0
Lyndon Johnson never saw war in Vietnam as a political plus; he kept the issue generally
quiet during the 1964 election ((Beschloss 1997)). Bombing pauses, international conferences,
3
and peace proposals were driven largely by concerns for domestic public opinion ((Karnow
1983b;Halberstam 1972b;Small 1988)). Every major address by Johnson on Vietnam concerned
peace proposals, not escalation. Many observers suspect that Johnson’s cessation of bombing
North Vietnam on the eve of the 1968 election was calculated to help Hubert Humphrey.
4
Most
audaciously, Johnson may have hoped to reenter the presidential race after a surprise U.S.-Soviet
summit he had arranged for the week before the 1968 Democratic National Convention
((Beschloss and Talbott 1993), p. 113)
5
Nixon may have believed that a “silent majority” supported the Vietnam war, but he
nonetheless felt that escalation would be rejected by the public. Fear of backlash led him to drop
his plans for a massive bombing campaign in the fall of 1969 ((Sagan and Suri 2003)) The pace
and timing of his administration‘s troop withdrawals were calculated to maintain public support
for Nixon ((Karnow 1983b), pp 594-596; (Bundy 1998), pp 63-67). Beyond Vietnam, the
Administration’s interest in arms control came partly because it was perceived to be a popular
political issue ((Garthoff 1985), p. 115; (Kissinger 1979), pp 399-402; (Knopf 1998)). Nixon
was also very conscious of the boosts he received from high-profile summits with foreign
leaders; as the Watergate scandal approached its conclusion in the summer of 19754, Nixon
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