Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [56]
A few weeks later, CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite traveled to Vietnam. Returning to the United States, he aired a special commentary on February 27 that may have been the single most devastating moment for the Johnson administration in the long years of the Vietnam War. Cronkite soberly concluded that we were “mired in stalemate” and needed to negotiate with the Viet Cong. After the broadcast aired, the President was reported to have said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.” It was undoubtedly true.
On March 31, the President appeared before television cameras for an address from the Oval Office. He talked about making 1968 “the year of decision in South Vietnam—the year that brings, if not final victory or defeat, at least a turning point in the struggle.” By then there had been so many turning points, so many decisive moments, so many tides turned that it seemed to ring hollow. LBJ then uttered words that deliberately had not been included in his teleprompter text, surprising everyone but those closest to him. “With America’s sons in the fields far away, with America’s future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world’s hopes for peace in the balance every day,” he said, “I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office—the presidency of your country. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”29
The war in Vietnam had been a test of political wills. But it was not our enemy’s will that had been broken. The turmoil of the year had left the Johnson administration in ruin and American policy on the war uncertain. It also abetted a most unlikely political comeback.
PART IV
In Nixon’s Arena
Provence, France
AUGUST 8, 1974
The French seaport of Saint-Tropez was the landing site for Operation Dragoon during World War II, where the Allies began their drive to liberate southern France from Nazi control. A decade later the town again achieved notoriety as the setting for a film that launched the career of actress Brigitte Bardot. With its pristine beaches and skies as clear and blue as the nearby Mediterranean, it soon became a haven for European glitterati.
If there was anything the Rumsfelds were not, it was part of the glitterati. We passed through the town’s narrow, winding roads in an aging but resilient maroon Volvo.1 Our three young children were squeezed together in the backseat, and our trunk was stuffed with bags and suitcases. Our destination was Grimaud, a small, sleepy village where Ambassador André de Staercke, the distinguished dean of the North Atlantic Council, had a vacation home.
While most Americans were transfixed by the Watergate scandal we were thousands of miles away from those epic events. As the U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, I had to fly back to Washington for meetings periodically. But for the most part Joyce and I were removed from the day-to-day Watergate developments that spring and summer. We were living in Belgium, where the news on TV was in either French or Flemish, and I didn’t speak either language. Two of our children were in neighborhood Belgian schools, and I couldn’t even read their report cards. We received English newspapers, of course—the International Herald Tribune and some British papers—but we weren’t able to keep up to speed with events in Washington as one would expect today with the internet and cable TV.
Instead, during that period I had been deeply involved in helping alleviate a dispute teetering on the verge of war between two