s taying the c ourse 239approval for the president’s overall job performance. In summer 1967,
as popular disenchantment with the war increased, 65 percent of Amer-
icans in a Gallup poll said the administration was not being truthful
about the war, a vivid demonstration of the magnitude of the credibility
problem. Th at August the president’s approval rating bottomed out at
39 percent, with 54 percent disapproving of his conduct of the war; in
October, a Harris poll showed that backing for the war itself declined
to 58 percent, a new low and down from 72 percent in July.
Hidden within the overall numbers was a sharp division within the
public that mirrored the split within elite policy circles. On one wing
were doves who believed the United States should either withdraw
unilaterally from Vietnam (still few in number by late 1967) or halt
the bombing of North Vietnam and negotiate a prompt exit from the
confl ict. At the other end of the spectrum stood a larger fraction of the
public in favor of fi ghting the war more vigorously. A sizable percentage
of the public endorsed hawkish positions that frightened administration
decision makers: in April 1967 just over a quarter of those polled favored
the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam, while the following December
nearly half endorsed a ground invasion of North Vietnam. Sandwiched
between these two camps was the smallest group, Americans who
backed the administration’s war policy.
Th e administration debated internally how best to present its case
but could not settle on a single theme. Veering from a principled
defense of freedom wherever threatened, to America’s own self-defense,
to the need to fi ght a small war to avert a much larger one, the incon-
sistent messages did not make things clearer to the American people.
Citizens puzzled, too, over why, if the war mattered so much, they were
not being asked to make greater sacrifi ces. Th e president’s conviction
that support for the war would collapse if the price became too great
clashed directly with popular expectations that any confl ict worth the
cost ought to impose a price on everyone. Th e public also voiced
confusion over the actual war policy, a predictable consequence of the
administration’s eff ort to strike a delicate balance between being fi rm
without becoming too bellicose.
Meanwhile, Johnson found it impossible to discredit the antiwar
movement. It continued to gather steam, staging larger demonstrations
in 1967 that attracted considerable media attention. Th e president and