“So my question is: Why are the Viet Cong not convinced of our national will?” I asked. “In what ways have we failed to convince them of this determination, and what is being done, or can be done, to convince them?”4
Since he was supposed to be leading the briefing, I addressed my question to Vice President Humphrey. But before he could answer, LBJ popped up from his chair and jabbed his big index finger toward me.
“I’ll tell ya what’ll convince ’em!” he almost shouted. “More of the same like we’ve given ’em!”5
“Like the bombing pause?” I asked skeptically.
“For the past thirty days, we’ve stepped up bombing!” Johnson raged. “The Reds have seen twenty thousand casualties!”
LBJ knew all the details of the bombings then underway. The press was reporting that he was personally selecting targets from the West Wing of the White House, and that assessment seemed correct. I assume the idea was to demonstrate the close involvement of the commander in chief in the war, but for me it was an enduring lesson about the perils of trying to micromanage a war from thousands of miles away. Long before this briefing, I noticed that LBJ tried to preempt any second-guessing of his Vietnam strategy by quoting then Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn’s comment during World War II. “If General Marshall doesn’t know more than I do in this area,” Rayburn supposedly said, “then we’ve been wasting a whale of a lot of money at West Point all these years.” In other words, Johnson was suggesting that the military knew best and others ought not to question the military brass. I understood that I knew far less about what was going on in the war than the President and his advisers, but I didn’t think he had answered my question, so I followed up.
“Well, Mr. President, if we have been doing this since the conclusion of the pause,” I continued, “is there any hint or indication that we are, in fact, being successful in convincing them? Is the message getting through?”
LBJ looked at me for a moment in silence. “No,” he eventually conceded, “there isn’t.”
The President became more subdued—his moods could change rapidly—and his deep-pocketed eyes turned somber.
“Look, no man wants to end this war as badly as I do,” he said. His softer tone might have garnered some sympathy. That was, until he quickly added, “I’ve got a lot riding on it.”
Those words summarized the last hour of the briefing, which consisted of an elaborate and rambling effort to cast blame for the unhappy situation wherever President Johnson could. First, it was Congress’ fault. He referred more than once to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which had passed the House of Representatives in August 1964 by a vote of 416–0.6 Johnson clung to that vote like a life preserver. He carried a dog-eared copy of the resolution in his pocket, which he pulled out to recite some of its lines. He particularly liked to emphasize one phrase in the resolution: “approves and supports.”
“That’s two words,” he said, “and they are both there.”
Of course, it wasn’t that simple. When I voted for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, I did have some concerns about its language—I worried it might be interpreted too broadly by LBJ—and in hindsight I should have considered the words more carefully.7 But even then I had not anticipated it would be interpreted as a blanket justification for anything the President chose to do. LBJ clearly believed many of the people who voted for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution now wanted to bail out on him, and he would have none of it. He seemed to be trying to convince the Democrats that they would be alright in the upcoming elections if they stuck with him. And he threatened Republicans who publicly opposed his policies that he would “land on them with both feet.”8
But according to LBJ, it wasn’t just Congress that deserved blame for the situation in Vietnam. Johnson sought to tie the conflict to his predecessor, President Kennedy, who sent military advisers into Vietnam in the early 1960s, and to the Kennedy cabinet that Johnson had inherited. He pointedly noted that Secretaries Rusk and McNamara were both Kennedy appointees. I wondered if they felt ill at ease as the President spoke. LBJ then invoked former President Eisenhower, saying that “Ike” had supported his actions in Vietnam. Johnson even referenced consulting about the war with the Pope. I was half convinced he would have placed some of the blame on his wife, Lady Bird, if he could have thought of a way to do so. I watched in amazement—even embarrassment—as LBJ went on with his “woe is me” harangue.
As I listened to him personalize the growing criticism of the war, I thought to myself that Vietnam wasn’t LBJ’s personal problem. It was our country’s. A Johnsonian phrase, “a stuck pig squeals,” came to mind.
Looking back on that encounter from different circumstances, I was probably too harsh in my assessment of LBJ. During the Cold War—only a few years after the Soviets tried to place nuclear missiles in Cuba—the Communists were testing American resolve on several continents. It was hard, if not impossible, to ignore the challenge the Communists were posing in Southeast Asia. But it was a tall order to explain that to the American people, and to try to convince them that it was worth fighting a long, costly war in a small country so many thousands of miles away.
In any event, the President did not make it easy to be sympathetic to him. Indeed, that memorable meeting in February 1966 marked in my mind the beginning of a downward path for Lyndon B. Johnson and his administration. It was certainly a moment of clarity for me in terms of how I saw Vietnam. The war in Southeast Asia would slowly poison the remainder of the 1960s, a decade that had started out with such promise.
