Analysis: Nixon on the "Silent Majority" and "Vietnamization"

Date: November 03, 1969

Author: Richard M. Nixon

Genre: speech

Summary Overview

In his speech of November 3, 1969, President Richard M. Nixon introduced a new phrase, “silent majority,” and a new policy, termed “Vietnamization.” He distinguished the silent majority, the people that he believed supported his policies, from the “vocal minority” of antiwar protesters. Vietnamization involved shifting more of the burden of fighting the war from US troops to a larger and better trained and equipped South Vietnamese army, which would eventually permit the United States to withdraw. These terms served to frame the subsequent debate in America about the Vietnam War.

Defining Moment

Denouncing those who advocated walking away from the nation's commitments, Nixon pledged during the campaign that he could achieve “an honorable peace” in Vietnam. (The standard phrase later became “peace with honor.”) In speeches and public statements he generally assumed hardline positions on Vietnam, but he took a different line in private sessions with liberal reporters and newspaper editors. The public came to believe that he had a “secret plan to end the war,” although he did not use that terminology. The phrase was introduced by a reporter who was trying to summarize the candidate's vague and contradictory claims regarding the possibility of a quick victory. Still, Nixon never explicitly disowned the phrase.

Nixon's actual plans focused more on reducing the United States' direct role in the war so as to minimize domestic opposition to it. Eventually this would involve continuation of the negotiations with North Vietnam initiated by President Lyndon B. Johnson, coercive military actions to compel the North Vietnamese to make concessions in the peace talks (which was also consistent with the Johnson administration), the improved equipment and training of the South Vietnamese army (the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, or ARVN), and periodic announcements of unilateral US troop withdrawals accompanied by positive reports on how the war was proceeding. This is not to say that Nixon would have rejected an acceptable settlement, but that he was prepared to continue the war in other ways if a settlement was not reached. Perceptions also mattered. In August, North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh responded to a US negotiating proposal in a manner that he may have considered a serious counteroffer, but which Nixon considered an outright rejection.

In internal discussions, the notion of shifting the major burden of ground combat to ARVN was initially referred to as “de-Americanizing” the war. Eventually, the accepted term was Vietnamization. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger was skeptical of Vietnamization and warned that pressure to resolve the war quickly would increase if Vietnamization failed to reduce US casualties.

In the summer of 1969, as Nixon was sending secret envoys to meet with the North Vietnamese, he also had plans drawn up for a “savage blow” against North Vietnam. The White House called the operation Duck Hook, while at the US command in Saigon it was known as Pruning Knife. Elements of the plan included heavy conventional bombing (532 sorties a day), the mining of harbors (in Cambodia, too, for good measure), and a ground invasion across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separated North and South Vietnam. At least some consideration was given to the use of tactical nuclear weapons. The onslaught would occur in intervals of four days, with every fifth day off to give Hanoi a chance to respond, until North Vietnam agreed to negotiate seriously. A presidential speech announcing the offensive was drafted in September. (“It is my duty to tell you tonight of a major decision in our quest for an honorable peace in Vietnam.”) Without revealing details, Nixon conveyed threats of severe military action in early November if Hanoi was not forthcoming in negotiations.

Nixon finally decided against Duck Hook/Pruning Knife on November 1. The secretaries of state and defense and members of the National Security Council staff had opposed it all along, saying it would prolong the war rather than end it; that the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong had not been intimidated by the threats; that it would not change the military situation within South Vietnam; that it would further fuel the antiwar movement at home; that it would elicit adverse reactions from the Soviet Union, China, and Europe; and that Hanoi would never believe that it was intended to encourage negotiations. Nixon and Kissinger later expressed regret for not following through on the plan.

The “moratorium” on the war—a peace demonstration that brought hundreds of thousands of protesters onto the streets of Washington on October 15—helped seal the fate of Duck Hook/Pruning Knife. Nixon concluded that the show of domestic opposition undercut the credibility of the ultimatum. An even larger demonstration was planned for mid-November, and launching this offensive immediately before it could have had unpredictable results. The president also allowed that the death of Ho Chi Minh in September might open new possibilities for negotiation.

