American Experience; 1964; Interview with Dan T. Carter, Historian, part 1 of 2

So we'll kind of float around with some general shock, march a little chronologically, but not slavishly through the year, and go anywhere that strikes me. And I'll be on, this is in my contract, 20 minutes, so I'm assured of it. You'll have a 20 minute, then, plus or minus. Plus or minus 19 minutes, yeah, that's right. That's the 1930. So yeah, what made 1964 such a distinctive year for America? Well, it wasn't because America, 1964 was not a year where everything changed. I know, what's that? We're rolling. By a place, everybody settle. You get another run of this. Great. What made 1964 such a distinctive year? 1964 wasn't for a year when everything changed in America. But in some ways, it was the beginning of that change in the real, real developments that'll have so much impact over the next decade, start in 1964.

I haven't thought of it as a year of crossroads, kind of, of the forms in the world. It seems like a lot of these issues that have been percolating, bubbling, or fermenting, or whatever the word is. Suddenly, in that year, you got to make these tough choices. Is that a fair way to look at it? I think so. I mean, in some ways, although there are many things that lead up to 1964, I think most historians would agree that civil rights is the catalyst. I mean, that's the Bunsen burner going first and then the blast furnace by the early 60s. It's been going since the 50s. But by 64, you've had the freedom rides. You've had that traumatic James Meredith entry in the University of Mississippi in the fall of 1963. You've got the demonstrations going all across the region.

And at that point, you have to do something about civil rights. And I don't think anybody will not anybody, but very few people realize that this was not encapsulated in civil rights. That it was a kind of broader movement that was going to stretch out into so many different parts of American society. Was there a political consensus that reigned when the year began? The almost stereotypical quintessential kind of calm, a peace and prosperity kind of world. American politics, we think of it as the 50s in some ways, is a kind of placid decade, I mean, with Eisenhower. And then even 60s, the Kennedy Nixon debate, she look at them, and it's Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

I mean, they really seem to agree on most things. But there are divisions. And some of them have to do with communism, anti-communism, the Cold War. And there's subtle differences, not yet clearly defined between the Democratic and Republican party. But within the political parties, again, first revolving around the issues of civil rights that are going to split both parties wide open. I mean, it's going to split the Democratic party with the Southern wing breaking away. It's going to split the Republican party led by some of the supporters of Goldwater, who see the South as becoming a central kind of leader in the Republican party. So it's all happening, but it's beneath the surface until you finally get to 63, 64, and particularly 64 with after the death of Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson starts pushing through the civil rights.

Because civil rights bill. Because up until then, I think a lot of people really thought it wasn't going to pass. Once again, in the past, the Southern filibuster would prevent it. But it was like a balloon that had reached its maximum point. And with Lyndon Johnson and the White House, it suddenly dawned on many conservatives that a great change was coming. Right. It is that, you know, when you think about it, is a year of political change like no other? The difference between 1960 and 1964 could not be greater. Whereas 1960 was still, in terms of the major, certainly, domestic issues, was a year of consensus between the two candidates. In 1964, it was a choice, not an echo. And you, the choice, was either Lyndon Johnson, the Great Society, a Barry Goldwater, and a return to 1920s economic policies

as some critics would say, but certainly a return back to the past. And the two together, in terms of the political division, mean that American voters really do face the choice in 1964. And not just on economic issues as well, but on the whole range of issues. The whole future of the society is. Well, again, things like everything from birth control to prayer in the schools, to the role of the Supreme Court and opening up a free speech, for example, on issues of pornography. All of these things presage up until then a kind of rumbling transformation. And then suddenly in 1964, you can't escape from anymore. I mean, one of the episodes that I think is fascinating is in 1964, when Barry Goldwater's running for president,

some of his people produced a film called Choice, which actually is a better film for 1968 than 1964, in that it lays out all of these divisions in American society, whether it's social divisions, cultural divisions, racial divisions, and Goldwater kills the film. Because it's just a little too raw. But in fact, that film in 1964 really does capture what's happening in American life and what are going to be the issues for the next generation. Yeah, why Goldwater, why did he kill any film that was? It was the main reason I think that Goldwater killed it. He was already trying to argue that his stance against, I'm sorry, back up here.