CHAPTER 5
“Here, Sir, the People Govern”
—Alexander Hamilton
After I had begun serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, I was sent a doctoral dissertation about the Congress. The thesis was that the representatives elected to Congress tended to reflect the kind of people who lived in their districts. At the time my district had the highest level of education and the highest annual earned income in the United States. From that one might have inferred that it said something about me to have been elected by such a bright, affluent population in one of the largest districts in the country. But, in fact, the dissertation asserted that I was the one who broke the rule. The paper said something to the effect of “Rumsfeld is distinguished principally by his total lack of social, financial, and political standing in the community.”
As I read the passage one night, I nudged Joyce, who was asleep.
“Listen to this,” I said, and I read her the critical lines.
“Go to sleep, Don,” Joyce responded. “It’s tough to argue with.”
Though the 1960s are commonly remembered for drug use, permissiveness, and the hippie counterculture—“if you can remember anything about the sixties,” one wag joked, “you weren’t really there”—that was not how the decade started. It was a time of energy and opportunity, with a dynamic leader who seemed to offer both in generous supply. Although I was a Republican, it was hard not to be caught up in the excitement and glamour that John F. Kennedy brought to the country. The young, seemingly vital president—he was elected at forty-three—implored Americans to “get this country moving again.” And America responded.
The astronaut John Glenn circled the Earth. The Freedom Riders began their daring bus rides in the South. Judy Garland embarked on her legendary comeback tour at Carnegie Hall. The satirical novel Catch-22 was published. American women were gaining their voice, leading to the rise of the feminist movement. There was a sense that with this young, exciting president to lead them, Americans could go anywhere.
I was ready to serve in Washington, D.C. Early on I took a tour of the Capitol building—that exquisite monument to America’s heritage; I walked along the rich marble floors and gazed up into the splendid dome of the rotunda and studied the large statues, two from each state in the Union. I felt fortunate every day to be a member of Congress. At the age of thirty, it was quite a privilege to be the human link between a million people and their federal government.
I found the 434 members I served with interesting as individuals. I soon came to believe that by knowing them, I was learning about our country. They varied in energy, integrity, and intelligence. But the important thing was that they did represent the people of their congressional districts, and each one was there for that reason. Some clung to the vestiges of an earlier era. There were still spittoons on the floor of the House chamber for those who chewed tobacco, and every member was issued one. There was a strong deference to seniority and paying one’s dues. Indeed, the attitude of many of the old bulls of Capitol Hill was that newly elected members should quietly stay in their place until we’d been around for a while—like a decade or two.* I gravitated toward a different group.
Because I had decided to help Gerald Ford defeat one of the old bulls in a leadership contest, I had earned the enmity of another member of the leadership, the second-ranking Republican in the House, Congressman Les Arends. Arends was one of the oldest of the old bulls, having been in Congress since 1935. Making matters worse, Arends was also the chairman of the Illinois GOP delegation. Among other privileges, he played the deciding role in all committee assignments for members from our state. I had been hoping for a spot on the Foreign Affairs, Armed Services, Appropriations, or Ways and Means committees. But helping Don Rumsfeld, a member of the GOP rebellion that threatened him, was at the bottom of Arends’ agenda. He adopted the philosophy of “don’t get mad, get even.”
Instead, I was assigned to what was considered one of the less important committees—the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, also known as the Space Committee. I was disappointed with the assignment but never had any regrets about supporting Ford for the leadership. Because the space race was heating up between the United States and the Soviet Union, the committee turned out to be more interesting than I had expected.
In 1957, the Soviets had launched Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the earth, and the American people were surprised to find our country having to catch up to the Russians in an area where we had presumed superiority. President Kennedy had proposed a sharp increase in America’s investment in our space program. He put forward an ambitious proposal—to have the United States “commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”1 The audacious promise captured the country’s imagination. In a can-do era, Americans felt, why shouldn’t we be able to go to the moon?
As a member of the subcommittee on manned space flight, I spent time with the men selected to accomplish President Kennedy’s bold pledge, including Neil Armstrong, years before he became the first person to take “one giant leap for mankind.” I admired their professionalism and their courage.
I understood the appeal of having an American walk on the lunar surface. I also knew that the administration was attempting to blunt criticism from its left that space would become the next frontier in the Cold War by making a point of emphasizing NASA’s peaceful, civilian missions.2 But I looked at the idea of a lunar landing somewhat differently. Was that, I wondered, the best use of finite resources? The Soviets were not worried about demonstrating peaceful intentions. Indeed, they announced that they had no interest in putting a man on the moon and concentrated on less dramatic but more practical efforts, such as manned orbital missions and satellite technology. By making the possible military use of space a lower priority, I was concerned America might allow the Soviets to gain superior capabilities in reconnaissance, intelligence, and communications, and in the process also develop the ability to destroy or neutralize other nations’ capabilities.
