The Administration: To Have a Part in It

The most critical U.S. embassy post anywhere in the world today is Saigon—diplomatic frontier not only for the war in Viet Nam but for the longer-range struggle between the U.S. and Communist China. Last week the Saigon job went to a man who knows by first-hand experience just how difficult and demanding it is: named to succeed Ambassador Maxwell Taylor, retiring at 63, was Taylor’s own predecessor, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., 63.

Taylor’s leave-taking was no surprise. He reminded President Johnson in his letter asking for retirement that he had accepted the Saigon assignment with the understanding that he would stay only for a year. “That year is now past,” he wrote, “and I feel obliged to request relief.” In a “Dear Max” reply, President Johnson said: “There is no prouder page in your record than the one which you have written in the last year.” Later, at a news conference, the President denounced speculation about policy differences between himself and Taylor as “irresponsible and inaccurate and untrue.”

Matters of Degree. Despite all this, there seemed little doubt that the President would feel easier with Taylor gone. The freewheeling Texas politician and the austere Army general had little in common. In Saigon, Taylor served loyally, but more as soldier than statesman, with little enthusiasm for coping with the bafflements of Saigon politics. Moreover, there were indeed policy differences, of degree if not of direction, between Taylor and Johnson. During a visit to Washington last month, Taylor is said to have urged that the U.S. decide more clearly how existing troop commitments in Viet Nam are to be used before sending in more men; his advice was not accepted.

As long ago as March 24, the President telephoned Lodge in Manhattan, asked him if he would be available for Saigon when the time came. Lodge asked to sleep on it, called Johnson the next day and said yes. Lodge has twice undertaken special missions for Johnson, traveling throughout most of the world to round up support for U.S. Viet Nam policy.

Actually, the President had not wanted Lodge to leave Saigon in the first place, and it was with genuine reluctance that he bowed last year to Lodge’s desire to return to the U.S. and try to head off Barry Goldwater for the Republican presidential nomination. Johnson and Lodge are old Capitol Hill colleagues and they speak the same language, although with different accents. As a Republican, Lodge lends an aura of bipartisanship to the U.S.’s Viet Nam policy at a time when G.O.P. criticism of that policy is rising. During his previous Saigon stint, Lodge earned the respect, if not the affection, of South Viet Nam’s feuding political and religious factions.

Why. If the President’s designation of Lodge last week was a natural, Lodge’s acceptance seemed less so. He certainly can expect no personal or political reward from the thankless Saigon assignment. If the Viet Nam war situation worsens, he can just as certainly expect to be blamed. Why, then, did he take the job? The answer could be found only in terms of a sense of service. Vacationing in Massachusetts when his appointment was announced, Lodge said of Viet Nam: “Something noble and brave is going on out there, and I am glad to have a part in it.”

This week Lodge was scheduled to make an inspection trip to South Viet Nam with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara; he will not take over the embassy formally until mid-August. When he does, he will find that things have changed since his first tour of duty. When he left Saigon on June 29, 1964, Major General Nguyen Khanh was Premier; since then, there have been six changes of government, and the current incumbent is Air Commodore Nguyen Cao Ky, whom Lodge has never met. Moreover, at the time of Lodge’s 1964 leavetaking, there were 16,000 U.S. servicemen in Viet Nam, restricted to an advisory role and forbidden to carry the war to North Viet Nam. Today, American troops total 67,000, many of them are operating in combat units, and U.S. planes daily attack the North.