In my comfortable corner of a Midwestern college-town, the 1968 Chicago riots caused hardly a skip until they came out on an album, set to music.
My friend Ted put it on his father's expensive ''hand's off'' stereo while his parents were gone, and cranked it into the red zone. Suddenly, the quiet living room in a sedate, shady neighborhood was overflowing with street-fighting cops and anti-war protesters. ''The whole world's watching!'' a crowd chanted over and over, fading into angry electric guitars and crashing drums.
The album was called ''Chicago.'' That was all. That was enough.
At age 16, our protests concerned haircuts, date curfews and limited access to the family Chevy, not some distant war. But we instantly recognized this Chicago thing as something new and cool that would just as instantly shock the white socks off everyone old enough to tell us what to do.
Open rebellion was powerful stuff, and we inhaled a lungful. It was like a gateway drug. We started out with ''Hell, no, we won't go - to Latin class.'' But before long we had graduated to harder stuff - we hallucinated that we could run out into the streets and stop the war as easy as stopping traffic. We thought we could change the whole world.
Eventually, we grew up, lifted the needle off the record and stopped looking for the meaning of life in rock lyrics. Well, most of us did.
A few are still hiding out in the jungles of college campuses, media and government, like Japanese soldiers on some forgotten island, who still don't know the war ended 20 years ago.
Deep down, behind the ''New Democrat'' bunker and ''Born-again Republican'' camouflage, Bill Clinton is one of those soldiers of the '60s who never surrendered.
As Democrats return to Chicago again, 28 years after the riots of 1968, the people outside are now insiders. The party is led by a draft-dodger and war protester who still has one foot planted in the ethical quicksand of the anti-war movement: ''The end justifies the means.''
Or, put in a more Clintonesque fashion, ''I can't be wrong if my intentions are right.''
So, although he wriggled out of Vietnam with greasy moralizing, he didn't flinch about risking American lives for ''peacekeeping.''
Although he has repeatedly cheated on his own taxes, he didn't feel even a moral hiccup about pushing through the biggest tax hike in history. Later, he glibly blamed it on Democrats in Congress.
Nine members of his staff were killed in a plane crash - and he hardly paused to blink away a Hollywood tear on his way to panhandle $10 million at his birthday party.
Feeling deprived and underappreciated as governor of Arkansas, he didn't hesitate to reach into illegal land schemes with both hands, or encourage his wife to peddle his influence for a killing in cattle futures. They were entitled to do well, for doing so much good.
And now that their friends and business partners are being tracked down and sent to the slammer, the Clintons feel entitled to turn their backs and use the full power of the presidency to smother erupting scandals, because Paula Jones, Whitewater, Travelgate and hidden FBI files all get in the way of their important plans to change the world.
I've read half a shelf of Clinton books - The Agenda, On the Edge, Primary Colors, Blood Sport, The Choice - and they all tell a sad story of an undisciplined, unprepared, unprincipled man who believes in nothing but Bill Clinton.
We've been lied to by other presidents. That was part of what we protested so angrily in 1968. But the secret of the magic Clinton salesmanship is that he also lies to himself. He is so convincing because he really believes it when he twists the truth, takes both sides of an issue or pretends that limiting the growth of Medicare spending is an extreme cut.
In Chicago, we're going to hear that President Clinton is ''growing'' in office, that he's not finished yet. But people like the Clintons are never finished changing the world.
His presidency is like Snuffy Smith's ramshackle house. Every time it threatens to fall in on him, he nails on a stray two-by-four or props up the porch with a stick and stands back to marvel at his all-new, remodeled White House, sipping a jug of Old Democrat moonshine.
I hope he's growing up. But I fear the first-boomer is a bust because the ''Me Generation'' got the leader it asked for.
As I head for the ''Man From Hope'' mini-series in Chicago, I still hear the stinging criticism from our national dads. ''Convertible Dodge,'' Gerald Ford mocked. ''Demeaning the presidency,'' George Bush scolded. ''A corps of the elite who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered and never learned,'' Bob Dole scorned.
I'd like to ask the protesters from 1968 - ''Is this the national leader we had in mind? What have we learned?''
When we finally emerged from the purple haze of the hippie daze, most of us discovered that our parents had not given up on us. They were still waiting to give us another chance, another shove in the right direction.
Maybe this election is the same second chance. We go back to Chicago, take a closer look at the man we've chosen to lead our country and our generation, and register our protest at the ballot box on Nov. 5 - that, or give Bill Clinton four more years to grow up.
The whole world is watching.
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or comments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
