The recent RFK non-hagiography bio (Robert Kennedy: His Life) suggests that at some level and on certain occasions, most especially late '67 and early '68, Johnson escalated the Vietnam war as a response to domestic political pressure, to reassure the public that he wanted to win the War Against Communism. There are some particular passages where RFK thought that the more anti-war grief he gave LBJ, the more LBJ would escalate the conflict (don't have it handy so I can't dig it up). If true, that definitely puts part of the Vietnam escalation in the bad-Johnson category. Also The Fog of War has several segments that suggests Johnson wasn't always calling for restraint.

Also, be careful not to engage in revisionist history on Iraq, where the large-but-not-overwhelming expert consensus was somewhere in between "Nuke Baghdad Now" and "Well, we're going to have to do this eventually anyway, so let's get it over with". Yes, you had people like Wes Clark opposing the war, but still using brinksmanship rhetoric, and plenty of Democratic foreign-policy types (chief among them Mr. Diamond from the Brookings institute) on-board with Bush.

[I agree fully with your analysis on the domestic front; many other possible Democratic Presidents might have made less progress on Medicare, Medicaid, the Civil and Voting Rights Acts, and poverty.]

The invasion of Iraq wasn't fairly widely endorsed by most of the relevant people?

That's right--all sorts of official policy-makers, who were ignored, said Iraq would be a bad idea.

That's in addition to all the people (~half) among the American public who said in advance of the war that it'd be a bad idea, or wrong. Vietnam, by contrast, was opposed mostly well after it began.

Yeah, the majority of commentators, experts and such were ambivalent about Iraq before the invasion. They didn't oppose it, but it wasn't a systemic error in the way that Vietnam was. Think about it this way: if LBJ hadn't been president in the '60s, would we have gone into Vietnam? If GWB hadn't been president in 2002, would we have gone into Iraq? There's no way a President Gore (or even a President Ken Pollack) would have launched a full-scale invasion. A President Pollack would have done some mucking around over there, and the real-life Pollack shrugged his shoulders at Bush's taking initiative in going even further, but the invasion doesn't happen without Bush taking that intiative.

Vietnam, by contrast, looks like much more of a systemic error.... At least that's my understanding -- there was relatively little Johnson-related idiosyncracy to the decision to escalate and Johnson himself was consistently a voice for restraint vis-a-vis his main military advisors.

I used to think that too. But check out a book by historian Frederick Logevall called Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam. He makes a very persuasive case that there were a lot of forces pushing in both directions, and that the personality of the president was perhaps the key factor. Reading his book I thought that JFK might well not have pursued the war -- not that he had already planned to withdraw, but that he would not have committed ground forces on the scale Johnson did.

It's a strong historical case (and a fascinating book). I fear that the evidence indicates that both Johnson's best and his worst were quite particular to him.

This seems a rather odd response to Matt's what-if --

Assuming similar actions by the North Vietnamese in the Summer of 1964, JFK, in a reelection battle, would have acted at least as strongly as LBJ did. Had he been reelected -- a very iffy assumption -- he would have made so many warlike campaign promises, it would have been difficult for him to back away from them.

And although Goldwater probably wouldn't have been nominated (Northeastern Republicans who had to be drafted to run against LBJ would have been salivating to run against JFK), had he been, his strongly stated anti-Communist position and his declaration that we must "win" in what he, almost alone, was already in 1964 describing as the "war in Vietnam" would have mandated escalation.

In private, JFK as president expressed on numerous occasions how he was umcomfortable with the escalation of the Vietnam War, and suggested many times that if he were re-elected in 1964, and was not constrained by hopes of winning another election, he would have pulled out or stopped the escalation. But this didn't happen. Its not history.

ANY discussion of LBJ as president has to point out that LBJ was OBSSESSED with his Great Society program, and this distracted him and even drove his Vietnam policy. He felt that the potential success of the Great Society would cement his place in the hall of great presidents and overshadow his clearly failed, but almost politically necessary Vietnam policy.

sef23

man, you said exactly what i was going to say. i think LBJ accomplished more domestically than JFK would have, but, Logevall's book convinced me against all my priors that LBJ is totally indictable on the charge that he lacked the courage to stay out of Vietnam.

He essentially bullied himself into committing the US to the war, driven by fear of right-wingers' criticism.

it's a great book.

joshb

I lived through that JFK/LBJ/RFK/Gene McCarthy era and I doubt JFK would have done Vietnam much differently had he not been assasinated. Clean Gene was a lonely voice until LBJ quit the race and RFK tried to steal that thunder. BTW, I supported neither Humphrey or Nixon--Dick Gregory got my vote.

As to the "good" LBJ, much of his Great Society was passed evoking the fallen JFK god. That said, he sure knew how to twist arms on both sides of the aisle. Possibly the best Senate leader of all time--and he would have been able to shut Lieberman up well before the "kiss." Remember, he got his way when there were two enemies of the left--most Republicans and all the Dixiecrats.