In 1964, Goldwater was trying to argue that he was against the civil rights bill, not because he was opposed to civil rights, but because he was opposed to the role of the federal government enforcing civil rights. And when his campaign people produced a film called Choice, which in fact was openly racist, he realized that that wouldn't fly. And he saw to it that the film was suppressed. Let's cut for a second. I have to keep checking my phone because my phone is... Was it symbolic or ironic or prophetic that the film that they made is called Choice? Well, I think they saw it. Certainly, the Goldwater people and the Johnson people saw this as a fundamental kind of choice. I mean, I was a 24-year-old graduate student. I was interested in politics, been involved in the civil rights movement, but I had never been directly involved in politics

in the sense of going out and passing out leaflets. 1964, I was going door to door, passing out Lyndon Johnson's leaflets and trying to get people to vote for LBJ mainly because I was very much of that group that saw this. Yeah, this is the fundamental choice. We've got a madman who's going to lob missiles into the men's room in the Soviet Union versus someone who has promised us, as Lyndon Johnson did, that he wasn't going to send troops to fight in Asia because Asians needed to take care of this themselves. So for me, it was on the war, on civil rights, which I cared deeply about. These were fundamental choices. And of course, LBJ was the right choice. Why did Kennedy's death represent such a fundamental for a American society? Well, we think about the 50s and early 60s

as a relatively placid year. And it wasn't. There was conflict in American society. But nothing like this. I mean, think about it. It was well over a half century since the assassination of McKinley. And although there had been attempted shootings of other presidents, I think it's just it's difficult unless you live through it to realize how traumatic it was for Americans. And it occurs. And this psychologist would maybe have to get everybody on the couch. But it came after, for example, the missile crisis. And there is this sense that things are coming apart. And yet still being held together. And then our president's killed in a thing that in a way that seems totally inexplicable. And that, I think, really did traumatize.

It did traumatize people. I was a graduate student at the time. And this is not. And I was from the deep south. I was at the University of Wisconsin. And I came out of the student union. And one of my classmates, who was from Brooklyn, a wonderful, wonderful young woman, came running across the street and began hitting me and said, you've killed him. And she identified me. It was happened in Texas. And she saw me as a white southerner as somehow being complicit. Well, of course, the next day she apologized profusely. But it was that emotionally traumatic. On my flight back to visit my family the next day. Because I went back to South Carolina. A fist fight broke out on the airplane. The Eastern Airlines airplane between Chicago and Charlotte. Someone in the seats up in front of me

was holding the newspaper and said, glad somebody finally got the bastard. And the guy crossed the way, jumped up, and began, grabbed his neck tie, and began shoving him up against the seat. So it's, I don't mean that the country would not serve anything, or, for example, my mother was a substitute school teacher in South Carolina. And when the principal came on with the news that the president had been shot. And she sadly announced it to her class. About a dozen of the kids began applauding. They were 12 years old. And it was because they had as white southern kids, their family, had talked about what a monster he was. Well, this is a far cry from the politics of the 1950s in terms of the emotional intensity on the part of white self-inners, but on the part of others, as well. Wow.

What's Johnson's greatest challenge as the new president? And what was he known for when he went on? Well, Linda Johnson was the great legislator, the one who could massage, egos, intimidate, to do whatever he needed to do to get legislation to prove, reach the compromises. But he really had a number of disadvantages. I don't think most Americans felt comfortable with Lyndon Johnson. There was always a streak underneath a Texas Wheeler dealer. And for some people that never disappeared. And so his greatest challenge with the assassination of Kennedy was simply to establish himself as president and a president that people could trust. And Robert Carroll points out in his recent biography that was clearly on his mind from the very beginning. I don't mean to act presidential in the sense of appearances, but to act presidential.

And that meant to seize the kind of issues that John Kennedy had talked about, and not in a crude way, but to use the great trauma, the sadness about Kennedy's assassination, to then push forward, to see a kind of continuity between Kennedy and himself that would push forward his ideas, of which civil rights was one of only many issues that he wanted to then carry forward in honor of John Kennedy. And I think that process really established him as a president that rallied people. And what does he do? He goes and makes a speech right away and comes with how concrete what does he do? Well, he, it's a very dramatic moment. And Johnson, first of all, I think he reassures people, the Johnson that they see. And he does have, despite the baggage that he brings with him, he does have this desperate desire

on the part of the American people for some kind of security and stability and continuity. And in his first remarks, in fact, from the very beginning, that's the key note throughout his continuity. This is going to, I'm going to continue on in the tradition of and the policies of John Kennedy. But implicit, I'm going to get him done. And after all, what's that? Kennedy said, let us begin. Yes, that's right. Kennedy had said, let us begin in talking about his policies. But Johnson was the one who was going to carry them through. He said, he says, let us continue. Yes, which is a great idea. I've forgotten that line. That's a great idea, but it's great. Yeah, he's, yeah. That continuity, though, is most clearly seen in the Civil Rights Bill.

