Presidential Vehicles - Lyndon B Johnson National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service) Presidential Vehicles The Presidency of the United States is certainly a demanding job. The need for relaxation; to refresh one’s wholeness, is imperative for the tough days that lie ahead. President Johnson’s daily schedule was at the very least, exhausting. From early morning until long after sunset, Vietnam and his Great Society programs consumed his time and energy. On those occasions when he would have some free days he would retreat to his ranch in Stonewall, Texas. This is where he found the peace and serenity that was needed to recharge himself mentally, physically and spiritually. He particularly enjoyed his many vehicles; his presidential toys. Inspecting his ranch in one of his cherished Lincolns; the practical jokes on unsuspecting guests with his Amphicar; hitching up a couple of donkeys to his little wagon and making children smile; ringing the fire bell; yes, these were the types of simple pleasures that re-energized our 36th president. Oh, how he loved his vehicles! Lincoln Continental Convertibles These were the cars probably most associated with President Johnson. Here his Special Assistant, Joseph A.

Califano, Jr recalls a ride with the President: In the early afternoon, the President, with me next to him in the front seat, took his white Lincoln convertible, top down, for a drive around the ranch. It was incredibly hot; the dust clouds made it hard to breathe. But there was relief. As we drove around we were followed by a car and a station wagon with Secret Service agents. The President drank Cutty Sark scotch and soda out of a large white plastic foam cup. Periodically, Johnson would slow down and hold his left arm outside the car, shaking the cup and ice. A Secret Service agent would run up to the car, take the cup and go back to the station wagon. There another agent would refill it with ice, scotch, and soda as the first agent trotted behind the wagon. Then the first agent would run the refilled cup up to LBJ’s outstretched and waiting hand, as the President’s car moved slowly along. 1915 Fire Truck The fire truck is a 1915-type 12 American La France given to the President by the people of Brady, Texas in 1964.

When it was new it carried 1200 feet of standard fire hose and could deliver 1000 gallons of water per minute at any pressure desired up to 400 pounds per square inch. It is electrically equipped throughout, having lights near each gauge on the pump and around the motor, as well as an electric starter. The motor is a six cylinder and provides 105 horsepower. 1934 Ford Phaeton President Johnson used his 1934 Ford Phaeton touring car for hunting. It's equipped with a V8 Lincoln Zepher engine and a steel plate underneath to prevent damage when going over rough terrain. It was a maroon color with tan upholstery until 1962 when it was repainted red. A bar with running water is mounted on back of the front seat. V.I.P.’s to ride in this car include Hubert Humphrey, Dean Rusk, and Robert McNamara. The car is believed to have been given to the President by Wesly West. Amphicar Built in Germany from 1961 to 1968, the Amphicar is the only civilian amphibious passenger automobile ever to be mass produced.

A total of 3,878 vehicles were produced in four colors: Beach White, Regatta Red, Fjord Green (Aqua), and Lagoon Blue--the color of President Johnson's Amphicar. President Johnson enjoyed surprising unsuspecting guests when taking them for a ride in his Amphicar. The President, with Vicky McCammon in the seat alongside him and me in the back,was now driving around in a small blue car with the top down. We reached a steep incline at the edge of the lake and the car started rolling rapidly toward the water. The President shouted, "The brakes don’t work! The brakes won’t hold! We’re going in! We’re going under!" The car splashed into the water. I started to get out. Just then the car leveled and I realized we were in a Amphicar. The President laughed. As we putted along the lake then (and throughout the evening), he teased me. "Vicky, did you see what Joe did? He didn’t give a damn about his President. He just wanted to save his own skin and get out of the car." Then he’d roar. --Joseph A.

Califano, Jr Jolly 500 Ghia The Jolly 500 Ghia apparently was a gift to President Johnson from the Fiat Company. It is a very President Johnson takes daughter Luci and grandson Lyndon Nugent for a drive rare automobile. In fact, during his retirement,and after the establishment of the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park, the park curator encouraged the President to restore the vehicle to its original condition, but the restoration effort ended when the President was unable to find any replacement parts. The car was often used as transportation between the various outbuildings and was especially enjoyed by the children of those that worked for the President, giving them a chance to practice their driving skills. Cushman Golf Carts The Cushman golf carts were used by President Johnson to transport the many friends, dignitaries and political leaders that landed on the LBJ airstrip, to and from the Texas Whitehouse. The airstrip, located behind the hanger, is 6300 feet long and 60 feet wide. Some notable passengers include West Germany’s Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Mexico’s President Adolfo Lopez-Mateos and West Germany’s new Chancellor Ludwig Erhart.

