Guns or Butter

by Bernstein, Irving;

  The General Offensive and General Uprising had been a military failure. Giap had surprised the Americans and the South Vietnamese, but he did not defeat them. In fact, the South Vietnamese fought bravely and well to everyone’s surprise. Moreover, the people of South Vietnam had not risen against their government. But the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong had not been defeated either. The war dragged on as before, a bitter stalemate. Tet’s greatest impact was not on the war, but on the United States, where it was devastating.

  Tet stood American public opinion on its head both toward the war and toward President Johnson. The widely held assumption of victory was snuffed out and the hope for an acceptable formula for settlement went with it. Tet made it clear that this would be a long, vicious war, a prospect most Americans could not bear. The views of Walter Cronkite, the CBS news anchor and the most respected of television journalists, were typical. He had supported the President on the war from the start. But after a visit to Vietnam, he made this report on February 27, 1968:

  It seems more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer’s almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation; and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one hundred or two hundred or three hundred thousand more American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes close to the brink of cosmic disaster.

  To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.

  White House press secretary George Christian said that when Cronkite made this report “the shock waves rolled through the Government.” Bill Bundy thought Cronkite’s defection was “an absolute landmark.”

  The polls dropped like stones in the water. In the six weeks between late January and early March 1968 Johnson’s approval rating fell from 48 to 36 percent and those who supported his handling of the war declined from 40 to 26 percent. Over the same period seven major newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, along with Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, CBS, and NBC came out against Johnson’s Vietnam policy. More important, as Doris Kearns pointed out,

  A leader’s authority comes from the public’s belief in his right and ability to rule, in the willingness of individuals to suspend their own judgment and accept their leader’s because they trust him and the system he represents. By 1968 Johnson had lost this trust. The issue was not simply Johnson’s loss of popularity; it was his loss of credibility. A majority of people believed he regularly lied to them, and that belief soon spread from matters of personal biography to high matters of state.

  A mood of gloom engulfed the President’s advisers. On February 27 Joe Califano and Harry McPherson attended a conference on Vietnam in the Secretary of State’s private dining room. Those present were McNamara, Clifford—who would succeed him in three days—Rostow, Rusk, Katzenbach, and William Bundy from the State Department. Califano, because of his domestic duties, had not heard a high-level discussion of the war for several years. “It was,” he wrote, “the most depressing three hours in my years of public service. … McNamara, Katzenbach, and … Bundy were beyond pessimism. They sounded a chorus of despair. Rusk appeared exhausted and worn down.” As he drove back to the White House with McPherson, Califano wrote, “I was physically shaken. Both of us were completely drained.” Califano said, “This is crazy.” McPherson agreed. Califano: “It really is all over, isn’t it?” McPherson: “You bet it is.” Mc-Pherson spoke to Deborah Shapley about McNamara at this conference. McPherson had “never heard [McNamara] speak with such terrible emotion.” There were tears “in his eyes and in his voice.” He condemned “the goddamned Air Force and its goddamned bombing campaign that had dropped more bombs on Vietnam than on Europe in the whole of World War II and we hadn’t gotten a goddamned thing for it.” McPherson thought that Clifford’s gaze was saying, “See where this has gone. Is this where you are going?”

  Johnson had long sought to bring his old and trusted friend Clark Clifford into his administration, always without success. In 1967 he drew Clifford into the Vietnam quagmire. Westmoreland wanted more men. Since he already had 525,000, the President was extremely reluctant to provide more. Clifford wrote, “He desperately wanted new commitments from the nations of the region to show the American people we were not carrying the weight of an Asian war entirely on our shoulders.” South Korea, in exchange for enormous U.S. aid, had sent 45,000 troops; Australia 5,465; Thailand was committed to 2500; the Philippines, 2000 in noncombat units; and New Zealand, an artillery group of 381. Clifford thought that increasing their levies was “eminently reasonable and achievable.”

  On July 22,1967, Clifford and General Maxwell Taylor left on a swing through these nations to persuade their governments to raise their commitments. It was a total failure, including Singapore. “To put it simply, the troop-contributing nations did not want to contribute any more troops. In fact, with the exception of Korea, they made it clear that they resented having had to send any soldiers to Vietnam in the first place.” Clifford “jokingly” told Taylor that “more people turned out in New Zealand to demonstrate against our trip than the country had sent to Vietnam.” On his return Clifford told Johnson that he was “shocked.” Until now a hawk, he tossed away an article of that faith: the domino theory. “On the other hand, I continued to support the [administration’s] policy because it seemed to provide the best way out of the war.”

  In January 1968 the President nominated Clifford to be Secretary of Defense. He was confirmed on January 30, just as the Tet offensive began. McNamara stayed on for another month to prepare the budget. Clifford was “half-private citizen and half-Cabinet member. [He] was free to concentrate almost exclusively on Vietnam.”

