“Great Leaders don't grow on trees”
----Mother
Today is yet another landmark observance of that time half-century ago when anything and everything seemed within our reach. On this date in 1968, President Lyndon Johnson addressed the nation in a speech to the nation about the war in Vietnam. The speech had become necessary in the wake of the January Tet Offensive during which South Vietnam had been temporarily overrun by insurgent forces. Images of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon under assault, and raging battles lasting weeks in the old provincial capital of Hue where street fighting was literally block, by block, house by house, door to door.
Johnson had accepted at face value, as had most of the nation, the assurances of General William Westmoreland, then commander in the field. Recent biographies have thrown doubt upon the veracity of Westmoreland as well as his role in creating illusions of victory; for he had purposely manipulated the facts on the ground in order to tell the president what he thought the president wanted to hear. Now the president would tell a nation, grown impatient and weary of war, what it so desperately wanted to hear. This, tragically, had led the president to tell the nation that there was, in his unfortunate metaphor, 'a light at the end of the tunnel'. Now, it appears, that light was nothing more than a speeding locomotive.
Much has been made in the hand-wringing in the aftermath about the lessons of Tet. Pro-war advocates still contend that the battles were a huge defeat for the Vietminh, and that the nation should have pursued its objectives in the wake of the 'victory'. But this analysis misses the point entirely. Yes, as Johnson was about to address the nation, now 50 years ago this evening, he could report the heavy casualties inflicted upon the enemy and that it would take years for Hanoi to recover. Indeed, it would be another 4 years, almost to the day, before our adversaries could mount another major offensive. But missing in this argument is that there would, inevitably, always be another and then, seven years later, finally, another.
Johnson had finally absorbed what he had always suspected. In historian Michael Benchloss' book “Taking Power”, Benchloss publishes for the first time recorded telephone conversations from the oval office in the days immediately following the assassination of President Kennedy. Here one encounters Lyndon Johnson in frank conversation with his Senate mentor Richard Russell of Georgia wondering aloud, in the fall of 1963, whether anyone—even the United States—could ultimately prevail in Vietnam. These people are a warlike people, the President told his former Senate colleague, citing Vietnamese history. President Kennedy, confronted with a crisis in neighboring Laos in 1962, had wisely demurred from military intervention. Now the drumbeat for war in Vietnam was growing and the calls that the dogs of war be loosed were becoming ever more insistent. On these recordings one can hear a deeply troubled president cite the fact that the Vietnamese had fought the Chinese for over 300 years before they finally were able to free themselves. Johnson knew, as Ho Chi Minh would later declare in 1966, that our children and grandchildren will still be fighting this war. It was always a real possibility, if not a dead --certainty. Now, Tet had confirmed his worst fears.
Johnson found himself caught between a rock and a hard place. To ask the nation for ever greater sacrifice in the defense of such a corrupt regime; a sacrifice seemingly without end was, simply, not tenable. To sue for peace was, in the wake of all the jingoistic Sabre-rattling, unthinkable.
Many historians, from LBJ biographer Robert Caro to MSNBC's Chris Matthews, have duly noted that since his days in Congress, LBJ was always writing his resignation speech. Indeed, Lawrence O'Donnell in his “Playing with Fire” a book commemorating the 50th anniversary of that terrible year 1968, points out that several anti-war activists—Allard Lowenstein among them—were pointing out to Robert Kennedy, Gene McCarthy and anyone else who would listen that LBJ would, if push came to shove, quit.
And so it was that as a reluctant RFK pondered the times, Lowenstein and others coaxed a quixotic Minnesota Senator to enter the race, challenging LBJ in a limited number of primaries. What followed was a stunning performance in New Hampshire in which McCarthy polling at around ten percent finished with an astounding 42 percent of the vote, Lowenstein had found his peace candidate. Then, on March 16, Robert Kennedy entered the race. Now the President faced with war on one side and a surging peace movement on the other, felt the ground shift beneath him.
From the White House, Johnson addressed the nation. He had two endings to his speech. As he approached the end of the speech he signaled Lady Bird Johnson what he would say. She was the only other person who knew of the alternate ending and they had agreed upon a prearranged signal. Accordingly, as he ended his address to the nation he told the country that, in effect, Walter Cronkite was right. That there had to be a negotiated settlement. That the effort would require his undivided attention and that to do this he had to remain above the partisan struggle now unfolding in the process to choose a new president. Then he said it “ accordingly, I will not seek, nor will I accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”.
I remember watching the speech alone. My mother was in the kitchen, my step-father was working second shift. In any case, I was the family's only dissenter and in our house the “generation gap”, as it came to be known, was real and palpable. They supported the President and this was anticipated to be yet another speech on what was becoming an all-too-familiar drum-beat. I quite expected the same and when the President announced that he was sending more troops into the maw of war, my heart sank. Then, he pulled a rabbit out of his hat, inviting our adversaries to join us at the peace table. When he withdrew from the race by god I leaped from the sofa, exclaiming “Yes!Yes! Yes!” My mother asked me why I was so animated. When I told her, she looked puzzled, perplexed, crestfallen. Then she said “you know, great leaders don't grow on trees”.
An observation that was soon enough brought home.
“An' Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”
Impeach and Imprison.
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