[Jimmy Valentine's brother]

Johnson did not seek a declaration of war because he wanted nothing to interfere with his Great Socialism vision that would place him right beside his hero FDR. He hoped to fight a limited war based on the containment policy articulated by Acheson in the Truman Adminsitration. Johnson thought he could do a deal with anyone and he and the Kennedy leftovers thought that proportional response could bring Uncle Ho to the table. Sort of like what we are trying to hold Israel to today.

The problem is you don't play proportional response football and you don't fight an enemy that way either. Unfortunately not many of our leaders or generals have played football.

[lentulusgracchus]

Johnson did not seek a declaration of war because he wanted nothing to interfere with his Great Socialism vision that would place him right beside his hero FDR.

Exactly right. LBJ's ego came first, before everything else. The War was just something that promised to screw it all up, and if he played it straight and asked for articles, he knew old Everett Dirksen, the minority leader, would ask for taxes to pay for the war (like Dick Nixon did with the 10% income-tax surtax), which would saddle LBJ with a burden to his popularity (he had actually tried to get 100% of the vote in 1964, remember), and Dirksen would also be able to defeat much of the Great Society program on the prudential ground that you don't do that kind of stuff in the middle of a war! Which is exactly what LBJ was going to do, come hell or high water.