Presidential Power 1968
TYLER, GUS
April 8, 1968Johnson's Moment in History??Three Articles Presidential Power 1968 By Gus Tyler The American Presidency proved its power again on the evening of March 31. At the end of a relatively...
...Had Johnson moved to de-escalate the bombing while stepping up his campaign for President, he would have been charged with political trickery...
...The magic words said two things: 1) The U.S...
...It was at his inauguration in 1965 that Johnson made his basic decision...
...The script calls for lessening tensions both here and abroad...
...backers wish he had done the latter: de-escalated the war and run for office...
...He did both...
...Or he could have announced de-escalation and continued —in this strengthened posture—to run for re-election...
...if Hanoi responded negatively or with massive escalation, then America might once more have to use its air power...
...March 31 apparently was a proper date...
...But in either case, the nation would act with a greater consensus...
...He took office a century after the War Between the States, but the "war" was not resolved...
...2) Lyndon Johnson would withdraw from the Presidential contest...
...He who would rule without malice became himself the object of much malice...
...If Hanoi responded positively, negotiation could proceed...
...In this country, since he is no longer running for office, he no longer has to politick...
...To Kennedy, the threat was now a Draft-Johnson movement or a turn to Vice President Hubert Humphrey as the President's alter ego...
...He decided to govern by this consensus...
...Great as the drama of Act One was, fate may not allow LBJ to exit in a one-act play: His power and his problems are too great...
...It is anti-Kennedy on instinct and is convinced that his nomination will lose all the South to Nixon...
...Within the Democratic party, candidates arose to ride the waves of discontent...
...What the President's move clearly does at this time, though, is give him the initiative...
...He would step aside, but did not want to be pushed aside...
...Some will go "unpledged...
...The most maligned President since Lincoln became a folk hero in his own lifetime...
...If South Vietnam—and other Southeast Asian countries—step up their efforts to defend themselves, Johnson is ahead again...
...In addition, he was losing world opinion and the backing of our allies...
...would continue bombing up to the 20th parallel...
...some will root for Humphrey...
...American air power could deter a Communist build-up in the sparsely populated area north of the demilitarized zone, while exempting the rest of North Vietnam?90 per cent of North Vietnam's population, and most of its territory"—from bombing...
...So he de-escalated and declined simultaneously as the nation wept, cheered—and wondered...
...Despite numerous bombing pauses, Johnson's dove critics continued to demand a real halt...
...The White House had to repeat the specific words of the President's announcement of Sunday: "I have ordered . . . no attacks on North Vietnam, except . , . north of the demilitarized zone where the continuing enemy build-up directly threatens allied forward positions...
...for a moment...
...Then they set about their compaigns...
...The priest of consensus was about to be torn apart by the preachers of disconsensus...
...He could have announced his withdrawal from the contest and then—liberated from all internal pressures—pursued the war with the added troops the military requested...
...Then, there are those delegations that prefer LBJ, and many now prefer him doubly on his new pedestal...
...First, there is McCarthy with his prior claim to the youth and the "peace" wing...
...Indeed, there had been many bombing let-ups before, the most catastrophic of which had been the ease-up around Hanoi that ended when the Vietcong shattered the Lunar peace with an all-out offensive against Hue and Saigon...
...The much-maligned "consensus" that LBJ sought was the effort to heal old wounds: to make "one nation indivisible" out of North and South, black and white, poor and rich...
...some will go for favorite sons...
...The Texas President decided to unite the divided nation and govern it by a liberal coalition such as FDR composed during LBJ's freshman days in Congress...
...Then, there is the South with its more than 500 convention votes, almost one-quarter the total...
...At the end of a relatively brief speech, President Johnson spoke a handful of words that overnight changed the mood of America, unbalanced China and Vietnam, perplexed the Soviets, re-scrambled the nation's politics, sent youngsters dancing into the streets, bulled the stock market, and confounded the critics of the Administration...
...Today his options are open—and they are his options...
...Until that election he had acted with borrowed authority, doing his good deeds without an independent electoral mandate...
...Within a week, the streamlined Kennedy company was on its way, hoping to sew up the convention five months before it opened...
...Despite RFK's political ability and appeal, however, he is not likely to bring either peace or unity to the Democratic party...
...Could Lyndon Johnson succeed where Andrew Johnson had failed...
...The President had the choice of making either of these statements without the other...
...He can go the road of Hochpolitik: shaping attitudes at home by shaping events in the world...
...If the United States must reply to increased Communist pressure, Johnson can choose his time, place, and weapons...
...Although de-escalation alone could not bring peace in Southeast Asia, Johnson realized it could bring a measure of peace in the United States...
...Then came the "disconsensus"?the international, intergenerational and inner-city conflict...
