Lyndon Johnson in Trouble
Wechsler, James A.
Lyndon Johnson in Trouble by JAMES A. WECHSLER Johnson story. It is too early to take seriously the prospect of an anti-Johnson revolt at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. But neither can I...
...Yet there is the sense among many at the United Nations that Goldberg is given a margin of maneuver rather than a mandate...
...that, given the highest national office, he had swiftly liberated himself from provincialism and proved that his real fidelity was to the spirit of Roosevelt progressivism in which he grew up...
...He has pictured himself as trying to steer a middle course between the so-called "hawks" and "doves...
...Richard Goodwin, the brilliant former Kennedy aide, played a large part in the President's decision to proclaim our readiness for "unconditional negotiations...
...In large measure I think these missed moments are primarily attributable to what must be described as the "Formosa First" mentality that persisted in strategic diplomatic and military places, eruditely rationalized by Rusk and other members of his Department and too easily accepted by a President who privately doubted his own expertise...
...Arthur Goldberg still remains at his U.N...
...Johnson took office in a moment of national horror and rose magnificently to the desperate occasion...
...As long as Moyers was a key figure in the inner circle, it was hard to believe the portrait of cynicism being drawn by many critics...
...No one can deny the agony and loneliness of his tenure, and I can visualize his injury (perhaps too often manifested in self-righteous reply) at some of the uncharitable, uninformed assault he has endured...
...Perhaps the crudest verdict on Mr...
...but one day Goodwin had departed, and later he was to write his chronicle of despair...
...that he still prefers to manipulate men by vindictive or devious power-plays rather than move them by thoughtful argument...
...to tell off the yes-men and happy warriors around him...
...In the first phase of his Administration there were glowing moments— legislative triumphs, rhetorical eloquence, the image of a man who had come back from physical anguish and political isolation to confound his critics and prove anew the resilience of the American system...
...Johnson can now be accused of having embraced some of the strategic concepts of Barry Goldwater, it can only be said that he has proved they do not work...
...Men like George Kennan, who had shrewdly diagnosed the development of discords within the Communist world, found themselves in exile...
...But he added: "I used to see the President a great deal but I no longer do...
...Then what did go wrong...
...The "Great Society" sounded like an extension and elaboration of the New Deal...
...He has revived the image of a man who pushes other people around (as he did in dealing with Texas liberals during his Senatorial days...
...The answer given is that this might undermine the morale of General Ky's regime...
...possibly it will not be known for many years...
...But in retrospect one sees that what Lyndon Johnson needed most of all was a creative foreign policy command that would recognize at once the depth and danger of the Vietnam diversion...
...If Mr...
...that his blandness is a mask for bluster...
...But if there is no peace...
...Johnson has hidden resources of character and conviction, he cannot afford to keep them in storage any longer, or assume that his losses are the temporary result of political cycles...
...As these lines are written in the early days of the New Year, the Goldberg letter to U Thant, expressing Mr...
...He faces a long road back...
...It is hard to set down such words about the President of the United States, especially when the emotions involved are so difficult to define...
...It takes the form of an essential crisis of confidence in the man, expressed most commonly in phrases like "I just don't trust the guy...
...Generals Ridgway and Gavin raised somber storm signals over the escalation, but they too were ignored as if they were far-out intellectuals...
...A few months ago I would have been disposed to discount such comment as a momentary mood...
...That not all criticism is well-founded or that there are some streets in the land where he is loved is no answer to authentic doubt and concern sweeping so much of the nation as the second half of this term begins...
...But even those who scorned his candidacy had a certain compassion for him as a man...
...The retirement of young William Moyers to accept a newspaper executive post climaxed Mr...
...For one thing, as suggested above, no major Republican dignitary looming as a candidate against him has spoken out in language that indicates any real capacity to make peace or bring the war to a decisive end...
...No large "fix" has come to light in any government agency under his rule...
...The full history of lost opportunities for some semblance of an honorable peace in Vietnam is still unwritten...
