The Undeserving Poor

An undercurrent of racism has flowed through the modern American political system that is neither admitted nor convincingly denied. Like a thread from an unraveling sweater, Dan T. Carter pulled at this loose stitch and was able to trace this characteristic through several of our most prominent and popular conservative leaders of the latter part of the twentieth century. From George Wallace’s open racism, to Richard Nixon’s veiled racism, to Ronald Reagan’s economic racism, to George Bush’s fearful racism, to Newt Gingrich’s racism against welfare queens eating t-bone steaks (so what are they supposed to eat?), these leaders’ views represented more than their individual bigotries. Like any politician, these leaders were representative of their constituents in their attitudes. This premise formed the basis of From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counter Revolution: 1963-1994.

It was said of George Wallace that his overt racism was just an act[1], a political move designed for Southern popularity. In fact, Wallace was such a politician that it was said of him that he would have been a good communist if he’d live in Albania rather than Alabama[2]. The racial bigotry of the electorate in Alabama in the 1950’s is well documented, yet it is still a sobering thought that a politician may have had to play up his own bigotry to be elected, rather than somehow leading his constituents to a higher level.

Yet, as Wallace spent his later years denying that he ever felt these feelings, one could not help but wonder if that was an act too. Memories were simply too acute to forget how he could fill the air of any room in which he was speaking with the word “nigger,” as in “that nigger Senator from Massachusetts.”[3] However, Wallace was simply a pitiful character of the old South, almost quaint in his blustering. Carter contended that while conservatives wanted to sweep Wallace under the rug, his racism did live on in more subtle forms.[4]

Many have written about how the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and ’60’s sparked other liberal movements, such as the women’s movement or gay liberation movement. But if for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, then the civil rights movement sparked a counter-revolution of a conservative movement.[5] As Spiro Agnew called for a return to law and order (how’s that prison food, Spiro?), the silent majority sang along with Archie Bunker to a day when it wasn’t so crazy outside, when people knew their place, when girls were girls and men were men. The New Deal, and to a greater extent the Great Society, had caused tumultuous change in how the government took care of its people. It seemed to many that we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.

The year 1968 was the cinematic equivalent of a fireball scene in a Bruce Willis movie. LBJ’s Great Society had long been mired down in Vietnam. Kennedys and Kings were being shot down. And the disarray in the streets of Chicago during the Democratic Convention doomed whomever the Democrats would choose to nominate, in this case smiling Hubert Humphrey. For the rest of the century, the Democratic Party became associated with being the party for shiftless, poor blacks, left-wing protesters, and sexual degenerates.[6]

Although Richard Nixon would deny that race was an issue in the political campaign of 1968, Carter contended that it was unavoidably one.[7] Nixon used the relatively moderate Agnew as a surrogate Wallace to win over the South without sullying his own name.[8] John Ehlrichman acknowledged that the Nixon campaign presented positions on crime, education, or public housing so the voter wouldn’t have to admit that he was attracted by the racist appeal of these positions.[9] The campaign put out a subtle anti-busing message, wrapped up as “freedom of choice.”[10] This was especially effective in the North, where black neighborhoods were closing in on white enclaves. Nixon himself wouldn’t admit to a link of race with disorder in the streets nor to a belief that blacks were genetically inferior to whites, but Ehlrichman and others knew he believed these ideas.[11]

Toward the end of the 1960’s, there was a feeling that the Democrats had abandoned their traditional base of the white, middle-class, and middle-aged. Politically savvy (but perhaps a bit cynical) Nixon aide Kevin Phillips actually urged Republicans to work for getting more voting rights for blacks in the South, as their entering the Democratic party would push all those old Dixiecrats to the Republicans.

When Watergate allowed Democrat Jimmy Carter into the White House, this was merely an anomaly in the conservative tide that was occurring during this time period. With the exception of the Camp David accords, there was little occasion for Jimmy Carter to flash that famous grin during his term in office. Upon Election Day 1980, American voters almost unanimously lifted up their voices in a shout of “see ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya.”

