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Even the most loyal of Lodge's 1960 aides do admit that the promise of a Negro Cabinet member was a mistake—but they exonerate Lodge of the blame. Lodge, they say, had been booked suddenly for a Harlem speech. But during that day, he had several conferences on, plus work to be done on a foreign policy address to be delivered later at a major rally. He therefore instructed a couple of speechwriters to work up a talk that contained some positive proposals, not mere pious platitudes. The Negro Cabinet-member proposal was the result, and Lodge was dismayed when he saw it. But advance copies of the speech had already been delivered to the press, so Lodge decided to go ahead with it. As a final irony, it turned out that the appearance was in Spanish Harlem, where the voters cared very little about having a Negro Cabinet member.
Policy Line. After the election Lodge joined Time Inc. as a foreign affairs consultant, later became the first director-general of the newly formed Atlantic Institute, a private organization that promotes Atlantic unity.
Lodge had long since put in for an overseas post under the Kennedy Administration. In the spring of 1961, he volunteered his services to Secretary of State Dean Rusk "in any meaningful capacity." Nothing came of it for two years, until Lodge met Kennedy at a dinner honoring Lauris Norstad, retiring Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. The two got to talking, and Kennedy was impressed by Lodge's continuing desire to work in the national interest. Two weeks later the President sent his military aide, Major General Ted Clifton, to ask Lodge if he wanted to return to public life. Replied Lodge crisply: "Sure, if the assignment is tough enough."
It was all of that.
Lodge got to Saigon just as the Diem regime was afflicted with what Mme. Nhu rather indelicately referred to as the "Buddhist barbecues." There are those today who argue that Lodge, as the chief instrument for carrying out the policies of a Democratic Administration in South Viet Nam, cannot reasonably be the Republican presidential nominee. If that is the case, Lodge does not want the nomination, for he fully associates himself with the Kennedy and Johnson policies. Says he: "My attitude was and is exactly the same as that articulated by President Kennedy, which is to say that, as of last summer, changes in both personnel and policy were badly needed in South Viet Nam. That was a policy line I was expected to implement, and it was a policy with which I thoroughly concurred. If I had not, I would not have taken the job."
Lodge insists that neither he nor the Kennedy Administration wanted Diem overthrown by a military coup, although he was aware that one was highly possible. "After all," he explains, "when a government makes a practice of such things as yanking young girls out of their homes at 3 o'clock in the morning and sending them off to some camp for some real or fancied offense, it is setting in force some awfully basic and powerful emotions." The U.S., he says, wanted "oppressive and inhuman" practices stopped, urged religious freedom and wanted Diem's malevolent brother Ngo Dinh Nhu sent into exile. But "absolutely nothing" was done "either to stimulate or thwart a coup."