The Fierce Urgency of Now

by Julian E. Zelizer

  Shriver told the congressmen that he did not have the authority to determine who would be appointed to the agency, but he also defended Yarmolinsky as an outstanding public servant. He emphasized that top-level staffing was entirely in the president’s hands. Cooley claimed that Shriver had previously said that he did have control over who would be appointed. Shriver and Cooley went back and forth; the discussion grew increasingly heated. The Democrats in the room sat uncomfortably, staring down at the floor. When Louisiana’s Hale Boggs vouched for Yarmolinsky, Cooley demanded to hear from the president about his intentions. Desperate to establish some calm, well aware of how furious the president would be if he saw this measure go down to defeat, Speaker McCormack walked with Shriver into a small adjoining room and called Johnson on the phone.

  In response to Johnson’s first question, Shriver described Yarmolinsky’s work under McNamara and the conversation that had just taken place. Johnson thought for a minute, then told Shriver to let the Carolinians know that Yarmolinsky would not be appointed. “We’ve just thrown you to the wolves,” Shriver later told his friend, “and this is the worst day of my life.”33

  The Economic Opportunity Act passed in the House on August 8 by a vote of 226 to 184. Though only 22 Republicans voted for the bill, Larry O’Brien’s vote counts proved to have been too conservative; the final measure got much stronger support than the president had expected from southern Democrats, with 60 of them voting yes. At the end of August, Johnson signed the bill into law. The passage of the Economic Opportunity Act was a campaign promise fulfilled in advance; it was Lyndon Johnson’s proof that he could deliver legislation to benefit everyone.

  SHIFTING RIGHT INTO VIETNAM

  If the Economic Opportunity Act gave Johnson a bill to help define his presidency to American voters, his decisions about Vietnam in early August were intended to insulate him from Republican attacks that he was weak on defense. It was no surprise to anyone that Senator Goldwater was emphasizing national security issues in his campaign. Johnson was not tough enough on communism, Goldwater said, repeating a mantra Republicans had used since early in the cold war, when they charged that President Truman had “lost” China to “the Reds.” Johnson, who had seen Democrats lose control of the White House and Congress in 1952, when Republicans used the stalemate in Korea against them, accepted as a truism that he would have to protect his foreign policy flank in the upcoming election battle, so he began to take a more hawkish line in Vietnam.

  Southeast Asia, and Vietnam in particular, had preoccupied U.S. policy makers since 1954, when the French pulled out of their Indochinese colony and left it divided into a communist North and an anticommunist South. President Eisenhower decided to send limited assistance to the South. “You have a row of dominoes set up and you knock over the first one,” he said, “and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly . . . The loss of Indochina will cause the fall of Southeast Asia like a set of dominoes.” Though Kennedy expanded the U.S. commitment by sending thirteen thousand military advisers to help train the South Vietnamese forces, he was reluctant to commit ground troops. He knew that the South Vietnamese government, run by Ngo Dinh Diem, was corrupt and unreliable. In the summer of 1963, Diem’s crackdown on Buddhists who were protesting persecution by his government led to widespread unrest and the belief that he wasn’t strong enough to withstand the opposition in his own part of the country. On November 2, he was killed in a CIA-backed coup.

  Throughout the early months of 1964, Democrats in Washington agonized over what to do about Vietnam. Many senior legislators, including conservative Democrats who were generally extremely hawkish on fighting communism everywhere else, counseled President Johnson against expanding America’s role in Southeast Asia. Senator Russell, one of the biggest hawks of the Democratic Party, who had been a strong supporter of the cold war buildup since the late 1940s and tended to call for the United States to take tough stands against the Soviet Union, as he had done during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, bluntly told the president that Vietnam was not essential to U.S. national interests, the conflict would bog down American troops in a deadly quagmire, and there was a real danger the Chinese would enter the war.

  Johnson understood these arguments, but his advisers, later referred to by the journalist David Halberstam ironically as “the best and the brightest,” were pressuring him to increase America’s presence in the region to prevent North Vietnam’s leader, Ho Chi Minh, from unifying the country under communist rule. They argued that if South Vietnam fell to communism, other countries in Southeast Asia would soon fall too, like Eisenhower’s dominoes. Johnson believed them.

  He also believed that any Democratic president, in order to be effective in his legislative efforts, would need to embrace a national security policy that was firmly opposed to communism. He told Russell that in certain states, including Georgia, voters would “forgive you for everything except being weak.”34

  During July, Goldwater had warned that the new leader of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev, was more dangerous and aggressive than his predecessors had been, and he accused Johnson of refusing to stand firm against communism throughout the world. He predicted that Johnson was preparing to fight a halfhearted ground war against the communists in Vietnam and that he would be too timid to use America’s arsenal of bombs and airpower. Goldwater had caused quite a stir back in May, before he was the official nominee, when he said he would be willing to consider the “defoliation of the forests by low-yield atomic weapons” to gut the supply routes being used by the communists in Vietnam. At the Republican convention, Goldwater had promised to institute a “win policy”: military commanders would have the authority to do what was necessary, and President Goldwater would not stand in their way.

