Why didnt president Johnson run for re-election in 1968?

Answer 1

The Vietnam War was very unpopular, especially with people of draft age. Little known Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy, running against the war, did well in early primaries and Robert Kennedy, also against the war and no friend of Johnson was lurking in the wings. so Johnson could see that he would have a major fight just to get the nomination. He had enough political sense to see that his party had enough of a problem with the war without an inter-party fight for the nomination, so he announced on March 31 that he was no longer a candidate.

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Answer 2

Connected to an unpopular war, Johnson had lost the Democratic party. While he and Humphrey still had the Democratic machine led by Richard Daley and the unions, the Party was split into factions. When Robert F. Kennedy entered the presidential race, Johnson began to trail badly in the polls. President Johnson also had some health worries at the time as well. He surprised the country by announcing he would not seek reelection.

Answer 3

· 67: First time more U.S. troops died than Saigon Army

· Length of war long already, government kept saying war would end quickly

· Attention getting tactics of anti-war movement

o March on pentagon

o Another mother for peace

· Draft resistance movement begins

· MLKJ comes out against the war

· Robert Kennedy became critic of the war

· Rise of Black power, and violent activisim

· B.E.M.: Business executives movement for peace…concerned about economy

· 66: Fulbright Hearings. First time arguments against war had public audience

o This raised issues of credibility…Gulf of Tonkin incident specifically

· March on the pentagon…he pulls out 6 months after this

· March opens up more harsh criticism, cruel

· Dump Johnson Movement: from democratic party by Allard Lowenstein

· His Great society was abandoned at the cost of an unpopular war

o Money spent on war needed for poverty at home

o LBJ took money originally allocated for his fight against poverty, gave it to war effort

o Federal funding for education, medicare/Medicaid, gun control, space race

· Tet Offensive: Vietcong forces penetrated the US embassy (approval rating after: <35%)

He was very sensitive to criticism, and with an overwhelming body of malcontent he couldn't take it anymore. also he was in bad health

· He announced it March 31, 1968

Answer 4

Johnson had no chance at all of winning another election, and he knew that well.

His handling of the war in Vietnam was enough to ensure loss of another election, just by itself, and he knew it.

But he also hacked off most of The South with his two big Civil Rights bills and The Gun Control Act Of 1968, and that would make it all the harder to win, even if he had a chance in the first place.

Any man on the street would have had a good chance of beating him in the next election.

He escalated Vietnam from 16,000 troops to 550,000 troops, and instead of trying to WIN the war, he tried to convince the North Vietnamese to quit fighting it.

His theory was that we would destroy trivial targets (getting pilots killed in the process), to show the North Vietnamese that we COULD hurt them if we decided to, and they would call a truce because of that.

Pressure from The Media and the American Public made it obvious that the one issue (Vietnam) would be more than enough keep him from winning an election.

He and Macnamara personally chose every bombing mission, down to the smallest detail, dictating what kinds of planes, how many bombs, what time of day, sometimes even from which direction, and above all, choosing the targets.

They deliberately protected North Vietnamese military air fields, Haiphong Harbor, and communication centers, while the destruction of those should have been the #1, #2 & #3 priorities, respectively.

He literally fought the war personally from The Oval Office, instead of letting the Generals and Admirals on the ground do it.

We needed to shut off military supplies being shipped in from Russia and China through Haiphong, but there was a standing order that no bomb should fall within 10 miles of Haiphong.

When MIGS showed up in the air, bomb-loaded Phantoms would often drop all of their bombs immediately, to shed weight for dogfighting, then the MIGS would just run away, having stopped the bombing mission without ever firing a shot.

And yet the air fields that these MIGS operated from were protected, like Haiphong, with a "Do Not Bomb, Even By Accident" order, directly from The White House.

Johnson chose not to run because he had already killed over 40,000 young men for nothing, and the American people were highly aware of it by that time.

Answer 5

Because of the Vietnam War The Tet offensive NLF attacks in South Vietnam in January of 1968

Answer 6

He did try, but the Republican Party nominated Ulysses S. Grant instead.