Voir Dire

The Lusitania was torpedoed today in 1915, killing 1198 people and eventually leading to US involvement in World War I.

The event was covered widely in the US and Europe, although “Remarkably, this event dominated the headlines for only about a week before being overtaken by a newer story.”

The official papers of the president show only one mention by Woodrow Wilson, on April 19, 1916 in his Address to a Joint Session of Congress on German Violations of International Law:

Great liners like the Lusitania and the Arabic and mere ferryboats like the Sussex have been attacked without a moment’s warning, sometimes before they had even become aware that they were in the presence of an armed vessel of the enemy, and the lives of non-combatants, passengers and crew, have been sacrificed wholesale, in a manner which the Government of the United States cannot but regard as wanton and without the slightest color of justification.

And the sinking became a source of inspiration for WWI “calls to arms”.

But Lyndon Johnson mentioned the event six times - three times in 1964 alone. The mentions convered the space race, national security lead-ins to discussions of the 1964 elections, science investments for national security, and containing the march of communism in Korea and Vietnam.

What explains the lag? Interestingly, people who were in their teens in 1915 were in their 60s in 1965 - and their decision-making power was the greatest in formal political settings.