Historical Image of the Day

I pulled this off a post at Whiskey Fire and it seemed a very appropriate image of the day. Barry Goldwater campaign ad, 1964.

LBJ

One of the many things to love about LBJ--just by quoting him, I can swear up a storm in my class.

Bad Days in American History: January 31, 1968

On this date in 1968, the United States suffered one of its most embarrassing military setbacks in history--the Tet Offensive.

Early January 1968 found both North Vietnam and the United States in a difficult position. The U.S. was struggling with a war that seemed to never end, supporting an unstable, corrupt government in South Vietnam that had no support from the people, and fearing the fall of South Vietnam to communism would mean the loss of all Asia.

Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese were suffering greatly from the pounding American pilots were providing every day. They wondered how long they could hold out against this beastly assault. In addition, their great anti-colonialist leader Ho Chi Minh was weakening. The North Vietnamese leadership knew they needed a big victory before Ho's passed away. So they decided to take the war to the U.S.

On January 31, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong took a page out of the U.S. historical playbook, picking a major holiday to launch a surprise attack. They launched operations in all parts of South Vietnam, even infiltrating the U.S. embassy in Saigon for a brief time. From a military perspective, the Tet Offensive was a total failure. The North Vietnamese had way over-extended themselves and they could not hold the positions they took against superior firepower.

But despite the military losses and high casualty rates, the Tet Offensive succeeded beyond anything the Vietnamese could have expected. This was the turning point in the war.

The U.S. was in Vietnam for any number of reasons. Lyndon Johnson committed himself to the war effort because he was captured within Democrats' box of fear of being called soft on communism. Johnson was determined not to be the next Harry Truman, whose reputation was at a low point during these years. Republicans tainted Truman with "losing" China. This was utterly unfair since a) Chiang Kai-Shek was a terrible leader and not popular with his people and b) it's entirely unclear what more U.S. military support would have accomplished except for more dead Chinese and Americans. When the newly communist Chinese entered the Korean War, it was a great embarrassment for Truman and emboldened Republican shouts of a communist-infiltrated government.

Johnson wouldn't let this happen to him. But of course he didn't know what to do about Vietnam. No one did. Knowledge of Indochina in the State Department amounted to a hill of beans. Almost no one spoke these languages or specialized in the region. We backed up French recolonization efforts after World War II because we wanted to get the French back on their feet as an anti-communist ally. We fretted after Ho's forces kicked the French out in 1954 after their victory at Dien Bien Phu. We refused to allow Ho to take over the country, creating a puppet regime in Saigon known as South Vietnam. This was only supposed to last 2 years, leading to a 1956 election that would reunify the country. But fearing Ho's communism and afraid it would lead to more red advancement in an area where the U.S. had almost no economic or strategic investments before this, the Eisenhower Administration refused to allow the elections to be held. Eisenhower and Kennedy raised the stakes and when Johnson took over in 1963, he felt he had no choice but proceed.

Like any successful politician after World War II, he had to talk a big game about fighting communism. And when things started to go bad, he didn't think the American people were ready to hear it. So he began to lie about everything associated with Vietnam.

The Tet Offensive put the lie to the Johnson Administration's claims that the war was near victory. The ensuing "credibility gap," which had begun before the offensive grew. Johnson's ability to govern fell. He was hopelessly trapped in lies and with no good options. Seeing no light at the end of the tunnel, Johnson, who had won the presidency in 1964 in one of the greatest landslides in U.S. history, withdrew his name from nomination for re-election in 1968.

From an American perspective, the most tragic thing about the Tet Offensive is that it provided the final nail in the coffin to the man who could have been the greatest president since Lincoln. While Johnson was hamstrung by Cold War imperatives, he also showed the greatest passion for the poor of any president in our history. His desire to end poverty, to create environmental legislation, to sign civil rights legislation--these were the hallmarks of a great leader. But in the end, fighting the Cold War took precedence, even if it meant tens of thousands of dead Americans and hundreds of thousands of dead Vietnamese. Even if it meant throwing his presidency away on a country America knew nothing about.

From a Vietnamese perspective, obviously this day marks a enormously important point in their freedom struggle. I'm not sure how the Vietnamese mark the day today, but I imagine they see it as a great day of martyrdom for the cause of freedom. And we should probably see it that way as well.

Lyndon's Balls

It turns out that Lyndon Johnson was very concerned about his pants riding up on his testicles, as he bluntly tells the Haggar pants company in this audiotape released from the National Archives.

A worthy listen.