...Unhappily the documentation for their case rests on assumptions that only those spared the responsibility of power can glibly accept...
...In the light of the cynicism of some of his political detractors, this might be an occasion for sympathy if it were the whole story...
...One is now tempted to wonder whether this fealty did not primarily reflect the new President's lack of conJAMES A. WECHSLER is the editor of editorial page of The New York Post and a featured columnist for that newspaper...
...that, in the old phrase, he redoubles his energies when he has lost sight of his aims...
...But there is a mounting body of evidence on the subject—not necessarily proving that peace could have been obtained but that there was a failure of pursuit of chances that deserved intensive, audacious exploration...
...Now one detects the feeling that he has somehow offended and duped us, and the resentment is not restricted to those who retain a nostalgic remembrance for the style and grace of the Kennedy era...
...He has obviously never shared the simplistic reliance on military muscle that pervades many areas of the Pentagon...
...To voice any dogmatic finality about the autumn of 1968 in this early winter of 1967 would be an absurdity...
...In the aftermath of Mr...
...outpost and has succeeded in imparting to the American position a tone of official flexibility that was never really achieved in the Stevenson time...
...Among his books are "Labor Baron" and "The Age of Suspicion...
...How does a man prove that he means what he says when there is a growing popular conclusion that he doesn't say what he means...
...To state the possibilities is to underline the most tragic aspect of the Johnson era...
...Strong as my feelings are about the blunders of Vietnam and some other phases of the Johnson era, there is no element of rejoicing in this report...
...Yet some variation of this refrain emerges in political communiques from almost every area of the nation...
...Johnson has too often emerged as a two-headed man...
...Nothing was more imperative at that time than the assertion of the American continuity, symbolized by the swearing-in of Lyndon Johnson with Mrs...
...There was a tone of dedication to civil rights...
...His Republican critics have been almost universally guilty of moral and political double-talk...
...He is utterly dedicated, capable of long hours of labor, a fastidious administrator, and a faithful deputy...
...but in truth it had been cold for many hours and only some of those who cherished him so deeply refused to recognize the fact...
...How valid is the indictment and how profound the disaffection...
...He had seemingly proved that his rough wheeler-dealer background as a Texas politician was the product of geography and accident...
...But neither can I fully imagine him successfully running for the Presidency if this war is still being fought when the next national campaign approaches...
...In any case there can be little question that Lyndon Johnson's predicament—his slippage in the opinion-polls, the open alarm voiced in Democratic ranks over the prospects for 1968, the setbacks of November, 1966, the alienation of overseas allies—stems in major measure from the prolongation of the war...
...casualties and avoiding any serious risk of collision with Peking or Moscow...
...Johnson was the victim of cruel, unjust history...
...It is conceivable that Lyndon B. Johnson, who once seemed the invincible political man, may yet stage a recovery in the role of underdog...
...Many things seemed to bulwark that case...
...There is, however, a deeper unease about Mr...
...yet despite his long personal association with the President, he was never summoned for consultation...
...He has often cited to visitors the pressures for larger military exercises to "get it over with" and his resistance to such madness...
...The impression inevitably created was that the President was still playing a double-game, giving Goldberg the sanction to speak as his man of peace but assuring the military that it could pursue its dream of "total victory...
...All that can be stated now with any assurance is that Mr...
...it has a peculiarly melancholy aspect because I do not know whether it is curable...
...It may well be that an excessive solicitude for that dubious establishment (obstinately encouraged by Henry Cabot Lodge) has been our most costly folly...
...most of them (including the more enlightened in their ranks) have refused either to join the drive for a more consistent, coherent peace drive or to demand larger sacrifices of manpower...
...Those of us who had opposed his designation for the Vice Presidency experienced a certain remorse...
...Something has happened in the process of communication between the President and the people that is unequalled in my experience as a political writer...
...There were clear, meaningful legislative accomplishments...
...Johnson's support for "any steps necessary" to achieve a cease-fire, clearly represents the most advanced phase of the American peace effort...