  It was a terrible time. “It is hard to imagine or recreate,” Clifford later wrote, “the atmosphere in the sixty days after Tet. The pressure grew so intense that at times I felt the government itself might come apart at its seams. Leadership was fraying at its very center—something very rare in a nation with so stable a governmental structure.” His understanding of the war “crumbled—not with a single dramatic revelation, but slowly and unevenly.”

  At the end of February, General Wheeler returned from Vietnam with a request from Westmoreland, supported by the Chiefs, for 205,179 more men. On February 27, at the meeting Califano and McPherson attended, there was, in Clifford’s words, “a fierce discussion” of the proposal with no resolution. Clifford was the challenger. “The American people and world opinion believe we have suffered a major setback. How do we gain support for major programs if we have told people that things are going well? How do we avoid creating the feeling that we are pounding troops down a rathole?” He called for a careful review of the troop request. The only immediate decision was that McPherson should draft a major speech for the President for the end of March. The next day Johnson created a task force led by Clifford to review Westmoreland’s request.

  On March 1, Clifford made a momentous decision. “I had come to the conclusion that my overwhelming priority as Secretary of Defense was to extricate our nation from an endless war.” His fundamental problem was to overcome the President’s determination to continue the war. This would take time and Johnson would have to swallow in small bites. The Master Manipulator would manipulate the Great Manipulator.

  At the first task force meeting on March 2 Clifford pressed Wheeler relentlessly on the troop issue and got these answers:

  Will 205,000 more men do the job? There was no assurance that they would.

  If 205,000 was insufficient, how many more were needed and when? There was no way of knowing.

  Can
the enemy respond with a build-up of his own? He could.

  Can bombing stop the war? No.

  Will bombing decrease American casualties? Very little, if at all.

  How long must we keep on carrying the main burden of the war? We do not know when, if ever, the South Vietnamese will be ready to carry the main burden of the war.

  These answers shocked Clifford. “The military was utterly unable to provide an acceptable rationale for the troop increase.” When he pressed for a plan for victory, he was told that “there was no plan for victory.” Clifford was appalled; he had never dreamed that there was no military justification for the war.

  With the assistance of Paul Warnke, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security and an advocate for ending the war, Clifford drew up a three-point memorandum for the President: (1) 20,000 troops by May 1; (2) a call-up of the reserves; and (3) a deferred decision on the remaining troops depending upon a weekly assessment of the military situation, improved performance by the Saigon government, and a complete review of U.S. political and strategic options.

  On March 4 Clifford presented these points to Johnson as a short-run solution. But Treasury Secretary Fowler made a devastating analysis of the impact of calling up the reserves upon the federal budget, inflation, the balance of payments, and the tax increase. In fact, a massive outflow of gold would take place on March 13 with no call-up of reserves. Rusk, surprisingly, proposed a cessation of bombing during the rainy season. This caught Johnson’s interest and he directed Rusk to work up a proposal. He also instructed Clifford and Wheeler to discuss the reserve call-up with key senators on defense issues. They met with Richard Russell, John Stennis, Scoop Jackson, and Stuart Symington, all dedicated hawks, who flatly refused support for either the reserves or for more troops. Mansfield told Clifford that the present force in Vietnam was the end of the line. When informed, Johnson realized that no major increase was any longer politically possible.

  On Sunday, March 10, the lead story in the New York Times was that the administration was torn by a debate over Westmoreland’s request for 206,000 more troops. Johnson was furious, certain that it was a treacherous leak. In fact, two brilliant reporters, Neil Sheehan and Hedrick Smith, had pieced it together from scraps and inferences, some supplied by the President himself.

  In mid-March the President’s political position deteriorated dramatically. Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota sensationally exposed his weakness in the New Hampshire primary, leading Robert Kennedy to announce his candidacy on March 16. Under Johnson’s orders, McPherson’s latest draft of the speech for the end of the month took a very hard line on the war. In a March 17 extemporaneous address in Minneapolis the President called emotionally for a “total national effort to win the war,” which caused an uproar of opposition. “I am shocked,” Jim Rowe wrote Johnson, “by the number of calls I have received today in protest against your Minneapolis speech.”

  Clifford wrote later that the U.S. was in a “crisis that had now almost completely enveloped Washington: a crisis in confidence in the government which—in those pre-Watergate days—was the most serious … since the Civil War.” Desperately seeking some means of moving Lyndon Johnson to reality, he thought of a second meeting of the Wise Men.

  Clifford knew that Dean Acheson had become disillusioned with Vietnam. As Truman’s Secretary of State, Acheson had been an original Cold Warrior. Now he was extremely skeptical of military optimism and thought the South Vietnamese “government” a bad joke. Averell Harriman, still in the government, thought the war madness and worked over his old friend Acheson. Acheson’s daughter, Mary, had married William Bundy. She told her father that he was “miserable,” no longer a hawk and unable to grope his way out of Vietnam. Clifford made a few phone calls which revealed that others among the Wise Men had also changed their views.

