1979 was not a watershed year for the Jimmy Carter Presidency. A lot was going wrong and a lot that had gone right just the year prior was in danger of sliding off the rails.

Iran was proving to be a bigger problem than originally thought with signals the Soviet Union were contemplating an overture or two towards Tehran. Our presence in the world was not on the best of terms. Embassy's in Iran and Afghanistan were attacked. Our Middle East policy, pointed with such optimism and accomplishment via the Camp David Peace Accords only a year earlier, was in danger of being derailed. The SALT II Treaty with the Soviet Union was on shaky ground if the Senate had anything to say about it and our agreement with The People's Republic Of China at the cost of our relationship with Taiwan had many in and out of government wondering if damage control would do any good.

And so Walter Cronkite, the Most Trusted Man In America, weighed in on the issue of our Foreign Policy and where we stood in the midst of all this. Here is his commentary for February 20, 1979 as broadcast by CBS Radio.

I am always fascinated to listen to assessments of dissent from the past. How much it resembles the present, how often it was distorted in the past - how spot-on or miles-off the observations were.

Marya Mannes, a name that's all but forgotten now, was a writer, journalist and social commentator who mixed caustic with clever, often with keen insights and sometimes mixed results.

In this commentary, which came from the same Newsfront broadcast as yesterday's Milton Friedman entry (May 5,1968), she talks about the then-current state of dissent in our country. The peaceful versus violent protests that were sweeping the U.S. at the time (end destined to get much worse as the year went on), and where youth was fitting into the picture.

Bear in mind that Mannes was born in 1904, and at the time of this commentary she was 64. So there is a goodly amount of "generation gap" to sift through. But the thing that I noticed, and something many people were concerned with at the time, was the seeming co-opting of peaceful anti-war protest by a violent minority.

Sound familiar? This was something that plagued the Peace Movement in the 1960's, and something which has confronted just about every movement of this kind throughout history. The strong desire to keep the Occupy Movement peaceful has been in large part a desire not to fall into the patterns of the past - breaking with the protest movements that have gone on before and trying something new. Which is why OWS has been successful and continues to gain momentum - not because of it's violence on the parts of the protesters, but because of the peace and non-violence of the protesters. The violence has been perpetrated by the Police, and not a reaction of the police to violent actions. Of course, our mainstream media has chosen to focus, as it always has, on violence because it largely feels that chaos is more attractive to viewers.

Every movement has had its fair share of malcontents, chaos merchants and infiltrators. There are people who simply want to disrupt and destroy for no other reason than that they can.They have been largely isolated and shunned by the peaceful majority and that most likely will continue in the coming weeks and months.

But it hasn't always been that way. And this commentary by a respected member of the Fourth Estate gives some idea of what people were thinking at the time.

Reference points are always good to have now and then.

Listening to the United Nations meeting yesterday over the request to grant the Palestinian territory Nationhood, I was reminded of a similar situation with regards to the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, and how our Foreign Policy in the Middle East has always been one of inconsistency.

In 1948 a lot of what the U.S. did in the area of Foreign Affairs was predicated on aspects of the Cold War - always the threat of undue influence in any region from Moscow was of primary importance. And it shaped our relations with the rest of the world, and many times not with the best outcomes (Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia). Since the end of the era of the Soviet Union, it's become the threat of Islamic Extremists and another whole set of new and complicated fears.

But as much debate as there is going on now over the Palestinian question, there was going on with the Israeli question, sixty-three years earlier.

Here is a Sunday featuring the noted NBC newsman and commentator Clifton Utley from May of 1948, where Utley discusses the role of the U.S. in the Middle East and the newly declared nation of Israel in the United Nations.

A typical March 28th day in the Cold War world.

Beginning with word from Capitol Hill that the House Appropriations Committee voted to give President Eisenhower authority to spend the 1959 Budget in 1958. The unprecedented move was brought about to stimulate business and an attempt to bring the economy out of the doldrums.

Also on Capitol Hill - the Senate Appropriated funds for the Civil Rights Commission and UAW President Walter Reuther was testifying before the Senate Rackets Committee.

In other parts of the world - The Liberal Party in Britain won it's first election in over 29 years. Saudi Arabia ended it's $14Million subsidy to Jordan. U.S. Military aid to Yugoslavia officially ended on this day and Volkswagen workers in Germany went on a one hour strike to protest calls to arm German troops with Nuclear weapons.

The rest of this broadcast was given over to commentary regarding the new rise of power from Nikita Khruschev in Moscow, how it was viewed by the Press throughout the world. How the British Press regarded the newly emerging Khruschev from "We must try and get on reasonable terms with the Soviet Union, no matter who is running the country" to "More dangerous than Stalin".

Only time would tell where Nikita Khruschev would fall in those assessments.

And that's how it went this March 28th in 1958, via Cedric Foster News and Commentary over the Mutual Broacasting System.

Your average day, only this one was in 1975. Economic news was grim, with reports on the Recession getting worse. The Gross National Product dropped 9.1% the previous month. The worst since 1958. Inflation shot up 13%. The worst since 1947. Meanwhile, calls on Capitol Hill for Gasoline rationing were roundly poo-pooed by President Ford, saying it wasn't really all that necessary. The grumblings continued.

The Soviet Union proclaimed Detente wasn't dead, it was just wounded.

Meanwhile, back on Capitol Hill - Congressional Hearings on the CIA brought up two former directors, Jesse Helms and William Colby who both had different takes on the matter of Domestic spying. It doesn't bode well when your own people can't get their stories straight.

Some good news from the Auto Industry, at least for consumers. Ford announced it was offering rebates of $200-500.00 on new car purchases.

In the Middle East, border skirmishes were taking place between Israel and Lebanon with artillery fire being traded back and forth. On the Negotiation front, Senator Charles Percy was in Cairo handing out peace feelers to Anwar Sadat in the hopes of getting something moving, however slow.

And in his Commentary, news analyst Eric Sevareid offered some pithy observations on World reaction to the Economic crisis.

All in all, a run-of-the-mill day for January 16, 1975 as reported by Douglas Edwards on CBS Radio's The World Tonight.

Since the last day of the year is usually enveloped in contemplation of the 364 days before, 1955 kept that tradition up nicely.

Here are two commentaries on the day's news and the current state of American affairs on December 31, 1955 as presented by veteran news reporters Gabriel Heatter and Virgil Pinkely.

Strange times when you consider the possibility of nuclear annihilation was hovering over everyone's head while trying to be optimistic about the future at the same time. So on the one hand you had news of the Cold War escalating and drunk drivers going completely out of control on the nation's highways. And on the other hand you had a picture painted of who the first born of 1956 would be.

It explains the growth of the pharmaceutical industry and the advent of Mitown.

At the end of the two broadcasts there is a very nice commercial for the 1956 Desoto. A reminder that conspicuous consumption was also very much a household word in the 1950's.

News and commentary from Gabriel Heatter and Virgil Pinkley, broadcast on December 31, 1955 over the Mutual/Don Lee Radio network by way of KHJ in Los Angeles.