Guns or Butter

by Bernstein, Irving;

  What about the heart of the university—the teaching of undergraduate and graduate students, the day-to-day research of faculty and graduate students? How are they affected by the student rebellion? The answer is that, up to now, there has been little effect. The structure of the university and its normal activities go on, suffering only minor impact from the events that have made student activism a major political issue in the state, the nation, and now in the world.

  Berkeley launched a wave of student unrest that swept through universities both in the U.S. and in Europe. In this country there were serious outbreaks at Columbia, Cornell, San Francisco State, Michigan, Wisconsin, Northwestern, and Boston University. The student demonstrations in Europe were especially important in France and West Germany.

  During the summer of 1964 the Republican convention that nominated Goldwater met at the Cow Palace in San Francisco and received Ronald Reagan enthusiastically. He would run for governor of California in 1966, and Pat Brown, who would seek another term, feared that the middle-class backlash from Berkeley would give Reagan a decisive issue. He was right. Reagan capitalized on law and order and attacked Brown, Kerr, and the University of California. He won easily and at the first meeting of the regents after he took office Reagan produced the votes to fire Clark Kerr.

  The confrontation at Berkeley was entirely over university rather than national or international issues. Even civil rights was of no consequence. But in time there would be an impact. The tough FSM demonstrators would shortly become stalwarts in the antiwar movement.8

  At home 1966 was a dismal year for Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War. The tension was palpable in Washington, in the White House itself. On February 28 McGeorge Bundy resigned as National Security Adviser to become president of the Ford Foundation. Walt Rostow succeeded him. While Bundy said nothing publicly, there was no doubt that he could no longer stomach Vietnam. A few months later the press secretary, Bill Moyers, quit to become the publisher of Newsday. Moyers, Halberstam wrote, had “shown a lack of enthusiasm for the war.” Reston called him a war casualty, wounded at the Battle of Credibility Gap. When Walter Heller submitted a memorandum on preparing for the transition at the end of the war, McPherson commented, “I expect Walter Heller’s memo will be met by thunderous silence. Maybe I am timid, but I rather hope it will. Oh, what a long war this looks like. A Presidential sign that peace is about to break out, and we have got our problems compounded.”

  McNamara and McNaughton in the Pentagon became profoundly disillusioned. In McNamara’s case there was stress at home. His daughter Kathy opposed the war, defied her parents, and argued with her father. His son Craig, still in prep school, decided that “what we were doing in Vietnam was absolutely wrong.” Dean Rusk faced the same problem with his son Richard, who disagreed so intensely with his father’s views on Vietnam that he became emotionally scarred. His psychiatrist told him, “You had your father’s nervous breakdown.” In 1966 Rusk visited an Army hospital in Saigon. The nurse, a captain, “stared long and hard at me with a look of undisguised hatred. … From the look on her face she clearly held me responsible for what had happened to those men. I never forgot the look on that nurse’s face.”

  George Ball, melancholy and worn out from interminable meetings at which “would-be Clausewitzes” were “endlessly searching for the elusive keys to victory,” resigned on September 30, 1966. He had “never believed for a moment we could win,” and had worked on other parts of the world where “vital American interests were genuinely involved.” But “the war was a vampire sucking dry the Administration’s vitality.” He found it “practically impossible to interest the distracted President.” “I was depleted—physically, mentally, morally, and financially.” The Johnsons gave the Balls a farewell party and they left for a prolonged holiday in Italy. Ball tried to put Vietnam out of his mind, but could not. “What deeply preoccupied me then—and still does [1982]—was how our country could have blundered into the Vietnam mess.”