  On March 19 at the Tuesday lunch he proposed the meeting. At first Johnson was opposed, but Fortas and Rusk urged him to accede and he did. It was scheduled for March 25, six days before the big speech to the nation on Vietnam.

  Johnson called a major meeting on March 20 on the issue of the number of troops to send to Westmoreland. But the question that dominated the chaotic discussion was a halt to the bombing. Three positions emerged: continued bombing of the North, backed by Fortas, Bunker, Rostow, Westmoreland, and the Joint Chiefs; cessation of the bombing, supported by Goldberg and Mac Bundy; and stopping the bombing except for the area near the demilitarized zone, for which Rusk and Clifford spoke. In fact, Clifford was for a full halt, but, he wrote, “It was clear that the President was not ready to approve a position that was opposed by Rusk, Bunker, Rostow, and the entire military leadership.” Clifford’s strategy was to lock in Rusk and push for a cessation in the March 31 speech. But the President closed the meeting by ordering McPherson to “get ‘peace’ out of the speech. … Let’s make it troops and war.”

  Clifford’s strategy was now in the hands of the Wise Men, who met for dinner at the State Department on March 25. “It was,” Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas wrote, “possibly the most distinguished dinner party of the American Establishment ever held. The Cold War Knighthood, now bowed and balding but nonetheless formidable, sat down together to dine by candlelight and discuss the Vietnam War. … ”

  They listened carefully to the briefings. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Philip Habib gave a bleak assessment of the South Vietnamese government and “guessed” it would take five to seven years for it to make any progress. Clifford asked whether he thought a military victory was possible. Answer: “Not under present circumstances.” Another question: “What would you do if the decision was yours to make?” Answer: “Stop the bombing and negotiate.” Major General William E. DuPuy, who had commanded troops in Vietnam, stressed that Tet had ended in a U.S. victory but that there was still a long way to go. The CIA’s George Carver was concerned about the pacification program and expected a long war.

  The next day the senior advisers met with the President, who asked Mac Bundy to summarize their views: “Mr. President, there has been a very significant shift in most of our positions since we last met.” Now Bundy, Acheson, Ball, Dean, Dillon, and Vance (who was very close to Johnson and, in fact, had questioned the war for the last two years) think the U.S. should “disengage.” But Bradley, Taylor, Murphy, and Fortas favored continued support for the military. General Bradley, however, pointed out that he would send only “support troops” and would accept a bombing halt. The President, falsely thinking that the briefers had “poisoned the well,” was enraged. More important, he was also deeply shaken.

  Clifford’s final problem was to turn the speech around. While McPherson was reliably on his side, he took his orders from the President. “The speech,” Clifford wrote him, “still locks us into a war that is pictured as being essential to our security.”

  The critical session took place in Rusk’s office on March 28. Clifford pointed to the fundamental problem with the draft: “It is still about war. What the President needs is a speech about peace.” Clifford urged a halt to the bombing and, if the North Vietnamese responded, “other steps.” To his amazement, neither Rusk nor Rostow “fought back,” but neither assented either. Clifford suggested giving the President a choice—one draft on war, the other on peace. Rusk agreed and Rostow was silent.

  McPherson worked late on the new version. The next morning he received a call from the President to discuss changes. McPherson grabbed the war speech, but, to his amazement, he soon realized that Johnson was working on the peace draft. When finished, he called Clifford and shouted, “We’ve won. The President is working on our draft!”2

  During 1967 Postmaster General Larry O’Brien was absorbed in shaping a fundamental reorganization of the Post Office. But O’Brien knew that he would soon be drawn into the 1968 presidential campaign. He assumed that Johnson would be the candidate, and, since O’Brien was the pro, he took it for granted that he would manage the President’s campaign. He found the prospect painfu
l. “It’s nuts and bolts. There’s very little, if any glamour attached to it. It’s hard, hard work.” Years in politics had taught him that all that mattered was victory and you won it by working “harder and longer than the opposition.” And you started early.

  During the summer of 1967 the President asked O’Brien to put together some suggestions for the campaign, both organization and issues. He worked up a “white paper,” a 44-page campaign manual, which he submitted to Johnson in September 1967. It touched every base. It listed all the significant jobs and the individuals he considered competent to fill them, voter registration, the primaries, problems in particular states, the issues, possible Republican candidates, answers to likely opposition charges, polling, the media, the black vote, and so on. It was an updated version of what had come to be known in Democratic circles as the O’Brien Manual.

  This effort was greeted with deafening silence by the White House, which bothered O’Brien. Meantime, he got about the country to talk to prominent Democrats and was shocked by the fact that Vietnam seemed to have crowded out everything else.

  The President did submit the document to his old friend and sometime political adviser Jim Rowe. Early in November O’Brien received a critique from Rowe and gave his answers. A meeting was held shortly which the President attended, but he left early. It was all talk. On November 7, O’Brien, annoyed, wrote Marvin Watson in the White House: “I cannot believe that a campaign can be waged by a committee of viewers. I feel that last Friday evening’s meeting following the President’s departure was a debacle.” There was no response.