policy - The Black Vault

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of US foreign policy objectives. In retrospect, the incompatibility of
Johnson's separate goals is apparent; one by one each of the three elements
of his program failed as he cut back on his cherished Great Society programs
and sacrificed domestic price stability in the hope that the war
would be short. In the end, tts domestic political debate that his
policies engendered,
the economic and social failures associated with his
policies, and his failure to produce a quick military resolution of the
* Vietnam situation put such extreme political pressure on Johnson that fie
felt obliged to retire from public life.
Johnson had sought to occupy the middle ground in any debate ind to
use his manipulative skills as a parlimentarian to influence political
outcomas. It is ironic that Johnson's demonstrably successful 1964 attack
on the political right personified by Barry Goldwater was an im,)ortant
I element in his political difficulties in 1967-1968. Without a strong,
credible, and vocal r~ght to offset the growing power of the left in American
politics, Johnson's political balance was upset, and he himself came to
represent the most hawkish element in the political debate about the course
that should be taken in Vietnam.
Nixon's administration was also marked by political ironies concerning
his intended political programs. Nixon had sought to drive the political
left into a corner while he occupied the right and
politics.
center of American
This allowed him to command a 'new inmjority" that he hoped would
be an element in arresting and then reversing the growing ascendancy of the
Democratic Party. Nixon succeeded in developing a political base that made
him immune to liberal and left-wing criti:"`sm - the criticism that had
hardened Johnson in his attempts to r'nsolve the Vietnam situation. In the
end, however, when his political enemies identified Nixon with the Watergate
scandal, they succeeded in bringing him down.
The result was that the
political base which Nixon had assembled also collapsed, and neither he nor
WV7' Ford could pursue the esteblished course of withdrawing US forces from
Vietnam while supporting the South Vietnamese.
Throughout each administration one element was similar:
the fear that
the American people would not support the policies that were being followed
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