In came the affable, yet also gaffable Ronald Reagan, who in some ways seemed to promise to bring the country back to 1910, only with military teeth. Dan Carter noted that Reagan had an abysmal civil rights record both as governor and then as president. He (along with George Bush) had voted against the civil rights bill and also the voting rights act. Reagan appointed William Bradford Reynolds as Assistant Attorney General for civil rights. Both Reagan and Reynolds agreed that affirmative action programs were prejudiced against white people, an argument that was beginning to gain ground on various radio talk shows. (Curiously, Carter doesn’t mention Rush Limbaugh, Laura Schlesinger, or any of the other magnetically polarizing conservative radio talk show hosts of the era).

Reagan also listened to “bizarre but persuasive academic showman Arthur Leffler,”[12] who came up with the idea for “supply-side economics,” where the richest Americans would get the biggest tax cuts, in hopes that they would then spend their increased resources to get the economy going, and the money would then “trickle down.” One problem was that these “supply-side Reaganomics” were devastating to low income Americans, especially the black poor. But despite Reagan’s gaffes and prejudices he was easily forgivable. Even Carter, while he did use the negative terms associated with the Reagan era (i.e. “Star Wars” instead of SDI, Reaganomics, etc.), limited his comments (and thus, his criticisms), on Reagan’s eight years in office to fourteen pages. Reagan’s successor, the somewhat less consequential George Bush, who only served one term, received about twice as much ink.

Carter opened his book discussing a young George Bush running for Senator who was impressed with George Wallace’s astounding success in the 1964 Presidential Primaries (receiving 43% of the vote in Maryland). Bush concluded that the Civil Rights Bill was unpopular and said, “The new Civil Rights Bill was passed to protect 14% of the people. I’m worried about the other 86%.” Though he later wrote that Bush had an impeccable history regarding civil rights,[13] Carter effectively tied Bush to the George Wallace pattern of racism in the conservative movement.

It could be argued that that was a Bush of a different era, especially as he later demonstrated a strong record on civil rights, according to Carter. But even the modern-day George Bush could be prone to, if not a lapse of judgment, then certainly a lapse in good taste when he allowed his political team to attack his opponent Michael Dukakis over what could be considered a racial issue. In 1988, Bush trailed Dukakis by 20 points in the polls. With the help of the Republican Party’s superior funding for market research, and, according to Carter, superior skill in manipulating the electorate, Bush’s team found that voters were most uncomfortable with Governor Dukakis’ prison weekend pass program. One of the results of this program was that a man from a predominantly black area of Boston named Willie Horton went out on a weekend pass and committed a rape. The historical association of a black male committing rape was loaded to affect the electorate’s viscera. The ads proved very effective, Bush rapidly overtook Dukakis in the polls and was eventually elected president. Carter decried the increased reliance on political symbols, the thirty second sound bites that defined a candidate. Carter quoted Democrat Adlai Stevenson, “If the only way I can get elected is by pandering to people’s fears and hatreds, I want no part of it.” The implication here was that by authorizing the use of the Willie Horton ads, George Bush’s political victory came at the expense of his character, and that the whole political process was no longer a debate of issues but rather who could come up with the cutest commercials. And the Republican Party, with its superior financial resources, usually won. Carter failed to acknowledge, however, the existence of cheap political symbols that have been part of the political process since silver-spooned William Henry Harrison became half of “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” with its portrayed image of these “backwoodsmen” chopping their own logs to build their houses. But there was a growing feeling in these Republican commercials with their waving flags and fields of grain, that after twenty years of Wallace, Nixon, and Reagan, the Democratic Party had become the party for blacks, homosexuals, the undeserving poor, big-spending bureaucrats, those weak on foreign policy, and those soft on crime. Democrats seemed to do little to counteract or contradict these charges.

