He never delivered the report; in San Francisco he heard the news of the assassination in Dallas, and that Lyndon Johnson was sworn in. Lodge asked the new President if he should simply return to Saigon; no, said Johnson, they ought to talk anyway. And so they met, and the message, that it was all bad in Vietnam, that hard decisions were ahead and not very far ahead, was delivered to a brand-new President, unsure of himself, unsure of the men around him, unsure of his relationship to the country, and the country’s acceptance of him. He was above all unsure of himself in foreign affairs, more
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