  Harry McPherson had “colossal” doubts about U.S. policy in Vietnam. He did a good deal of reading, talked to people who had worked on the civilian side, and had spent two weeks there himself. “I can’t think of a worse place in the world to fight a war than in Vietnam.” McPherson had developed a sense of “how dense an affair it was; how many strands were running through it, and how unsusceptible it was to the ordinary treatment of major policy commitment, military and political and economic.” So he became a “ ‘dove,’ I suppose, in that very unsatisfactory classification.” But, “if I behaved like a dove … I would have no hope ever of taking part in either decisions or even of having such an effect as a speech writer can have—that I would be aced out of the whole Vietnam thing.” He would write a pessimistic memo about the air war and add, “This is the way doves feel about the bombing.” He felt terrible about behaving this way and sometimes thought he should quit. But he did not.

  Public support for the war dropped sharply during 1966, sinking below 50 percent. This was part of a two-year trend that prevailed from late 1965 to late 1967. This shift in public opinion was quickly reflected in the mood, particularly among Democrats, in Congress.

  On January 24 Senator Fulbright announced his opposition to a resumption of the bombing, and Mansfield and Aiken called for an indefinite suspension. Three days later, 15 Democratic senators sent a letter written by Senator Hartke of Indiana to the President endorsing this policy.

  Bill Moyers conducted a poll of Democratic members of both houses which was taken between March 19 and June 5, 1966. There were responses from 116 representatives and 25 senators, who were asked to identify the five most important issues to their constituents. In the House Vietnam was first with 82 percent, and inflation, created by the war, was second with 61 percent. No other issue received more than 34 percent. The Senators voted similarly with 76 and 56 percent for the two leaders and no other over 40.

  On June 28 Mansfield conducted a “completely free” discussion of Vietnam with Democratic senators and summarized for Johnson the major themes they stressed:

  1. There is general support for you among the members in your overwhelming responsibilities as President;

  2. The prompt end of the war is seen as most essential and there is confusion and deep concern that we have not yet found the way to end it, either by extension or contraction of the military effort;

  3. There is no sentiment among the members for an immediate withdrawal;

  4. There is a strong conviction that candidates of the Democratic Party will be hurt by the war.

  In July, as Cater put it, “Wayne Morse … declared war on his President and is trying to use education legislation as his weapon.” Morse said he put “responsibility for the Vietnam War where it belongs—on the doorstep of the White House.” Charging that the war had short-changed schoolchildren, he more than doubled the administration appropriations under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. In mild panic the White House, HEW, the Bureau of the Budget, and :he Senate leadership ganged up on the senator’s subcommittee to prevent what they called “anarchy.” Wilbur Cohen may have been persuasive. Morse asked if the increase was justified on educational grounds. Cohen: “Definitely not.”

  Morse was not alone in worrying about shifting Great Society funds to Vietnam. Cater was concerned about a sharp cutback in the college loan fund. Mayor Richard Lee of New Haven sent Cater the “cry of an anguished soul” over reductions in school and construction programs. They stood between the “cities and chaos.” He had slept in his office for three nights to avoid a riot in his town.

  Mansfield did not let up. In October he again urged a formula on Johnson for settling the war: the termination of bombing, a cease-fire, withdrawal of 30,000 troops, and a commitment to deal with the Vietcong.

  The February 1966 issue of Harper’s carried an article by General James M. Gavin, one of the nation’s most distinguished soldiers. He recalled the fall of Dienbienphu when General Matthew B. Ridgeway, the chief of staff, asked him
to explore a landing in the Hanoi Delta. Gavin said it would bring China into the war and that Hanoi was the worst place for the U.S. to wage a war. Ridgeway agreed and notified President Eisenhower, who said it was “like hitting the tail of the snake rather than the head.” Gavin now wanted to stop the bombing, withdraw to enclaves on the coast, and seek peace. Cater asked the President if he wanted to talk to Gavin. Answer: “No.”

  During the summer McPherson vacationed in Rhode Island and talked to a large number of people, mainly moderate Republicans of means. His conclusions:“Nobody I talked to was affirmative about Vietnam.” “Everybody I talked to at any length expressed the strongest wish for peaceful overtures—for cooperation with the Russians chiefly.” These people were of the “well-informed, internationalist middle class, … the strongest supporters of every new initiative in foreign affairs since the end of World War II. … Their support is vital.” Johnson’s personality “seems to baffle everybody.” He found an enormous mistrust of government outside of Washington. McPherson urged “more talk of peace, peace, peace” with “outright candor.”

