As much as we're heard about the Protest Movement to the Vietnam War in the 1960's there was that just-as-vocal contingent who not only believed the war was justified, but that we were also in the process of winning it. And many of those people were on Capitol Hill.

For example, Sen. Thomas J. Dodd (D-Conn) who served on the Senate Armed Services Committee was a staunch believer in the Vietnam War and was convinced we were winning it. One of the true Hawks in the Senate. But in all honesty, early in 1965 there was a much larger segment of the population who believed the war could be won and believed we were absolutely justified in being in Southeast Asia than who weren't. The Anti-War Movement was just getting started at this point and the sales pitch for the War was much more organized.

Dodd was convinced we were winning, that we had "turned the corner" so to speak. And in this installment of NBC's Meet The Press, he is asked why he is so adamant in that assessment.

Sen. Thomas Dodd: “We’re winning more battles every day. The latest figure I heard was, on an engagement just recently, it was in the ratio of about four to one. They suffered something in excess of 400 losses. Our side had something in excess of 100.The morale of the South Vietnamese is very high. There are more defectors coming over to our side every day. About a year ago, my information is, we were getting about ten a month. We’re now getting over a hundred a month. We’ve got a thousand pilots, about a thousand pilots now in the South Vietnamese Air Force. They’re good pilots, I’m told by our Air Force people, they’re good fighters. As a matter of fact, I was told they do a better job at maintenance than our people do. So there are all these reasons I say we’ve begun to win.”

Hearing the casualty reports, I am reminded of what was later revealed to be grossly inflated enemy body counts, and how early on the war was being manipulated to be portrayed as another cakewalk. What was being conveyed and what was actually happening were two wildly different stories. And unfortunately we had to find out the hard way.

So here is Meet The Press featuring Sen. Thomas J. Dodd as originally broadcast on May 2, 1965.

Since the name Nelson Rockefeller has been brought up lately with regards to the current state of the GOP and the 2012 election, I ran across this Meet The Press interview with Nelson Rockefeller on the subject of his tax proposals to President Eisenhower, but really about whether or not he was planning on running for Governor of New York.

In doing a tap dance routine that would make Gregory Hines proud, Rockefeller skirts and double-skirts around the issue of running for the State House.

As a Moderate-bordering-on-Liberal Republican, his views were more in line with the Democratic Party than his own and he served in various capacities in the Roosevelt, Truman as well as Eisenhower administrations. His particular brand of politics as a Rockefeller Republican came to become the description of anyone in the Republican Party who espoused moderate values, often accompanied with ridicule.

He left a considerable involvement in Public Service in 1956 to concentrate on New York politics and, contrary to his dodging of the question during this Meet The Press installment he ultimately ran, and successfully won four terms as Governor before his brief appearance as vice-President during the Ford years.

Here is that Meet The Press from April 20, 1958 featuring Lawrence Spivak and Company.

In lesser hands this interview would have been a shambles and it probably would have become a forum for the Jabberwocky that flew out of his mouth, but this interview with Senator James Eastland (D-Mississippi) gives some idea just how entrenched, how arrogant and how racist the bloc of Senators known as Dixiecrats were.

I am still hot on the trail of the infamous (and somewhat legendary) Meet The Press interview with Senator Bilbo, another Dixiecrat from Mississippi who proudly proclaimed his membership in the KKK in 1946. But until I find it, this will have to do for the Mississippi contingent who made up the States Rights South in the 1950's and 60's.

A sampling of the interview:

Lawrence Spivak: “Senator, by what inalienable right do you ask certain freedoms for yourself and the other white people of Mississippi that you refuse to grant to the Colored people of your state?”

Sen. James Eastland: “ Why they have all the . . .there is no discrimination. Now, I believe in full economic equality, for every man.”

Spivak: “You say there is no discrimination . . . .

