Public Sentiment Regarding the Vietnam War

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Many of the democrats within the legislative branch turned against Johnson’s war. Scholar’s conflict on the reason why Johnson’s own party turned against him, some scholars attribute it to the growing number of antiwar constituents, while other scholars such as E.M. Schreiber, Burstein and Freudenburg cite the numerous deaths of American soldiers in combat. One democrat by the name of Eugene McCarthy labeled the entire Vietnam War as an “error” and describes the Johnson administration as “misguided.” McCarthy decides to run for President, but loses in the primaries by a slim margin to Johnson, further indicating that the antiwar movement was gaining significant momentum. Things were only beginning to get even worse as the Tet Offensive and the Mai Lai massacre overshadowed the propaganda speeches from Westmoreland and President Johnson. The media was once a key ally to the Johnson administration during the early stages of the war, now turned completely against American involvement. Media outlets such as Life magazine began to show pictures of dead Americans in almost every issue. In February of 1968, influential CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite, who returned from Saigon, informs Americans during his nightly broadcast that the Vietnam War could not be won. Leaks from within the White House did not help Johnson’s strategy either; the New York Times broke the news of General Westmoreland’s request of 206,000 additional troops. In August 1968, during the Democratic national convention in Chicago, 10,000 antiwar protesters gathered and were confronted by an equipped police force. The crackdown on the protesters was broadcasted on live TV. The protests indicated that the U.S. was experiencing a profound degree of social unrests. T...

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...er, E. M.. "Anti-War Demonstrations and American Public Opinion on the War in Vietnam." The British Journal of Sociology 27, no. 2 (1976): 225-236.
Small, Melvin, William D. Hoover, and Charles DeBenedetti. "3." In Give peace a chance: exploring the Vietnam antiwar movement : essays from the Charles DeBenedetti Memorial Conference. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1992. 90-95.
Verba, Sidney, Richard A. Brody, Edwin B. Parker, Norman H. Nie, Nelson W. Polsby, Paul Ekman, and Gordon S. Black. "Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam." The American Political Science Review 61, no. 2 (1967): 317-333.
Wagaman, J. Brian. "Antiwarriors: The Vietnam War and the Battle for America's Hearts and Minds." The Journal of Popular Culture 37, no. 4 (2004): 746-748.
Wells, Tom. The war within: America's battle over Vietnam. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994.

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