22 March 2006 - 8:16am
"W" and LBJ - like Vietnam
It is tempting to compare Iraq to Vietnam - the image of the United States bogged down without a clear military objective, save for pacification.
By his second term in office, President Lydon Johnson (LBJ) had become mired in Vietnam. In 2006 with an all-volunteer army, versus 1966 with a draft, the protest over US military involvement overseas is less strident.
And yet, George W. Bush is beginning to sound a lot like Lyndon. Most surprising is that at his press conference yesterday, Bush went so far as to suggest it might take a subsequent Administration to get the US out of Iraq.
When Johnson's ratings in the polls crashed, so did the rest of his Presidency. It would be fanciful to say that Bush, despite his low numbers, is as embattled as LBJ once was.
Nevertheless, it isn't good news for a President to say that success is so far away, as we have to wait for another Administration to sort things out. Ike won the 1952 election over Korea, Nixon (to some extent) won it over Vietnam, and Carter lost, in part, because of the Iran hostages. What the voters perceived was an Administration that could not get out of Korea, Vietnam, or get the hostages back.
During World War Two, President Roosevelt did not campaign for his fourth term by saying the "next Administration" would win the war - although that is actually how it turned out.
Leaders are there to offer vision and hope and to lead. Responsibility to extricate the United States from Iraq is now passed onto some faceless generals. Generals such as Ike may have been popular, but again to FDR, despite his failing health, seemed to be at the helm.
But the United States foreign policy, especially as regards Iraq, seems to be a rudderless ship. The President says he does not know where the shoals are or where the current is taking him, and a new captain will steer us home.
It is too bad, like Johnson, that he has become a prisoner of his own policies and has come to believe his own ever-shifting rhetoric.
We ask, "why are we in Iraq?" What led us there? Who led us there! What objectives? Were they ever truly articulated? Were they ever attainable, and worst of all, is Bush going to be able to do more than flay around? What will it accomplish to wait around? Can only the next Administration dig us out?
Right now, there is no true vision at the top ... and as history teaches us, to put it off to another Administration merely ensure that the current Administration will fail and been seen as a failure.
Like for Lyndon, Bush may have just turned a corner and stepped off a cliff.
November will tell.
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Comments
it's 1866, and we know how that turned out.
What kills the comparison to Johnson is that Bush is term-limited and thus has no need to worry about his re-election chances. 2007 will be consumed with the designation of his successor, and 2008 will be consumed with the attempt to fulfill that succession. All he has to do is tread water for the rest of this year, then kick back outside of the spotlight and let everyone else squabble.
Very true that the Constitution would have allowed Johnson to run for a second term in his own right. He chose Hubert Humphrey who dared not criticize the war, for it would have besmirched the name of his patron (Johnson). So Hubert looked like a Johnson apologist and lost to Nixon.
The rhetoric was similar to Bush, though. "Staying the course" and "if we withdraw, how will that look?" Well, except for those who have their heads in the sand, it will look exactly like it does now - the United states troops are not resolving the problem and only prolonging the agony.
Like pulling a rotted tooth, nothing is prevented by prolonging the extraction, save for the ultimate pain. In the meantime, there is additional pain.
The real problem with both Johnson and Bush is that neither can see the problem is of their own making. That they went in, and it is THEIR own face that they are trying to save.
I am not sure of your 1966 reference. Andrew Johnson? Corruption under Grant?
was the culmination of the running feud between the Radical Republican faction in Congress who wanted to extract the price of their blood lost on the field from a prostrate South, and with Lincoln before his death and then with Johnson, whose goal seemed to be a restoration of as much of the status quo ante as possible. The mutual acrimony of the Radical faction and Johnson peaked that year and brought the Radicals a solid win at the ballot box. Flush with victory, they spent their political capital on Johnson the next year, squandering the last real opportunity to solidify any lasting social change in the South for a century. Taking their eyes off the prize, as it were. The failed impeachment broke the Radical advance, what work had been done steadily eroded without reinforcement, and 1876 simply put an official stamp on what had been reality since 1870.