A political reversal of this trend occurred in 1992, when Bush lost his political advisor Lee Atwater to brain cancer and his campaign fell apart. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton hired the very skillful James Carville, whose personality held a remarkable resemblance to a pit bull. Clinton chose to distance himself from Jesse Jackson so that he could regain the white male Democrats who had liked it when Reagan was in the White House. Carville was also able to negotiate around a major political vulnerability, Clinton’s womanizing, which had sunk earlier candidates, such as Gary Hart. (Curiously, both Clinton and Hart traced their interest in politics being sparked by one John F. Kennedy, or as Marilyn Monroe called him, Mr. President). Carville was able to turn the attack on Clinton’s accusers, and voters dismissed this issue as unsubstantiated accusations by white trash tramps. This was all, of course, before anyone (including Bill) had heard of Monica Lewinsky.

However, Clinton’s narrow victory in 1992 could hardly be called a mandate. Evidence of this was manifested in the turnout for Ross Perot, a man free of any substantial issues, who received 19% of the vote. Clinton struggled his first two years in office. He was highly criticized for his “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding homosexuality in the military; his desire for a massive national health care project was, in many minds, typical of what was the worst of the Democratic Party’s excesses. People no longer wanted a Great Society; they wanted to be left alone. Despite the fact that the U.S. population was at its most stratified and imbalanced since the 1930’s (the richest 1% had 40% of the wealth), the middle class blamed the poor welfare class as the cause of their economic problems. The increasingly insulated and isolated middle class in their suburban enclaves did not like “Big Government” spending “their money” to fund the poor, whom they didn’t even know. The culmination of the growing conservative trend among voters occurred in 1994, as Democrats were swept out of their seats in Congress and replaced with Newt’s Army. Newt Gingrich escalated the war between Republicans and Democrats to Cold War levels, calling Democrats “sick,” “bizarre,” “corrupt,” and “traitors.”[14] Joseph McCarthy could have been his speechwriter. As slavery, Catholicism, and communism slipped away as threats, the public focused its abhorrence on welfare mothers and illegal aliens, who were powerless to strike back. Middle class taxpayers were angry about “young women, without education, who [were] long-term dependents and whose dependency [was] passed from generation to generation.”[15] Carter editorialized their feelings, “More accurately, these women were inner-city substance abusing blacks spawning a criminal class.” So Gingrich’s “Contract With America” transferred benefits from the undeserving poor to the deserving middle and upper classes. Unfortunately, Gingrich’s increased rhetoric led to an increased frustration, and Newt found himself struggling six months into his new role.

As a clue that the age-old racism was still with us in 1994, Carter cited the popularity of an ugly book called The Bell Curve. This book was released on the eve of the Grand Ol’ Party’s victory of 1994, a coincidence not lost on Carter. This book, based on research grants that were funded by companies and people that were linked with Nazism[16], explained that blacks and Hispanics were at the bottom class not because of discrimination but because of their low IQ’s. Carter considered this book significant enough to devote eight pages of commentary on it. Although most columnists were critical of this book, including the conservative Wall Street Journal, Carter was disturbed that this sort of thinking about eugenics and racial stratification would even enter the national debate.

At times, Carter’s thesis of the prevalence of racial bigotry in the Conservative movement could be rather tiresome, rather like someone playing the same key incessantly on a piano when a listener knows there are other notes out there. A narrow, focused topic lends itself well to a detailed study, but there are times that it seems that Carter may be grasping at straws and possibly missing others to support his thesis. The focus on George Bush seemed unwarranted, as Carter devoted fifteen or twenty pages to the Willie Horton ad, which was comparable to the amount of ink that George “Segregation Forever” Wallace received. Conversely, rather little was written about the Reagan era, which did see an economic downturn for inner-city blacks. There was also surprisingly little written about the growing conservative trend in the media, including radio personalities that seemed to be a vent for faceless racist anger. There was no mention of the surprising popularity of David Duke in the early 1990’s. There was also no mention of the prevalence of racial bigotry in the Moral Majority, a dominant force in the conservative movement of the 1980’s.