Thus the circumstances for Nixon's November 3 speech were set. In it, he set out to dampen antiwar sentiment and mobilize his supporters. By revealing the existence of “subterranean” support for his policies, he would seek to undermine resistance to his policies in the bureaucracy and in the nation as a whole.

Author Biography

Richard Milhous Nixon was born on Jan. 9, 1913, in Yorba Linda, California, and was raised as a Quaker. He graduated from Whittier College (1934) and Duke University Law School (1937), served as an officer in the US Navy in World War II, and was elected by California to the House of Representatives in 1946. Nixon joined the House Un-American Activities Committee and gained a national reputation for his investigation of Alger Hiss, whom he accused of espionage for the Soviet Union. He won election to the Senate in 1950 and developed a reputation as a staunch anticommunist crusader (“red-baiter”). Representing the conservative wing of the Republican Party, Nixon was selected as Dwight D. Eisenhower's running mate and served as vice president (1953–61). Selected as his party's presidential nominee in 1960, he lost narrowly to John F. Kennedy. In 1962, he lost the election for governor of California and temporarily retired from politics. Returning to the political scene, he was elected president in 1968, after campaigning on a promise to end the war in Vietnam and to restore law and order after years of political turmoil, protests, and race riots. Despite his anticommunist reputation, he sought to improve relations with the Soviet Union and China, in part, but not entirely, to help extricate the United States from Vietnam. Reelected in 1972 in a landslide, he became, in 1974, the first president in US history to resign in disgrace, as a result of the Watergate affair. Nixon died on April 22, 1994.

Document Analysis

The day after his speech a number of municipal and state elections were held in which Republican and other conservative candidates did well. Nixon pointed to this as evidence that the silent majority of Americans supported him and his policies. This was, in Nixon's view, one of the rare speeches that change the course of history.

The White House received 50,000 telegrams and 30,000 letters praising the speech. An overnight poll showed support for his Vietnam policy rising to 77 percent after the speech, from 58 percent before. This was the highest rating that Nixon would receive during his first term for his handling of the war. It was not entirely a coincidence. The Nixon White House had an unprecedented apparatus for measuring and influencing public opinion, which involved both in-house and commercial polling operations. In addition to keeping close track of trends in opinion, the administration would propose “loaded” questions in order to boost favorable responses. (A 1970 survey allegedly intended to gauge the public reaction to the Cambodia incursion asked, “Do you support the president's action to end the war in Vietnam, to avoid getting into a war in Cambodia, to protect U.S. troops?”) In this case, the administration sought to preempt opinion in a variety of ways. For instance, the White House—according to court testimony thirty years later, in 1999, by former Nixon aide Alexander Butterworth—solicited positive letters and telegrams from labor unions, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, Air Force retirees, governors, and state Republican chairmen. (Butterworth described the response as “contrived” but sincere.) White House chief of staff (and former advertising executive) H. R. Haldeman reported in his diary that, on the night of the speech, the president ordered him to “get 100 vicious dirty calls to New York Times and Washington Post about their editorials (even though no idea what they'll be).” Nixon always assumed the press would be negative.

The polling surge, however, was short lived, lasting about two weeks. So was the mail campaign. Three weeks after the speech, the number of antiwar letters to the White House outnumbered supportive letters once again.

Bibliography and Additional Reading

Berman, Larry. No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam. New York: Free Press, 2001. Print.

Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs. The Great Silent Majority: Nixon's 1969 Speech on Vietnamization. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2014. Print.

Haldeman, H. R. The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House. New York: Putnam's, 1994. Print.

Katz, Andrew Z. “Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: The Nixon Administration and the Pursuit of Peace with Honor in Vietnam.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 27.3 (Summer 1997): 496–513. Print.

Kimball, Jeffrey. Nixon's Vietnam War. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998. Print.

Perlstein, Rick. Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. New York: Scribner, 2008. Print.

Rottinghaus, Brandon. “‘Dear Mr. President’: The Institutionalization and Politicization of Public Opinion Mail in the White House.” Political Science Quarterly 121.3 (2006): 451–76. Print.