Word: viets
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...Quayle quandary has led many to behave as though Viet Nam battle stars and scars should be an entrance requirement for public office. Not only is it a bit unfair to single out Quayle for taking refuge in the National Guard, but ; the belated embrace of combat chic, which now stretches from movie screens to comic books, seems a disturbingly one-sided way to redress the inequities of the Viet Nam-era draft. Away from the heat of political campaigns, many Americans acknowledge that the Viet Nam War was fraught with moral ambiguity and that honor could be found...
...Even before the Viet Nam War consumed Lyndon Johnson, his dark rantings sometimes shocked the White House press corps. The first serious criticism of his conduct of foreign policy came in 1965, when he sent 20,000 troops into the Dominican Republic to quell domestic violence. Stung, Johnson summoned a small group of reporters to an off-the-record lunch that began at 1:30 p.m. and did not end until 5:30. The four hours were taken up by the President's pacing, raving, justifying his action. When it was over, the numbed newsmen hurried to a nearby...
...speechwriter and aide to L.B.J., has taken such recollections several steps further. In his memoir of the 1960s, Remembering America (Little, Brown; $19.95), Goodwin writes that Johnson was at times literally crazed and that his episodic madness helped propel the U.S. into "a needless tragedy of such immense consequences ((Viet Nam)) that, even now, the prospects for a restorative return remain in doubt." He brazenly diagnoses Johnson's large eccentricities as "incursions of paranoia," which led to leaps "into unreason" that "infected the entire presidential institution...
...manila folder from his desk. 'It's Teddy White's FBI file. He's a Communist sympathizer.' " At another time: "The Communists already control the three major networks and the 40 major outlets of communication." Thus, by Goodwin's account, did L.B.J.'s fantasies propel the country into Viet...
...denying the reality of what was happening to the man. "Johnson's excessive secrecy and lying, his suspicion, fit into a pattern that made it hard for him to make proper decisions," said Goodwin last week. "The final irony is that the only guy who saw how disastrous the Viet Nam War could be was Johnson himself." In the book, Goodwin quotes a gloomy Johnson proclaiming, "I'm going to be known as the President who lost Southeast Asia." Paranoid or not, Johnson was painfully aware of the tragedy unfolding at his hands...