The LBJ Ranch was becoming the Western White House, where foreign leaders were entertained, advisors consulted, affairs of state were conducted, and the Texas Hill Country was opened to the eyes of the world. Donkey Cart The President was given a little green wagon that he enjoyed using at family gatherings. He would hitch up his two donkeys, Soup and Noodles, and give the children and their parents rides around the property. People were very important to President Johnson, especially his staff. He knew on a first name basis all those who worked for him--their families were like his own. He enjoyed making them feel important and happy; he took great pleasure in their smiles. The vehicles were one way that he could share his humor and express his love and affection. President Johnson did love people--all people. DiscoverLBJ LBJ Presidential Library About DiscoverLBJ is the LBJ Presidential Library's online digital archive. The site is currently in BETA mode as we are in the process of migrating and digitizing new content. Learn more . Resources As a start, we recommend reviewing the List of Holdings for a true description of the library’s collections of documents, photographs, audio, and moving image records.

Featured Online and searchable for the first time, explore Lady Bird Johnson's daily diary and personal diary. The collections feature audio and transcripts. Lyndon B. Johnson: Domestic Affairs—Miller Center About the Administration The Lyndon Johnson presidency marked a vast expansion in the role of the national government in domestic affairs. Johnson laid out his vision of that role in a commencement speech at the University of Michigan on May 22, 1964. He called on the nation to move not only toward "the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society," which he defined as one that would "end poverty and racial injustice." To that end, the national government would have to set policies, establish "floors" of minimum commitments for state governments to meet, and provide additional funding to meet these goals. Click to listen to the Johnson's remarks at the University of Michigan (May 22, 1964). By winning the election of 1964 in a historic landslide victory, LBJ proved to America that he had not merely inherited the White House but that he had earned it. The election's mandate provided the justification for Johnson's extensive plans to remake America.

Large Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, along with Johnson's ability to deal with powerful, conservative southern committee leaders, created a promising legislative environment for the new chief executive. The Great Society Johnson labeled his ambitious domestic agenda "The Great Society." The most dramatic parts of his program concerned bringing aid to underprivileged Americans, regulating natural resources, and protecting American consumers. There were environmental protection laws, landmark land conservation measures, the profoundly influential Immigration Act, bills establishing a National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Highway Safety Act, the Public Broadcasting Act, and a bill to provide consumers with some protection against shoddy goods and dangerous products. To address issues of inequality in education, vast amounts of money were poured into colleges to fund certain students and projects and into federal aid for elementary and secondary education, especially to provide remedial services for poorer districts, a program that no President had been able to pass because of the disputes over aid to parochial schools. Johnson, a Protestant, managed to forge a compromise that did provide some federal funds to Catholic parochial schools. He signed the bill at the one-room schoolhouse that he had attended as a child near Stonewall, Texas. With him was Mrs.

Kate Deadrich Loney, the teacher of the school in whose lap Johnson sat as a four-year-old. To deal with escalating problems in urban areas, Johnson won passage of a bill establishing a Department of Housing and Urban Development and appointed Robert Weaver, the first African American in the cabinet, to head it. The department would coordinate vastly expanded slum clearance, public housing programs, and economic redevelopment within inner cities. LBJ also pushed through a "highway beautification" act in which Lady Bird had taken an interest. For the elderly, Johnson won passage of Medicare, a program providing federal funding of many health care expenses for senior citizens. The "medically indigent" of any age who could not afford access to health care would be covered under a related "Medicaid" program funded in part by the national government and run by states under their welfare programs. The War on Poverty Click to view scrolling White House tape with transcript. LBJ's call on the nation to wage a war on poverty arose from the ongoing concern that America had not done enough to provide socioeconomic opportunities for the underclass.

Statistics revealed that although the proportion of the population below the "poverty line" had dropped from 33 to 23 percent between 1947 and 1956, this rate of decline had not continued; between 1956 and 1962, it had dropped only another 2 percent. Additionally, during the Kennedy years, the actual number of families in poverty had risen. Most ominous of all, the number of children on welfare, which had increased from 1.6 million in 1950 to 2.4 million in 1960, was still going up. Part of the problem involved racial disparities: the unemployment rate among black youth approached 25 percent—less at that time than the rate for white youths—though it had been only 8 percent twenty years before. To remedy this situation, President Kennedy commissioned a domestic program to alleviate the struggles of the poor. Assuming the presidency when Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson decided to continue the effort after he returned from the tragedy in Dallas. One of the most controversial parts of Johnson's domestic program involved this War on Poverty.

Within six months, the Johnson task forces had come up with plans for a "community action program" that would establish an agency—known as a "community action agency" or CAA—in each city and county to coordinate all federal and state programs designed to help the poor. Each CAA was required to have "maximum feasible participation" from residents of the communities being served. The CAAs in turn would supervise agencies providing social services, mental health services, health services, employment services, and so on. In 1964, Congress passed the Economic Opportunity Act, establishing the Office of Economic Opportunity to run this program. Republicans voted in opposition, claiming that the measure would create an administrative nightmare, and that Democrats had not been willing to compromise with them. Thus the War on Poverty began on a sour, partisan note. Soon, some of the local CAAs established under the law became embroiled in controversy. Local community activists wanted to control the agencies and fought against established city and county politicians intent on dominating the boards. Since both groups were important constituencies in the Democratic Party, the "war" over the War on Poverty threatened party stability.