  In July, Johnson, goaded by Goldwater, ordered the navy to intensify its operations off the coast of North Vietnam. The administration intended the presence of U.S. destroyers as a show of force to the North Vietnamese and to Republicans at home who were calling him weak. On August 2, Washington received reports of an attack on navy ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. The evidence that this was a concerted effort by the North Vietnamese to hit U.S. forces was sketchy at best. Johnson decided to downplay the incident. He made it clear to his advisers that there would be no response, and when the North Vietnamese remained silent about the incident, he concluded that there was no need for any U.S. action.35

  Johnson understood the political stakes of the situation and decided to wait. Goldwater, who was vacationing in Newport Beach, California, was asking in the media if the presence of U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin meant that the president was planning on using ground forces in the battle and if there was a change in foreign policy ahead.36 On August 3, Johnson told Secretary McNamara they needed to be “firm as hell” without making any dangerous statements that could escalate America’s involvement into a full-scale war. Johnson said that he had spoken to a banker in New York and a friend in Texas, both of whom praised how the navy had handled the situation until now, but both of whom wanted to “be damned sure I don’t pull ’em out and run, and they want to be damned sure that we’re firm. That’s what all the country wants because Goldwater’s raising so much hell about how he’s gonna blow ’em off the moon, and they say that we oughtn’t to do anything that the national interest doesn’t require. But we sure oughta always leave the impression that if you shoot at us, you’re going to get hit.”37

  In the morning of August 4, there were reports of a second attack in the Gulf of Tonkin. Once again, little intelligence was available, and some of what was available suggested that the attack, if it took place, had been provoked by actions taken by the U.S. destroyers. Johnson told one aide, “Hell, those dumb, stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish”—and the White House concluded the attack had been a mistake or a decision by a low-level commander.38 A leak from the administration to the press created a public impression that
there had been an unprovoked attack and that policy makers saw this as a key moment for the United States to prove how serious it was in the fight against communism in Southeast Asia.39 When Johnson met with legislative leaders to tell them what had happened, the Republicans in the room supported passage of a congressional resolution authorizing the use of force. At a subsequent meeting, Johnson and Kennedy’s top adviser, Kenneth O’Donnell, agreed that any failure to forcefully respond would provide conservative Republicans with a huge opening to attack the administration for being weak on defense.40 Johnson agreed with O’Donnell that he was being “tested” and that he needed to have a tough response for the North Vietnamese and for the Republicans. After reviewing the intelligence one more time, Secretary McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded that an attack had taken place. It would later be revealed that the intelligence was based on inaccurate information provided by officials at the National Security Agency.41

  Regardless of the doubts prevalent among high-level officials, Johnson embraced the argument that there had been an unprovoked attack. He asked Congress to pass a resolution that granted him the authority to expand military operations in the region if necessary. Johnson asked Goldwater to support him, and Goldwater immediately agreed that the war should not be an issue in the campaign. After meeting with Johnson at the White House, he made a public statement in which he expressed his support for Johnson’s overall strategy.

  Many congressional Democrats were uncomfortable granting so much power to the president to expand American involvement in a war. Johnson asked Arkansas’s senator William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to lobby Democrats and give them the president’s assurance that if he decided to send troops to Vietnam beyond responding specifically to the alleged incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin, he would return to Congress to request the power to do that. Congress had passed a number of similar resolutions in recent years—on Formosa, the Middle East, Berlin, and Cuba—none of which had resulted in war, so few in the House and the Senate saw the resolution as leading inevitably to wider war. “I took Fulbright’s word at face value,” Senator Mansfield recalled.42 It was just as important to everyone involved that a demonstration of force was essential to blunting Republican attacks on Johnson’s national security policies. Liberal and moderate first-term senators elected in 1958 were worried about winning reelection, and many agreed to vote in favor of the resolution; no Democrat wanted to defend softness on communism in a tough political campaign against any Republican hawk.43

  The Senate passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7 with only two dissenting votes: Oregon’s Wayne Morse and the Alaska Democrat Ernest Gruening. The House took less than forty minutes to pass the measure unanimously. The resolution authorized the president to take “all necessary measures to repel any armed attacks against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” The resolution was extraordinarily vague and broad—Johnson later said it was “like grandma’s night shirt, it covered everything”—even though he, and Fulbright, had promised Democrats that the resolution would apply only to the current circumstances in the Gulf of Tonkin.

  The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, just weeks before the Democratic National Convention, sent a message to the North Vietnamese—and to American voters—that the United States would take a tough stand against communist aggression. The resolution was as much a battle in the war against Republicans as it was against communism. Though the implications of the alleged attacks on U.S. destroyers were far from clear, Johnson believed he had to send a strong signal to the electorate that he would take a tough stand against communism.

  Johnson’s first strike in the campaign against Barry Goldwater was the passage of the War on Poverty; it embodied his distinct presidential vision; it was his own thing. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was a second strike in the campaign; Johnson believed his best defense against Goldwater was a good offensive stand against the North Vietnamese. He was pleased when his poll numbers rose immediately in response to the resolution. Its dire consequences to the United States, to the Vietnamese, and to Johnson’s presidency would not become evident until several years after he won the election.