I have a message from the ghost of Lyndon Johnson

To Democrats:

GROW A PAIR

Seriously? At this time last year not only did we just have a new president that we were all excited about, we also had a brand-new super-exciting majority in the Senate. 58 votes! SO COOL!

Oh yeah, that's right. We've had 60 votes for a couple of months, after Arlen Specter switched and Franken finally got his seat. While Franken's made the most of that seat, the rest of the party has been mostly fucking spineless, undisciplined, and too busy worrying about the center.

The center didn't elect Scott Brown. The tea party crowd elected Scott Brown with the help of a depressed Democratic base (gee, let me think, a boring law & order prosecutor type who doesn't campaign and makes John Kerry look like a raging populist is gonna get them all fired up? Plus, um, Liebercare looks a lot like MassCare, which is not exactly popular with a lot of the Dem base either.)

Lesson we SHOULD learn from this shit? The teabaggers have the strategy right. Make a whole lot of noise, throw some money around, and bend the party to YOUR will instead of folding your hands and giving it the benefit of the doubt. (Also, candidates matter. A lot. Just ask that guy...what was his name again...Obama?)

But come the fuck on. With 60 votes we were going to get watered-down shitty health care reform that would mandate us giving our hard-earned cash to the people who've been fucking us for years. Can we stop pretending that we lost anything valuable Tuesday night? We lost the myth that any seats are safe. That's GOOD news. Let's have some real campaigns now.

On LBJ's Senate Career

In the comment thread of my discussion of greatest senators, as well as at LGM, a lot of people have brought up Lyndon Johnson as a legitimate candidate.

I think this is off-base. As Majority Leader, Johnson certainly was powerful. But we've had lots of powerful senators. The question is, did he provide unusual qualities of leadership that got difficult legislation through the body on repeated occasions? Did he change history as a senator? Were his characteristics so exceptional that he is above 99.9% of other senators in the history of the United States?

To me, the answer is clearly no. Johnson's senate career was notable for working with Eisenhower to ensure that nothing of interest happened. OK, I'm being flippant here, but Johnson was an architect of the consensus politics of the 1950s, which is hardly the most noble time in American political history. He did shepherd through the Civil Rights Act of 1957. But we need to look more deeply at that situation to analyze Johnson. This was a case where the American public was clearly demanding something be done about civil rights issues, particularly in the aftermath of Brown, Montgomery and Little Rock. Eisenhower didn't want to deal with it. Neither did Sam Rayburn. Neither did Lyndon Johnson. These were all centrist southern politicians who by all accounts weren't boat rockers when it came to race. So they crafted a weak bill. That doesn't mean that LBJ doesn't deserve some credit--he did have to overcome massive opposition from the fireeaters in the South like James Eastland, Richard Russell, and Strom Thurmond. But this is not the Missouri Compromise here. Fewer blacks were registered to vote in the South in 1960 than in 1956.

I think the support for Johnson comes for two reasons. First, the magisterial Robert Caro biographies. People know more about him than anyone else. But what those books show above all is that Johnson knew how to manage people. That's a pretty great skill for Majority Leader (and one that Harry Reid should learn). But being an effective Majority Leader, as LBJ certainly was, is different than being one of the best senators ever.

Second, and most important, people are projecting Johnson's stance on race during his presidency back upon his senate career. This is a mistake. When Kennedy died in November 1963, King and other civil rights leaders were devastated. Not so much because JFK had been a great leader for their cause; rather, the movement expressed great frustration at his reticence to get involved. They were upset because they thought Kennedy was coming around to their side and now there was a southerner who had shown absolutely no sympathy for civil rights. They had ZERO evidence that LBJ would do a damn thing to help them. And they were shocked to be wrong.

This is why Johnson is one of our greatest presidents. But that's an entirely different matter from his senate career. Here's an equivalent. Let's say that Obama died and Biden was out of the picture or something. Somehow Max Baucus becomes president. Everyone interested in health care reform would be devastated, figuring that any meaningful health care is out the window. Then, President Baucus (!) forces through an American version of the British National Health Plan. Wouldn't we all be absolutely shocked and delighted. That's something approximating how civil rights leaders felt when Johnson slammed through the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Because he was absolutely not a leader on civil rights while in the Senate.

From Colony to Superpower, Part XVI

This is the sixteenth installment in the 20 part series Rob Farley and I have commenced to review George Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. See the Herring Review tag below for previous entries. Rob's entry for the week is here.