President Johnson ordered Vice President Hubert Humphrey to mediate between community groups and "city halls," but the damage was already done. Democrats were sharply divided, with liberals calling for a greater financial commitment—Johnson was spending about $1 billion annually—and conservatives calling for more control by established politicians. Meanwhile, Republicans were charging that local CAAs were run by "poverty hustlers" more intent on lining their own pockets than on alleviating the conditions of the poor. By 1967, Congress had given local governments the option to take over the CAAs, which significantly discouraged tendencies toward radicalism within the Community Action Program. By the end of the Johnson presidency, more than 1,000 CAAs were in operation, and the number remained relatively constant into the twenty-first century, although their funding and administrative structures were dramatically altered—they largely became limited vehicles for social service delivery. Nevertheless, other War on Poverty initiatives have fared better. These include the Head Start program of early education for poor children; the Legal Services Corporation, providing legal aid to poor families; and various health care programs run out of neighborhood clinics and hospitals. Overall government funding devoted to the poor increased greatly.

Between 1965 and 1968, expenditures targeted at the poor doubled, from $6 billion to $12 billion, and then doubled again to $24.5 billion by 1974. The billions of dollars spent to aid the poor did have effective results, especially in job training and job placement programs. Partly as a result of these initiatives—and also due to a booming economy—the rate of poverty in America declined significantly during the Johnson years. Millions of Americans raised themselves above the "poverty line," and the percentage under it declined from 20 to 12 percent between 1964 and 1974. Nevertheless, the controversy surrounding the War on Poverty hurt the Democrats, contributing to their defeat in 1968 and engendering deep antagonism from racial, fiscal, and cultural conservatives. Civil Rights and Race Relations Presidential Speech Archive Johnson was from the South and had grown up under the system of "Jim Crow" in which whites and blacks were segregated in all public facilities: schools, hotels and restaurants, parks and swimming pools, hospitals, and so on.

Yet even as a senator, he had become a moderate on race issues and was part of efforts to guarantee civil rights to African Americans. When Johnson assumed the presidency, he was heir to the commitment of the Kennedy administration to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ending segregation in public facilities. As a result of his personal leadership and lobbying with key senators, he forged a bipartisan coalition of northern and border-state Democrats and moderate Republicans. These senators offset a coalition of southern Democrats and right-wing Republicans, and a bill was passed. It made segregation by race illegal in public accommodations involved in interstate commerce—in practice this would cover all but the most local neighborhood establishments. The following year, civil rights activists turned to another issue: the denial of voting rights in the South. Since the 1890s, blacks had been denied access to voting booths by state laws that were administered in a racially discriminatory manner by local voting registrars.

These included (1) literacy tests which could be manipulated so that literate blacks would fail; (2) "good character" tests which required existing voters to vouch for new registrants and which meant, in practice, that no white would ever vouch for a black applicant; and (3) the "poll tax" which discriminated against poor people of any race. The poll tax was eliminated by constitutional amendment, which left the literacy test as the major barrier. In 1965, black demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, marching for voting rights were attacked by police dogs and beaten bloody in scenes that appeared on national television. Presidential Speech Archive In response to public revulsion, Johnson seized the opportunity to propose the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This piece of legislation provided for a suspension of literacy tests in counties where voting rates were below a certain threshold, which in practice covered most of the South. It also provided for federal registrars and marshals to enroll African American voters. The law was passed by Congress, and the results were immediate and significant. Black voter turnout tripled within four years, coming very close to white turnouts throughout the South.

Blacks entered the previously "lily white" Democratic Party, forging a biracial coalition with white moderates. Meanwhile, white conservatives tended to leave the Democratic Party, due to their opposition to Johnson's civil rights legislation and liberal programs. Many of these former Democrats joined the Republican Party that had been revitalized by Goldwater's campaign of 1964. The result was the development of a vibrant two-party system in southern states—something that had not existed since the 1850s. Even with these measures, racial tensions increased. In addition, the civil rights measures championed by the President were seen as insufficient to minority Americans; to the majority, meanwhile, they posed a threat. Between 1964 and 1968, race riots shattered many American cities, with federal troops deployed in the Watts Riots in Los Angeles as well as in the Detroit and Washington, D.C., riots. In Memphis in the summer of 1968, Martin Luther King Jr., one of the leaders of the civil rights movement, was gunned down by a lone assassin.