  A CAMPAIGN ABOUT LIBERALISM VERSUS CONSERVATISM

  Johnson and Goldwater both campaigned to create the perception that the election was a choice between right-wing conservatism and Great Society liberalism. While each candidate targeted the character of the other—Goldwater questioned Johnson’s ethics, and Johnson portrayed Goldwater as psychologically unstable—policy issues were front and center in both campaigns.

  When the Republicans had nominated Goldwater in San Francisco in July, the proceedings had conveyed the clear message that the party was making a choice to stand behind conservative principles rather than lining up behind another centrist Republican who might have broader electoral appeal. Choosing Goldwater meant taking a stand against the expansion of the federal government that had been occurring since the 1930s.

  The Democrats met in Atlantic City, once the jewel of Atlantic coast beach resorts, now becoming a seedy, crime-ridden eyesore. They offered a ringing endorsement of liberalism, but liberalism didn’t have it easy at the convention.

  The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) was a group of African American Democrats who had been selected by African Americans in the state to represent their interests at the convention. They arrived in Atlantic City to protest the abuse of voting rights in the South and demanded to be seated in place of the official state delegation, which they reminded Democrats came from a state whose politicians were elected almost exclusively by white voters—only around 5 percent of the African Americans in the state were registered to vote—and which was led by a well-known and outspoken racist. The MFDP challenge to the party threatened to raise questions about Johnson’s commitment to liberal goals, to diminish the electoral benefits of the civil rights and poverty legislation Congress had just passed, and to trigger an internal party battle that would give Goldwater a shot at winning more southern states. Governor John Connally of Texas told the president, “If you seat those black jigaboos, the whole South will walk out.” Johnson pleaded with civil rights leaders to think about the long term. He promised them that if they acceded to the seating of the official delegation and he was elected, he would deliver more historic legislation to secure full civil rights for all African Americans.

  During credentials committee hearings to decide the fate of the MFDP, television news broadcast dramatic testimony about the violence and abuse the delegates had confronted in their struggle for voting rights. The activist Fannie Lou Hamer provided riveting testimony about the violence she had endured throughout her career as an activist. Toward the end, she asked, “Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as human beings, in America?” President Johnson, fearful of how Americans would be swayed by this moving speech, convened an impromptu press conference so that the television stations would turn their attention to him rather than cover the end of her appearance.

  Initially, liberals on the committee sought a compromise whereby the MFDP would obtain half of the seats, but Johnson feared that this arrangement would provoke a civil war among Democrats at the convention; southern Democrats had formed a third party in 1948 over civil rights, and they could do it again. Instead, the president sent Hubert Humphrey to Atlantic City to broker an alternative compromise by which the members of the regular delegation would be seated after they took an oath to support the ticket and agreed that future delegations would not be selected by racially discriminatory procedures. While Humphrey was negotiating, Johnson and the FBI kept tabs on the civil rights activists through a wiretap. In the end, the MFDP received two at-large seats—and votes—at the convention, but the white official delegates would still cast all the votes for Mississippi. The liberals on the cr
edentials committee had agreed to the compromise under pressure from the White House. Most civil rights activists were furious at what they saw as a betrayal. “We didn’t come all this way for no two seats,” Hamer said.44

  The convention began, and Democrats focused once again on selling Johnson and his legislative achievements. Rhode Island’s senator John Pastore delivered a blistering keynote speech on the opening night of the convention. With the delegates on their feet, cheering and clapping, the senator, a brilliant orator, lashed out against the GOP. In characteristic fashion, he waved his arms and jabbed his fingers in the air as if berating Goldwater himself. He extolled Johnson’s “nine miracle months” of productivity, during which civil rights, the tax cut, and the Economic Opportunity Act were passed. Pastore told the delegates that LBJ had accomplished more than any other president had ever done in such a short time. While Kennedy had dreamed of civil rights, Pastore said, “it was brought to fulfillment by President Johnson.” He castigated Goldwater and the rest of the Republican Party for seeking to weaken the Social Security program, repeal the minimum wage law, and dismantle other crucial strands of the social safety net. The Republican National Convention, Pastore thundered, had been captured by “reactionaries and extremists . . . lock, stock and barrel.”45 Throughout the hot New Jersey days and into the nights, convention speakers blasted the extreme policies of the GOP and contrasted them with their party’s remarkable legislative output under Lyndon Johnson.

  Hubert Humphrey, selected by Johnson as his running mate, gave a barn burner of a speech on the closing night of the convention that centered on domestic policy. “Most Democrats and most Republicans in the United States Senate voted last year for an expanded medical education program,” Humphrey said. “But not Senator Goldwater. Most Democrats and most Republicans in the United States Senate voted for education legislation. But not Senator Goldwater.” The delegates chanted the refrain “But not Senator Goldwater” every time Humphrey repeated the phrase. Humphrey emphasized the theme of the convention and the Johnson campaign: the Republicans had become the party of “stridency, of unrestrained passion, of extreme and radical language.” He appealed not only to Democrats but to moderate Republicans.