Word: goldberg
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Maybe, then, Johnson did appoint Goldberg to protect his flank in the international political game. And maybe Goldberg has been able to persuade the President to let him make the American position more palatable to its critics at home and abroad. The job has had its rewards. The responsibility for delivering the encouraging speech at Howard University, asking Hanoi to clarify the ambiguities in its statements on negotiations, fell to Goldberg. If McNamara or Rusk had delivered that statement, diplomats might not have been able to believe their own ears; but it should be disconcerting for Goldberg to realize that...
Unfortunately, everyone has come to expect statements of this sort from Goldberg--followed a few days later by a Rusk statement declaring that nothing much had really changed, and that the bombing must therefore continue...
...other words, the impact of much of what Goldberg does or tries to do seems to have been undercut by his superiors in Washington. Perhaps this should be interpreted as an encouraging sign, since it indicates that those who urge that a negotiated settlement be America's top priority in Vietnam are occasionally allowed a public platform. But the irreconcilables always seem to get the last word...
This is not to imply that Goldberg serves no good purpose. There is little doubt that whatever advice he gives the President is of a different sort than that offered by Secretary Rusk. There is no reason to believe that Goldberg has been able, like Rusk, to extrapolate from the theory of containment a paralytic, fervently anti-Communist demonology...
...there is, after all, a slim chance that Hanoi will respond affrmatively to one of Goldberg's conciliatory statements before Rusk can once again dash cold water on peace prospects. --JOHN A. HERFORT