On this day in 1968, Richard Nixon, the Republican candidate for the presidency who was running against Vice President Hubert Humphrey, said apropos of the Vietnam War, "Those who have had a chance for four years and could not produce peace should not be given another chance." He was criticizing President Johnson's failure to bring the Vietnam War (or at least the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War) to an end, and tagging Vice President Humphrey with the failure of the Johnson administration.
Four years later, Nixon was the president and the country was still in the Vietnam War. His Democratic opponent, George McGovern, who was running on a strong anti-war platform, distributed black campaign buttons that said simply "Remember Oct. 9."
The current Iraq War is still shy of its fourth birthday, a milestone it will pass on March 20, 2007. To the extent that next month's congressional elections are a referendum on the President's war policy, there must be some variant of "Remember Oct. 9" that the war's opponents can use as a reminder of how much, or how little, the country can accomplish in four years of war.