“Vietnam and 1960s/1970s America was all theirs to run, and they ran it into the ground.”
Our Vietnam involvement began under Eisenhower in the early 50s, but Ike was opposed to getting into a ground war in Asia. Unfortunately his successors were too arrogant to heed the old General and they set disaster into motion. Kennedy managed to get the President of South Vietnam assassinated and Johnson inherited a mess that he made worse.
I often think that LBJ is the worst President of my lifetime. He set in motion domestic policies whose poison still afflicts the country. And he was aided in this by liberal Republicans, who helped him pass all the noble sounding civil rights bills that have had so many evil consequences for average Americans.
Nixon was no better. He had no interest in domestic policies and essentially continued those of Johnson, adding to them in fact. I’m sure many Republicans would be surprised to learn some of the agencies and laws that were created under Nixon, particularly in environmental law.
Vietnam happened because of JFK, not Eisenhower.
There was never a problem with having a few hundred advisers there, the Army had been involved in Southeast Asia since the 1940s.
It was the sudden build up to over 16,000 troops that got us in.
The election of JFK is what ended America. No JFK meant no Vietnam, no radical 1960s, no immigration, no multiculturalism and language chaos, not most of what we think of from the 1960s and 1970s.
JFK and LBJ are just two parts of the same monster.