Literary Quote of the Day: David Halberstam
I’m reviving this late great TMV feature for the day in honor of David Halberstam, whom I remembered in a post earlier today.
This quote, which Dick Polman had the good sense to dredge up, is from the closing pages of Halberstam�s The Best and the Brightest (1972):
Lyndon Johnson had lost it all, and so had the rest of them; they had, for all their brilliance and hubris and sense of themselves, been unwilling to look to and learn from the past. . . . He and the men around him wanted to be defined as being strong and tough; but strength and toughness and courage were exterior qualities which would be demonstrated by going to a clean and hopefully antiseptic war with a small nation, rather than the interior and more lonely kind of strength and courage of telling the truth to America (about an unwinnable war) and perhaps incurring a great deal of domestic political risk…
Nor had they, leaders of a democracy, bothered to involve the people of their country in the course they had chosen; they knew the right path and they knew how much could be revealed, step by step along the way. They had manipulated the public, the Congress, and the press from the start, told half truths, about why we were going in, how deeply we were going in, how much we were spending, and how long we were in for. When their predictions turned out to be hopefully inaccurate, and when the public and the Congress, annoyed at being manipulated, soured on the war, then the architects had been aggrieved. They had turned on those very symbols of the democratic society they had once manipulated, criticizing them for their lack of fiber, stamina, and lack of belief. . . . What was singularly missing . . .was an iota of public admission that they had miscalculated. The faults, it seemed, were not theirs, the fault was with this country which was not worth of them. So they lost it all.
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10 Responses to “Literary Quote of the Day: David Halberstam”
Another war that was lost due to tragic miscalculations. But at least LBJ was stricken , not arrogant when antiwar demonstrators picketed the WH, blaming him for the deaths of all of those young men. He never got over it.
Kritter:
A worthy point. We will see if Mr. Bush, who claims to channel the wisdom of Jesus, has a similar catharsis.
Impressive quote, Shaun
‘Tis an excerpt, Shaun, not a quote.
Shaun, Do you know if Halberstam felt the same way about Iraq?
Kritter:
I did an expanded post at my own blog and include a quote . . . er, excerpt from an interview in which he discusses both wars.
Here’s a link.
Shaun…that is a great picture, and a good exerpt.
I have always thought Halberstam was being unfair to Johnson in “The Best and the Brightest”…influenced probably by his writing it immediately in the shadow of Vietnam.
Contrast Halberstam on Johnson in 1972 and in the linked interview above:
In 1972 he represented Johnson as being in Vietnam for domestic political fears…while in 2004 he acknowledged that Johnson incurred a domestic political body blow, and gave away the South, simply on the principle of ensuring African Americans had equal voting rights. In this, Halberstam mirrors the changing views of a generation on Johnson.
One of the great “Might Have Beens” in American political history was Johnson’s decision not to contest the nomination. My partner, an American historian, believes he could have won against Kennedy…and only Johnson had the political leverage on the Hill to get the troops out and survive the firestorm.
Think of what would have been different…perhaps no Nixon…the “fighting liberal” Democrats would still be a viable political force…the Great Society extended.
But by 1968 he was a broken titan. An American tragedy…though it has taken a generation for historians to see it.
Shaun…the linked interview is a great piece on Halberstam comparing Iraq and Vietnam.
There has been a lot of debate over the comparisons between the two, but Halberstam’s interview made me think of the aftermath of the two conflicts (a connection no one has drawn, to my knowledge).
I know you were young at the time, but I was wondering if you see any parallels between the aftermath of Vietnam, and the immediate future for the US after Iraq (presuming the US will withdraw in the next year or so)?
Are there any lessons to be learned? Or will we make the same mistakes?
In the last sentence of your Halberstam excerpt (as posted), is it possible that the word “worth” should be “worthy”?
In a hard lesson in humility, the Democrats shed their ugly American war egotism under the pressure of popular opinion. Unfortunately, the republicans didn’t think they had anything to learn from it.
The republicans do not care what Americans think, they only care about their Rich Corporate base with the rest of their constituency being easily beguiled with nationalist bigotry disguised as patriotism. The Vietnam scenario so perfectly fits today’s conservative political mantra of “we know better than you, therefore your complaints do not count”, that I am sure the republicans will learn their lessons the hard way as well.
Only now, we will certainly be much less forgiving because they should have known better.