The premise of Paths Not Taken, a book of essays edited by Jonathan M. Nielson, was that historical results were not inevitable. Indeed, Nielson contended that human choice (and error) has played a major role in putting the world in its current situation. The book examined seven critical time periods that involved crucial decision-making in American foreign policy. The book opened with the years of the country’s inception, and John Adams’ refusal to draw the country into a war with France. In fact, it was Adams’ resistance, thanks to his studied knowledge of history, which was one of the few examples of the right decisions being made. This decision to avoid war was at the sacrifice of political popularity for Adams, who seemed to remain in the shadow of the great warrior, General George Washington, and led to increasing the stature of Adams’ successor (and occasional nemesis) in building relations with France and making the Louisiana Purchase possible.

The ensuing chapters were less glowing. Woodrow Wilson’s grandiose pledge to make the world safe for democracy committed the country to fights that they would not have otherwise had to fight for the rest of the twentieth century. Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt lacked the political courage and foresight to intervene in Europe in the 1930’s to prevent the rise of fascism. The United States surrendered the moral high ground regarding their relationship with Cuba in the 1950’s and ‘60’s, and thus lost influence with other nations in the Western hemisphere who sympathized with Cuba. Harry Truman’s policy regarding Israel was unpopular even with his own advisors, many of whom felt that the United States needed to maintain ties with the Muslim world for its oil. The Muslim world further distanced itself from the United States when the Eisenhower administration favored Britain in the struggle over the Suez Canal. When the United States intervened in Iran supporting the unpopular Shah, ramifications echoed twenty years later. The book closed with the most infamous of American blunders in foreign policy, the decision in November 1964 to expand involvement in the struggle in far-off Vietnam.

Paths Not Taken certainly had an interesting premise, to explore what could have been. Nielson acknowledged that this book could be accused of second-guessing, but defended the book with the argument that we needed to study past options so we could be prepared for future contingencies. One problem, which may be due to the fact that there were several authors contributing to this work, was that sometimes the book seemed to contradict itself. The book seemed especially unclear about whether or not the United States should accept the role as “world policeman.” Sometimes they shouldn’t have, but tried to (Woodrow Wilson), sometimes they should have, but didn’t (Hoover and FDR), and sometimes the answer was simply left unclear (Clinton in Yugoslavia). Even with 20/20 hindsight, there was much ambiguity. At times, the judgments of the book may have seemed a bit too harsh, such as the examination of the policy in Cuba, while holding Cuba virtually blameless in the tango. Another weakness of the book is the number of typographical errors, which are distracting to the reader.[17] Interestingly, almost all the chapters in the second half of the book involved the Eisenhower administration, which created the impression of an administration worthy of a lot of second-guessing.

The history of the United States in regard to its foreign policies is replete with ironies, particularly related to the nation’s beginnings as a small country seeking independence from a foreign power, and its subsequent defense of the claims of colonial powers (including its old adversary, Great Britain). The nation has occasionally claimed the role of moral protectorate over the globe as well, but sometimes fallen far short of this lofty goal. More than any world event, it was the effects of the Cold War that brought these awkward ironies to a head.

The reaction of the United States to the rise of power of Fidel Castro illustrated these ironies. While many North Americans greeted Castro’s defeat of the corrupt Fulgencio Batista with great enthusiasm, the relationship between the United States and Cuba decayed quickly. The author of the article, Kyle Longley, was quick to blame the policies of Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy for exacerbating the problem and widening the split, thus driving the Cubans to the Soviet Union in response. The relationship between Cuba and the United States went through four stages in these years, and according to the authors, each one was made progressively worse by American folly. There was no mention of the extent of Cuban responsibility for this souring relationship.

Stage One covered the time period of the rise of Castro to his victory in January 1959. Longley accused the U.S. of waiting too long to rescind support of Batista, or its support of other Latin dictators. Another mistake was appointing and then maintaining Earl Smith as Ambassador to Cuba, who neither understood nor cared about Cuban nationalist sentiment. Smith became a resented symbol of the presence that the U.S. had had in Cuba since the Platt Amendment of 1901, with its proclivity for insensitive dominance.