In June of 1963, that John Kennedy had introduced the Civil Rights Bill after the demonstrations in Birmingham. But it really just lay there. And the assumption was that it wasn't going to move forward very much. Well, from the beginning, London Johnson said, yes. And he began that process that he was such a master of. And that is bringing in members of the political party and getting them to talk about how they might move the bill forward. Johnson had some personal demons. He was known as Landslide, Lyndon. He was in the 48th, right? Help me, just be careful that you're leaning one way, so you're all there. Yeah, yeah. Is that OK for you? Just slides to the left. I mean, on a personal level, Johnson's

got so many demons. Sure. But I see this as really in a way, November 63 to November 64 is the ultimate journey toward legitimacy for Johnson. Right. What's he struggling with? What's Landslide, Lyndon? Well, first of all, Lyndon Johnson had his own personal demons, I think, that you'd have to be a psychiatrist to figure out. But a lot of it grew out of his background as a Texan in national politics. If you go back and listen to a lot of Lyndon Johnson's telephone conversations, you realize this deep-seated insecurity. He always felt as though other non-Texas, non-Soviners, we're looking down on him a little bit. He's kind of a hillbilly from Texas, the cowboy, not very smart, maybe, the accent, the oversized personality.

He's certainly no John Kennedy. And no matter what his accomplishments, and they were many as Senate Majority Leader, they never seemed to give him the kind of statutory warning. When he ran for president in 1960, he got on the ticket only because of Lyndon, because, sorry, when he ran for president in 1960, he got on the ticket only because Jack Kennedy needed Texas. And once he became vice president, he was essentially shoved in the corner. And so there are all of these things. Breed this sense of frustration, the feeling that he's lost his way, and it's going to be a failure. And then the moment comes, and he seizes it. And seizes it in ways that I think are not only for himself, but he does see, and he's always this very complex personality. But he's always seen himself as both a kind of compromise or wheeler dealer, but is someone whose roots are deep

in the new deal in the 1930s, in which he sees himself as a kind of savior for working class people, lower income people, and those who are on the margins society. And I think it has something to do with his own feelings about being on the margins of American political leadership. And he turns out to be extraordinarily effective in combining that great drive that he has to establish himself, and to get these policies through. Great. What happens on January 3rd, a new political figure steps up in Paris on that? Oh, oh, oh. Yes, I was thinking of January 3rd. I thought he talked about it before then, but you're right. A Barry Goldwater was always a kind of side figure, even during these years, liked by his colleagues regarded as clearly outside the mainstream.

He was part of that economic libertarian stream that always existed in American politics in the 40s and 50s and 60s, but was pretty limited to places like Arizona. And given the kind of broad consensus that extended back into the 1930s, it really kind of amabric in some ways in his emphasis upon restricting the role of the federal government in so many ways. And he had established himself by writing an autobiography which became a kind of little red book to many conservatives. And that established him as a figure, not a major figure it didn't seem. What I think people didn't grasp in 1964 was the intensity of maybe a minority of Americans, but a rising minority of Americans who saw Goldwater as a kind of savior.

And what's driving that? Why are the Republicans? What does he represent? Why is he such an insurgent? Why is this such a revolution? I thought of it just as you were saying. It was if the Republicans nominated Rand Paul or Ron Paul. Right, right, right. And we all be like, holy shit. Yeah, but well, to me, to Goldwater's strength has always stemmed from partly himself and partly the confluence of circumstances in 1964. One of them is the long term one that's communism, anti-communism. Goldwater is a hard line, anti-communist. And the Democrats have struggled with that ever since the days of Harry Truman. And that is how to get this incubus of being soft on communism off of them. Well, Goldwater drove that issue home again in the game. So that's one issue, anti-communism.

