36.A) LBJ & Vietnam, an interview with Mark Lawrence

Few presidents have a darker mark on their resume that LBJ's handling of the Vietnam war. Though overwhelmingly popular at first, the war divided the nation and broke Johnson's political power just 4 years later.

How did the United States get into Vietnam? Why didn't LBJ see what the American people saw as public opinion turned against it? And what can we learn from Johnson's handling of the war in Vietnam?

Mark Lawrence, director of the LBJ Presidential Library & Museum in Austin and author of The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era, discusses the legacy of LBJ's leadership of the Vietnam War.

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