Pay Any Price: Lyndon Johnson and the Wars for Vietnam [Paperback]

Lloyd C. Gardner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1997

Lyndon Johnson brought to the presidency a political outlook steeped in New Deal liberalism and the idea of government intervention for the public good—at home or abroad. Seeking to fulfill John Kennedy's pledge in Southeast Asia, LBJ constructed a fatal coupling of the Great Society and the anti-Communist imperative. Pay Any Price is Lloyd Gardner's riveting account of the fall into Vietnam; of behind-the-scenes decision-making at the highest levels of government; of miscalculation, blinkered optimism, and moral obtuseness. Blending political biography with diplomatic history, Gardner has written the first book on American involvement in the Vietnam War to use the full resources and newly declassified documents of the Johnson Library, and to tell whole the story of Johnson and Vietnam. The book is filled with fresh interpretations, brilliantly incisive portraits of the president and his men, and new perspectives on America's most divisive foreign war. Gardner describes for the first time how, as tragedy swirled around the deliberations in Washington, Clark Clifford and Dean Rusk struggled for the president's soul, culminating in the bombing halt of 1968 and the Johnson decision not to run. The war finally sundered the liberal cold war consensus, Gardner argues, and brought to an end the New Deal politics that had dominated American political life since 1933. Pay Any Price is a major work of history by one of our most distinguished historians.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Lloyd C. Gardner traces the trajectory of the Vietnam War from police action to international conflict, showing how its conduct coincided with Lyndon Johnson's attachment to social programs meant to improve the lives of the world's poor. By introducing such tangled political elements into a military problem, Gardner argues, Johnson cast a certain unreality on the whole affair. "If one could go to the moon," Gardner imagines a loyalist reasoning, "and if one could help grandma with new medical miracles, surely it would be possible to convince Ho Chi Minh to accept a dam on the Mekong River instead of a residence in Saigon." Manipulated by Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara, Johnson believed that his schemes of regional economic development would bear him out as a savior of the world's oppressed---whether the oppressed asked for his help or not. Gardner's suggestion that Vietnam can be seen as a moral drama played out in the dark recesses of LBJ's conscience is intriguing, and he backs it up with careful scholarship. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Gardner's masterful study takes a close look at President Lyndon Johnson's juggling of military strategy, international diplomacy and domestic politics during the Vietnam War. Most interestingly, Gardner (Imperial America) explores LBJ's dream of going beyond the Cold War policy of containment by offering the North Vietnamese huge incentives to abandon communism, e.g., a Mekong River project that would have surpassed the New Deal's Tennessee Valley Authority. The book features a clear explication of the views of key advisers, most notably Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and his struggle with moral and ethical dimensions of Vietnam policy. By the fall of 1967, according to Gardner, most advisers' conferences included a clash between McNamara and colleagues, particularly over the bombing of the North. Making judicious use of newly declassified documents at the Johnson Library in Austin, Tex., Gardner has written a major study of LBJ's incremental reactions to the war's shifting options, shedding new light on the internal debates over the conduct of the war. Photos.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 629 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R Dee (September 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566631750
• ISBN-13: 978-1566631754
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,583,543 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #85 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( J ) > Johnson, Lyndon

More About the Author

Lloyd C. Gardner is the Charles and Mary Beard Professor of History at Rutgers University and the author and editor of more than a dozen books, including Three Kings and The Long Road to Baghdad. He lives in Newtown, Pennsylvania.