There were new civil disturbances in many cities, but some immediate good came from this tragedy: A bill outlawing racial discrimination in housing had been languishing in Congress, and King's murder renewed momentum for the measure. With Johnson determined to see it pass, Congress bowed to his will. The resulting law began to open up the suburbs to minority residents, though it would be several decades before segregated housing patterns would be noticeably dented. Click to view scrolling White House tape with transcript. Although the Great Society, the War on Poverty, and civil rights legislation all would have a measurable and appreciable benefit for the poor and for minorities, it is ironic that during the Johnson years civil disturbances seemed to be the main legacy of domestic affairs. Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission to inquire into the causes of this unrest, and the commission reported back that America had rapidly divided into two societies, "separate and unequal." It blamed inequality and racism for the riots that had swept American cities. Johnson rejected the findings of the commission and thought that they were too radical. By 1968, with his attention focused on foreign affairs, the President's efforts to fashion a Great Society had come to an end. Lyndon B. Johnson Essays Lyndon B.

Johnson: Life in Brief—Miller Center About the Administration On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas. The event thrust Lyndon Johnson into the presidency. A man widely considered to be one of the most expert and brilliant politicians of his time, Johnson would leave office a little more than five years later as one of the least popular Presidents in American history. The man who had risen from the poor Hill Country of Texas to become the acknowledged leader of the United States Senate and occupant of the Oval Office would return to Texas demoralized and discredited. He died four years later, a few hundred feet from the place of his birth. As a man, Lyndon Johnson was obsessed with his place in history, consumed by a voracious appetite for life, and often cast between emotional extremes. He was a natural politician, and to many people who knew him, he seemed larger than life.

As a President, Johnson revealed that he was even more complex and ambitious, unveiling a sweeping collection of legislative and social initiatives he called "The Great Society." Elected in his own right by a landslide victory in 1964, he seemed unsinkable but soon floundered amid the Vietnam War. Vietnam—perhaps the most divisive event in American life since the Civil War—polarized the country and transformed political, strategic, and moral debates. President Johnson was unable to devise a strategy for victory, withdrawal, or peace with honor. In 1968, facing strong opposition to his renomination, Johnson declined to seek a second term. He left to his successor the problems of Vietnam, racial unrest, and unresolved issues of income inequality and erratic economic performance. Education and Marriage The Johnson family had been in Texas for generations. Farmers and ranchers, they had helped to tame the state and had fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Lyndon's father had the gregarious gifts of a politician, and three years before Lyndon's birth, at the age of twenty-seven, he began serving as a Texas state representative. The elder Johnson, however, was less fortunate as a farmer and businessman.

During Lyndon's early teenage years, his father piled up enormous debts, lost the family farm, and spiraled into financial crisis that rarely relented the rest of his life. The experience affected Lyndon throughout his own life and likely contributed to his commitment to improving the lot of the poor. He did badly in school and was refused admission to college. After a brief period of doing odd jobs and getting into trouble, Johnson managed to enter Southwest Texas State Teachers College in 1927. He taught briefly, with a stint at a poor school in Cotulla, Texas, but his political ambitions had already taken shape. In 1931, he won an appointment as an aide to a congressman and left the teaching profession. The experience was electrifying: he had found his natural environment. He would not return to Texas full-time until 1969. In 1934, he met Claudia Alta Taylor, "Lady Bird," and the two were married three months later. She was a perfect balance for him: charming and refined where he was raw and boisterous. She also had family money, which the Johnsons would eventually use to build a broadcasting and real estate empire.

Fast Political Track In 1937, Johnson resigned as the state director of the National Youth Administration and won election to Congress, representing his home district as an ally of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was just twenty-eight years old. He was an activist congressman, bringing electricity and other improvements to his district, but in 1941, he lost his first bid for the U.S. Senate, being defeated in an expensive and controversial election by W. Lee "Pass the Biscuits, Pappy" O'Daniel. Johnson remained in the House, and after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt helped him win a commission in the Naval Reserve. On a tour of the southern Pacific, he flew one combat mission, and it provided an ironic moment in presidential history. Before takeoff, he left one B-26 bomber, the Wabash Cannonball, to use the restroom and on his return, boarded another plane, the Heckling Hare. During the bombing mission, the Heckling Hare was forced to run back to base, while the Wabash Cannonball crashed into the sea, killing all on board. Johnson received the prestigious Silver Star for his participation.