Stage Two came during Castro’s first year in power. It was evident from the memos produced by the Eisenhower administration that U.S. officials regarded the Cuban revolutionaries as children, even referring to them as such. When Castro visited the Press Club in Washington, D.C., Ike elected to go golfing in Albany, Georgia. Longley believed an important opportunity was missed to improve relations with an official welcome. Also, there was conflict between the moderates in the State Department and hardliners in Congress, which resulted in an inconsistent policy. The administration was therefore reactive, rather than proactive. The U.S. did not offer economic or humanitarian assistance, which could have built relations, nor did it acknowledge Castro’s right to decide Cuban land reform policy.

Stage Three covered the worsening of relations from early 1960 to the end of the Eisenhower administration. The U.S. began to make threats of cutbacks of sugar imports to force compliance from the Cubans. For this, the U.S. met a firmer resolve. Castro then made a sugar deal with the Soviets, and then seized all remaining U.S. investments in Cuba. The CIA recruited and trained Cuban exiles in Florida to overthrow Castro. This was bungled when Castro’s spies were part of the recruited force, and Castro was kept abreast of these developments. Rather than accepting the revolution and moderating it, the U.S. tried to bully the Cubans into changing their policies. More humanitarian aid to Cuba would have made it much tougher for Castro to demonize the U.S. Finally, Ike broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba, virtually killing any chance of negotiation.

Stage Four occurred during the Kennedy administration. Although Kennedy disagreed with previous mistakes by the Eisenhower administration, he had to prove that he was an effective Cold Warrior and so he had to take a hard line. Therefore, the blunders continued. Kennedy mistakenly believed that there would be a massive anti-Castro uprising among the Cuban public when the opportunity arose during the Bay of Pigs operation. Kennedy’s administration continued the fallacious notion of equating Castro’s nationalism with Moscow-directed communism. They never fully considered the morality or ramifications of their actions, choosing military and covert options first (including a plot to assassinate Castro), without attempting diplomacy. For some reason, the authors failed to explore the Cuban Missile Crisis in any depth. That didn’t seem to be an incident beyond the scope of this essay.

The next chapter examined the United States’ policy toward Israel and its Arab neighbors. While Franklin Roosevelt had concentrated on pleasing the Arabs in the Middle East in hopes of obtaining their oil, Harry S Truman became the first president to be really sympathetic to the Jewish Zionist cause, as scenes from the Holocaust were making their way across the Atlantic. However, the State Department remained relatively unmoved by the Jewish plight, and did not support Truman in this cause. So the United States gradually distanced itself from Israel, after helping in its establishment, and hoped Britain could take the leadership role in the area, as the United States had its hands full with Europe and implementing the Marshall Plan.

The authors of this article, Antonio Donno and Daniele De Luca, reported that the State Department believed that their decision-making powers were infallible, and that the department did not hold the opinions of the inexperienced young president to be of much consequence. The State Department felt that Israel was at best merely a symbolic presence in the Middle East; it was really the Arabs who had the oil. However, Donno and De Luca asserted that Truman and the lone supporter in his cabinet, Clark Clifford, were correct in opposing the State Department on this matter. The authors pointed out that the United States could never really become a trusted ally with the Arabs. The Arab nations held abhorrence for any foreign power trying to dominate them, and for the West in particular. Donno and DeLuca explained that another advantage was that Israel did effectively block Soviet expansion to the Red Sea.

The tone of U.S. policy changed when Dwight Eisenhower became President. Eisenhower deeply trusted his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. As Britain and France saw their influence weaken in the Middle East, the U.S. took a stronger role in the region. Dulles involved the Arabs, especially in Egypt, and distanced himself from Israel in the Cold War struggles. The new American policy was that: 1) The U.S. sympathized with legitimate Arab concerns, 2) Israel was not to receive preferential treatment, 3) the U.S. would help with boundary settlements, and 4) the U.S. would discourage further Jewish immigration into Israel.

