It is worth taking a moment to pause and explore Johnson’s personality further, as it is central not just to understanding his decisions that led to the Americanization of the war in Vietnam but also to appreciating his relationship with Humphrey. David Halberstam provides one of the most insightful descriptions of LBJ in his magisterial, albeit imperfect, account of the origins of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, The Best and the Brightest. For Halberstam, Johnson was “a relentless man who pushed himself and all others with the same severity and demanded, above all other qualities, total loyalty.” That loyalty had to be “first and foremost to Lyndon Johnson. Then Lyndon Johnson would become the arbiter of any larger loyalty. Those who passed the loyalty test could have whatever they wanted.” LBJ, Halberstam continued, “was ill at ease with abstract loyalty, loyalty to issue, to concept, to cause, which might lead one to occasional dissent, a broader view, and might mean that a man was caught between loyalty to civil rights and loyalty to Lyndon Johnson.” But unlike others, Johnson demanded loyalty out of insecurity. Why was LBJ, who had risen to the heights of political power in the United States, insecure? According to Halberstam, it was Johnson’s sense that he was an outsider—he was not part of the Eastern establishment, he lacked an Ivy League pedigree, and he was not among the country’s financial elite. That sense of not belonging was only magnified by the fact that those cohorts were so prominent in the Kennedy administration. That feeling “was a profound part of him. . . . He was haunted by regional prejudice, and even the attainment of the Presidency did not temper his feelings.”[31]
Complicating matters was Johnson’s experience as JFK’s vice president. Kennedy kept the former Senate majority leader—who was accustomed to power, control, and prestige after dominating the legislative process on Capitol Hill for so many years—busy with a series of seemingly insignificant, although traditionally vice-presidential, tasks.[32] LBJ never forgot his own miserable years spent one heartbeat away from the presidency, later admitting that he “detested every minute of it.”[33] That helps to explain why Johnson, who did not speak up in cabinet meetings about civil rights despite his strong feelings on the issue, probably wondered why Humphrey spoke up so forcefully on Vietnam early in his tenure as vice president and treated him poorly as a result. Indeed, that attitude comes through clearly in the interactions between the two men. Early in 1965, LBJ told Humphrey, “I had none [power], ’cause Kennedy wouldn’t give me any. He didn’t just assign it to me. . . . Kennedy felt if I did it . . . they’d say I was the ‘Master Craftsman’ and so forth.”[34] President Johnson would show Humphrey even less consideration over the next four years than he had received from JFK.
Given that perspective, and despite the fact that Humphrey shared Johnson’s outsider background, LBJ’s treatment of Humphrey becomes more understandable, if not excusable. Johnson had “always viewed Hubert Humphrey as something of a convenience, to be used at times for his own and the country’s greater good,” but the Texan never held the kind of respect for Humphrey that he did for people like Richard Russell. Humphrey was “too prone to talk instead of act, not a person that other men would respect in a room when it got down to the hard cutting.” The relationship was “almost completely one-sided, Johnson using Humphrey on Johnson’s terms,” whether on civil rights, the Great Society, or the conflict in Vietnam.[35] Understanding this dynamic on both a personal and institutional level is absolutely vital to grasping how the LBJ–Humphrey relationship influenced Humphrey on the issue of Vietnam during his vice presidency.
While Vietnam loomed large for the new president, Lyndon Johnson also had to focus on the impending 1964 presidential campaign and the question of who he would select as his vice president. Although he vetted several possibilities, Hubert Humphrey stood out in Johnson’s calculations because Humphrey possessed a number of potential campaign assets: the senator was a Northerner, an intellectual, and a certified liberal, all electoral weaknesses for a Southern Democrat like Johnson. Those qualities made for a tempting set of ticket-balancing credentials for LBJ. It helped that Humphrey and Johnson worked well together, their unequal relationship notwithstanding. In his memoirs, Johnson characterized Humphrey as “a strong contender” along with Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-MN) for the vice presidency but eventually concluded that Humphrey “was the best choice in the light of all the circumstances.”[36] Still, the president continued to have reservations about Humphrey throughout the first half of 1964. At one point, LBJ told White House aide Bill Moyers, “I would have lots of problems with him. He’s so exuberant, so enthusiastic; he’d get off the reservation all the time”—not exactly what Johnson was looking for in a vice president.[37]
The president’s concerns may have been exaggerated and certainly betrayed LBJ’s insecurities. The reality is that after nearly two decades in the Senate, Humphrey’s sharp liberal edges had been softened. While still energetic, garrulous, and firmly committed to his causes, he had learned to be “a half-a-loaf pragmatist instead of an all-or-nothing martyr.” Even though the Minnesota senator still possessed the “instincts of a brawler,” he was no longer brash, and he understood the etiquette demands of the Senate to be “no less pointed but far more genteel.”[38] To his arsenal of rhetoric and passion, Humphrey added the quiet skills of conciliation and negotiation that allowed him to become effective in coalition building, compromise, and political maneuvering, the critical components of legislative success. That being said, Humphrey still spoke truth to power and advocated for his causes, but he did so in a more mature and measured way. Of course, speaking one’s mind as a member of the Senate is one thing; it would be entirely another to be candid as vice president—especially to Lyndon Johnson.
Nevertheless, according to journalist Kenneth Crawford, Humphrey possessed the most important qualification to be vice president: “he is essentially a contented man” who would “not be chafed by subordination to the President or by the degree of anonymity this imposes. He already has adjusted gracefully.” Crawford also observed that Humphrey understood the ground rules of the relationship with LBJ most importantly that Humphrey would “speak for the President only when the President specifically authorizes him to do so,” despite the fact that Humphrey “has never been one to sit quietly for long in a back seat.” Crawford believed that the two men shared a “mutual respect and understanding and finally trust and affection.”[39] It was an optimistic perspective but a mostly accurate assessment in mid-1964. Unfortunately for Humphrey, those bonds would fracture over the next four years.
After Humphrey agreed to serve as vice president, Johnson warned him—presciently, as it would turn out—that the requirements and realities of their new working relationship would probably ruin their long-standing friendship. “There is something about the jobs and responsibilities that seem to get in the way of those friendships and understandings,” LBJ told Humphrey, speaking from his own experience. “You have to understand that this is like a marriage with no chance of divorce. I need complete and unswerving loyalty.” Humphrey assured Johnson that he accepted the parameters of the job, and the deal was done. Humphrey fully understood that his