Weary of the memory of depression and of the demands of a foreign war, rather bored with politics, international or domestic, the American people accepted victory and prosperity as a sufficient achievement of the safety and security their hearts desired.

And after 1961, as in the period since the victory of 1945, there were in the policies Americans debated, now rejected now pursued, echoes of the politics and culture of that earlier time, echoes of varying intensity that sounded through the republic for a generation. [Epilogue]