212 e lusive v ictories
be worse, with a tragic revival of American isolationism that the world
could not aff ord.
Johnson was nonetheless determined that Vietnam not defi ne his
presidency. The president intended to make his greatest mark on
domestic policy. He envisioned a broad legislative program to provide
health care for the elderly, secure voting rights for African Americans,
alleviate poverty, and rebuild cities—in short, to outdo even the New
Deal by erecting what he would call the Great Society. It was an ambi-
tious agenda, one made possible only by the remarkable prosperity of
the United States since the Second World War. But even American
affl uence had its limits. If he sought to mobilize the nation for full-scale
war, moderate conservatives in Congress, already opposed to the Great
Society, would use the cost of the war to insist he curtail his domestic
program. Vital though Vietnam might be, Johnson did not intend to
let it interfere with the completion of the domestic political project that
would be his enduring legacy.
Sliding into Intervention
Lyndon Johnson led the United States into war in Vietnam through a
series of small decisions and policy shifts between early 1964 and
summer 1965. Ready to move ahead with his domestic agenda at the
beginning of 1965, the president continued to fi nd himself beset by the
dire predicament of the Saigon government. He escalated American
military intervention in Vietnam, fi rst through a sustained bombing
campaign against North Vietnam and then with the introduction of
ground forces in South Vietnam. Although his decisions, especially
the authorization of major troop reinforcements, occasioned extensive
discussion within the administration, the outcome was foreordained.
Th e president’s actions expressed the assumptions that drove American
foreign policy at the time. But Johnson had full discretion over
whether to take Congress and the American people into his confi -
dence. Political calculations led him to minimize the Americanization
of the war.
In a brief exchange of fi re between North Vietnamese torpedo boats
and a U.S. Navy destroyer in international waters in the Tonkin Gulf
on August 2, 1964, the Johnson administration saw an opportunity to