...Johnson will be defeated and their prospects for a negotiated victory enhanced...
...But none of these qualities was calculated to inspire innovation or initiative...
...Johnson faces doom in 1968 if the war is still on by the time he faces the electorate again...
...The polls accorded him extraordinary stature...
...And this may be the root of the disaster, granting all the difficulties of achieving a sane solution in Vietnam...
...He is, after all, the President who delivered the most memorable civil rights address in our history, even invoking the hallowed phrase: "We shall overcome...
...Johnson symbolized by the "credibility gap" in the conduct of the war but extending beyond it...
...Yet the melancholy record shows that McNamara was deluded into believing—and saying aloud—that he foresaw the possibility of the homecoming of American troops by Christmas, 1965...
...He inherited the war...
...He has courageously fought the brass on many matters...
...How many other miscalculations did he transmit privately to the President...
...While there are no sure things in history, it is entirely and monstrously conceivable that the American frustration could produce a reckless adventure rather than a mood of pacifism...
...But the move was shadowed from the start by the Administration's refusal to agree to a new pause in the bombings of the North—which U Thant had repeatedly called a precondition to any successful mediation...
...yet one encounters on every side the remark (unproven) that Bobby Baker's memoirs would shake the White House...
...Johnson is in deep trouble, and that any associate who gives him a cheerful report is deceiving him...
...Kennedy at his side...
...Yet if this were the only fact of the matter, it could be replied that Mr...
...The Republican suicide-instinct is still strong...
...He was damned for inadequacy but not for insincerity...
...For some twenty years, with small interruptions, the Vietnamese have glimpsed no real peace...
...And Dean Rusk, an earnest public servant with a wholly traditional, inelastic view of Asian affairs (symbolized for so long by his insistence on the word "Peiping" as a deference to the anti-Peking Chiang legions) kept his privileged sanctuary in the State Department...
...I do not like the scapegoat theory of history...
...Moyers has steadfastly insisted that his resignation was dictated by personal considerations, but few men in Washington believed that this dedicated citizen would have left if he felt that he could have played any important role in the quest for peace...
...Conceivably it may bear fruit in some sudden unexpected fashion...
...Rusk is a highly knowledgeable man, skilled and poised in the conventional business of diplomacy...
...There is a different atmosphere now...
...The fateful circumstance is that this may be exactly the Communist calculation...
...This is not to denigrate his effort...
...One must assume it is possible that they are prepared to endure another eighteen months of agony in the belief that Mr...
...If Mr...
...It must be described as a symptom of the national sickness induced by this protracted struggle that Dwight D. Eisenhower has begun to talk in terms of a military recklessness he sharply shunned when he was commander-in-chief...
...He has an urbane, learned manner...
...Arthur Goldberg may somehow rescue him from the debacle of Vietnam if the President sustains his hand at crucial moments...
...They are not the exclusive property of the New Left or the racist right...
...Time and again Mr...
...This misconception above all may have been responsible for the fateful decision to escalate the American commitment and to minimize the disparities between the Vietcong thrust ,and the Russian-ruled Communist battalions of Western Europe...
...Is the self-inflicted damage irretrievable...
...but there has long been growing belief among informed men that an assertion of our readiness to meet with the Vietcong might be far more relevant...
...In the face of hard, painful choices, Mr...
...Johnson's entry into the White House many of his earlier adherents contended that he had quickly justified their faith...
...Johnson may be his ability to face the real condition he confronted as 1967 began...
...But it cannot be lightly minimized any longer...
...Peace in Vietnam might reduce to insignificance many of the other matters explored here...
...He and Rusk have frequently affirmed their willingness to talk with Hanoi...
...They will argue that Mr...
...But the exploitable unrest grows, and there is a spreading view that Mr...
...The retention of Adlai Stevenson as United Nations Ambassador seemed an initially favorable augury...
...The analysis may be called unfair by the President's apologists...
...to undertake a new beginning...
...Why is even his sentimentality suspect and his heartiness so often found repugnant...
