Historians are still rethinking the disastrous Vietnam War that started under Eisenhower and ended with Nixon’s withdrawal. While there is general agreement that former President Lyndon Johnson blew it, and his chances for a second term, a new theory is emerging that John F. Kennedy could have sold the war to a skeptical public.
“I think had he lived, he might have made it a popular war, imagine that,” said historian Edward Drea, author of a new book about Vietnam era defense secretaries Robert McNamara and Clark Clifford. JFK, he said, “had that rhetorical flair, charisma, a leadership that he could probably have made some decisions that Johnson was terrified of making,” such as calling up the Reserves.
But, said former McNamara aide and Carter era Defense Secretary Harold Brown,
“making it popular would not necessarily have made it winnable.”