The earlier mistrust of Arab loyalty to an alliance became an issue after the U.S. had given Egypt weapons to defend themselves against the Soviets. Egypt began to use their new weapons against Israel rather than the Soviets. They even began using Soviet weapons. U.S. officials were left to look quizzically upon the Egyptians, as they seemed to form an alliance with the dreaded Soviet Union. When Abdul Gamal Nasser extended relations to Communist China, that was the last straw, and the U.S. withdrew their heavy financial support of the Aswan Dam. In reaction, Egypt then seized the Suez Canal for themselves, away from the British. Britain, France, and Israel then attacked Egypt. The U.S. refused to support this attack, and it was easily dissipated. The end result was that Britain lost all influence in the Middle East, and European allies saw that they could not really rely on U.S. support in times of crises. The Soviets responded to these developments with their own financial help to the Aswan dam and stepped up shipments of arms to the Middle East. According to the authors, the Soviet Union understood that though they could not force a communist government into Egypt, they could at least distance Egypt from the U.S. by getting involved in arms sales.

Several errors dotted these events. First of all, the U.S. overestimated the Egyptian fear of the Soviets. In fact, Egypt was rather neutral in this Cold War business. The U.S. did not foresee that Egypt would actually buy arms from the Soviets. The authors felt that the U.S. should not have given Nasser all that he wanted until after he saw that a relationship with the Soviets would gain him nothing. Another mistake was that the U.S. believed that Arab nationalists actually wanted peaceful coexistence with the newly formed Israel. The U.S. also thought that Egypt relied on American dollars for the Aswan Dam. Rather, when financial support was withdrawn, Nasser’s sense of self-importance reached new heights, and he was able to recoup the money by seizing the Suez Canal. Turkey and Pakistan found U.S. policy to be confusing. Why was the U.S. so willing to offer Egypt financial support to defend itself from the Soviet menace when Turkey and Pakistan also felt so threatened? Couldn’t the U.S. open their purse strings for these countries as well?

When, during the Suez crisis, the U.S. renounced in advance any use of force, they tipped their hand and let the Soviets in. This renunciation of force in solving international disputes was inconsistent with other events during the Eisenhower administration. This only served to confuse the U.S. allies in Europe. Furthermore, by cutting ties with Europe, the United States assumed the role as the sole protectorate of all countries battling communism across the globe. This would have later implications in Southeast Asia.

Another incident that would bring about implications was the U.S. policy in Iran in the 1950’s. In 1953, Iranians finally found a good, liberal, nationalistic leader in Muhammad Musaddiq. But the CIA staged a coup and placed the dictatorial Shah in power. Iranians did not forget the role Americans played in this part of their history.

The United States had never really gotten involved in Iranian affairs until after World War II, but they soon became heavily involved in supporting the Shah and getting rid of his potential adversaries. The authors postulated that perhaps the United States saw more stability in a Shah-led government. A stable government, even if it wasn't a very good, humane, or democratic government, was desirable in that it would at least keep the communists out.

So, what should the U.S. have done differently? The authors felt that the U.S. should have had a more balanced assessment of Musaddiq. He was neither a tyrant nor a communist. In fact, Musaddiq's vision of Iran was very reminiscent of a Colonial America-- "Throw the British out." But the U.S. never bothered to listen to him. Additionally, the U.S. felt some obligations to the British. Dean Acheson felt we had to "fly wing to wing" with them. The British had a monopoly on Iranian oil, and there were fears Musaddiq might nationalize the oil companies. If the U.S. had treated Iran like it would treat Egypt just three years later, the events of the late 1970's may not have been so grim for President Jimmy Carter and his fellow Americans. However, after the overthrow of Musaddiq, Eisenhower seemed to grow fond of covert action. The next year the CIA successfully overthrew the Guatemalan government, and six years after that they attempted the Bay of Pigs operation.