The second is, there is this tradition that have gained, because there seemed to be such a consensus on the broad outlines of new deal and fair deal policies. Certainly, President Eisenhower accepted them. It didn't seem logical that there were people who resisted this, but they were. All through the 30s and 40s and 50s, and they were growing. The reasons, in part, because of the very success of the new deal and the fair deal and the economic prosperity of the 1950s, a lot of people said, why do we need the federal government for all these things? Things are going well. And that emphasis upon free enterprise, non-governmental policies, that is, a de-emphasis on the role of the federal government. That was strong in American life. The third factor, and this, I think, is historical. And that is that the moment that he begins

to expound this issue, he has people all over the United States. But it's in the South that you get a solid core, what turns out to be, an incredibly solid core of delegates who are going to go to the 64 convention in San Francisco. These are people who are driven almost entirely or certainly overwhelmingly by the civil rights issue. And they may think of, sorry, Southern Republicans, this new generation of Southern Republicans. Southern Republicans earlier had been moderates. Now you've got this new hard core switch over from the old Democratic party into the new Republican party in the South and they're focused on one issue, and that's civil rights. And stopping the role of the federal government. Well, they don't think that Eric Goldwater's a racist. They probably are aware that he doesn't share their views on race, but his opposition to federal policy

and civil rights is enough for them. And so you get, he's anti-communism. You get his long-term kind of libertarian economic philosophy. And then you get the solid South. And it turns out to be the solid Republican South, which is going to support Barry Goldwater. And that's enough to drive him from a marginal figure to a much more kind of mainstream figure. Great. Yeah. Next. Briefly. Briefly. That's terrible for a historian when you say that. I know that. I don't think that's even in the dictionary. Sorry. How does Goldwater represent a break with the Republican orthodoxy and the Republican kinds of candidates that he comfortable with? Yeah. If you look at the Republican Party beginning

really in 1936, so an half-land and lost thereafter, every Republican candidate up until Barry Goldwater essentially said, we're going to make the policies of the 1930s, the New Deal. We're going to make them work better. We can be more efficient. We can limit the expansion of government. But nobody challenged the foundations of it. That was true with Tom's Dewey. That was certainly true with Dwight Eisenhower. In 1952, the Republicans had a choice. Secretary of Cho's in TAF, he was much more conservative. Eisenhower, they chose Eisenhower. In 1960, Richard Nixon, in his debates with John Kennedy, sounds like, yes, man, almost, in terms of the two of back and forth. How much they agree on these policies. So it's a quite different kind of thing in 1964, in which. Who picks these guys? Because it's full of slack that she's railing

against the King of the Kings. Yes, yes. Well, up until, certainly, until 1964, I think it's pretty clear that conservatives who resisted this consensus republicanism were right. There wasn't really a clique that met in a smoke-filled room, but there was a kind of leadership within the Republican Party that said winning is important. And we need to get candidates who will appeal to centrist as well as conservatives, and they did that, all during the 40s, 50s, up until 1964. But the mechanism was there in terms of the election of delegates by 1964, that if you were dedicated, if you went out and worked in a way that was pretty unprecedented in American politics at the time, you could elect delegates in the primaries and in states where you had a much more complicated process

of electing often at precinct meetings and other ways, you could end up actually mounting a challenge to this consensus leadership. And that's what the Goldwater people did. It was that tremendous dedication that allowed them to break past what would have clearly was the consensus candidate. And that was Governor Rockefeller of New York. Who are these? I mean, it feels like it's the definition of the grassroots, these Goldwater rights. Who are they? Who is the Dan Carter on the other side? Don't you want to join that? If you look at the composition of the Goldwater movement, someone once said, and this is not meant not to meant to disrespect dentists, if you had taken the dentist out of the Goldwater campaign that would have collapsed, there was often led by conservative professionals. I mean, the leadership, if you look at the leadership,

it consists in many cases, small businessmen, conservative professionals, doctors, dentists. But those were the, that was the leadership. You often had simply middle-class Americans who were, as they saw it, fed up with what was going on in American society. You see, housewives who've never been involved in politics before, who suddenly start going to, going to local party meetings, are rallies, are reading literature, are putting, helping put out pamphlets in literature. All of this, it's what's so difficult to describe about any mass movement as it begins. It literally does bubble up from the ground, from the bottom up. And I think the Goldwater movement, while it certainly had some wealthy patrons, had the Goldwater movement, had people who were willing to put their finances behind it. I think it's fair to say it was a genuine grassroots movement.

