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Melvin Small. At the Water’s Edge: American Politics and the Vietnam War. Chicago: Ivan R.
Dee, 2005. xii + 244 pp.
Melvin Small. At The Water’s Edge: American Politics and the Vietnam War. Chicago: Ivan R.
Dee Publisher, 2005. xi + 241 pp. $14.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-56663-647-6; $26.00 (cloth), ISBN
978-1-56663-593-6.
Reviewed by Tuan Hoang (Department of History, University of Notre Dame)
Published on H-Diplo (May, 2007)
Vietnam Left without the Right
Melvin Small is the ideal historian to write on the
relationship between the Vietnam War and U.S. domestic politics. He started his career as a specialist on the
conjunction of public opinion and foreign policy, and
has authored the most comprehensive survey to date on
the impact of politics on U.S. foreign policy. He has devoted much time to the studies of the war, and has published both monographs and surveys on several Vietnamrelated topics: Johnson, Nixon, the media, public opinion, and the antiwar movement. Noting that “no one
has explicitly studied the domestic side of the Vietnam
War” (p. 217), he now reaches into the voluminous historiography on the war and, to a lesser degree, the sixties to write this synthesis-minded survey on the topic.
The result is an endnotes-free, Washington-centered, and
liberalism-framed narrative that compliments the numerous overviews on the war that emphasize foreign policy. It shows also strong pedagogical qualities and would
make a fine addition to the reading list for an undergraduate course on the war, the sixties, or U.S. politics. However, it also leaves out the conservative movement and
ought to be supplemented by readings on that very important topic.
policies of the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the early Johnson administrations. Although Eisenhower’s options on
Indochina were constrained by the unpopularity of the
Korean War and the opposition to intervention from both
parties, he was well served by bipartisan support for containment and by the public perception that the Republicans advocated a more muscular policy in Asia. For
Kennedy, his decision to send more advisors to South
Vietnam stemmed in part from his fear of appearing as
an appeaser, and he appointed Republican Henry Cabot
Lodge, Jr. as ambassador to Saigon out of political calculation, if not necessity. Reelection also figured large,
as Kennedy knew that “it could be a fatal political blow
to cede Vietnam to the Communists before November
1964” (p. 21). The same concerns affected Johnson, who
kept Lodge in Saigon and maintained the U.S. presence
in South Vietnam. But in the months after his landslide victory, Johnson still could not escape the limits
imposed by domestic politics. He feared that disengagement would arouse fiery opposition from Republicans,
southern Democrats, and Robert Kennedy. Even more,
he was constrained by his own vision of the Great Society, knowing that he needed to push his legislative program before the midterm elections in 1966, which his
party would likely lose. This factor was “uppermost in
his calculations as he made the decision in February 1965
to escalate quietly in Vietnam” (p. 38).
Small follows conventional chronology and divides
the book into ten chapters. The general emphasis is on
the impact of the war on domestic politics, but the first
two chapters see the reverse: how politics affected the
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It is at this point that the narrative switches emphasis.
From time to time, Small points out the effects that domestic politics had on the war, especially on the election
cycle. But in the main, he stresses the impact that the
war had on politics. Chapters 3-7 cover the years 1965
to 1969, with each chapter taking up one of the years.
The war fractured the liberal consensus, and liberals began to abandon Johnson at a time when he most needed
their support for the Great Society. Dissatisfaction with
the war drove many young people into radical groups or
the hippie movement or both. Jewish Americans turned
against him in spite of his support for Israel. Even Martin
Luther King, who considered Johnson to have done more
for African Americans than any president since Lincoln,
publicly turned against the war in 1967. Virtually the
only major constituency that stuck with Johnson was labor unions, and much of their rationale had to do with
the economy. But even the all-powerful economy did not
withstand the rising costs of war. Between 1961 and 1964,
the United States had a trade surplus of $5.4 billion, but
partly due to military spending, it had a trade deficit of
$6.4 billion in 1972.
cluttered; the parts, well connected into a whole. Instead of inundating readers with information, Small illustrates with a modest but choice amount, be it economic
statistics, poll numbers, song titles, or quotations from
the temptingly quotable LBJ. The narrative shows few
acronyms, no small achievement since the era bore more
acronyms of programs and organizations than any other
time except for perhaps the New Deal. Most commendable is the author’s controlled and, at times, even dispassionate tone that abstains from polemics without obscuring his views on particular issues or personalities. Notable too are the many crisp and insightful observations
sprinkled throughout the book. For example, so pervasive were the effects of the hippie movement on the larger
society that even “members of the military on leave wore
wigs and torn jeans in order to look like ’normal’ young
persons” (p. 61). Or, for Americans who might have
privately opposed the war but were even more troubled
by the antiwar movement, civil disobedience “on their
television screens looked like revolutionary violence” (p.
