Analysis: President Johnson on Limiting the War

Date: March 31, 1968

Author: Lyndon B. Johnson

Genre: speech

Summary Overview

President Lyndon B. Johnson's nationally televised speech of March 31, 1968, included two major announcements: his decision to curtail the bombing campaign over North Vietnam as a way to induce the North Vietnamese into engaging in peace talks and his decision not to seek reelection as president. Both decisions are practically buried in the lengthy presentation, especially the latter announcement, which came in the penultimate paragraph, with little preparation. It marked a precipitous fall for a politician who, just four years earlier, had been elected in a landslide of historic proportions.

Defining Moment

Multiple contexts came together in President Johnson's March 31 speech, encompassing both the war in Vietnam and politics at home. Johnson had always wanted to be remembered as a great president based on his domestic policies, a program that he had termed the Great Society. He became closely identified with the Vietnam War, which he viewed as a threat to that domestic legacy. He feared that defeat in Vietnam would undermine political support for the Great Society. His decisions to escalate had been motivated by that fear as much as by events on the battlefield.

Until 1968, the escalation of the war, not the prospect of defeat, roiled US politics and fueled the antiwar movement. Then came the Viet Cong's Tet Offensive of January–February 1968, which undermined public faith in the official narrative of how well the war was going. (This was compounded by the Pentagon's confusing analysis that the offensive had backfired, resulting in the decimation of the Viet Cong, but also that US military leaders would now need 205,000 more troops.) On March 26, the “Wise Men,” a team of elder statesmen that Johnson consulted, changed their previously optimistic view of the war's prospects, determining that it was time to move toward disengagement. Turmoil extended into the president's party. Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-MN), whom Johnson had considered as a possible running mate in 1964, challenged him for the Democratic nomination on an antiwar platform. Although Johnson defeated McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary, the outcome was close enough (49.4 percent to 42.4 percent) to be a humiliation for an incumbent president. Moreover, Johnson was trailing in the polls for the next primary, Wisconsin's, scheduled for April 2. Senator Robert Kennedy (D-NY), encouraged by these results, joined the race within days. At the same time that the war was dividing the Democratic Party, segregationist Southern Democrats were reacting to Johnson's civil rights agenda by rallying around Governor George Wallace (D-GA), who was running for president as an independent.

Also, unknown to the public at the time, Johnson's health was deteriorating. It was not certain that he would live through another term, and he had struggled with the idea of announcing his retirement during his State of the Union address in January. He had already fulfilled his domestic agenda, and he may have concluded that he had become controversial enough that stepping down was the surest way to secure his domestic legacy. The war in Vietnam clearly was not going well, but if nothing else, he could structure his exit in such a way that he left the scene as a peacemaker. This he sought to do in his March 31 speech. Still, the announcement that he would not seek reelection took the public by surprise. Johnson eventually endorsed Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who had not challenged him before his decision to retire from office, but only after Humphrey agreed to continue Johnson's policies. Humphrey was nominated at the Democratic National Convention in August, but then distanced himself from the war starting in late September. Johnson continued to voice support for him, but only as a Democrat and the candidate most likely to sustain the Great Society, without reference to Vietnam.

Author Biography

Lyndon Baines Johnson was born on Aug. 27, 1908, in Stonewall, Texas. He was elected to the US House of Representatives (1937–49) and to the US Senate (1949–61), where he served as Senate majority leader for six years. After unsuccessfully seeking the Democratic nomination for president in 1960 (the first Southerner to make such as attempt since the Civil War), he served as John F. Kennedy's running mate and vice president (1961–63). He succeeded to the presidency upon Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963 and was reelected in 1964 in a landslide. Johnson had been a New Deal Democrat in the House, developed a more conservative reputation in the Senate (which he viewed as necessary to win state-wide elections in Texas) and was a noted liberal in the White House. As president, he prioritized civil rights legislation, federal aid to education, and a “War on Poverty,” but he also drew the country into the Vietnam War. He acquired a legendary reputation for passing legislation, but this owed as much to the dramatic way in which he came to office, the existing support in Congress for his legislative agenda, and the 2–1 Democratic majorities in both houses (in 1965–66) as it did to Johnson's personal political skills. Johnson was known as LBJ, following the tradition of Democratic presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) and Kennedy (JFK). He died on Jan. 22, 1973, just four years and two days after leaving office.

Document Analysis

The administration was divided over whether outcome of the Tet Offensive represented a breakthrough to be exploited militarily, through yet another troop escalation, or an opportunity to pursue peace talks and a negotiated settlement. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who had gradually turned against the war, resigned at the end of February and was replaced by Clark Clifford. Clifford, who came into office supporting the war, turned against it in a matter of weeks, having concluded that the military was unable to justify its latest troop request. In Clifford's view, escalation would result only in renewed stalemate at a higher level of violence. On the other hand, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and National Security Adviser Walt W. Rostow were convinced that conditions increasingly favored the United States. Johnson typically refused to accept either argument fully. He generally responded to their appeals with compromises and halfway measures. The March 31 speech represents one such compromise. At the same time, in announcing his resignation, he stresses that he would be able to negotiate and pursue the war without having to yield to electoral considerations.

Bibliography and Additional Reading

Berman, Larry. Lyndon Johnson's War: The Road to Stalemate in Vietnam. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989. Print.

Busby, Horace. The Thirty-First of March: Lyndon Johnson's Final Days in Office. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005. Print.

Herring, George C. LBJ and Vietnam: A Different Kind of War. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1994. Print.

Jamieson, Patrick E. “Seeing the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidency through the March 31, 1968, Withdrawal Speech.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 29.1 (March 1999): 134–49. Print.

Warner, Geoffrey. “Lyndon Johnson's War? Part 2: From Escalation to Negotiation.” International Affairs 81.1 (January 2005): 187–215. Print.