Later, when President Roosevelt insisted that members of Congress leave active service, Johnson returned to his duties in Washington. In 1948, he was finally elected to the Senate by winning the controversial Democratic primary by 87 votes. Embittered by alleged instances of voter fraud, his opponents thereafter derisively referred to him as "Landslide Lyndon."Once in the Senate, Johnson advanced rapidly. Within two years, he was the Democratic whip; then, when the Republicans won a majority in the Senate on President Eisenhower's coattails, he became minority leader. In 1955, he was elected majority leader and transformed the position into one of the most powerful posts in American government. He worked ceaselessly and is perhaps best known for passage of the watered-down Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first such measure in almost a century. He also pushed for America's entry into what would become known as the Space Race. By 1960—after two failed attempts at the vice presidential nomination—he set his sights on the White House. JFK and LBJ That year, however, belonged to John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Young, handsome, rich, and witty, the Senator from Massachusetts piled up one primary win after another. Despite Johnson's announcement of his own candidacy, Kennedy was nominated on the first ballot at the Democratic convention in Los Angeles. Facing a seasoned Republican contender in Vice President Richard Nixon, Kennedy turned to Johnson to bring political and geographical balance to the ticket. Johnson delivered the South—including several states that had voted Republican during the Eisenhower years—and the team of JFK and LBJ won the election by the smallest popular margin of the century. Although Johnson never seemed comfortable in the vice presidency, he headed the space program, oversaw a nuclear test ban treaty, and worked toward equal opportunity for members of racial minorities. He also publicly supported the young President's decision to send American military advisers to the Southeast Asian country of Vietnam, whose corrupt but friendly government was threatened by a Communist insurgency. Johnson was not, however, in Kennedy's inner circle and seemed frustrated by his lack of influence, particularly on legislative matters. Legislative and World Impact Presidential Speech Archive Johnson was only two cars behind Kennedy on the day the President was shot to death in Dallas. He was sworn in as President aboard Air Force One later that afternoon. A few days later, he spoke to a joint session of Congress.

Seizing on Kennedy's inaugural plea to "let us begin anew," he asked Congress to "let us continue." Over the next year, he endorsed the late President's programs even as he announced his own. He pushed for passage of Kennedy's tax cut and civil rights bill and declared a "War on Poverty." When he ran for election against the Republican conservative Barry Goldwater in late 1964, he won by the biggest popular vote margin in history. During his presidency, Johnson engineered the passage of the Medicare program, poured money into education and reconstruction of the cities, and pushed through three civil rights bills that outlawed discrimination against minorities in the areas of accommodations in interstate commerce, voting, and housing. But in the meantime, the conflict in Vietnam was intensifying. By 1965, the American "advisers" were a thing of the past as Johnson began an escalation of American commitment to more than 100,000 combat troops. Within three years, the number would swell to more than 500,000. As American casualties increased, an antiwar movement gathered momentum.

The North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front kept winning, even as Johnson poured more money, firepower, and men into the war effort. Ultimately, the President came to be identified personally with a war that seemed unwinnable. As a result, his popularity sagged drastically, dipping below 30 percent in approval ratings. Senator Eugene McCarthy, a Minnesota Democrat, announced that he would seek the Democratic nomination and did surprisingly well in the New Hampshire primary. President Kennedy's younger brother Robert also joined the race. On March 31, 1968, Johnson announced that he would neither seek nor accept the nomination. After a relatively short period in restless retirement, Lyndon Johnson died on January 22, 1973. His grave lies in a stand of live oaks along the Pedernales River at the LBJ Ranch. Lyndon B. Johnson Essays President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Vietnam War Disengagement Strategy By Stephen B. Young More than thirty-five years past the 1968 Tet Offensive provides an excellent vantage point from which to re-examine the alleged truths about the Vietnam War. One such ‘truth’ is that President Lyndon Baines Johnson, in sending U.S.

Marines ashore in March 1965, followed shortly thereafter by U.S. Army ground combat units, broke the strategic continuity of American involvement in Vietnam and, in so doing, paved the way for the U.S. forces’ ultimate defeat. But that theory cannot withstand dispassionate analysis. The American commitment to Vietnam was very much part of the overall U.S. Cold War strategy. As President Harry S. Truman said on June 27, 1950, at the beginning of the Korean War, the attack on Korea made it ‘plain beyond all doubt that communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war.’ Containment of such Communist expansion in Southeast Asia would remain the bedrock of U.S. national and military policy for the next 25 years. The Eisenhower administration approached nation building in South Vietnam in the classic terms of Cold War confrontation. An international alliance — the South East Asia Treaty Organization in the case of South Vietnam — was supposed to deter Communist forces from conventional aggression by threatening belligerent Communist regimes with conventional warfare, backed by a possible nuclear strike by the United States if the fighting got out of hand.

Then American money would prime the pump of economic development and ameliorate dire social conditions in the nations under Communist attack. American advisers would work with local governments and military units. In theory, successful nation building would defeat the Communists and forestall any American involvement in a conventional ground war. Read More in Vietnam Magazine Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!! American policy toward an independent South Vietnam first took shape in the late summer and early fall of 1954, after the Geneva Conference armistice agreement between French Union forces and Ho Chi Minh’s government created two states, North and South Vietnam. In a letter to South Vietnam’s new leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, dated October 1, 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower explained the rationale for his support of South Vietnam: ‘The purpose of this offer is to assist the Government of Vietnam in developing and maintaining a strong, viable state, capable of resisting attempted subversion or aggression through military means … .

