Presidential Personality and National Security Leadership: A Comparative Analysis of Vietnam Decision-making

Abstract

This essay presents a framework for analyzing the effect of presidential personality on policy making, while avoiding the fallacy of simply "reducing" the explanation of presidential performance to the president's individual characteristics. Using an approach that simul taneously takes account of the larger political environment, and the president's constellation of immediate associates (the "institutionalized presidency"), as well as the president's individual characteristics, we present data comparing presidential decision-making with respect to Vietnam in 1954 and 1965. All three levels of evidence must be examined to establish why the United States did not inject military force in 1954 at the time of the fall of Dienbienphu and did in 1965, in the face of the incipient collapse of South Vietnam.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Ball, G. (1982). The Past Has Another Pattern. New York: Norton.

Barber, J.D. (1972, 1976, 1985). The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

Berman, L. (1982). Planning a Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam. New York: Norton.

Brodie, B. (1973). War and Politics. New York: Macmillan

Burke, J.P. (1986). Bureaucratic Responsibility. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Burke, J.P. (1987). "The institutional presidency" In The Presidency and the Political System 2nd ed. (M. Nelson, ed). Washington, D.C.: CQ Press.

Carter, J. (1982). Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President . New York: Bantam Books. Cooper, C. (1970).

The Lost Crusade. New York: Dodd, Mead.

Eisenhower, D.D. (1965). Waging Peace. Garden City, L.I.: Doubleday.

10.

Ellsberg, D. (1971). "The quagmire myth and the stalemate myth." Public Policy 19: 217-274.

11.

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Vol. 13, (1982). Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

12.

Gelb, L.H. (1971). "Vietnam: The system worked." Foreign Policy 2: 140-167.

13.

Gelb, L.H. and R. Betts (1979). The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked . Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution .

14.

George, A.L. (1980). Presidential Decisionmaking in Foreign Policy: The Effective Use of Information and Advice. Boulder : Westview Press.

15.

Goldman, E.F. (1969). The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson. New York: Dell.

16.

Greenstein F.I. ( 1978). Personality and Politics: Problems of Guidence, Inference and Conceptualization, rev. ed., Princeton : Princeton University Press (originally pubished in 1969).

17.

Greenstein, F.I. (1982). Hidden-Hand Presidency; Eisenhower as Leader . New York: Basic Books.

18.

Herring, G.H. and R. Immerman. (1984). "Eisenhower, Dulles, and Dienbienphu: 'The day we didn't go to war' revisited." Journal of American History 71: 343-363.

19.

Janis, I.L. (1972). Victims of Groupthink: A Psychological Study of Foreign Policy Decisions and Fiascos. Boston: Houghton-Mifllin.

20.

Janis, I.L. (1982). Groupthink. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.

21.

Johnson, L.B. (1971). The Vantage Point: Perspectives on the Presidency, 1963-1969. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

22.

Kearns, D. (1976). Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream . New York: Harper and Row.

23.

Neustadt, R. and E. May (1986). Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers. New York: Free Press .

24.

Nixon, R.M. (1978). R.N. : The Memoirs of Richard Nixon . New York: Grosset and Dunlap.

25.

Pentagon Papers , (1971). The Pentagon Papers: United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-67 Vols. 1-3. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

26.

Roberts, C. (1954). "The day we didn't go to war." The Reporter 11: 31-35.

27.

Snyder, R.C., H.W. Bruck and B. Sapin, eds. (1962). Foreign Policy Decision-Making. Glencoe: The Free Press.

28.

Taylor, M.D. (1972). Swords and Plowshares. New York: Norton.