It should be noted that Johnson’s key advisors, notably McNamara and
Rusk, also refused to reconsider their initial assumptions about Soviet and
Chinese intervention. Berman, Lyndon Johnson’s War , 108–9. Th is suggests
the danger in retaining for too long key aides who have invested so deeply
in certain assumptions that they are beyond reassessment.
Berman, Lyndon Johnson’s War , 41, 103, 25.
Turner, Lyndon Johnson’s Dual War , 4–6.
Turner, Lyndon Johnson’s Dual War , 140–41.
Johnson’s own defensiveness and doubts about whether he as a southern
president could ever get fair treatment from the elite media worked against
his fi tful eff orts to improve press relations. Turner, Lyndon Johnson’s Dual
Wa r , 117.
Turner, Lyndon Johnson’s Dual War , 4.
Dallek, “Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam,” 159–60.
Th ese included several former senior military offi cers such as Generals
James Gavin, Matthew Ridgeway, and David Shoup, whose arguments
that the war was unwinnable and not in American interests gave con-
siderable legitimacy to the antiwar movement. On the infl uence of
retired offi cers who opposed the war, see Rob Buzzanco, “Th e American
Military’s Rationale against the Vietnam War,” Political Science Quarterly
101 (4) (1986): 559–76.
He contended that Johnson had shifted war aims from those set by his
brother, which he had helped establish. Robbins, Th is Time We Win , 53.
Schandler, Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam , 54–56; Berman, Lyndon Johnson’s
Wa r , 73, 78. Even before the new targets were approved, the administra-
tion had authorized strikes on all but 39 of 242 targets recommended by
the JCS. Berman, Lyndon Johnson’s War , 71.
Schandler, America in Vietnam , 133–35.
Berman, Lyndon Johnson’s War , 27, 60.
Th e president closely followed public opinion polls and tried to infl uence
both question wording and, through the timing of his public statements
and other actions, the results. Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro,
“Lyndon Johnson, Vietnam, and Public Opinion: Rethinking Realist
Th eory of Leadership,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 29 (3) (September
1999): 592–616, esp. 606–7.
Berman, Lyndon Johnson’s War , 60, 85–86. Th e administration sought
to infl uence both the poll results and how they were interpreted by the
media, with very little to show for its troubles. See Bruce E. Altschuler,
“Lyndon Johnson and the Public Polls,” Public Opinion Quarterly 50 (3)
(1986): 285–99.
Robbins, Th is Time We Win , 44, 47–48. On the three-way split in opin-
ion, see Jacobs and Shapiro, “Lyndon Johnson, Vietnam, and Public
Opinion,” 610.