Eastland: “Wait, wait, just a minute now. For every man, regardless of race. But there are social questions and we do have a problem that we think we know more about than people who do not have that problem, And that we think the system of segregation is in the best interests of both races. It doesn’t mean . . it’s not based on any doctrine that one man is superior to another. It’s not based on any doctrine that one man is better than another, but that experience has shown that both races develop their own culture and develop better when they’re separated, because there is more to this question of race than merely the color of a man’s skin. There are different characteristics, different traits.”

And it stays pretty much the same for the entire interview.

This interview comes just about a year before the Central high school integration confrontation in Little Rock Arkansas. But you can see just how deeply the resistance was and what a political thorn these Dixiecrats were in the side of any Civil Rights reform on a Federal level. Which is certainly one reason the struggle lasted so long. The irony in all of this is that Eastland rose very high in the ranks of the Senate and, in addition to being second in line of succession to the Presidency in case of emergency he was also the longest serving Senator, having retired in 1978. In short, he wielded an enormous amount of power.

Here is Meet The Press with Senator James Eastland from January 29, 1956.

Dr. Walter Heller, Economic Adviser to both the JFK and LBJ Administrations, was an architect of the War On Poverty which President Johnson ran with enthusiastically.

In this Meet The Press interview from November 7, 1965 in which he ran down the outlook for the economy in 1966 and beyond.

Dr. Walter Heller: “It seems to me that we have a very basic issue. We’ve had a winning combination of a good private policy and good public policy which has produced a long standing prosperity. And an absolute essential of that has been the fine productive performance of private industry and their moderation. A moderation in their inventories and finance and particularly their moderation in prices. And it seems to me unless we maintain that, we threaten the whole fabric of expansion.”

Only one problem: Vietnam. As the War escalated and as we found ourselves deeper and deeper in a questionable commitment, President Johnson insisted that escalating the war wouldn't require raising taxes in order to pay for it. The result was a spiraling inflation and Heller's optimistic predictions were largely relegated to the dustbin of history. And Heller subsequently resigned in disgust.

But before all that there was optimism and Lyndon Johnson was riding the crest of a very popular wave. And Dr. Walter Heller was largely responsible for at least part of it economically.

Hindsight - that other thing about history.

Nicholas Katzenbach became something of an "Eyewitness to History" in the 1960's. First as Assistant Attorney General to Robert Kennedy, participated in the pivotal "confrontation at the Schoolhouse door" moment with George Wallace in 1963 and later, as Attorney General, enforcing the newly signed Civil Rights Legislation of 1964. No walk in the park, to be sure.

During this episode of Meet the Press, from April 11, 1965, Katzenbach is grilled on his stance with regards to Civil Disobedience and protest of unjust laws.

Nicholas Katzenbach: “In history and history of Philosophy the argument about not obeying the unjust law was almost always an argument against absolute power on the part of the governing body.”

Katzenbach had helped draft the Civil Rights Bill of 1964. Although he frequently clashed with J.Edgar Hoover on matters of domestic surveillance and objections to Hoover's unauthorized use of wiretaps including those of Martin Luther King.

Eventually, the war with Hoover proved to be too exasperating and Katzenbach resigned in 1966 and went into the private sector in 1969. Still, he was around when a lot of defining moments were happening and this interview gives some idea of who was Attorney General in 1965.

Continuing a sampling of economic figures in various White House Administrations, Dr. Walter W. Heller was an adviser to the Kennedy White House and, after JFK's assassination, adviser to Lyndon Johnson and was one of the contributors early on in the creation of the Marshall Plan for economic recovery after World War 2.

A Keynesian, Heller was an advocate of cutting marginal income tax rates which was credited for boosting the U.S. economy when it was enacted in the Johnson Administration. He also suggested Johnson declare a War On Poverty, which was enthusiastically accepted.

Here is an interview on Meet The Press from September 3, 1961 where Heller discusses a number of topics, including what effect the Berlin crisis was having as well as the domestic programs recently enacted by the Kennedy Administration were going to have on our economy.

