{"id":6084,"date":"2005-12-14T13:45:05","date_gmt":"2005-12-14T18:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6084"},"modified":"2005-12-14T13:45:05","modified_gmt":"2005-12-14T18:45:05","slug":"lbj-went-to-a-lot-of-military-bases-for-a-different-reason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/lbj-went-to-a-lot-of-military-bases-for-a-different-reason\/","title":{"rendered":"LBJ went to a lot of military bases — for a different reason"},"content":{"rendered":"

CNN’s Jeff Greenfield wrote a good item<\/a> today about the contrast between LBJ’s frequent visit to military bases during Vietnam and Bush’s now. As Greenfield put it, it’s a “compelling, new, and entirely mistaken comparison.”<\/p>\n

The point has been coming up quite a bit lately. Greenfield noted that a series of writers at a number of outlets noted that Johnson tried to rally the country behind the war while “standing in front of reliably supportive men and women in uniform,” and Bush is doing the exact same thing now.<\/p>\n

Except there’s an important difference. Randall Woods, a University of Arkansas historian, explained that when Johnson did visit military bases during his second term, it wasn’t to rally public opinion or tout his war policy.<\/p>\n

“When he went to bases,” Woods says, “it was to talk to troops informally … he didn’t stage media events there.” The exception, he notes, was a visit to Cam Rahn Bay in South Vietnam in October 1966.<\/p>\n

The major speeches Johnson made in defense of his Vietnam policy were all at non<\/i>military venues: the TV statement on the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August of 1964, a speech at John Hopkins University in April of 1965, his “escalation” press conference in July of that year, and a September 1967 speech at the Texas National Legislative Conference in San Antonio. He also defended his policies in detail in his State of the Union messages.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In contrast, staging media events in military settings seems to be one of Bush’s favorite<\/a> things<\/a> to<\/a> do<\/a>. Indeed, his address on Iraq two weeks ago was at the Naval Academy<\/a>, which followed a speech at Osan Air Base<\/a>, which followed a similar speech at Elmendorf Air Force Base<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some comparisons between Johnson’s Vietnam and Bush’s Iraq are compelling, but this isn’t one of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CNN’s Jeff Greenfield wrote a good item today about the contrast between LBJ’s frequent visit to military bases during Vietnam and Bush’s now. As Greenfield put it, it’s a “compelling, new, and entirely mistaken comparison.” The point has been coming up quite a bit lately. Greenfield noted that a series of writers at a number […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6084\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}