Such a government would, I hope, be so responsive to the nationalist aspirations of its people, so enlightened in purpose and effective in performance, that it will be respected both at home and abroad and discourage any who might wish to impose a foreign ideology on your free people.’ The Kennedy administration sustained and even intensified this strategic approach to containment of Communist expansion in Vietnam. President John F. Kennedy responded belatedly to Hanoi’s 1959 decision to subvert South Vietnam by increasing the size and scope of American financial and advisory assistance to the South Vietnamese. But Kennedy and his advisers remained well within the conceptual limits of classic nation-building theory: America’s role was to provide South Vietnam with supplementary skills and resources to accelerate indigenous economic development, political mobilization by state structures and military self-reliance. National Security Action Memorandum 52, issued on May 11, 1961, set forth the Kennedy administration’s policy for South Vietnam, essentially affirming the previous Eisenhower policy. It stated, ‘The U.S.

objective and concept of operations stated in the report are approved: to prevent communist domination of South Vietnam; to create in that country a viable and increasingly democratic society, and to initiate, on an accelerated basis, a series of mutually supporting actions of a military, political, economic, psychological and covert character designed to achieve this objective.’ Later, President Richard M. Nixon’s program of ‘Vietnamization,’ under which American forces withdrew and the South Vietnamese increased their own war-fighting capacity, again invoked the theme of nation building, but only after many Americans had lost confidence in South Vietnam’s capacity to prevail in the long run against Hanoi. In between the Eisenhower administration’s programs and Nixon’s Vietnamization effort, an apparent aberration in American strategy occurred. Beginning in March 1965 — at the request of General William C. Westmoreland, the MACV commander — President Johnson committed to South Vietnam an American field army of two Marine and seven Regular Army divisions with appropriate logistic, air and naval support. Many analysts have been misled by this 1965 escalation of military force into concluding that it represented a change of U.S. strategy in Vietnam. Controversy then grew around the wisdom of this imputed innovation in America’s Cold War policy.

This new strategy was said to have resulted in South Vietnam’s defeat at Communist hands. But LBJ’s 1965 decision to escalate the force deployed in Vietnam did not signal a discontinuity in strategy, nor did it represent an Americanization of the war so that an acceptable victory over Hanoi could be obtained unilaterally by American arms. LBJ’s escalation of direct American participation in the war was a response to a prior escalation by Hanoi in 1964, in which North Vietnamese regular forces had been committed to battle in South Vietnam. Faced with the potential defeat of South Vietnam’s volunteer armed forces, Johnson authorized General Westmoreland to fight a limited war with American and allied combat units. Westmoreland was instructed to prevent the fall of South Vietnam as an independent nation-state governed by its own people and to secure its borders against further North Vietnamese incursions. In April 1965, when he acted on recommendations to use American air power against North Vietnam, President Johnson reiterated his reasons for that decision and for subsequent escalation of the war. In an address at Johns Hopkins University, he said: ‘Our objective is the independence of South Vietnam and its freedom from attack.

We want nothing for ourselves — only that the people of South Vietnam be allowed to guide their own country in their own way. We will do everything necessary to reach that objective, and we will do only what is absolutely necessary.’ Johnson’s strategic objective in South Vietnam, as articulated at Johns Hopkins, was the same one set forth previously by Kennedy in National Security Action Memorandum 52. In his April 1965 speech, Johnson limited himself to a defensive strategy of containment in Indochina. His limited goal was to keep North Vietnam from destroying South Vietnam’s capacity for self-defense, preserving its ‘independence and freedom from attack.’ Johnson never meant for American forces to win the Vietnam War by taking offensive action in the traditional sense. American soldiers were merely intended to act as guardians at the gate until the South Vietnamese could reconstitute their armed forces consistent with their collective national resolve. Two decisions made by Johnson in 1967 offer compelling evidence for interpreting his controversial escalation of the American role in the Vietnam War as a temporary expedient rather than as a new strategy for victory. First, he sent Ellsworth Bunker to South Vietnam as the new ambassador with private instructions to prepare for the disengagement of American forces.

Second, that summer he denied Westmoreland’s request for substantial augmentation of American combat forces for tactical use against Communist base areas inside South Vietnam. Johnson gave his instructions to Bunker in a private meeting between the two men. Both have since died, but Bunker once related to me his recollections of that meeting and told me how his subsequent decisions as the senior American official in South Vietnam had been shaped by Johnson’s directive to disengage American forces from Vietnam. After the war ended, I interviewed Bunker at his Vermont farmhouse about his experiences as American ambassador in South Vietnam from 1967 to 1973. I asked him, ‘By the way, why did Lyndon select you to go to Saigon?’ ‘That’s easy,’ Bunker replied. ‘Because of the Dominican Republic. I had gotten him out of the Dominican Republic and still accomplished his political objectives there.’ In the spring of 1965, Johnson had sent 25,000 American troops to the Dominican Republic to prevent pro-Castro elements from coming to power in the civil war that was about to start between right- and left-wing armed Dominican units.

