>> Jim Lindsay: Political pundits love to talk about how foreign policy helps or hurts
a presidential candidate.
But the more interesting question may be, will foreign policy break a presidency once
a candidate makes it to the White House?
I’m Jim Lindsay, and this is Lessons Learned.
Our topic today is Lyndon B. Johnson’s announcement on March 31, 1968, that he would not seek
reelection as president.
If history had played out differently, LBJ would have been running for his first term
as president in 1968.
But the shots fired in Dallas on November 22, 1963 changed everything.
Less than two hours after John F. Kennedy’s death, LBJ was sworn in as America’s thirty-sixth
president.
LBJ inherited JFK’s immense popularity.
He served out the final year of Kennedy’s term and was elected president in November
1964 in a landslide.
LBJ won 61 percent of the popular vote, the highest vote share won by any president ever.
LBJ put his political popularity to use.
The list of landmark laws that he pushed through Congress as part of his Great Society effort
is breathtaking.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed major forms of racial discrimination.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which abolishes practices that prevented African-Americans
and other minorities from exercising their right to vote.
Medicare, which provided health insurance to the elderly.
The list goes on.
If LBJ is judged solely by what he achieved on domestic issues, he may have been America’s
most successful president.
But many Americans remember LBJ’s presidency for an entirely different issue: Vietnam.
When LBJ took office in November 1963, the United States had 16,000 troops in South Vietnam.
Over the next several years, LBJ greatly expanded the number of U.S. troops in South Vietnam
and changed their mission from advising the South Vietnamese to fighting the North Vietnamese
and Viet Cong.
By the end of 1967, the United States had nearly 500,000 troops in South Vietnam.
As the war escalated between 1965 and 1967, so too did criticism of America’s involvement.
Protests grew on college campuses.
The chant “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”
entered the American political lexicon.
But doubts about Vietnam went beyond the young.
By 1967, polls showed that a majority of Americans thought that the war was a mistake.
In November 1967, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota announced that he would challenge
LBJ for the Democratic nomination.
McCarthy’s challenge might have been a footnote to history if not for the Tet Offensive that
began in late January 1968.
Images of fighting on the streets of Saigon contradicted the Johnson administration’s
rosy talk of progress in Vietnam.
On March 12, 1968, McCarthy received a stunning 42 percent of the vote in New Hampshire’s
Democratic Primary.
LBJ still won, but the political damage had been done.
Four days later the Democrat whom LBJ most feared, Senator Robert Kennedy, announced
that he too was running for president.
Worn down by the stress of Vietnam and faced with tough challenges from within his own
party, LBJ decided not to seek reelection.
He announced his decision at the tail end of a nationwide address on March 31, 1968:
>> President Lyndon B. Johnson: 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, 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.
>> Jim Lindsay: What’s the lesson of LBJ’s decision not to run for reelection?
Just this: foreign policy may not make a presidency, but it certainly can break one.
LBJ is hardly alone on this score.
Korea ate away at Harry Truman’s popularity.
Jimmy Carter’s presidency faltered over the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan.
The Iran-Contra affair marred Ronald Reagan’s second term.
Escalating violence in Iraq did the same thing to George W. Bush.
We are now in the midst of another presidential campaign.
President Obama hopes to win reelection.
Events in Iraq, North Korea, and Afghanistan may go a long way toward determining whether
he succeeds.
So here is a question to consider: Why are presidents so eager to pursue an activist
foreign policy when history suggests that it so often hurts them politically?
I encourage you to weigh in with your answer on my blog, The Water’s Edge.
You can find it at CFR.org.
I’m Jim Lindsay.
Thank you for watching this installment of Lessons Learned.