Congress Dissents

Abstract

Gary Stone's Elites for Peace explores the role of the Senate during the Vietnam War between 1964 and 1968. Stone provides useful support to many of the arguments made by Fredrik Logevall in Choosing War(Stone explains that he had been unaware of Logevall's work before the production of his manuscript). Stone contributes to an emerging portrait of Lyndon Johnson as a president who was isolated when he escalated America's intervention in Southeast Asia despite widespread and ongoing opposition from Congress. Stone claims that from the start there was doubt and dissent in the Senate about entering into the civil conflict in Vietnam. In developing this argument, Stone provides a better understanding of the influence of Congress in an era when most scholars focus on the presidency. Although acknowledging that a majority of senators refused to use the power of the purse to force an end to the war under President Johnson, Stone demonstrates that legislators did turn their chamber into a powerful public forum through which to raise questions about the intervention and mobilize elite opinion against the president's strategy.