How Presidents Test Reality: Decisions on Vietnam, 1954 and 1965

CHAPTER TWELVE: Eisenhower and Johnson Decision Making Compared

CHAPTER TWELVE Eisenhower and Johnson Decision Making Compared BECAUSE THE VIETNAM policy of the United States has been so widely perceived as flawed, the way it was made would commend itself for study to students of decision making even if the possibility for comparison did not exist. It is an intellectual bonus that Eisenhower and Johnson and their advisory systems differed so markedly and in such potentially illuminating ways. Moreover, the two episodes posed the presidents and their aides with many common dilemmas, even though they also had distinctive elements and do not constitute a controlled experiment. We turn now from analyzing to comparing the cases. We do so first in terms of the three levels of influence identified in Chapter One, Framework of the Inquiry; then, briefly, in terms of the links among the levels. THE ROLE OF THE ADVISORY SYSTEM The structure, dynamics and content of the two advisory systems stand out plainly as one reviews each of the unfolding cases. The chronology of 1954 decision making is systematically punctuated by the weekly NSC meetings. These were fed by regular streams of information-the weekly briefings of the CIA director, Eisenhower andJohnson Decision Making Compared 257 the periodic reports of the Special Committee and a steady flow of information and advice from the NSC members' agencies via the deliberations and reports of the NSC Planning Board. The 1965 chronology is erratically punctuated by a remarkable diversity of kinds of presidential councils-repeated NSC meetings in February but few thereafter, Tuesday lunches in March, April and May but few thereafter and wall-to-wall meetings in July that occurred after the president had provisionally made up his mind about the issue they debated. Both presidents complemented their advisory meetings with much more fluid consultations with a core group of aides. Each president relied in particular on three crucial individuals. President Eisenhower was especially reliant on Secretary of State Dulles, JCS Chairman Radford and NSC Special Assistant Cutler. President Johnson relied on Secretary of State Rusk, Secretary of Defense McNamara and Special Assistant Bundy. Although Robert Cutler and McGeorge Bundy shared the title special assistant to the president for national security affairs, their roles were fundamentally different. Cutler was a specialist in process, who was expected to remain neutral on policy matters. Eisenhower and Cutler made an early agreement that Cutler's practice was to be "no speeches, no public appearances, no talking with reporters" and that he was not to express his personal views as national security adviser, even though, as Cutler put it in his memoirs, "this did not come easy because my nature is the opposite of neutral."1 Bundy was johnson's process manager, but he also was a confident, self-assured policy adviser. In addition, he periodically smoothed the way to consensus within the Johnson advisory group (as he did in the case of the conflict between Maxwell Taylor and Washington) and served as policy spokesman (most conspicuously in a televised debate with Hans J. Morgenthau on Vietnam policy, on June 21, 1965). As Johnson's process manager, Bundy consistently brought differences of viewpoint to johnson's attention. But because he was also a policy adviser, in advancing his own views he sometimes failed to do justice to the views of others. 1 Cutler, No Time for Rest, 295-96. 258 HOW PRESIDENTS TEST REALITY The structural properties of the two decision-making processes shaped their dynamics. The liveliness of discussion in the Eisenhower deliberations is in part a result of the fact that so many of them took place in a body (the NSC) whose staff (the Planning Board) regularly posed it with sharply focused policy alternatives. The desultory nature of the Johnson advisory discussions arose in part from the lack of focused agendas. The quality of the discussions was also influenced by the presence of an individual whose job it was to keep the group on course in 1954 and the absence of such an individual in 1965. Cutler moderated the Eisenhower NSC meetings; the Johnson meetings were selfregulating . Differences in record keeping make it difficult to compare deliberations within the two core advisory groups. Notes comparable to the accounts by Dulles and Cutler of small group meetings with the president do not exist for most 1965 meetings. The detailed Johnson Daily Diary does suggest the dynamics of LBJ's meetings with his inner circle, permitting some comparison. Eisenhower was engaged...