  On August 3 Cater informed Johnson that Secretary Gardner was “worried that the Administration is suffering from a feeling in the nation that the domestic program has lost its momentum.” Cater and Moyers agreed. But the President did not want to talk to Gardner.

  McPherson learned from a friend at the Israeli Embassy that the National Council of Churches had approached the Synagogue Council of America to join in a statement denouncing the war, which was declined. The National Council, McPherson pointed out, carried great weight. If it attacked the administration on the war, that would “leave us only with the support of the fundamentalists among the Protestants, and that is a bad bed to be in.”

  The Democratic party and President Johnson suffered a sharp defeat in the midterm elections on November 8, 1966. The Republicans gained 47 seats in the House and 3 in the Senate, along with 8 governors and 677 state legislators. Johnson’s control over the House was shattered. He had commanded a 10 to 40 vote majority over the necessary 216 from the 294 Democrats and 140 Republicans. Now the northern Democrats would shrink from 194 to 158, the southern from 100 to 90, while the Republicans would grow from 140 to 187. The Republican-southern Democratic coalition would be back in the saddle. The Democrats, however, hung onto a 64 to 36 majority in the Senate. The GOP won the two most dramatic races: Charles Percy defeated Senator Paul Douglas in Illinois, and Ronald Reagan swept into the governor’s mansion in California over Pat Brown. Many commentators concluded that the Great Society was washed up.

  Even Larry O’Brien, now the Postmaster General but still the smartest political observer, was surprised by the size of the Republican victory. He had anticipated a modest swing back after the 1964 landslide, 32 seats in the House, not 47. The political analyst Louis Bean had expected a Democratic decline from 58 percent in 1964 in House voting to 53 or 54 percent in 1966, costing the Democrats about 36 seats. In fact, the Democratic vote fell to 51 percent. Even after the election Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg argued that the 1966 decline of 66 seats for both the House and the Senate compared favorably with the Republican loss of 84 in 1922 and the Democratic decline of 77 in 1938. Small comfort.

  O’Brien made several swings around the country prior to the election and was surprised and shocked by the impact of the war. “It was,” he said, “the beginning of an unraveling of support for the President’s Vietnam policy.” The congressmen in trouble “felt we should get out of Vietnam, that this was a loser, that it was a bottomless pit, and the President didn’t seem to be making a sufficient effort to bring it to a resolution.” O’Brien found this sentiment in California, New York, New Jersey, Indiana, even Oklahoma. Mayor Daley “expressed great concern about Vietnam. … You wouldn’t find a greater hawk than Dick Daley or a more loyal Democrat on the Hill or anywhere else.” The mayor personally had no concern, but he worried that Vietnam would be “devastating to the Democratic Party.”

  In New York O’Brien lunched with the publisher and editors of the Times—Harrison Salisbury, Harding Bancroft, Turner Catledge, Clifton Daniel, and the rest of the “top echelon.” They spent two hours on Vietnam and a number of them were “distressed and disturbed. … It wasn’t mean or bitter, but it was clear that these fellows were not at all convinced regarding the policy.” He reported to Johnson that he found no “warmth toward the administration.”

  Despite these disturbing signs for the President, the year was relatively calm on the streets. “For the antiwar movement itself, its putative leaders and its activists,” Nancy Zaroulis and Gerald Sullivan wrote, “1966 was an outwardly quiet year.” Senator Fulbright held hearings of his Foreign Relations Committee in February on the war, but, despite television coverage, they generated only mild interest. Ball said they were “disappointingly docile.”

  On February 23 Freedom House gave Johnson an award for his contributions to peace and justice at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. A crowd of 4000 outside conducted a noisy demonstration. Inside a protester stood on his chair and yelled, “Mr. President, Peace in Vietnam!” He was thrown out.