And really, you know, we don't think about it. It's really vital, passionate. Yes, yes. And do you feel like the early Obama? Yes, and the passion for the Goldwater movement seems to stem as you go back and look at it. From this, I call it one, is the fear wing. And in fact, much of it is driven by a kind of fearfulness that the America that we've known, the America that these middle class and their predominantly middle class and upper middle class people have known, is somehow slipping away. And in ways that they sometimes find it difficult to articulate, communism becomes a kind of umbrella for this. And it embodies all the things that challenge to American economic institutions, to moral institutions, that communism, anti-communism becomes one wing of that. But there's also, even though we think of it,

it's a pretty 1950s kind of America in 1964. You were already beginning to see the first stirrings of a kind of revolt against the status quo. I mean, think about it, the civil rights movement. We now look back on the civil rights movement as this great and glorious moment in American history. It's now been sanitized to the point, conservatives, liberals, only a few French people would challenge the rightness of the civil rights movement. But in the 1960s, well over half of the American people believe the Communist Party was either controlling or directly affecting the civil rights movement. Because it was subversive. It, I mean, everything from the sit-ins, for example. I was a student at the University of South Carolina when the sit-ins started, as a reporter briefly, covering the sit-ins.

And I can remember these feverish debates, even among civil rights advocates. At the time, this admittedly was the deep South, in which you had to think about, well, which is really important. The right of a businessman to control his own business, the right of these people to sit down and have lunch, have dinner, go to a hotel. And it did pit, it was a choice between property rights and human rights. And although today it seems, of course, well, of course we do human rights. But at the time, it wasn't so clear. It was one of those choices that people were beginning to have to make. Are we going to allow blacks to live next or to us? Are we going to allow the federal government to determine whether African-Americans or other ethnic groups live next or to us? By controlling the choices we make. Big moment, that's great. It's very, very thinkable. And he had to attract us in real fringe challenges. He never did much to assist in that.

Yeah. My aunt was married to a bircher, my father. I almost nothing to do with it. My path to that, because it's just like, who is this man? And it's Southern California. Pasadena. Well, California was a particular around Pasadena, Los Angeles, was the center of Burt Society, John Burt Society activity. And the John Burt Society was a very small organization in some ways, but it was, had a couple of things going far. It had a leadership that was well-educated. It was often professional in background, business people. And absolutely fanatical. I mean, these people believed, passionately believed, that not only was, of course, the Democratic Party was controlled by the communists, but many of them believed the Republicans were too. I mean, Joseph Welch, the founder, argued that one point that Dwight Eisenhower

may have been an agent of the Soviet Union. So there was this fanaticism, but that very fanaticism gave them a passion, which furnished a kind of vibrancy and energy. And go water disagreed with them, but yeah. Go water was not a John Burture. But he learned the same thing that any politician who's riding the wave of a grassroots revolt, and that is you're going to have people who are pretty far out in that grassroots movement. And the question is, what do you do? In the case of Go Water, and I think, in the case of other politicians, you ignore them. You use them. You don't agree with them, but whatever you do, you don't disavow them. And that's exactly what Go Water did in the 1964 campaign. George Wallace used to call him the night people.

He used to say, we don't want these people out in the daytime. But they're hell of a useful group at night. He said that. These fringe groups, in his case, the Clans people, and the Burt's people who supported them as well. So that's great. Just a break from civil rights for a second, the other one. This is moment in January 16th, pretty early in the year when Bundy gets this thing called Oakland 34A, moved by the president, which is to escalate pressure around the Gulf. Do you remember that moment? Use that little moment that you can from me. How crystallized? What it is about Vietnam that is also going to become this fundamental form of this year? If you look back up here a second, there's a kind of public progression of what's going on in 1964 in Vietnam.

We knew that. We now know a lot more from the recordings and the memos of 1964. And it was clear from the very beginning that Lyndon Johnson was seized by a kind of schizophrenia, in which, on the one hand, in the back of his mind, I think, by the kind of native shrewdness, he realized that this was a tar baby. And that there really wasn't any way to win. There was no, sorry. Does that make any sense at all there? Very, very much so. Yeah, that's why that phone call is pissing me off. LAUGHTER Rolling? Go ahead. Vietnam was Lyndon Johnson's nightmare. He was totally schizophrenic from day one in 1964, publicly, and even within the government, they were talking about what to do,

expanding the number of advisors, what they might be able to do to control events. And privately, he was telling his closest advisors, I don't think there's any way to win. This is going to be a nightmare. It's going to be a political nightmare. We can't militarily win, but he keeps on. He doesn't move quickly in early 1964, but he certainly doesn't pull back at all. And... Why is it so hard to back up? Yeah. The problem for Lyndon Johnson was, I think we think of it in terms of the general problem that the Democrats had. They're soft on comedies, and they lost China, that they were weak, and that was one of the big, big arguments that Barry Golder made in the 1964 campaign, that Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats were weak on comedies, and they didn't stand up to them. I think it was also reflected its own personality. That...

