Many Americans of late have altered their views about the complex and bewildering war in Viet Nam without feeling obliged to offer elaborate justifications. Politicians, too, change their minds, and the good ones do so with such grace that people hardly notice, or such logic that everyone understands. Last week Michigan's Governor George Romney offered so inept an explanation of his shifting views on Viet Nam that it could end his presidential ambitions.
Romney's judgment has never been noticeably clouded by the hobgoblin of little minds. He strongly endorsed the war in July 1965 (before he first visited Viet Nam); he lent qualified support to the Administration's policy at Hartford last spring (17 months after his return from Saigon); and, most recently, he unequivocally denounced the U.S. commitment as a "tragic" mistake. Last week, during a Labor Day interview on Detroit's WKBD-TV, Commentator Lou Gordon wanted to know how Romney squared his current conviction that the U.S. should never have got involved in Asia with the comment he made after a tour of the war zone in November 1965 that "involvement was morally right and necessary."
Replied Romney: "When I came back from Viet Nam, I had just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get when you go over to Viet Nam."
Gordon: By the generals?
Romney: Not only by the generals but also by the diplomatic corps over there, and they do a very thorough job, and, since returning from Viet Nam, I've gone into the history of Viet Nam, all the way back into World War II and before that. And, as a result, I have changed my mind.
Odd Company. Romney was followed on the Gordon program by some husband and wife swappers, and it may have caused some surprise that the morally upright Governor should find himself televised in such company. But there was no surprise at all over the reaction to his comments.
Of the nine other U.S. Governors who made the 1965 Viet Nam tour with Romney, eight abruptly dismissed the brainwashing charge; the ninth. Wyoming's Clifford Hansen, was vacationing and could not be reached for comment. One of the Governors, Vermont Democrat Philip Hoff, called Romney's statement "outrageous, kind of stinking," adding: "Either he's a most naive man or he lacks judgment." Democratic National Chairman John M. Bailey declared that Romney had "insulted the integrity" of General William C. Westmoreland and former Ambassador to Saigon Henry Cabot Lodge because "they were responsible for the briefings he received." Protested Republican Lodge, who with Westmoreland stood accused—at least indirectly—of having played Svengali to Romney's Trilby: "I never brainwashed anybody in my life."