Finally, the book examined that morass to end all morasses—the deepening involvement in the Vietnam War. On 19 November 1964, a year into his presidency, Lyndon Baines Johnson held a cabinet meeting when it became evident that South Vietnam would fall if the United States did not increase its aid. The effects of the decisions made at this meeting would soon overshadow Johnson’s presidency, including the ambitious Great Society program. LBJ’s cabinet felt that they had three options: A) Keep present level of commitment, B) Commit drastic expansion of forces, and C) Commit gradual increase of forces. The author, Mitchell Lerner, bemoaned the fact that only one person there, George Ball, saw another option: Negotiate and withdraw. This suggestion was never seriously considered. Their decision to follow option C became an open-ended commitment that led to a domestic hemorrhage and eventual failure. Lerner then explained how the U.S. had just decided to enter an unwinnable situation. There seemed a virtual potpourri of reasons not to get involved in this particular land war in Asia.

Vietnam had no stable political system that the U.S. could nurse back to health, like Europe had in the 1940’s. In fact, Vietnam had never had a stable, self-ruling government. South Vietnam also lacked any charismatic leaders (whereas the North had Ho Chi Minh). There was no top-down organization in South Vietnam. Eisenhower had devoted aid to South Vietnam for their military, when what they really needed was aid for social, economic, and political reforms.

The cultural barrier that separated the U.S. from Vietnam gaped as deep as the Pacific Ocean that separated them. Even the Americans that were living in Vietnam remained indifferent to Vietnamese culture. While the U.S. servicemen watched their Hollywood movies on their military bases, they remained insulated from their surroundings and from getting to know their host country. Vietnamese were tied to their land in a way that Americans did not understand. Vietnamese did not want to be urbanized, as their rural way of life was sacred to them. Any goods the Americans bestowed upon them were viewed suspiciously. Vietnamese simply looked quizzically upon the television sets and water skis that were unloaded as unasked-for gifts. Any advisors sent to help them were viewed as yet another country trying to subjugate them.

The U.S. still saw the North Vietnamese as puppets of Moscow, not as people fighting for the independence of their country. The U.S. underestimated the skill and dedication of the North Vietnamese soldiers, who had been fighting for many years for their country. In contrast, generally the U.S. soldiers were draftees who just wanted to get home, were untrained in guerilla tactics, and didn’t care for South Vietnam, who really weren’t all too faithful in their own cause. The terrain was terrible for tanks and conventional forces. Bombing would be ineffective in a country with no nerve centers and a populace all-too-willing to die for their country. In fact, bombing would simply increase anti-Americanism home and abroad and not force North Vietnam to capitulate. Even if the U.S. had somehow won the war, what then? There would be no one there to rule and maintain whatever was won. The country would be even more ravaged and anti-American, even among the South Vietnamese.

Giving up Vietnam in 1964 would have meant one more domino down, and a possible black eye for LBJ. However, Johnson was very popular in 1964-65, and could have survived politically with a withdrawal, but he didn’t think he could. Most Americans in 1964 gave little attention to that far off Asian country. In fact, withdrawing from Vietnam might have even been a popular decision internationally, as Britain and France saw it as unwinnable and a country like Brazil could have used some of those resources that were otherwise spent. We could have indeed had a Great Society, with LBJ serving two terms and hence no Nixon, Watergate, Ford, Carter, nor Reagan, who were pulled in by the historical tide that was Vietnam. If only Johnson hadn’t chosen option C, but had rather listened to that still, small voice that said there was another way. If only.

It is a popular game, Monday Morning Quarterbacking. People stand around the water cooler and discuss what might have been. Jonathan Nielson contended that it is a valuable exercise, as well, in that it can prevent committing the same errors that plagued our forefathers. While he may be right in this assertion, Paths Not Taken seemed to leave many questions unanswered or unclear. However, the essays did provide interesting analyses of the various crucibles that the United States has passed through regarding its foreign policy.