policy - The Black Vault

I
THE 3DM CORPORATION
being won and that it was not necessary to derail the extraordinary
performance of the civilian economy. Those formulating economic
policy were not privy to details concerning the scale of the effort
that was projected for the Vietnam conflict. The lack of candor by
the president and his key political-military advisors concerning the
costs of the war had two results: economic planners were ill-prepaed
to adjust the civilian economy to the military realities the nation
was facing, and the administration's credibility suffered seriously
before the Congress and the public. See Halberstam, pp. 338, 595, and
604 and US Congress Joint Economic Committee, Economic Effect of
Vietnam Spending, p. 5.
24. Samuelson, p. 340.
25. The political underpinnings of economic policy must never be overlooked.
Thus, for example, the 87th Congress (1961-62) dealt harshly
with Kennedy's attempts to pass legislation dealing with the problems
of unemployment, education, civil rights, medical care, and environmental
protection. The 88th Congress (1963-64) treated Lyndon Johnson
somewhat better, passing, for example, the Civil Rights Act and the
Economic Opportunity Act in 1964. Sinilarly, the 8tith Congress
•, (1965-66) passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and generally
acquiesced to .1ohnson's running of the Vietnam War. Ultimately,
however, not even Johnson's phenomenal political skills and his willingness
to compromise with congressional heavyweights such as Mills
were sufficient to save him from conservative criticism of the Great
Society and liberal' criticism of the Vietnam War.
26. While inflation was in part attributable to the ',ar, the war was in
fact often blamed as much because it was a politically expedient thing
to say. By doing so, policymakers could absolve themselves of blame
for their own post-Vietnam mismanagement of the inflation problem.
Many of the sources cited above, in note 22, discuss the inflationary
impact of the Vietnam War. To these can be added other useful references
including:
Edwin L. Dale, Jr.,
January 4, 1969.
"The Inflation Goof," The New Republic,
Richard L. Strout, "How Vietnam brought inflation," Christian Science
Monitor, October 11, 1974.
Arthur M. Okun, et aL], Inflation: The Problem It Creates and the
Policies It Requires (New York: NYU Press, 1910).
Robert Eisner, "War and Taxes: the Role of the Eccnomist in
Politics," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, June 1968.
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