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Shadows of Vietnam Lyndon Johnson’s Wars by Frank E. Vandiver |
" . . . the work of an able, thoughtful scholar with an original point of view and excellent narrative gifts. . . . an insightful reading of the thought processes of that mystery wrapped in a riddle who went by the name of Lyndon Johnson."—Fred I. Greenstein, Princeton University
It is still not popular to be sympathetic to Lyndon Johnson. But in Shadows of Vietnam historian Frank E. Vandiver uses the trademark touch of biographer’s empathy he perfected in works on Stonewall Jackson and John J. Pershing to illuminate the shadow over President Lyndon Johnson’s struggle with the Vietnam crisis.
In a thorough account of the period from late 1967 to LBJ’s decision not to run for re-election, Vandiver offers a sweeping synthesis of the scholarship on Johnson’s war presidency, along with new insights culled from numerous and extensive interviews and immersion in the primary documents housed in archives around the country. This controversial presentation proposes to show what Johnson knew, felt, feared, and tried to do, thus offering a new view of Johnson—as he likely saw himself.
From the day Johnson stepped into the presidency, he lived in the shadow of Vietnam. With all his skills as a hard-nosed politician, he should have been successful at waging war. On the home front, with his War on Poverty, he was successful. Yet in Vietnam he failed, in epic proportions. This is the paradox that frames Vandiver’s riveting examination of one of America’s most controversial presidents, mired in the nation’s most controversial war.
Vandiver provides an unusual combination of politico-military analysis with on-the-scene battle narratives, dramatically juxtaposing for the reader the reality in Vietnam with the perceptions of it in Washington.
Addressing long-standing questions of whether the White House had become isolated from public opinion and whether Johnson was hardened to the voices raised against the war, Vandiver shows the president as a man who agonized, raged, and grew in response to crises in Vietnam and at home. He probes the shifting honesty of the president’s men on the Vietnam situation and identifies a playbill of White House villains who, over the years, have often been cast as heroes.
He argues that Johnson entered the war honestly—fully believing that Russia and China were serious threats and convinced by his Tuesday Lunch advisers that aiding South Vietnam was essential to maintaining America’s international reputation—but without confidence in his foreign policy role. In the end Vandiver concludes that, tragically, had Johnson had the faith in his war instincts that he had on other fronts, he might have achieved his goals, emerging at last from the shadow of Vietnam.
FRANK E. VANDIVER is chairman of the board of the Mosher Institute for International Policy Studies, Texas A&M University. He has published numerous works on American military history, including the critically acclaimed biographies Mighty Stonewall and Black Jack: The Life and Times of John J. Pershing, both published by Texas A&M University Press.
Shadows of Vietnam
ISBN 0-89096-747-4
$29.95
LC 96-50121. 6 1/8x9 1/4. 432 pp.
22 b&w photos. Map. Bib. Index.
American History. Political Science. Presidential Studies.
Publication Date: April 1997.
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