Johnson had found it easy to send in American troops, but then his diplomats had had trouble arranging a political solution to the rivalries that had brought the country to the edge of chaos. Bunker found the negotiated solution Johnson desired, and the American troops came home. The call for Bunker to go to Saigon had come suddenly and unexpectedly. En route home from a conference in Buenos Aires, he had received a message that Secretary of State Dean Rusk wanted to see him. Rusk told Bunker: ‘The president is in Texas and wants to see you Tuesday morning on his return. But I forewarn you that he wants you to go to Vietnam.’ As scheduled, Bunker saw President Johnson alone in the Oval Office. The president quickly came to the point — ‘I want you to go to Vietnam,’ he said. ‘It’s the most important problem facing the country today, and I need you there.’ LBJ avoided specifics and focused on the mission he wanted Bunker to accomplish in South Vietnam. Johnson wanted to begin withdrawing American forces. To de-escalate without losing the struggle demanded that the expansion and training of the South Vietnamese army be accelerated so that it could take over more and more combat responsibilities.

As the South Vietnamese capability increased, Johnson believed the United States could withdraw units without risk of defeat. Simultaneously, LBJ wanted the South Vietnamese to accelerate the development of a participatory political structure, which would make the people completely responsible for their nation’s destiny. Read More in Vietnam Magazine Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!! Much has been written of Johnson’s decisions regarding the Vietnam War, much of it by commentators predisposed to criticize LBJ for one reason or another. Today it is generally believed that Johnson was bent on escalation and full-scale war, whereas Kennedy had been essentially a man of peace, seeking withdrawal from a military confrontation over the future of South Vietnam. According to this unflattering stereotype of LBJ, only in March of 1968 — after the Tet Offensive — was he finally dissuaded from a policy of escalation. It also has been said that, in a reassessment of the war precipitated by that Communist offensive, Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford and other ‘wise men’ prevailed on Johnson to abandon war for peace.

Contrary to that prevailing wisdom, Bunker said that by early 1967 President Johnson was already seeking a formula for de-escalation and eventual disengagement of American forces from Vietnam. Why he did not make such plans part of his public discussion of the war, only he knew. Today, with both Bunker and LBJ gone, I can do no more to verify what Bunker told me about President Johnson’s decisions than report his recollections of their conversation and demonstrate that every subsequent action taken by both men was consistent with those 1967 instructions. From the start of his service as ambassador in Saigon in 1967, Bunker set his mind on four goals. First, South Vietnam’s leadership had to be convinced that it was necessary to build a legitimate government reflecting the country’s political forces. Second, a successful pacification program should create a civil order of legal process in the rural areas, removing politically motivated armed violence from the lives of the ordinary people. Third, the South Vietnamese army must take over from American combat forces the task of keeping the large Communist fighting units at bay.

And fourth, the South Vietnamese government had to promote economic development to improve living conditions for its people and finance the continued struggle against the North. Bunker encountered no opposition to the policy of withdrawal from General Westmoreland. Westmoreland had accepted the new policies set in motion at the Guam conference in April 1967 regarding constitutional reform, presidential elections, rural pacification and upgrading South Vietnam’s armed forces. Westmoreland’s strategic posture in 1967 incorporated his prior understanding of American objectives to defend South Vietnam from outside attack. His famous 44-battalion request of June 1965 had been made not strategically — to change the fundamental parameters of American policy — but tactically, to confront an immediate threat of North Vietnamese escalation. As his 1965 concept of operations made clear, American units would not be introduced into combat to assume responsibility for a strategic offensive against Hanoi. Rather, they would, in three phases, blunt the enemy’s conventional attack, then clean out major Communist base and staging areas within South Vietnam and finally push Communist units out to South Vietnam’s borders with Laos and Cambodia.

Once those tasks were accomplished, as Westmoreland had implied in 1965, South Vietnamese forces would again carry the brunt of any continued combat with the Communists, and American combat units could disengage. Westmoreland’s ‘Commander’s Estimate of the Situation,’ submitted on March 26, 1965, had defined the American objectives in South Vietnam as ‘A. Cause the DRV [Democratic Republic of Vietnam] to cease its political and military support of the VC in SVN [South Vietnam]’ and ‘B. Enable an anti-Communist GVN [government of Vietnam] to survive so that ultimately it may defeat the VC insurgency inside SVN.’ Westmoreland developed his assessment of the war’s future evolution into a three-phase concept of operations. Phase I would employ the initial reinforcements to prevent the loss of South Vietnam and halt the losing trend by the end of 1965. Phase II would employ additional U.S. and allied forces during the first half of 1966 to destroy enemy forces operating in high priority areas of South Vietnam.

