19.
Quoted in Mann, A Grand Delusion, 129.
20.
Mann, A Grand Delusion, 158.
21.
Gibbons, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War, Part I, 166.
22.
Statement, Humphrey on Indochina, April 19, 1954, 150.E.14.10F, HHHP, MHS.
23.
On the transition from French to U.S. dominance in Vietnam in the 1950s, see especially Kathryn C. Statler, Replacing France: The Origins of American Intervention in Vietnam (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007); Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2012).
24.
Hubert H. Humphrey, The Education of a Public Man: My Life and Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1991), 234.
25.
William C. Berman, William Fulbright and the Vietnam War: The Dissent of a Political Realist (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1988), 10.
26.
William Conrad Gibbons, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Part II, 1961–1964 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 126.
27.
Humphrey, The Education of a Public Man, 235.
28.
Albert Eisele, Almost to the Presidency: A Biography of Two American Politicians (Blue Earth, MN: Piper Co., 1972), 230.
29.
Transcript, Hubert H. Humphrey Oral History Interview, August 17, 1971, by Joe B. Frantz, LBJL, 5; Transcript, Hubert H. Humphrey Oral History Interview III, June 21, 1977, by Michael L. Gillette, LBJL, 11.
30.
Walter LaFeber, The Deadly Bet: LBJ, Vietnam, and the 1968 Election (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 121.
31.
David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992), 433–35.
32.
Mitchell Lerner makes a convincing argument that some of LBJ’s ancillary duties as vice president—specifically his extensive international travel (eleven trips to thirty-three countries, covering 120,000 miles)—were “not nearly as unimportant as many believed (and as the Kennedy people often tried to suggest).” See Mitchell Lerner, “‘A Big Tree of Peace and Justice’: The Vice Presidential Travels of Lyndon Johnson,” Diplomatic History 34, no. 2 (April 2010): 357–93 (quote from 359). On the role of the vice president in modern politics and foreign policy, see, for example, Joel K. Goldstein, The Modern American Vice Presidency: The Transformation of a Political Institution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982); Paul Kengor, Wreath Layer or Policy Player: The Vice President’s Role in Foreign Policy (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000).
33.
Quoted in Erik van den Berg, “Supersalesman for the Great Society: Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, 1965–1969,” American Studies International 36, 3 (October 1998): 60.
34.
Telephone conversation transcript, Hubert Humphrey and Lyndon Johnson, March 6, 1965, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/secret-white-house-tapes/conversation-hubert-humphrey-march-6-1965-0, accessed October 7, 2019.
35.
Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, 531–35 (emphasis in original).
36.
Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963–1969 (New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1971), 101.
37.
Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 137.
38.
Newsweek, April 13, 1964, 26.
39.
Kenneth Crawford, “HHH Anonymous,” Newsweek, January 11, 1965, 32.
40.
Randall B. Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition (New York: Free Press, 2006), 533; Newsweek, November 9, 1964, 30.
41.
In social science, role theory suggests that each role or office has a set of expectations, behaviors, and responsibilities with which a person must grapple and fulfill, which influences the locus of possible options for rhetoric and decision-making.
42.
Chester, Hodgson, and Page, An American Melodrama, 148.
43.
Mann, A Grand Delusion, 339.
44.
Memorandum, John Reilly to Hubert Humphrey, June 8, 1964, HHH Vice Presidential Files, 1965–1968, Foreign Affairs General Files, 150.E.14.1B, MHS.
45.
Quoted in Gibbons, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War, Part II, 278; Memorandum, Hubert Humphrey to Lyndon Johnson, June 8, 1964, 150.D.10.1B, HHHP, MHS. See also Van Dyk, Heroes, Hacks, and Fools, 29.
46.
On the Gulf of Tonkin attacks, see especially Edwin E. Moïse, Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
47.
Telephone conversation transcript, Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy, May 28, 1964, quoted in Michael R. Beschloss, ed., Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963–1964 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 499 (emphasis in original).
48.
Eisele, Almost to the Presidency, 229.
49.
Congressional Record (Senate), August 6, 1964, 17836-17837.
50.
On Vietnam and the 1964 presidential campaign, see, for example, Andrew L. Johns, “Mortgaging the Future: Barry Goldwater, Lyndon Johnson, and Vietnam in the 1964 Presidential Election,” Journal of Arizona History 61, no. 1 (Spring 2020): 149–60.
51.
Speech, Humphrey at Los Angeles town hall meeting, August 17, 1964, 310.G.12.4F, HHHP, MHS.
52.
Robert David Johnson, All the Way with LBJ: The 1964 Presidential Election (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 194.
53.
New York Times, August 28, 1964.
54.
Offner, Hubert Humphrey, 208.
55.
“Humphrey and Rauh,” National Review Bulletin 16, no. 37 (September 15, 1964): 1.
56.
Johnson, All the Way with LBJ, 243.
57.
Quoted in Time, September 4, 1964, 20.
58.
Speech, Hubert Humphrey, October 26, 1964, Thomson Papers, box 12, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston, MA (hereafter JFKL).
59.
Johnson,