...Asked why, Lippmann said: "I felt that he misled me...
...No serious scandal has blighted his Administration...
...Johnson's esteem—probably more than any other member of the Kennedy Cabinet that stayed on for the Johnson era...
...Johnson took pains to affirm his belief in Rusk's superior wisdom...
...Mr...
...But in fact they could be disastrously wrong in the second part of their conclusion...
...George Romney, the man so widely heralded as a prospective Presidential nominee, has managed to achieve large gains in the test-runs without offering a single thought on Vietnam that could be described as either constructive or destructive...
...It is often recalled that Harry Truman seemed destined for national rejection in 1948...
...Others have tried to suggest that there is some miracle formula by which we could multiply our military impact while reducing U.S...
...most of all to cease cherishing the excuse that a lot of Americans regard him as too liberal by their dim lights, or to interpret the cheers of a few street crowds as proof that all is well...
...but the air of Washington is filled with murmurs that things are looser for lobbyists now...
...Johnson's credibility came from Walter Lippmann...
...There were men in Washington who knew better, and to whom the President could have profitably turned for guidance...
...New legislative social programs are in the works, but there is no excitement in Washington amid a fatalistic view that the rising price of Vietnam will render most of these projects far larger in design than reality—especially with a new Congress that is clearly to the right of the old...
...Johnson was simply adhering to the two-pronged strategy of endorsing peace negotiations but simultaneously keeping the pressure on the adversary to dispel any delusion of a unilateral surrender...
...The great test of Mr...
...How did he lose the ground that he gained in the hours when the Presidency was suddenly thrust upon him...
...But by 1967 he was gone...
...It is one of the peripheral miseries of the controversy over William Manchester's book, The Death of a President, that Mr...
...He was saying different things to me than to other people...
...How does he combat a sort of whispering campaign of popular intuition...
...McNamara's role is still a bafflement...
...and that even his political talents were vastly overrated...
...Perhaps underlying all these animosities and anxieties is the judgment that he is really the victim of his own insecurities, too prone to substitute cant for candor and dictum for dialogue when he is under fire...
...The corollary to the doctrine of non-recognition of Communist China's enduring presence on earth was the promotion of the mechanical analogy between the European crisis of the 1930's and the Asian trials of the 1960's...
...fidence in his own handling of foreign affairs...
...It is my personal knowledge, for example, that Benjamin V. Cohen, the one-time Roosevelt brain-truster and State Department counsellor, accurately foresaw each new peril of our expanding involvement...
...Johnson's steady loss of men who asked hard questions and refused to accept ritualistic answers...
...that he is truly tolerant of outspoken men only when they have the insight to agree with him...
...From the beginning Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara also commanded a high measure of Mr...
...In an interview early in January when he reported his own decision to move to New York from the nation's capital, he did not attribute the change of scene to Mr...
...that his campaign techniques are demagogic and crude, and unworthy of his office...
...it "Well, Hubert, I guess you could say things are looking up" seemed he could do nothing wrong...
...Johnson is depicted as grasping greedily for power before the body of the slain President was cold...
...Perhaps the fairest conclusion is that the episode dramatized anew the fatal ambivalence of a President who genuinely desires rational escape from the Vietnam wasteland but dreads the allegation that he is lacking in military fortitude or "the spirit of the Alamo...
...But neither can anyone disparage his estrangement from his countrymen—and most of all from those young men and women who were stirred to a new resurgence of idealism in the time of John F. Kennedy...
...Yet the inescapable truth is that he has steadily given ground to the military hardliners and shrunk from the more challenging risks of a massive, total peace offensive...
...The myth that General Ky's dreary regime in Saigon could be neatly likened to the democracy of Prague in the Munich period was repeatedly advanced by Rusk and echoed by the President...
...but it became apparent in a matter of months that the center of power and policy remained in Washington and that Stevenson was to be, as he once lamented, an advocate of fixed stances rather than an architect of new ones...
Vol. 31 • February 1967 • No. 2