Phase III would require all allied forces to work in tandem to deny the enemy use of base areas within South Vietnam and to destroy all enemy forces capable of massing within the country. In mid-1965, Westmoreland expected Phase III to be completed by the end of 1967 — at which point American allied forces could begin to withdraw from South Vietnam as that country’s government became able to establish and maintain internal order and to defend its borders. Bunker’s arrival in South Vietnam coincided with military operations leading up to Phase III of Westmoreland’s original war plan. Under those circumstances, it was not hard for Bunker to work with Westmoreland in planning for the next phase — as yet unannounced — when American troops would begin to withdraw. In his spring 1967 force augmentation requests to President Johnson, General Westmoreland indicated that American forces could be withdrawn when Hanoi’s aggressive capabilities inside South Vietnam had been permanently nullified. Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., in November 1967, Westmoreland laid before the public his concept of withdrawal-as-victory. Few took notice of his prescription at the time.

Westmoreland further predicted that American forces would begin to withdraw from South Vietnam in 1969, as in fact they did. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had visited Saigon in July 1967. Seeking to improve South Vietnam’s military might, General Westmoreland presented a series of proposals to strengthen Saigon’s regular forces and improve South Vietnam’s less well-equipped provincial guards and village militia. Quarterly reviews would be instituted to measure progress against planned objectives and to ensure that course corrections were made as needed. Westmoreland would involve the South Vietnamese Joint General Staff in preparation of the combined campaign plan for 1968, which set forth specific goals for each military unit engaged in the war. The proposals were the first results of Bunker’s effort to turn the war over to the South Vietnamese. Secretary of Defense McNamara stood behind those proposals. He told the South Vietnamese leaders that their future would be better secured over the long run by improvements in the performance of their forces in combat than by reliance on American fighting power. McNamara delivered more significant news to Ambassador Bunker and General Westmoreland: American Reserve units would not be called into service to fight the Vietnam War.

The limits of American involvement had clearly been reached, and President Johnson had decided to authorize only a modest increase in American forces deployed in South Vietnam. Westmoreland’s requests for significant force augmentation were denied. President Johnson wanted no further escalation. On August 3, 1967, the American force ceiling was officially raised to 525,000 men, less than General Westmoreland’s minimum request of the previous spring. This little-noticed presidential decision is perhaps the best evidence on record that Johnson had been quite serious about finding a way out of the war without using more American forces. Johnson’s decision during the summer of 1967 to limit American participation in fighting against Hanoi effectively prevented the United States from achieving a conventional victory in the Vietnam War. The president’s decision not to give Westmoreland enough troops to more quickly grind up Hanoi’s regulars and clean out enemy base areas inside South Vietnam increased Americans’ frustration with the conflict. But both of those decisions were consistent with the strategic direction President Johnson had earlier given to Ambassador Bunker. America’s victory or defeat in the war would be determined by the South Vietnamese.

President Johnson’s unwillingness to commit additional troops to the war was welcomed by Hanoi’s senior strategist, Vo Nguyen Giap. He believed that Hanoi’s strategy of attrition was clearly beginning to achieve results. During the summer of 1967, Giap wrote an article published in English as ‘The Big Victory, the Great Task,’ wherein he presciently concluded: ‘At present, the United States does not have enough troops to meet Westmoreland’s requirements … . America’s economic and military resources, although great, are not boundless.’ Giap then set in motion preparations for the massive offensive scheduled to take place during the Tet holiday in early 1968. Perhaps the most appropriate way for observers and historians to phrase the basic inquiry about Vietnam is not ‘Did America’s strategy work?’ but rather ‘Was American confidence in the South Vietnamese well-placed?’ The proper question stresses nation building more than conventional war-fighting techniques. If the second question is the more relevant, then responsibility for the war’s outcome rested with America’s civilian political leadership, which alone had to judge whether or not to lend support to an allied nation.

Even a cursory survey of the record indicates that American military operations were successful in achieving the limited nation-building goals established by policymakers. In 1972, an invasion force of 22 North Vietnamese divisions was defeated on South Vietnamese battlefields through the combined application of American air power and South Vietnamese ground operations. Guerrilla forces supporting the Communist effort within South Vietnam had by then collapsed, and the South Vietnamese population had been mobilized in every village, town and city to support an elected government in Saigon. American forces withdrew from South Vietnam when North Vietnam had yet to win the war. North Vietnam’s attack against South Vietnam did not succeed until some time after the withdrawal of U.S. troops. As Johnson’s personal representative, Bunker went to Saigon in 1967 and began the process that led to a systematic phase-out and withdrawal of American combat forces. When Bunker left the country in May 1973, all American combat forces had long since been withdrawn. South Vietnam was defending itself and could boast an economy showing resilience in the midst of war. And the Vietnamese Communists had signed a peace treaty pledging to respect South Vietnam’s autonomy and independence.

Where his predecessors as ambassador had encountered frustration and failure, Bunker had succeeded. He had been a superb choice. Read More in Vietnam Magazine Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!! The article was written by Stephen B. Young and originally published in the February 1998 issue of Vietnam Magazine.

Question: Which former US President is often referred to as LBJ?
Answer: Lyndon Baines Johnson