomers; therefore, I do not consider the arrival of Taylor Swift or whatever else might capture the attention of the Gen Z cohort or other Americans. So I do not consider the impact of, say, the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel or the war in Gaza.
Listed in chronological order, I would suggest the following:
1. The beginning of the Cold War, more a development than a singular event, following the end of WWII, with the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan and the birth of the nuclear age, leading to Japan’s surrender Sept. 2, 1945. The rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union would dominate world politics for the next half century. We are still living under the shadow of “the bomb.”
2. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. I was a sophomore in college at the time and can still remember the seminar room I was in when I heard the news. The sudden death of a young, incredibly charismatic leader, it remains one of the two most traumatic moments experienced by my generation.
3. The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, accompanied by race riots and violent protests in American cities and on college campuses, in 1968. The protests associated with the deaths of Michael Brown and George Floyd pale by comparison.
4. The Apollo 13 moon landing July 16, 1969. No technological achievement can compare to this accomplishment decades ago, unless one counts the advent of the internet, which changed our lives more than outer space exploration.
5. The Watergate hearings resulting in the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974, the only such event in American history. Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, had already been forced to resign in 1973 due to scandal, leaving their successors, President Gerald Ford and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, as the only pair of U.S. leaders never elected to their positions.
6. The Vietnam War, which ended in 1975 after roughly 15 years and 50,000 American deaths. The second-longest war in American history, after Afghanistan, it consumed an entire generation and remains controversial in terms of how the war was “lost.”
7. The end of the Cold War, marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989. (New York Times columnist Tom Friedman once remarked that the two most important dates in recent times were “9/11 and 11/9.”) The Cold War had dominated our lives — not to mention, as an international relations professor, my lecture notes — for several decades. An entirely new world order suddenly appeared, one we are still trying to make sense of.
8. The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, killing about 3,000 people. Arguably the second-most traumatic moment of my generation after the JFK assassination, I can still recall watching the twin towers collapse while I was in my office at the University of Missouri-St. Louis that morning. I called my brother who was working in the Pentagon at the time and was thankful to hear he was OK. Though seared in our collective memory, 9/11 has not proved as existential a threat as envisioned at the time, as we have had few terrorist attacks on American soil since.
9. The election of Barack Obama as our first Black president in 2008, repeated with reelection in 2012. Once thought unfathomable given the country’s long history of slavery, Jim Crow and systemic racism, Obama’s rise to the White House demonstrated remarkable progress in civil rights even as race relations remained strained.
10. The violent attack on the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, by hundreds of protestors claiming that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that Donald Trump had won. Whether one wishes to call this an insurrection or a riot, it was a horrific, unprecedented attack on one of our most sacred institutions of government.
People are still trying to interpret the real significance of Jan. 6, especially in light of Trump’s clear victory this year, when he won not only the most electoral votes but also the most popular votes for the presidency.
We may have to wait until 2026, when we celebrate the 250th birthday of the United States (the semi-quincentennial) and when Trump is expected to still be in office. It should be quite a show.
