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THE PHANTOM OF THE OVAL OFFICE: THE JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION'S SYMBOLIC IMPACT ON LYNDON B. JOHNSON, HIS KEY ADVISERS, AND THE VIETNAM DECISION-MAKING PROCESS*
Nimmo and Combs write that "Presidents walk in the mythical shoes of giants and live in a mansion that is a mythic museum strewn with the holy relics of the giants and their ladies."(1) When Lyndon Baines Johnson became President, he had particularly large shoes to fill for the assassination of John F. Kennedy was the kind of heart-wrenching stuff of which the most monumental myths are made. Myths may not always be true but they are real in the sense that they are socially constructed realities.(2) As such, they help us to make sense out of certain confusing events, to justify our feelings and our resultant actions, and even help us to get our own way.(3)
President Kennedy's assassination was an event which gave him instant martyrdom. As the event was described and interpreted, the victim took on mythical and heroic proportions so much so that the new President, Lyndon Johnson, seemed haunted at every turn by the spectre of John F. Kennedy. In no area was this more apparent than in that of foreign policy-making and, in particular, the problem of Vietnam. Therefore, I wish to argue that the assassination of John F. Kennedy symbolically framed the Vietnam decision-making process, effectively cutting off other options in the solution of the Vietnam problem and, ultimately, propelling President Johnson and his advisers toward an overt escalation of the war.
In order to augment this argument, I will divide my analysis of the interaction and events leading up to and surrounding the assassination into four main areas: the historical context of the assassination; the policy-makers' interpretation of the event; the assassination's impact on the role structure of the policy-makers; and the assassination's impact on the Vietnam decision-making process.
THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The two years and 10 months preceding Lyndon Johnson's Presidency were marked by a mixture of triumphs and failures for President Kennedy and his advisers. From its inception, a series of "crises" plagued the Kennedy Administration with particular hot spots being Cuba, Laos, Berlin, and Vietnam. The situation in Vietnam was especially difficult to deal with. From the beginning, Kennedy...