Humphrey’s defenders have argued that he was trapped by his position as vice president and that he only supported the war because of his misguided loyalty to Lyndon Johnson. Scholars have long recognized that roles can shape, influence, or even determine rhetoric for leaders in the U.S. political system, and perhaps nowhere is that observation more accurate than with the vice presidency.[41] One of Humphrey’s oldest friends, civil rights attorney Joseph Rauh, suggested that “Hubert just had blinkers on. I said to him once, ‘If you were President, we’d be out of this war in ninety days.’ He said, ‘No.’ He really thought the war was right. But he was only thinking it through from A to B because of those blinkers he’d put on out of loyalty to Lyndon Johnson. If he’d let himself think it through, he’d have been against the war.” But, Rauh continued, “as it was, you have to say that he stayed and out-Johnsoned Johnson. You have to have forgiveness, though, because he is a really fine and noble man, and it was loyalty that made him do it.” Other observers suggest that such a conclusion is “untenable.” They point out that Humphrey’s rhetoric on the war in 1966 and 1967—which was passionate and overzealous, sometimes bordering on the fanatical—transcended what solidarity with the administration required. As one pundit commented, “One should do him the credit of believing him.”[42] The truth, however, is that, regardless of his true beliefs, Humphrey never managed to deal successfully with the war from a political standpoint, regardless of what his loyalty or principles may have dictated.
Throughout the summer of 1964, the situation in Vietnam continued to deteriorate as the Johnson administration devoted its energy to avoiding any decisions that might undermine the president’s electoral prospects that fall. Meanwhile, Humphrey continued to express doubts about the trajectory of U.S. policy in Southeast Asia. In June, for example, Humphrey spoke out in support of his colleague Senator Frank Church (D-ID), who suggested that the Vietnam conflict should be put before the United Nations and articulated his strong opposition to escalating the war. “What is needed in Vietnam,” Humphrey noted, “is a cause for which to fight, some sort of inspiration for the people of South Vietnam to live for and die for.” Shortly thereafter, he privately told LBJ, “No amount of additional military involvement can be successful” without providing “some hope” around which the Vietnamese people could rally. Military action against North Vietnam or intervention with U.S. combat troops, he argued, was “unnecessary and undesirable.”[43]
Humphrey was being cautious. LBJ had asked him for his views on Vietnam, but John Rielly, Humphrey’s thirty-five-year-old Harvard University and London School of Economics–trained foreign policy adviser, had urged the senator to avoid discussing Vietnam with the president or becoming one of the administration’s spokesmen on the conflict. Rielly told Humphrey, “(1) Do not make any speech on the subject of Vietnam. (2) Do not present to the President any memoranda on Vietnam. (3) Do not permit yourself, if at all possible, to be maneuvered into the position by the President where you become the principal defender of the Administration’s policy in the Senate against critics like Mansfield, Church, Morse, Gruening and others.” That said, Rielly advised Humphrey to “raise certain questions” with the president about “the implications of certain alternative lines of actions.” Rielly argued that the United States had become “overcommitted” in Southeast Asia and counseled Humphrey that, while it had been “a mistake to intervene” in Vietnam in 1954, “our prestige is so committed that there can be no justification of an immediate pull out.” Yet a withdrawal achieved “gradually and gracefully” that would not leave South Vietnam vulnerable to domination by the North would be in the country’s best interest. He cautioned against introducing U.S. ground troops, arguing that “Once we land troops in a country, it is difficult to get them out. We find it difficult to disengage—and usually end up becoming more involved than ever.” Rielly did admit that in an election year, “it is politically dangerous to talk about any scheme for ‘neutralizing the area’” but argued that “a political settlement is our ultimate goal. You may not care to emphasize this at the present time (i.e., before November 1964).”[44] Rielly’s advice would prove to be astute; the confrontation between Johnson and Humphrey in February 1965 would demonstrate just how accurate Rielly’s predictions and prescriptions had been.
That counsel notwithstanding, Humphrey did reply to LBJ’s request in a memorandum—which was prepared with significant input from Edward Lansdale and Rufus Phillips, Lansdale’s protégé and a former CIA officer—in which he counseled restraint in U.S. policy toward Vietnam. Humphrey argued that the Vietnamese “must be skillfully and firmly guided, but it is they (not we) who must win their war.” Playing the domestic political card that the president understood so well, Humphrey went on to point out that a “political base is needed to support all other actions. . . . No amount of additional military involvement can be successful without accomplishing this task.” Indeed, Humphrey concluded that direct U.S. military action or assumption of control in Vietnam would be “unnecessary and undesirable.” Any U.S. involvement should be confined to supporting counterinsurgency efforts rather than airstrikes or other conventional responses. Humphrey recommended that a team of U.S. counterinsurgency experts be dispatched to Vietnam. Johnson’s military aide, Major General Chester V. Clifton Jr., responded to Humphrey’s suggestions negatively, and LBJ took Clifton’s advice.[45] Clearly, Humphrey and Johnson did not share the same opinion on what approach to follow in Southeast Asia.
While the questions of how, when, and to what extent the United States should act in Vietnam remained fluid, the fall election campaign between Johnson and Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) took priority. Although Humphrey seemed to be a lock for the vice-presidential slot, the Democratic convention would not be held until the end of August 1964, and LBJ’s decision had not yet been finalized. In fact, Humphrey’s nomination was nearly derailed in the wake of the Gulf of Tonkin attacks.[46] On August 4, the president spoke with former campaign manager James Rowe in the middle of the crisis. He complained that Humphrey’s “garrulousness” was endangering national security. “Our friend Hubert is just destroying himself with his big mouth,” LBJ complained. “Every responsible person gets frightened when they see him. . . . Yesterday morning, he went on TV and . . . just blabbed everything that he had heard in a briefing.” Johnson called him a “damned fool” who “just ought to keep his goddamned big mouth shut on foreign affairs, at least until the election is over. . . . He’s hurting us!” The president concluded by telling Rowe that if Humphrey did not stop, he might reconsider the Minnesota senator as his running mate.[47]
Johnson’s disapproval failed to prevent Humphrey from addressing the situation in Southeast Asia. During the truncated debate that preceded the overwhelming passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Humphrey said “the aggressor seeks to bite off piece by piece the areas of freedom . . . our objective is to achieve stability in the area so that we can then go to the conference table. But we ought to make it clear to the world that we do not intend to sit at the conference table with a Communist gun at our heads.”[48] Humphrey made it clear he supported the administration’s request for authorization to retaliate for the attacks and defend both U.S. interests and South Vietnam. “It is my view that the minute we back away from commitments we have made in the defense of freedom, where the Communist powers are guilty of outright subversion and aggression, on that day the strength, the freedom, and the honor of the United States starts to be eroded.” He returned to his familiar anticommunist rhetoric and argued that he was “of the opinion that what is going on in Southeast Asia is a persistent attack on the part of the Communist forces to nibble away at certain areas in Southeast Asia which we can call free and independent, to take them one by one.” There was no question in Humphrey’s mind that the United States had to act. “A great power must be an honorable power,” he said. “A great nation must be willing at times to make great and difficult decisions. I would be the last to say that this decision did not have within it the possibilities of even greater troubles ahead. But I do not believe that we can duck these troubles.