When at last Diem’s motorcade came into view, however, it raced down the boulevard at such high speed, with the new prime minister invisible behind its tinted windows, that all was just a quick blur. As the disappointed crowds dispersed, the public relations instinct in Lansdale was aroused: “Whoever was advising him,” he wrote of Diem, “had clearly misread the mood of the people. Diem should have ridden into the city slowly in an open car, or even have walked, to provide a focus for the affection that the people so obviously had been waiting to bestow on him….I wondered aloud what further
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