The Week

■ “Withdrawal is now impossible. The overwhelming fact of American intervention has created its own reality. All the years of war have profoundly affected our friends and our adversaries alike, in ways we cannot measure and perhaps cannot know. Moreover, tens of thousands of individual Vietnamese have staked their lives and fortunes on our presence and protection: civil guards, teachers and doctors in the villages; mountain tribesmen in the high country; many who work for the present benefit of their people, who have not acceded to the Vietcong even though they may not support the Saigon government. Many have once already fled the dictatorship of the North. These people, their old ways and strengths submerged by the American presence, cannot suddenly be abandoned to the forcible conquest of a minority.” (To Seek A Newer World, Robert F. Kennedy, 1968.)

■ Mr. Theodore C. Sorensen “had a full and productive year, having participated in some of the nation’s worst decision-making in Hyannis Port on the question of Chappaquiddick, then having helped write one of the nation’s worst speeches . . . and then having gone on television in search of his own candidacy [for the Senate from New York] and criticized the speech.” (David Halberstam, “Ask Not What Ted Sorensen Can Do For You . . .,” Harper’s.)

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■ “Withdrawal is now impossible. The overwhelming fact of American intervention has created its own reality. All the years of war have profoundly affected our friends and our adversaries alike, in ways we cannot measure and perhaps cannot know. Moreover, tens of thousands of individual Vietnamese have staked their lives and fortunes on our presence and protection: civil guards, teachers and doctors in the villages; mountain tribesmen in the high country; many who work for the present benefit of their people, who have not acceded to the Vietcong even though they may not support the Saigon government. Many have once already fled the dictatorship of the North. These people, their old ways and strengths submerged by the American presence, cannot suddenly be abandoned to the forcible conquest of a minority.” (To Seek A Newer World, Robert F. Kennedy, 1968.)

■ Mr. Theodore C. Sorensen “had a full and productive year, having participated in some of the nation’s worst decision-making in Hyannis Port on the question of Chappaquiddick, then having helped write one of the nation’s worst speeches . . . and then having gone on television in search of his own candidacy [for the Senate from New York] and criticized the speech.” (David Halberstam, “Ask Not What Ted Sorensen Can Do For You . . .,” Harper’s.)