Vietnam

THE WAR IN Vietnam caused domestic political division in the United States more profound than at any time since the American Civil War. Presidential candidates adopted policy positions on Vietnam in 1964, 1968, and 1972. Unhappy memories of the war would continue to echo in American politics a generation later. Reappearing in 2004, Vietnam as a campaign issue encoded anxiety about U.S. military involvement in an intractable war of counterinsurgency in Iraq and resentment of those who openly protested against war. Although U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam began with transfers of military aid to the colonial government of French Indochina and, later, the government of South Vietnam by the Eisenhower administration, most Americans would became aware of the war only with the introduction of thousands of U.S. military advisors in 1963 by John Kennedy's administration and subsequent larger military deployments by Lyndon Johnson's administration.

Vietnam was, at best, a secondary campaign issue in the 1964 presidential election between incumbent Democratic President Lyndon Johnson, and Republican challenger Barry Goldwater. Ironically, it was Johnson who was positioned as the peace candidate against the bellicose Goldwater. Among the statements made by Goldwater that helped Johnson win a landslide were expressions of regret that the United States had not used nuclear weapons to support the French military at the decisive battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

Although the peace movement gained momentum in 1967, as U.S. troop deployments in South Vietnam reached 500,000 and the U.S. bomb tonnage dropped on North Vietnam exceeded that in the Pacific theater of World War II, public opinion remained largely supportive of the war effort. The bloody Tet Offensive in early 1968, exposed the Pentagon's claims of success against the insurgency as false. Declining public support for the war was matched by declining support among Democrats for Johnson as their presidential candidate. Peace candidate Eugene McCarthy's unexpectedly strong performance in the March 12, 1968, New Hampshire Democratic Primary, receiving 42 percent of the vote to the president's 49 percent, caused a humiliated Johnson to announce on March 31 that he would no longer seek re-election.

With that decision, the 1968 Democratic nomination became a struggle between pro-war candidate Vice [Page 820]President Hubert H. Humphrey, and peace candidates McCarthy and Robert R Kennedy. The charismatic Kennedy “threw his hat into the ring” following the New Hampshire Primary, but was assassinated before the tumultuous Chicago Democratic National Convention that gave Humphrey the nomination. The Republican National Convention in Miami that gave Richard M. Nixon his party's nomination was more orderly, but protests outside the convention presented the public with print and televised images of chaotic youthful protest and police violence comparable to those captured in Chicago.

Vietnam War protestors at the March on Washington in 1967. The war's political effects could be felt into the 2004 election.

Vietnam was the dominant political issue at that historical moment, but voters were unable to treat the 1968 general election as a referendum on the war because Humphrey and Nixon's positions on the war were too similar. Both supported Vietnamization, which meant the gradual reduction in the numbers of U.S. soldiers deployed and their replacement by U.S.-trained and equipped South Vietnamese troops. The only differences were that Humphrey preferred negotiating a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops and Nixon believed the aerial bombardment of North Vietnam should not end without evidence of reduction of attacks by the Viet Cong. Other issues determined the outcome of the election. Nixon defeated Humphrey and third-party candidate George Wallace in a close election.

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