  On March 26 the International Days of Protest staged a hoped for worldwide march for peace. There were said to be 50,000 on New York’s streets, fairly large turnouts in San Francisco and Chicago, and smaller numbers in other U.S. cities and abroad.

  During the summer and fall the Johnsons were beleaguered. There were rowdy picketers and profane abuse of Lady Bird Johnson at the Metropolitan Opera and the San Francisco Opera House, as well as in New Zealand and Australia. The President, Reston wrote, had to “sneak … around the country” to air bases to dodge people asking, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many boys have you killed today?”

  McNamara visited Harvard on November 6, 1966, starting at the Business School, where he had been both a student and a professor. He was greeted cordially. He was then driven across the Charles River to Quincy House. When he emerged and entered a campus police car on Mill Street, a crowd of 800 surrounded the vehicle and rocked it. He jumped out and climbed on top. “O.K., fellas, I’ll answer one or two of your questions. … We’re in a mob and I don’t want anyone hurt.” He was asked why the administration insisted that the war was the result of aggression by Hanoi after 1957. He said it started in 1954. Then someone asked why the government did not publish the number of South Vietnamese civilians killed. “We don’t know.” A policeman started climbing onto the car and McNamara pushed him away. “Listen,” he said, “I spent four of the happiest years of my life on the Berkeley campus, doing some of the things you’re doing here. But there was an important difference. I was tougher and more courteous.” Later he said that he feared a loss of life. “I was under tremendous stress and trying to calm the crowd.”

  Tom Wicker of the New York Times had supported the war. During 1966 he covered the protests of the demonstrators and was moved by the mothers who were perfectly willing to go to jail to stop the war. He realized that the peace movement was not just a bunch of “academic lefties.” He began listening to their arguments and became convinced that the U.S. had “no business mixing into” that war.

  The credibility of the White House and the Defense Department was battered by a sensational series of dispatches from Hanoi written by Harrison Salisbury and published in the New York Times between Christmas Day and January 3, 1967. By contrast, according to Melvin Small, they gave the peace movement a “dramatic shot in the arm.”

  Salisbury was one of the nation’s most distinguished reporters, a noted war correspondent, and a Pulitzer Prize winner. He had been trying to get into North Vietnam for a long time and shortly before Christmas learned that a visa was waiting for him in Paris. After picking it up, he flew Air France to Cambodia and the International Control Commission irregular flight from Pnom Penh to Hanoi. He then spent an extremely busy two weeks scouring the country, talking to people at all levels, and examining the impact of the bombing. “One of the (to me) remarkable facts about reportin
g from Hanoi,” he wrote, “was that there was no censorship.”

  Salisbury observed a “vast gap between the reality of the air war, as seen from the ground in Hanoi, and the bland, vague American communiques with their reiterated assumptions that our bombs were falling precisely upon ‘military objectives’ … with … surgical precision.” He noted specific houses, schools, churches, pagodas, villages, and other structures of no military value which had been obliterated. Nevertheless, a large, steady flow of supplies moved south by truck and rail. Damage to roads and rail track was quickly repaired. “Strategic air power or even tactical air power was not able to halt the movement of a determined, tough and skillful enemy.”

  He concluded that the “most important aspect of the war” was the “spirit of the North Vietnamese people and the spirit with which they were fighting the war.” It was an “amalgam of patriotism and elan.” The government had issued rifles to an enormous number of people, including women. “Can you imagine the regime in the South giving guns to all its people?” a party official asked. “They’d never dare.”

  Premier Pham Van Dong discussed the war with Salisbury in an intense four-and-a-half-hour session. He could not get it through his head that the leading newspaper in the U.S. was not controlled by the government. Salisbury assumed that the North Vietnamese had been shaken by the Sino-Soviet split and the launching of the Cultural Revolution in China. He thought, therefore, that this was the time to open secret peace negotiations with the U.S. and the premier left no doubt that his government was prepared to begin talks “immediately and without any preconditions.”