In retrospect, the crusade is what it was in prospect: the most exciting, intimate and high-stakes presidential campaign of modern times. In 1968 the nation was hopelessly fractious. Besieged by opposition to a war not wanted and not understood, Lyndon Johnson was more a prisoner than a President, hostage to his Texas-macho aversion to becoming the "first American President to lose a war." The brother of his martyred predecessor, whose policies had mired the nation in the mess in the first place, wanted Johnson's job and an end to the war. So did Clean Gene McCarthy, who had demonstrated in New...
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