![]() Kennedy’s charisma, and his military bona fides, encouraged Americans to believe in their young president as he confronted a complicated and dangerous world. It is no coincidence that the last president to inspire such trust was also the last president elected before the Vietnam War began in earnest. The public generally trusted Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower to be honest and well intentioned and to put the interests of the nation above their own. Faith in the presidency may have reached its apogee soon after the Second World War. But as late as the middle of the last century, Americans were inclined to view even incumbent presidents with reverence. Time has a way of burnishing reputations. The great presidents-Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, the Roosevelts-came to be viewed not merely as capable executives but as figures of myth: They were heroic, selfless, noble, godlike. They expose the presidents’ secret motives and fears, at once humanizing the men and deepening the disillusionment with the office they held.įor most of American history, that office conveyed authority, dignity, and some measure of majesty upon its occupant. ![]() ![]() The tapes they left behind-some of them still newly public, others long obscured by the sheer volume of the material-are extraordinary. Johnson, and Richard Nixon, each made the fateful decision to record their deliberations about it. The three men who are most responsible for the war, John F. New evidence of hypocrisy has continued to appear, an acidic drip, drip, drip on the image of the presidency. Nor did the process stop when that last chopper took off. Over more than a decade, the accumulated weight of critical reporting about the war, the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, and the declassification of military and intelligence reports tarnished the office. It did not happen all at once, this radical diminution of trust. ![]() The war undermined the country’s faith in its most respected institutions, particularly the military and the presidency. America’s illusions of invincibility had been shattered, its moral confidence shaken. More than 58,000 Americans and as many as 3 million Vietnamese had died in the conflict. Embassy in Saigon, the Vietnam War, the most consequential event in American history since World War II, ended in failure. O n April 30, 1975, when the last helicopter lifted off the roof of the U.S. ![]()
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