171). The cumulative effect is high readability for the
general public as well as suitability for, again, the university classroom.
The 1968 presidential contest saw multiple effects
that Vietnam had on politics, such as “law and order”
themes by Republican candidates Nixon and Wallace and
strikingly similar positions on the war from the convention platforms of both parties. Its Republican winner
then had to face a Democratic-controlled and more assertive Congress. Nixon’s programs of Vietnamization
and draft reform were direct results of domestic politics, but with the Cambodian invasion, it was again war
that affected politics. The invasion prompted stronger
congressional opposition as well as renewed antiwar
protests. In turn, many Americans who were privately
troubled by the war grew angry at demonstrators and
hippies for their flag-burning. Much of chapters 8 and
9 is about these spiraling effects, especially during 1971.
The year deepened the political and cultural divide, as
the antiwar movement staged massive protests and the
stories of My Lai and the Pentagon Papers broke to the
public. Nixon weathered these events in the short term,
and effectively used peace negotiations to beat George
McGovern in a landslide. But in the long run, he did
not outlast Watergate, which was intrinsically linked to
the Pentagon Papers affair. The last chapter is about the
war’s political legacies, particularly its effect of deterrence on presidents and its impact on domestic perceptions of presidential candidates.
The content, however, is less impressive than its composition. Like most overviews depending on secondary
sources, it does not tell what we have not already known.
But depending on its overarching framework and degree
of inclusiveness, a survey could be more rounded and
comprehensive or, conversely, more pointed and narrow.
An example of the first kind is Small’s book on Nixon,
which is thorough in themes and exhaustive in secondary
sources.[1] This volume, however, falls into the second
category. It describes well the effects of the war on presidential and (to a lesser degree) congressional politics, and
it aptly delineates the breakdown of the liberal consensus. But it says very little on the relationship between
the war and the conservative movement, whose rebirth
coincided with much of the war’s duration and whose
political influence is still strong today. In effect, it leaves
out a sizable and growing body of historiography about
the New Right.
The gap is regrettable, partly because Small is at times
cognizant of the budding movement. On the war’s effects on youths, for example, he offers that in addition to
the growth of radical groups, “conservative groups grew
apace, with the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF)
signing up more members during the decade than SDS
{Students for a Democratic Society] did” (p. 60). This fact
Similar to Small’s other surveys, the narrative flows is remarkable, but he neither elaborates nor returns to
sure-handedly. The prose is clear; the sentences, un- it, and instead goes back repeatedly to New Left groups
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such as SDS. Which is too bad, since the YAF shows a fascinating angle to the complexity of war and politics, not
least for its pro-war but anti-draft positions–and for the
fact it has been studied at length.[2] On leading conservatives, Ronald Reagan’s name is first mentioned apropos
of Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign. The next time we
see his name, it is the early 1980s. Yet, this hero to the
New Right was among the few supporters of the war to
the end; a steadfast opponent of the antiwar movement;
and was first elected to the important gubernatorial office
in California in 1966–or the very elections that Johnson
had feared the Democrats would lose. (That his opponent
Edmund “Pat” Brown was also a strong supporter of the
war, would have added another fascinating layer to the
political struggle on the state level.) The book sticks close
to the established view that the “imperial presidency” had
its last leg in the Vietnam era. But it also misses a chance
to enlighten readers on the conjunction of war and conservative organizations and political battles beyond the
Beltway.[3]
privately been opposed to the war but were even more
upset about antiwar protests. Rightly, too, he mentions
in passing that the anger of many union members at flagburning antiwar demonstrators might have accounted
for the 1970 senatorial victory of Conservative Party candidate James Buckley. However, the Silent Majority was
not exactly silent or, as Small seems to imply in the description of the union “hard hats,” merely angrily reacting to the visibility of hippies and antiwarriors. On the
contrary, as shown in a growing number of monographs
and broad histories, many members of the Silent Majority were actively mobilizing on grassroots and state levels while capitalizing on the self-destruction of the liberal establishment.[5] In other words, the visible “hard
hats” were likely less significant than the more methodical conservatives and libertarians who preferred organizing in the neighborhoods to showing their grievances on
the street and to the media. Whether the New Right is the
larger story of the Vietnam years, is a question open to
debate.[6] Nonetheless, its history is significant enough
to warrant attention, and the book shows little acknowledgement of it and no exposition at all.
