dy to overrule their principal foreign policy and military advisers on major issues. In matters of was and peace he seemed too much the sentimental patriot, lacking Truman's practical horse sense, Eisenhower's experienced caution, Kennedy's cool grasp of reality.12There was no indication that Johnson gave the subject of foreign policy much serious attention before 1964, until finally he had no other recourse. Americans were aware of this type of presidential leadership and apparently they were displeased by this. Philip Geyelin, in his perceptive book of mid-1966, said of President Johnson that,...by political background, by temperament, by personal preference he was the riverboat man...a swash buckling master of the political midstream-but only in the crowded well-travelled familiar inland waterways of domestic politics. He had no taste and scant preparation for the deep waters of foreign policy, for the sudden storms and unpredictable winds that can becalm or batter or blow off course the ocean-going man. He was king of the river and a stranger to the open sea.13Johnson failed to win the favour of Americans since he did not portray a man of intense determination and alertness.Well into l965, the United States was still concerned with communist invasion all over the world. It seemed that the Russians and Chinese were still in full pursuit of warlike, expansionist policies across the globe and were quite able to manipulate weaker governments.14 All the former presidents of the States had no desire to allow the Communists rule every nation for they thought it was in the interests of the world that anti-communism was a means of freedom. Kennedy inherited a still untempered Cold War and in his Inaugural Agreement he states,Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardships, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty. This ...
