        It was a refreshing change.  From the glory days of Camelot, in a few short years the country had become mired in a seemingly endless quagmire in Asia, with no clear concept of what it was trying to accomplish, or why.  Race riots had become so commonplace that they were hardly news, and in Chicago even the police had rioted, assaulting the so-called hippies that were working for the McCarthy campaign.  After JFK, political figures had been assassinated with an almost depressing regularity, to the point where the increasingly grim news had faded into background noise.