His oft-quoted assertion to newspaperman Charles Bartlett in late April 1963 (that is, shortly after Ngo Dinh Nhu stepped up his anti-American campaign), which may be apocryphal but rings true, captures this point well: “We don’t have a prayer of staying in Vietnam,” Bartlett quotes JFK as telling him. “Those people hate us. They are going to throw our asses out of there at almost any point. But I can’t give up a piece of territory like that to the Communists and then get the people to reelect me.”87
