Mansfield’s stance on Vietnam took courage
In response to Bob Brown’s column (What’s the point of being a senator if you don’t have guts, June 26):
As an admirer of your columns, especially ones in collaboration with my distinguished friend Marc Racicot (I played my high school basketball for Marc’s father, Bill Racicot, at Libby High School and stay in close touch with Marc) I was dismayed by your willingness to quote Sen. Burton K. Wheeler, “What’s the point of being a senator if you don’t have guts,” followed by Wheeler’s criticism of his senatorial successor, Mike Mansfield.
According to Wheeler, “Mansfield never takes a stand on anything.” You paraphrase Wheeler by stating that if Mansfield was really opposed to the Vietnam War he should have spoken out directly and forcefully against it, instead of “meekly” (your word) going along with President Lyndon Johnson.
You use Wheeler’s anti court-packing plan proposed by FDR in 1937 as a courageous decision, one that, in Wheeler’s view, took “guts,” when in fact three-quarters of senate Democrats opposed FDR’s plan, with 70 out of 90 senators in opposition. I don’t see that as exactly stomach-churning courage!
Regarding your comments about the our current congressional delegation, it is true, according to historian Robert Dallek, in “An Unfinished Life,” a biography of JFK (1917-1963), that “the great majority of senators — past and present — were unexceptional.” John F. Kennedy himself saw his fellow senators as “cautious, self-serving and unheroic.”
In 1954, after a year in the Senate, when someone asked Jack, what’s it like to be a United States Senator? He said after a moment, “It’s the most corrupting job in the world.”
In Dallek’s words, JFK saw senators as all too ready to cut deals and court campaign contributors to ensure their political futures. Dallek continues: JFK also enjoyed the famous comment by Senate Champlain Edward Everett Hale: “Do you pray for the senators, Dr. Hale?”
“No,” he replied, “I look at the senators and I pray for the country.”
Let us return to Montana’s finest senator, Mansfield, elected as majority leader in 1961, Mansfield was the first top elected official to call for a pullout from Vietnam, a position that took more “guts” than Wheeler ever publicly espoused.
A friend, at first, of Vietnam’s President Ngo Dinh Diem, a visit to Diem changed his mind, as $2 billion in aid, in Mansfield view, was “squandered and mismanaged.” Diem’s unwillingness to share power and lack of broad support from the South Vietnamese people was also evident to Mansfield.
Diem, in Mansfield view, had become a “changed man,” and a “puppet” to his brother Nhu. After Diems’ assassination, (with the U.S. as an accomplice), Mansfield was the only one of LBJ’s advisors to express opposition to any escalation in Vietnam.
“It is only fair that I give you my honest opinion … because to do otherwise would be a disservice to you and the Nation,” said Mansfield in 1965.
Years later, Mansfield revealed an exchange with LBJ: “I started out, but he, (Johnson) turned and said, ‘I approve of your honesty, but I only wish I had a majority leader who was more supportive.’ I didn’t say anything. He went his way, and I went mine.”
That doesn’t sound like “meekly going along with Johnson” to me.
Mansfield considered his inability to stop the Vietnam War his greatest failure.
“I received kind of heavy criticism for not doing more, but I didn’t know what more I could do. I kind of felt helpless. But I wanted my position to be known. That position never changed from the beginning to the end. I was never in any doubt that we were in the wrong.”
Still, it seems to me that Mansfield’s resistance and insight took more raw courage than either Kennedy or Johnson possessed (with “hawkish” advisors like Rusk, Acheson and McNamara), although in all fairness, besides Lincoln, LBJ was surely the most tormented president in American history. Mansfield thoroughly approved of Nixon’s policy of Vietnamization, although not always his methods of doing so by resuming “excessive” bombing attacks.
On a more personal note, your essay struck an unintended, still-raw nerve, one that most recently played itself out on May 25 with the dedication of the Arthur J. Rambo Memorial Bridge in Libby over the Kootenai River. Arthur Rambo, a 24-year old Notre Dame graduate with a master’s degree in engineering, and a family man with two young daughters, lost his life in Vietnam on Thanksgiving Day 1969.
Art, a graduating member of the Libby High School class of 1963, was a classmate, a best friend, and a life full of enormous promise, one left tragically unfulfilled. As a fellow Vietnam veteran, I was a pall bearer for Art in 1969, and, on May 25 of this year was the emcee at the ceremony to name the bridge in Art’s memory for his sacrifice, as well as for his gallantry in winning the Silver Star.
Libby native and former Gov. Marc Racicot and I, along with others, testified to Senate and House committees for Senate Bill 59 to name the bridge in honor of Art, one introduced by Sen. Mike Cuffe of Eureka. Senate Bill 59 passed unanimously in the Senate, and 98-2 in the House.
If only Mansfield’s experience and knowledge of Southeast Asia, his foresight, his wisdom, and his courage to express his concerns were heeded.
Finally, Bob, I look forward to more of your interesting and insightful essays. Your conversation with Wheeler at Wheeler’s advanced age was delightful, but Wheeler badly missed the mark regarding Mansfield, and I find it regretful that you chose not to expound on that.
Tony Smith lives in Troy.