Ann Marie Deer Owens
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Jan. 30 marks anniversary of battle that turned the tide against Lyndon Johnson
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - This month's 30-year-anniversary of the Tet offensive commemorates a milestone in the demise of the Lyndon Johnson presidency, according to Vanderbilt University historian Thomas Schwartz, who is researching a book on Johnson's foreign policy. During Tet, the Vietnamese lunar new year, there was supposed to be a 24-hour truce between the North and South Vietnamese forces. However, on Jan. 30, 1968, communist forces launched surprise attacks against South Vietnamese provincial capitals. Schwartz said that the Tet offensive dramatized the importance of television news in shaping political opinion. "The media coverage conveyed a false impression about the magnitude of the defeat for the United States and resulted in a major loss of support for President Johnson," he said. The communists did not actually take over the American Embassy, but they made it within the first barriers at a time when it was still quite shocking to Americans that their embassy could be attacked, Schwartz said. The images of combat during Tet were very strong for that era, such as a prisoner being shot in full view of the cameras. All of that had a significant effect on Johnson's approval rating, which dipped to 25 percent. "The importance of Tet was that it was an extraordinary military offensive at a time when Johnson and General William Westmoreland had said that the war was almost over," Schwartz said. Johnson soon realized that he would not be able to win re-election and pulled out of the race. (more)
Schwartz noted that the evening network newscasts were not being recorded for future analysis at that time. "Tet underscored the need for a television news archive, which began at Vanderbilt in August of that year, " he said. Schwartz, who is on leave at the Woodrow Wilson Institute in Washington, D.C., is conducting research for a project titled "NATO, Europe and the Johnson Administration: Alliance Politics, Political Economy and the Beginning of DÈtente, 1963-1969." His research will ultimately result in a book called "In the Shadow of Vietnam: Lyndon Johnson and Europe."
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