Folder, "[Section 3 - North Vietnam: All Activity] 3 A (2) Gulf of Tonkin, 1964 ‑ 68, 3 of 3," Vietnam Country File, NSF, Box 77

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From the Office of Sen r Clifford P. Case (R-N.J.) 105-M. For Release: P. M. Newspapers, Tuesday, September 26, 1967 10 PARTIAL TEXT OF REMARKS BY SENATOR CLIFFORD P. CASE ON THE TONKIN GULF RESOLUTION, PREPARED FOR DELIVERY ON THE SENATE FLOOR, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1967 For those observers of the passing scene to whom politics is little more than a cheap game in which one man or one group tries to advantage itself at the expense of another, the distress of Congress over the Administration's continuing misuse of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution means only that a crafty President has again put it over on the stupid members of Congress. How stupid you members are and were, they say, not to have known that Lyndon Johnson would extract the last ounce of advantage from the situation he so cleverly put you in! What this glib view so conveniently ignores, however, is that the American political system requires mutual confidence and trust between the President and the Congress, just as it requires confidence on the part of the people in the President and the Congress. This is important in tranquil times, It is essential in times of stress like the present. Yet, in somber fact, the Johnson Administration's handling of the war in Vietnam since 1964 has produced a crisis of confidence. The basic anxiety of Americans, in and out of Congress, by no means rests solely on the rising casualty lists or the increased money cost of the war or its diversion of resources and energy from urgent domestic needs--critical as these are. The people's anxiety, and that of Congress too, springs perhaps in greatest part from a growing conviction that the Administration is not telling them the truth. I have pointed out before that the Administration's continuing assurances of progress in Vietnam simply do not square with the cold fact that toward our basic objective--th of creating an independent self-governing society supported by its citizens- there has been no significant progress at all. (MORE) COPY LBJ LIBRARY