The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [220]
Further, Clifford found dire estimates of the effect on public opinion of each renewed escalation, and prognoses of budget increases of $2.5 billion in 1968 and $10 billion in 1969. He saw the national investment in Vietnam draining our disposable strength from Europe and the Middle East and the likelihood that the more we Americanized the war, the less South Vietnam would do for itself. He became convinced that the “military course we were pursuing was not only endless but hopeless.” The war had reached a dead end. Not a man to sink his high-powered talents and polished reputation in a failing cause, Clifford set himself to dislodge the President from his frozen stance. Against the “men in a dream” of the inner group, he was one against eight, but he had realities on his side.
Political forces were aiding. Anti-war sentiment had mounted against the Democrats because they were Johnson’s party. The war had become such an albatross, Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland told Johnson’s speech writer, that “Any reasonably good Republican could clobber me if the election were held today.” Tydings’ advisers told him he could save himself only by attacking the President, and though he would not do that, he would have to “speak out against the war. It’s dragging the country down and the Democrats along with it.” He named several other Senators who reported the same situation in their states. It was confirmed by the California State Democratic Committee, which sent a telegram to the President signed by 300 members saying that in their judgment “The only action which can avert major Democratic party losses in this state in 1968 is an immediate all-out effort to secure a non-military settlement of the Vietnam war.” Polls at this time showed the incumbent President trailing any one of six potential Republican opponents in the coming election.
An even stronger signal was Walter Cronkite’s broadcast of 27 February, upon his return from the “burned, blasted and weary land” still smoking from the Tet offensive. He described the new refugees, estimated at 470,000, living in “unbelievable squalor” in sheds and shanties and added to the 800,000 already officially listed as refugees. On the political front, he said, “Past performance gives no confidence that the Vietnamese government can cope with its problems.” He said the Tet offensive required the realization “that we should have had all along,” that negotiations had to be just that, “not the dictation of peace terms. For now it seems more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in stalemate.” The only “rational way out” was to negotiate our way out, but “not,” he warned again, “as victors.”
The nation’s “uncle” had rendered judgment and “the shock waves,” said George Christian, the President’s press secretary, “rolled through the Government” up to the top. “If I’ve lost Walter,” the President commented, “I’ve lost middle America.”
A week later Senator Fulbright announced that the Senate’s reinvestigation of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution had shown it to have been obtained by “misrepresentation,” and it was therefore “null and void.” News that the President was considering Westmoreland’s request for 200,000 men and had agreed with the Joint Chiefs on a call-up of 50,000 Reserves for strategic back-up leaked to the press, evoking the expected outcry. In dissatisfaction with the war, the public, if accurately reflected by press comment, was readier than the Administration to let go in Southeast Asia, and readier to acknowledge, according to Time, “that victory in Vietnam—or even a favorable settlement—may simply be beyond the grasp of the world’s greatest power.” That thought marked a rite