LBJ, Humphrey, & Vietnam

In listening to some of the mid- and late-1968 LBJ phone calls, I’ve been struck at how much more hard-line the President appears. Johnson never had a particularly sophisticated view of international affairs, but the sort of commentary evident in the call below was rare.

The excerpt is from a conversation with New Jersey governor Richard Hughes, who had just written to the President to urge that he consider a bombing pause in Vietnam. LBJ brusquely dismissed the request, implying that halting the bombing could be equated with “mass murder.”

The clip also previews the ferocity with which LBJ would oppose efforts of Hubert Humphrey would have to distance himself from the President’s Southeast Asia policy.

The clip is below; draft transcript below the fold.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Now, I have gone over all this [on the need for bombing] with the Vice President. I told him that I don’t have any voice over what he says or does, that he ought to take the position that he believes in. And if for some reason he doesn’t believe in what we have done, or what we’re doing, or as a candidate he needs to change his position, he ought to feel at liberty so far as I am concerned to do so. He ought to just take a position that “this I believe”—and then stay with it.

I told him: however, that he must not confuse Hanoi or our allies, both of whom are watching every move we make, with the feeling that he was speaking for anyone other than himself as a candidate, and not as an administration spokesman.

Now, the facts are, Dick, that we are anticipating an attack at any time. We are trying to abort it. We consider it to be a most serious one, as the North Vietnamese efforts to expand their military capabilities continue unabated.

All the indicators of the movements are at very high levels. The watercraft activity has reached a record level. We met on it most of today, and there are more than 1200 watercraft [that] were sighted south of the 19th parallel, and that is more than four times the weekly average since my speech [announcing his withdrawal from the campaign] of March 31st. The truck sightings were 25 percent above the weekly average since March the 31st, and the pilots’ reports on trucks destroyed are 40 percent above the average.

Now, I just could not, for a political reason, say to those men—and certainly some of them are my own sons [in-law]—that I’m abandoning you in this hour because I’ve got a convention coming.

DICK HUGHES: That satisfies me, Mr. President.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: And General Eisenhower said today to the Republicans that you must not do that—that’s murder. But that would be mass murder by a commander-in-chief.

HUGHES: Yes, sir.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: And I’m shocked that the Vice President considered it for a moment. He told me it was pure politics. And that caused me to think a good deal less of him, because I just think a man that plays with human lives because of political things, it’s just too dangerous.

HUGHES: That’s right.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: He said well, he just, frankly, had to shimmy. Well, I don’t think he’s ever going to get [Eugene] McCarthy. And I don’t think that when Nixon is nominated, that we’ll be confronted with as much pressure as he has now, when they look at Nixon and Humphrey.

But if he never carried a state, it would be terrible for me to say to [his son-in-law] Chuck Robb tonight, who has had killings every day for 90 days—his company’s less than half strength—that “I’m going to pull the air cover off of ya’, and tomorrow, instead of facing 70 trucks, you’ll face an extra 30.”

Now, [JCS chairman] General [Earle] Wheeler talked to me late into the night about it, and he was shocked at the Vice President’s proposal. And I’m afraid these professors are just getting him off.

Now, we have agreed with the Soviet Union that if they would give us assurance that this traffic would not be increased and speeded up, and they would not take advantage of our men, that we would be glad to let them underwrite it.

We’ve also said to Hanoi that if you will close your infiltration, and not accelerate it, that we will be glad to do it.

But in neither—they want something for nothing, and that I will not give them.

HUGHES: I don’t blame you, Mr. President, and I’m completely satisfied about this. I just was thinking about the possibility of a substitute for saturation bombing of the northern part of South Vietnam, if that would close them off. But if it’s not militarily possible, and you’ve got these men’s lives on your conscience, sir, I’m completely satisfied, and I withdraw the suggestion.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: God bless you, Dick.

HUGHES: I’m just worried about the outcome—unless a new look, unless this man [Humphrey] gets a new look, something here . . .

Now, for instance, these people are just literally raising hell up here. They’re strange-looking people, they’re young people, some of ‘em have got beards on. They’re intellectuals—they’re the people that . . . We just can’t carry this state unless there’s some little new, some new twist.

[Break.]

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Now, Dick, the way I see this: this government is in great danger, as the world is in great danger. I believe the communist international conspiracy is at work every hour.

The Soviet Union—[Aleksey] Kosygin wrote me two or three weeks ago that we stop the bombing, in return for nothing. We wrote him back and told him that we would be glad to stop the bombing if he would give us assurances it wouldn’t wipe out our men. But no commander-in-chief could take the gun away from his man while other folks assaulted him.

HUGHES: You’re right, Mr. President.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Then he went to India, and he put the same pressure on. Then he came to our two networks in this country, and they started putting the pressure on. Then he got two or three spokesmen in the Senate—like McCarthy and this damn little Stephen Young, who has speeches every day on the subject. Then he got Javits—Mr. [Jacob] Javits and Mr. [Thruston] Morton and Mr. [Mark] Hatfield. And they made speeches. Then the next thing I knew, the professors came in and got it in the Vice President’s speech. Then the next thing I knew, they started going to the civilians in the State Department.

All this load has come on me in a matter of hours before a deadly struggle. And what they’re asking me to do is to be the biggest boob of our time, just as the communists get ready to hit us.

They want me to do what I did at Tet—take a vacation. Let our men accept a Tet holiday. And as I do it, and call off my bombing, let them hit me full length. And I just . . . I just . . . I just don’t see it. And Rusk doesn’t see it. He comes full in his press conference today.

Although God, I want to be a hero, and I want to get the war over. I’ve got two boys in it, and both of them are in combat every day. One of ‘em has lost full half of his men. I just can’t do any more than I’m doing that I know of.

HUGHES: Mr. President, number one, I’m satisfied. Number two, I withdraw the letter. And number two [sic], God bless you. You stay with us.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Good-bye.