“The Day the Music Died” is Don’s McLean’s phrase. He used it in his fabled 1971 song, “American Pie,” to refer to the sudden death, in 1959, in a plane crash, of three great American musicians, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and “The Big Bopper.”
The music died again, in a different way, four years later, on November 22, 1963. This was the day that President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed. Though we could not know it then, his death signaled the end of the Age of American Innocence.
When John F. Kennedy was elected, in 1960, more than 73% of Americans said they trusted their government most or all the time. Since then, this figure has continued to decline, so that now only about 25% of Americans say they trust their government most or all the time. Moreover, we now have a sharp partisan divide, depending on who controls the presidency. This year more than 35% of Democrats said they trusted the government; among Republicans the figure was only 9%.
What happened in the interim is impossible to explain only by looking at leaders. But leaders do matter – at least some of the time. So when leaders in the highest of places are lost, or for some reason ignominiously defeated, their followers, in this case the American people, are unsettled. When the loss is repeated, over and over again, they become unmoored.
- President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963.
- The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in April 1968.
- Presidential candidate, and brother of the slain president, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated in June 1968.
- President Lyndon B. Johnson decided against running for a second full term in 1968. (Because he thought he would lose.)
- President Richard Nixon was forced to resign in 1974. (Because of the Watergate scandal.)
- President Gerald Ford was unable to win the White House in his own right in the election of 1976.
- President Jimmy Carter was unable to secure a second term in the election of 1980.
Had the two Kennedys and King not been murdered, things might’ve been different. Had Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter not had presidencies that in critical ways failed, things might’ve been different. We’ll never know. What we do know though is that for many years American’s most prominent political leaders were on a losing streak – however defined. No wonder while the music died once in 1959 and then again in 1963, it took well over a decade to declare it not only dead but buried. Buried for what turned out the indefinite future.