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Lyndon Johnson was extremely affected by public opinion. Johnson said, "What would happen, I wondered, if we stopped the bombing and the North Vietnamese then launched a major offensive, overran Khe Sanh, and killed thousands of Americans and South Vietnamese? The American people would never forgive me" (Sobel 66). This quote reveals that Johnson considered public opinion in his decision-making, and that public opinion established the boundaries and limitations in which he could act. In March 1968, General Westmoreland and General Wheeler recommended an increase in troops of up to an additional 400,000, but Johnson only approved 45,000, citing public opinion as one of the reasons why a limited number was approved. This shows that even the president isn't invincible; he has to answer to the public, which can sometimes be harsher than his peers in the government. .
Another aspect of the Vietnam War that swayed anti-war sentiment was the fact that the Soviets were able to catch up to the United States with technology. While Americans were off fighting a war in Asia, technology was not progressing as fast as the public had expected. In 1962, John F. Kennedy declared, "We choose to go to the moon." By 1969, the United States did accomplish this feat. Many people thought the U.S. would continue to advance technologically and become the only technological super-power. When no major advances in U.S. technology occurred, many Americans were skeptical with the government. Vietnam was being fought in the name of containment, but it was the opposite. "The beneficiary of this effort was the Soviet Union, America's primary enemy, which was able to focus its resources on first catching up with and then surpassing the United States in nuclear weapons. Because of this popular backlash to the war and to military spending, the United States fell behind in the strategic buildup during the 1970s.