This is armchair psychology, but I think his own sense of insecurity made it very difficult for him to stand up and say, we've got to cut our losses, because it would have implied not only weakness as a political leader, but personal weaknesses, that he didn't have the strength to stand up for what most Americans believe was a noble cause, and that was fighting communism in the Far East. And he's got to... Let's go ahead. And he's got to say no to all those Kennedy guys. That's right, that's right. Aren't you mean no to those Kennedy guys? They're all in favor, but... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The security team that he inherited from Kennedy, and obviously kept as he did in many instances, because he wanted that continuity, were all committed to playing an active role.

Now, it's still a debate about whether they were willing to commit American troops, but they certainly were not ready at that point to think about withdrawing from Vietnam. And so, Lyndon Johnson had to deal with most of his advisors who wanted him to expand the role of the United States in Vietnam, not contractive. Looking back at this little moment, there's this thing called O plan 34-A. It seems in no way. I do remember it, but don't remember a lot of details about it, Steve. Is this sort of decision to begin commando raids around the Gulf? That's right, all right, that's right. Oh, yeah, sure. I was just checking the box. That's right. Right. Each step along the way was in Cremendum, when Kennedy sent an advisors. They were advisors. One of my good friends was one of the early advisors. And as he said, we were told over and over. We were simply going in there to help the arbonne. And within about 20 minutes after we got there, he said,

I started carrying my rifle with me, because I knew I was not an advisor, and if I remained unarmed, I was going to be killed. Well, I think that was each of those steps from Washington seemed minor, seemed incremental, so that in January, when they began planning these commando raids, well, we can deny them. And they're going to be surreptitious. We're not going to see anything in the New York Times about them. But in effect, it commits us one more step, each step along the way, seeming so small. But by the time you get to November of 1964, we're much more involved. Much more involved. Has the Gulf of Tonkin. Yeah, that's just a moment. Yeah, that's coming back. Yeah. Well, the... Just getting natural. I'm not here to go by blah, blah, blah. Yeah, right. What was the date on it? September was it? Tonkin is...

I don't know what to say. It is... Because the mice will get it, right? Yeah. It's terrible. I can't remember, but I just... I hadn't looked at the... August 4th. August and... That's right. But the reason it's the 4th and it passes on the 6th. No, the 6th, that's right. But it all happens right there in early August there. I was thinking early September, which you're right, started. OK. By the summer of 1964, the American naval presence was much greater in the Gulf of Tonkin in the area that the curve that went between North and South Vietnam and there had been conflict between torpedo boats. Obviously, the North Vietnamese didn't have a big navy. And then there was this episode in the Tonkin Gulf in which an over-eager radar operator thought he detected torpedo boats attacking them, the U.S. fleet.

And in fact, they apparently we now know were blips on the radar screen. And so a lot of firepower was expended apparently into the Gulf of Tonkin. And on the basis of that, Lyndon Johnson saw it as an attack upon the United States. And he used that moment when everyone was upset. It had been in the New York Times. It had been national news about the attack on the American fleet. He used that to go to the Congress to get a resolution. In fact, giving him a blank check, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in August of, early August of 1964. And that gave him from that moment on the power, as he saw it. And I think it would be hard to argue with it that he could basically do what he wanted to, what he needed to in protecting American interest in Vietnam. Is it a faithful moment?

I think it is because from that moment on, the Congress has always been in modern times that Korea and Onward has been not very forceful in protecting its war-making powers. But once in August of 1964, once it seeds power to the president in this matter, giving him the authority to act, not absolutely unanimous, but only a handful of one senator and a handful of representatives opposed it. It then becomes very difficult to put the brakes on, whether it's Lyndon Johnson or then when Richard Nixon later comes in. If you see me leaning, just...