Personal Qualities Of Lyndon Johnson And The Vietnam War

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2) Personal qualities of Lyndon Johnson as a factor for the escalation of the conflict As noted above, the struggle with the Republicans and the public sentiment within American society caused Lyndon Johnson to first give pre-election promises, which he was later unable to fulfill, and then to take steps that in fact turned against him. In this situation, special consideration is given to the personal qualities of Lyndon Johnson as a politician and as a president and what role they played in the adoption, as it turned out as a result of a fateful decision for his political career and for the country as a whole. Lyndon Johnson, at the time of his accession to the presidency, was a fairly experienced politician who began his political career …show more content…

Kennedy undoubtedly affected the domestic setup in which Lyndon Johnson took over as president. Johnson was forced to take the post of the president before the next elections. As a result, LBJ was forced to make a dramatic number of crucial decisions in the context of both the domestic political instability and the complications of the Vietnamese conflict, where the government of South Vietnam failed to resolve the problems on its own. As a result, Lyndon Johnson found himself in an emergency situation in which he had to choose between an emphasis on domestic politics and the continuation of his predecessor's social reforms, or try to save the Saigon government, which led to an inevitable increase in military spending and the escalation of the conflict (VanDeMark, ___). Lyndon Johnson seems to have decided to try achieving two tasks at the same time, hoping that US intervention in the conflict will facilitate its rapid completion and allow him to continue the Great Society reforms. However, as further events showed, this decision proved to be a mistake on his …show more content…

Nonetheless, most of his trips abroad were connected with European countries and visits to Asian states were rare. As it has been already mentioned earlier, while D. Eisenhower was personally acquainted with the political leadership of South Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson hadn’t got the possibility to get to know Southern Vietnamese leaders. As a result, it is sometimes argued that in times of deteriorating crisis in Vietnam the United States lacked the president who was well aware of the specifics of the East Asian region, its history and

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