The Best and the Brightest: Kennedy-Johnson Administrations (Modern Library)

by David Halberstam

For the existing political structure still believed that America was threatened from without, while an increasing number of educated, articulate Americans felt the dangers were from within. The politicians in Washington were responding to issues which no longer affected large numbers of the people, and as a corollary, increasing numbers of people were bothered about elements of their life which were not defined as political issues. The gap between the politicians and the public, particularly an articulate educated minority, was growing, and nothing would widen it like the war in Vietnam. The government itself was still geared up to hold the lines in the Cold War, but a particularly influential part of the citizenry believed that it was a thing of the past, that the arms race was futile and destructive, that the enemy was really bigness, technology and the government itself. Liberals had always grown up thinking big and powerful government was good; now for a variety of reasons they were moving back from that position. So there were stirrings in the land; they had not surfaced as political forces and it would have taken a uniquely sensitive political figure to both perceive them and incorporate them into his policies.