This week, Herring covers the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, a period dominated by Vietnam. But Vietnam was hardly the only foreign policy crisis faced by the United States. Tensions around the world dominated both administrations. Kennedy was more comfortable dealing with these issues while Johnson preferred to focus on domestic programs. It's entirely expected, though still remarkable, just how many foreign policy issues Cold War administrations had to deal with compared to American history before World War II. In the Cold War context, it's hardly surprising that Johnson's presidency was destroyed by Vietnam. It's hard to believe that any credible presidential candidate, Republican or Democrat, would have done much different.

Kennedy comes across as eager to take on the Soviets but inexperienced and underprepared. Khrushchev made him look like a child in early encounters, though the Soviets way overplayed their hand in Cuba. Kennedy handled the Berlin issue poorly and did nothing to fight the erection of the Berlin Wall. He escalated the U.S. presence in Vietnam. While his admirers claim he wouldn't have gotten the nation into a quagmire like Johnson, that's hard to believe. He may have doubted whether his moves were effective, he also wore Cold War blinders that limited his range of decisions. He continued supporting Diem in his early years and then badly blundered the necessary coup to get rid of him. After the coup, the U.S. had no plan on who to replace him or what kind of government would be more effective.

Kennedy's foreign policy is probably best defined by his actions in Latin America. While the Alliance for Progress promised a more enlightened approach to the region and while the Peace Corps looked good, inflexible anticommunism undermined these programs. Cuba defines Kennedy like no other foreign policy issue. The nation was deeply embarrassed by the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion. That CIA and State Department leaders thought that the invasion would spark a popular uprising against Castro shows how badly they misread the situation, and several similar situations in the developing world during these years. On the other hand, Kennedy certainly was a stronger and more responsible leader than either Khrushchev or Castro during the missile crisis. What Khrushchev was thinking placing missiles in Cuba is unfathomable. Castro's anger when Khrushchev backed off is even more bizarre considering his nation was about to be blown into oblivion. Kennedy comes across less well with his undermining of left leaning regimes in South America. He ordered a coup against Guyana of all places, that noted center of key strategic importance, because they seemed leftist. Johnson approved the programs that caused a lot of the real damage in Brazil and Chile, but Kennedy began the process of undermining those countries' electoral democracies in the name of stability and anticommunism. Johnson failed in Latin America as well, particularly in the Dominican Republic, where the possibility of another Castro drove Johnson to distraction and led to another U.S. invasion of that country. For both Kennedy and Johnson, the idea of another Castro was not acceptable. That meant that almost any leader who was at all left of center became a threat to American security, regardless of whether they were actually helping their people achieve the kinds of rights that Americans enjoy every day. Such concerns were trivial in the face of threats to American democracy. And of course business interests.

Of course, Johnson was destroyed by Vietnam, and ultimately by the legacies of Truman's failure to prevent the Chinese Revolution and by the domino theory. This most avoidable tragedy happened in no small part because the United States could not see Ho Chi Minh as anything but a tool of Moscow. What if the U.S. had actually engaged with Ho? He had little interest in fighting the U.S. He just wanted to unite his country. He might have made a terrible leader, but he was certainly no worse than Diem or his successors in South Vietnam. U.S. military actions did little but kill people and solidify support for the Viet Cong. Yet Johnson could do nothing else, partially because of Cold War politics and partially because of his own personality.

Johnson was also taken for a ride by Israel. Israel looks really bad in Herring's discussion of 1967's Six Day War. Defying the United States because they knew at the end they would have American support, Israel launched a surprise attack against Egypt and Syria that was a major short term success for the Jewish state. In the long term though, the headaches Israel has with the occupied territories make that war of conquest seem like a terrible, terrible idea. American support of Israel, along with its continued support of the autocratic Shah in Iran fed Islamic radicalism that would have long term consequences for the region and for the United States.

Overall, the chapter is very strong. I do want to bring up one organizational question. After World War II, Herring resorts to traditional periodization based upon presidential administrations. I really question the utility of this. In the pre-war period, he divides the chapters in sensible blocks that represent real changes in foreign policy focus for the nation. Abandoning this for a more traditional approach toward the end of the book, I wonder if he doesn't undermine his narrative a bit. Splitting Vietnam into 2 chapters seems less than ideal to me. Kennedy continued Eisenhower's foreign policy in many respects, particularly as regards Cuba. Including the whole Cuba story in one chapter and then all of Vietnam in a second makes a lot of sense. The Gulf of Tonkin would be a great place to begin the next chapter. Instead, we will be begin next week in 1969, a time that only makes sense in the sense of a new presidential administration.

Historical Image of the Day

Daisy ad, run by Lyndon Johnson against Barry Goldwater, 1964