Politicians and politics as usual have given voters much about which to be mad; furious, in fact. But bullying is different. It comes from insecurity and fear, and lashes out with tactics of intimidation.

With a hot political season to come, I can't help recalling the first major political event I covered 42 years ago this week. It was the infamous Democratic convention in Chicago, when the conflict in the streets turned bloody.

The Chicago Seven were very serious peace activists and were baited into a festival of confusion instead of a festival of life in Chicago in 1968, launched to take the focus off the war.

Some forty years after Walter Cronkite told it like it was and called the Chicago of 1968 "a police state," Tom Brokaw, A.O. Scott, and Andie Tucher told their own versions -- like it wasn't.

I have the dubious distinction of being one of the first journalists to be beaten by the Chicago police in 1968. I was a witness on the outside back then, and I'm a witness on the inside this week.

Forty years ago my family was taking its annual vacation, which in the summer of 1968 was a trip to the Democratic National Convention, where my fathe...