...The power of the Presidency that weighs down and elevates is his cross...
...He carried the declination with him, ready for use when the proper moment dictated...
...For a hundred years to come, historians will ask—why...
...The monsoon season was ending...
...He may even be a beneficiary of Johnson's withdrawal as hostility toward LBJ turns into hostility toward RFK...
...Antipathy for Kennedy and empathy for Nixon could make many Southerners forget their sympathy for Wallace...
...The critics demanded an announced and unconditional halt...
...To McCarthy, the rival was now Kennedy...
...Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and ranking Republican Thrus-ton Morton—both of the dovecote?rose to defend LBJ...
...Similarly, in regard to Vietnam, the President may well find himself confronted with the same challenges as before...
...In November of that year he was elected overwhelmingly, and was inaugurated as the choice of what appeared to be the most united nation in decades...
...Up to this point, his choices were becoming more and more limited...
...To step down after a defeat would be to step down because of defeat...
...If Ho wants to talk, Johnson can proceed with that course...
...The address of March 31 was the first act of an unfolding drama...
...So LBJ moved deliberately two days before the Wisconsin primary...
...But he cannot exit...
...In the ghettos, riots broke out, led often by young men who were not only responding to their own frustrations but also reverberating to the world-wide upheavals of the "colored" peoples and the youth...
...LBJ was the first President from the South since Civil War days to put his brand on the White House...
...He was the second Johnson to enter the White House...
...They complained that other halts were either unannounced negotiation bids or were used as temporary threats to force negotiations...
...Both Johnsons came to their high office after the assassination of a revered President in a period of mounting tension and violence...
...His move has put Hanoi on the spot...
...But will all the characters play their assigned roles...
...His political Gus Tyler, a frequent contributor, is Assistant President of the ilgwu...
...His political adversaries wish he had done the former: withdrawn and left only himself as a target...
...The pot continued to boil...
...Had he stepped out of the race while escalating the war, he would have been charged with morbid paranoia...
...And as the months dragged into years at an increasing cost of men and money, the nation became querulous and quarrelsome...
...Within hours of LBJ's withdrawal, some county and state leaders of the Democratic party began complaining about the Kennedy "juggernaut"?while they supinely slipped aboard...
...In Vietnam, he was in a morass where he could hold the military line but could not win the kind of support from the American people he needed to conduct a long war...
...In the first 24 hours after Johnson's statement, both Senators McCarthy and Kennedy paid him their tributes...
...He will come to the convention with delegations from New Hampshire, Minnesota, Massachusetts (first ballot), Wisconsin, Iowa and elsewhere...
...would de-escalate the war in Vietnam...
...There would soon be an election in Wisconsin where Eugene McCarthy, with the backing of Robert F. Kennedy and the infiltrating hordes of Republicans, would challenge LBJ...
...North Vietnam could not easily strike a foul blow at Hue and Saigon under the cover of foul weather...
...Johnson worked with him on the statement: Maybe she had the deciding voice in the final decision...
...The war in Vietnam—to which two previous Presidents had committed the United States during years of slow escalation—expanded...
...After inner debate, he made his decision early in 1967 to announce his withdrawal from the candidacy...
...As the President looks at his party he may not find the peace or unity for which he yearns...
...The decision to halt the bombing of the North was also long in the making...
...One interpretation of his move—its origins and aftermath—will read as follows: Lyndon Baines Johnson came to the Presidency with a sense of history...
...In 1964, LBJ sought a vote of confidence from the American people in his program and in himself...
...Hawks pecked doves and doves pecked hawks and all pecked at the President...
...There are other acts to come, with the President still in the role of central actor...
...Within 48 hours after the Sunday shocker, Senator Fulbright reopened his war on the Administration because LBJ had not told the country that the U.S...
...The nation was still divided between North and South, between black and white, governed by a coalition of conservatives originally composed in the Great Compromise of 1876...
...He has captured the moral offensive...
...March 31 was again a proper time...
...In the months following Kennedy's assassination, Johnson employed his considerable legislative skills and his ties to the Southern and business communities to enact a body of legislation that Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy had futilely proposed...
...When Andrew Johnson tried to maintain a policy of governing "with malice toward none," he was impeached and almost removed...
...Johnson's early inclination to step down in '68 was undoubtedly assessed and reassessed as the hostile pressures built up...
...Many dedicated liberals like to dislike...
...The intergenerational struggle—the battle between the un-precedentedly numerous young and their elders over ideas and idols?exploded in America, as it had in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Israel, China and England...
...Some Republicans charged that LB J was the cause of it all: the continuing war in Vietnam, the unrest of the youth, the urban riots...
...He would be mater and magis-ter of America for a limited spell, governing with grace and good will...
Vol. 51 • April 1968 • No. 8