Another person shared that concern. Dr. Wernher von Braun was one of the brilliant scientific minds on our side. Two decades before I met him, he was Germany’s leading rocket engineer. Hitler rallied his forces after their defeat at Stalingrad with the help of von Braun’s V-2 rocket, called Hitler’s “wonder weapon,” that claimed thousands of lives. Thankfully, von Braun’s achievement came too late to turn things around. After the war, while other German scientists defected to or were captured by the Soviet Union, von Braun arranged the surrender of hundreds of his top German scientists to our American troops. This action, too, stirred anger. “He behaved like a traitor,” said one critic. “He smashed up half of London and other cities and he went crawling off to America with Germany’s secrets and became a hero.”3
Von Braun went to work for the U.S. Army, becoming in 1960 the first director of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where I visited as a member of the Space Committee. It was ironic that only twenty years earlier Germany and the United States had been locked in a terrible world war and now von Braun and his team were working with America to master space.* The charismatic and confident von Braun shared our conviction that the Soviets posed a threat to the world, and he committed himself to assisting our space program. Through his work, the United States developed the Saturn V rocket—“the most powerful machine ever made by man,” it was called—which propelled our astronauts into outer space.4
I never strayed far from the principles I had written on my first campaign card in 1962. I resisted expansions of the federal government and was supportive of tax relief. I didn’t believe that either party had a monopoly on wisdom—or on any particular issue—and I still don’t. For example, I supported the establishment of the Peace Corps as well as some environmental protection legislation. I also expressed reservations about the House Un-American Activities Committee’s use of subpoena power.
I found myself becoming friends with individuals with other points of view, such as John Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan, and the political activist Al Lowenstein, whom I had first gotten to know on Capitol Hill in the late 1950s. Lowenstein knew everyone in the liberal pantheon from Eleanor Roosevelt to Norman Thomas to Bobby Kennedy. He was an early critic of America’s involvement in Vietnam, took part in protest marches, and led civil rights activities with a passion. But unlike some on the far left, Al was a fierce anticommunist who steered away from those radical groups that were aligned with Soviet ideology.
We were an odd pairing—me with my crew cut and conservative suit and tie and Lowenstein with rumpled hair and untucked shirttails—but we forged a friendship. I found him humorous, passionate, and interesting. We got together when we were both in Washington, which was not often, since Al was constantly traveling all over the globe. He had a habit of sending us postcards in his almost unreadable scrawl. And just before our third child, Nick, was born in 1967, Al was with us at home timing Joyce’s contractions.
During his first uphill battle for a seat in Congress, against the Democratic establishment’s preferred candidate, he sent me a letter joking about the repercussions if he won. “I intend to join you if not on the Space Committee, then wherever else they put people who defeat Manhattan congressmen in primaries,” he wrote.
“Best of luck,” I replied. “If you want me to come in and campaign against you, I will be happy to.”5 In return for a contribution he had made to my first congressional primary, I sent him a fifty-dollar contribution—for the Democratic primary only.6 I had no doubt he would be a lively addition to Congress if he won a seat, which he finally did in 1968.
Shortly thereafter, and to my regret, our relationship soured. In 1970, Lowenstein ran for reelection against a tough Republican opponent. His campaign wanted to use our friendship to demonstrate that he was not as radical as his opponent suggested.7 Among other things, he was accused unfairly of being involved in the Black Panthers and of echoing the line of the enemy in Vietnam.
Wanting to help my friend, I gave an interview in which I made the point both that I wasn’t endorsing Lowenstein but that some of the characterizations being pinned on him were not consistent with my knowledge of him. “I don’t subscribe to the theory that an individual who raises questions about national issues, including war, is undermining support for the men in uniform who are executing that policy,” I told a reporter.8 “I have never known h
im to advocate working outside the system and I certainly have never heard him advocate the use of violence.”
If I had still been a member of Congress, that would have been one thing. But by then I was a senior aide in the Nixon administration and was referenced as such by the Long Island Press. The interview caused much more of a flap than I had anticipated. Al’s GOP opponent was furious and contacted the White House, demanding that I issue a retraction.
I was busy, so I asked my assistant, Dick Cheney, to handle the issue. Cheney was focused more on the need to elect Republicans to Congress than on my friendship with Al, and he drafted a strong statement of support for his opponent, who was then able to make it look as if Lowenstein had distorted his relationship with me for political gain.
I’d like to think that if I’d dealt with the matter personally I might have found a way to meet the needs of both friendship and politics. I’ve always regretted how the situation ended up. Al wound up losing the campaign. He was understandably unhappy with me, and it hurt our friendship. I learned that the political world sometimes made things difficult for friends.
Of all the presidents I’ve observed close up, John F. Kennedy was probably the most charismatic. He radiated warmth and good humor, and his televised press conferences usually offered glimpses of both qualities. The first time I had a conversation with him was at a House of Representatives’ annual party in 1963. The privilege of escorting the President around and introducing him fell to Congressman Albert Thomas, a Democrat from Texas and a friend of Vice President Lyndon Johnson. A thirty-year veteran on Capitol Hill, Thomas was first elected just after I was born.
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