But at least YAF and Reagan are mentioned in respect
to youths and anticommunism; on most other topics, the
book leaves out conservatives all together. One instance
is the U.S. military. Small devotes several pages to the
impact of war crimes on public perception of the military, such as the atrocities at My Lai and the testimonies
of John Kerry, which are standard fare in Vietnam War
narratives. But the war’s impact on the military was
more far-reaching than public perception of war crimes
and antiwar veterans. As Anne Loveland illustrates in
her monograph on evangelicals and the U.S. military, the
Vietnam War marked a monumental shift in the political orientation of military personnel. Once disdained by
the military establishment, evangelical Christians stood
among those who continued to support the war and, in
the end, gained visibility and the support of the military
leadership itself.[4] The impact of the war on the Right
was possibly just as significant as that on the Left, if not
more. But At the Water’s Edge does not explore any of it.
In the end, instructors should still consider using
this book for their classrooms, since it is well written
and provides an arresting narrative of the impact of the
war on presidential politics and liberalism. But I also
urge them to fill the aforementioned lacuna with one
or more articles or book selections on the New Right.
Small concludes that the effects of the war “have lingered
into the twenty-first century in ways that could hardly
have been imagined when President Eisenhower decided
in 1954 to save South Vietnam for the Free World” (p.
216). True enough. But the effects were more spiraling
and multi-dimensional–and the “water’s edge” of the title even more edgy and pivotal–than they are presented
in this volume.
Notes
[1]. Melvin Small, The Presidency of Richard Nixon
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999).
The overall impression, then, is that the book plays
it safe by staying close to well-established themes and
long-standing interpretative frameworks that emphasize
the roles of liberals and the New Left at the expense of
the conservatives. There is more, for instance, about
Allard Lowenstein’s too-late-too-little “Dump Johnson”
campaign than about George Wallace’s candidacy that
took 13.5 percent of the popular vote in 1968. Likewise,
the treatment of the Silent Majority falls victim to an interpretation that minimizes the agency of conservatives.
Small correctly notes that many Americans might have
[2]. See John A. Andrew III, The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics (New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1997); and Gregory L. Schneider, Cadres for
Conservatism: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise
of the Contemporary Right (New York: New York University Press, 1999). A substantial treatment is also found in
Rebecca Klatch, A Generation Divided: The New Left, the
New Right, and the 1960s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
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[3]. Lou Cannon, Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power
(New York: PublicAffairs, 2003). Also offering information about Reagan, anticommunism, and the Vietnam
War is William E. Pemberton, Exit with Honor: The Life
and Presidency of Ronald Reagan (Armonk, NY: M. E.
Sharpe, 1997).
tive Ascendancy in America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1996); Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the
New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2001); Jonathan M. Schoenwald, A Time for Choosing: The Rise of Modern American Conservatism (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003); and Kurt Schuparra, Triumph of the Right: The Rise of the California Conservative
Movement, 1945-1966 (Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe, 1998).
For an evaluation of the books cited here and in note 2,
see James A. Hijiya, “The Conservative 1960s,” Journal of
American Studies 37.2 (2003): 201-227.
[4]. See Anne Loveland, American Evangelicals and
the U.S. Military, 1942-1993 (Baton Rouge and London:
Louisiana State University, 1996), 118-225.
[5]. Major works on the New Right include Mary
Charlotte Brennan, Turning Right in the Sixties: The Con[6]. On leftist, liberal, and conservative interpretative
servative Capture of the GOP (Chapel Hill: University perspectives, see M. J. Heale, “The Sixties as History: A
of North Carolina Press, 1995); Godfrey Hodgson, The
Review of the Political Historiography,” Reviews in AmerWorld Turned Right Side Up: A History of the Conservaican History 33 (2005): 133-152.
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Citation: Tuan Hoang. Review of Melvin Small, At the Water’s Edge: American Politics and the Vietnam War and
Small, Melvin, At The Water’s Edge: American Politics and the Vietnam War. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. May, 2007.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=13227
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