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Wearing Thin. As marshaled by the White House, the evidence strongly indicates that Hanoi's resources may be wearing thin. In fact, ever since the battle of the la Drang Valley in late 1965, when U.S. troops first engaged the Communists in a major battle and handed them a bloody defeat, there has been little doubt that American power would eventually tell. Fittingly, in a White House ceremony last week, Johnson awarded a Presidential Unit Citation for valor to Lieut. General Harry Kinnard in behalf of the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) which he commanded in that hard-fought action.
Moreover, the U.S. has plans afoot to make things even more difficult for Hanoi. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's plan to lay an electronic barrier across the demilitarized zone aims at reducing Hanoi's ability to slip men and supplies into the South. The barrier is expected to run into Laos as well, which will vastly increase Hanoi's difficulties, since many infiltration routes make an end run around the North-South border and snake through Laos.
However accurate it may prove to be, any such appraisal from the White House is bound to stir a skeptical reaction. For a growing number of Republican leaders, in particular, no amount of rosy predictions will conceal the fact that Lyndon Johnson is vulnerable on the war issue. That conviction was reinforced during the Labor Day recess, when vacationing Congressmen sounded out their constituents. Said Kentucky's Republican Senator Thruston Morton: "The people I talked to a year ago were saying, 'Bomb hell out of that little country.' Now they're saying, 'Get out.' They're frustrated."
Accordingly, more and more Republicans are seeking ways to exploit this frustration by hanging the war on the President. "Some of us are going in different directions," said one Republican leader, "but we don't differ in our basic objective: to disengage ourselves from the Johnson policies."
Self-Propelled Candidate. One prominent disengager—from Johnson as well as from Viet Nam—is retired Lieut. General James Gavin, who was U.S. Ambassador to France during the Kennedy Administration and is now trying to promote himself among G.O.P. moderates as a peace candidate. Last week in San Francisco, while conceding that Viet Nam is "the best fought and least understood war in history," he said flatly: "We shouldn't be there." Next week a draft-Gavin group will run a full-page ad in the New York Times. That may well prove the high point of his candidacy.