I failed Politics I01. When I was a freshman. Got a D actually. John Roche, who taught the class, asked me in the first class: What’s the difference between civil rights and civil liberties? I had no idea. My confidence disappeared.
I passed Politics in life. For 25 years, I was a school superintendent for a tiny, complex district. The work with staff, school boards, the Department of Education, legislators all required political skill.
John Roche had a great career, but failed at one important task. Appointed by President Lyndon Johnson, to be, we students thought, his liaison to intellectuals. Roche was unable to reverse, let alone stop the erosion of support for Johnson and the Vietnam War. American leaders needed was a new concept of success.
Johnson and others were committed to winning a war, stopping the spread of Communism. Had they been committed to stopping nationalist aspirations of Russia and China, to supporting the nationalist aspirations of Vietnam, they might have minimized death and destruction.
They had an example if they could have seen it. Could they see Vietnam as similar to Yugoslavia? Could they see Ho Chi Minh as similar to Josip Broz Tito? Could John Roche? Lyndon Johnson? Robert McNamara? Could they have seen the similarities?
Could they have left a Vietnam united in opposition to China and to Russia, a member of the Non-Aligned movement with India, Ghana, and Yugoslavia? Even if it were only for the life of Ho Chi Minh?
Had they seen they seen it, they could have achieved it. They could have declared victory and gone home?
Now, that would have been a victory.