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A curious mix of optimism and pessimism for this week, ending on April 26th in 1964.

On the optimistic side - President Johnson announced to the world that the U.S. would make substantial reductions in Nuclear Weapons and Uranium enrichment production. Simultaneously, it was announced by Nikita Khruschev via Radio Moscow, that the Soviet Union would do the same thing. The news was greeted with a sense of relief and UN General Secretary U Thant offered an evaluation on what was deemed a hopeful sign towards an easing of Cold War tensions.

On the Pessimistic side - tensions were brewing between the U.S. and Cuba as Cuban Premier Fidel Castro vowed to down any U.S. Reconnaissance planes flying over Cuban territory as it had been doing since 1962.

On the optimistic side - Sec. of State Dean Rusk returned from a fact-finding mission to Saigon and offered an upbeat assessment of the situation in Vietnam, saying the South Vietnamese Army could handle themselves nicely.

On the Pessimistic side - Defense Secretary Robert McNamara conceded it will "take time" for any progress to be made in Vietnam and that the South Vietnamese Army is running a defensive strategy rather than an offensive one. Oh well.

Meanwhile - the four year long negotiations between the Railroads and the Unions was finally at the settlement stage. And just in the nick of time, as the settlement averted a threatened strike.

President Johnson went on a brief tour of the Appalachia region, hitting the towns and cities worst hit by poverty and unemployment, touting his War on Poverty legislation. He was greeted with waves of enthusiasm.

Not so enthusiastic were reports from Capitol Hill saying the 1964 Civil Rights Bill was at a standstill, making the future unclear for passage of the Legislation.

And the much publicized "Stall-ins", threatened for Opening day of the New York Worlds Fair on April 22nd, didn't materialize. But that didn't stop some 300 Civil Rights demonstrators from being arrested from the Fair opening anyway.

All this in one week, ending on April 26th 1964, as reported on the ABC Radio Voices In The Headlines program.

Since we're coming to the end of a year and the end of a decade, I thought taking a look at the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson and the turbulent times surrounding it might be a good idea.

Here is a look back at the Johnson years, as presented by NBC Radio and their Second Sunday series, broadcast on January 1969, as Richard Nixon assumed the White House.

Opinions on Johnson as President were sharply divided as much as everything else in the country at the time. In that respect, there are striking similarities between then and now with very little in the way of "middle-ground" opinions it seems.

So in case you were wondering if the country has always been divided over a leader and an administration's policies. I'm here to tell you it's always been that way.

I guess we just have to get used to it.

Happy New Year.

( . . .and there went Prague Spring for the next 30 years)

It was a only matter of time. The writing had been on the wall for months. The experiment got out of hand. Communism With A Human Face retreated back to the closet. And Alexander Dubcek, the architect of Prague Spring would be removed from office. On August 20, 1968, the Soviets, along with East Germans and other Warsaw Pact allies, massed troops and tanks on the Czechoslovak border and headed towards Prague.

When the first news broke via Radio Prague, the White House was alerted and President Johnson called an emergency cabinet meeting to figure out what was going on.

The recording here from the first few hours recaps much of the happenings earlier in the evening, including the interruption of an evening session of Democratic Platform hearings with Dean Rusk, chaired by Hale Boggs as the story unfolded and reports kept coming in.

Hale Boggs: “We have here a bulletin which has just been handed to me by the Press from Czechoslovakia saying that Radio Prague announced Wednesday that Soviet troops have crossed the Czechoslovak borders. The broadcast asked Czechoslovak citizens not to take any action against them. The broadcast came at 2 a.m. over the direct network of Radio Prague. There was unusual activity at the airport which justified as apparently a landing”

As the hours drifted into days, it was very clear what the end result was going to be.

(Robert McNamara - forever the voice of doom)

July 20th also came on a Tuesday in 1965. 45 years ago we were still dealing with an about-to-become-endless war, still dealing with politics, still dealing with Civil Rights, still dealing with Spy planes, launching spy satellites and worried about who else was going to join the Nuclear Club. It was still July 20th. Robert McNamara was wrapping up a fact-finding mission to Vietnam and arriving home with more dire scenarios and more promises of troop increases.

No change, right? Only the names. Well . . .that, and the fact that there was more information and the dose of "happy news" was relegated to the last two or three minutes - as opposed to the other way around now.

So here is the news of the day from WCBS in New York, the morning of Tuesday July 20th 1965.