Dr. Walter Heller: “When you look at the programs that have been proposed by and carried out by this administration and enacted by Congress you find that a very substantial contribution has been made to recovery. There was a speed-up of many payments, the GI Insurance payments, the speed-up of refunds, speed-up of military procurement and so forth. There was the enactment of extension of benefits under the Temporary Unemployment Compensation Act. We had further an enactment of expansion of the housing programs and so forth. Now most of these will recede just as they have been expanded for recovery they will contract, later on as the recovery proceeds to a satisfactory level of output and employment. So on one hand, as I say, there have been some very definite programs, I didn’t mention area redevelopment, I could mention many others. On the other hand I’d like to stress the fact that many of these programs will more or less automatically shrink, or can be reversed just as you speed up highway construction to fight a recession, then you pull back the program if you run into excessive economic activity and inflation.”

Heller resigned his post as Adviser to LBJ due to the escalation of the war in Vietnam which Johnson insisted on waging without raising taxes to pay for it. After resigning his post, Heller returned to teaching at the University of Minnesota where he became chair of the Department of Economics.

Another in a series of prominent economic voices.

Since the economy, the state of the economy, the debate over the economy and all things economic are at the forefront of all discussion these days, maybe it's a good idea to take a look at some of the economic voices of the past for some perspective, or at least looking at different methods used in the past to deal with economic problems.

One such voice was Leon Keyserling, a long time Economic Adviser during the Roosevelt Administration, in fact one of the architects of the National Recovery Act of 1934, and in 1949 serving as an Economic Advisor to the Truman Administration, this time with the Fair Deal. Keyserling was one of those advocates of conservative spending and prudent growth in times of prosperity to safeguard against recession and depression.

The U.S. in 1949 was coming out of World War 2 and was in the midst of aiding in recovery throughout Europe via The Marshall Plan.

At the time of this interview, on Meet The Press from March, 1949 - Keyserling had made recommendations to Congress on Economic needs and priorities.

Leon Keyserling: “In the period after the First World War we did not concern ourselves with maintaining the prosperity of the economy. And so we had a crash. And out of that crash, and out of that experience we took one step further forward; we came to recognize the majority of people, Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, came to recognize that in the event of a large depression we should, and would take effective affirmative broad steps to deal with it. Now the policy that we have been advocating since World War 2 goes one step further, it’s more moderate it’s a preventive policy. It says we should try to take these steps before the depression comes. And the only reason, the only reason why these proposals seem extreme is because some people have not come to accept the idea that you should do anything in times of prosperity to preserve it.”

Needless to say, his recommendations weren't sitting very well with members of the Meet The Press panel. At one point Lawrence Spivak accused Keyserling of wanting to give unlimited powers to the Presidency in the area of controls and price fixing, saying if such a policy was in place were a Huey Long President, the country would head to dictatorial disaster.

Lively discussion all around. And one that gives you some idea the question of our economy is as old as our government itself. Sadly, I have no Meet The Press or its equivalent from the 1860's, but I would imagine the debate would be just about the same.

Some things will never change.

(Abraham Ribicoff - Secretary of Health, Education And Welfare in 1961 - also Hand Holder, Paranoia Assuager, Debunker)

(Another repost from the Newstalgia Archives)

In 1961, JFK introduced a bill that would provide medical assistance to the Aged. It later became known as Medicare and would later pass in 1965 during the Johnson Administration. As is always the case, the mere mention of anything connection with a government aid program where Healthcare is concerned is immediately tossed into the realm of Socialized Medicine. And in 1961 it was no different.

Newly appointed Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Abraham Ribioff was confronted by a dizzying array of skepticism from the Insurance and Pharmaceutical industries who instantly labeled any kind of Healthcare reform as Socialized Medicine. As is evidenced by this exchange between Ribicoff and Meet The Press co-founder Lawrence Spivak:

Lawrence Spivak: “ Mister Secretary, as you know the AMA and others have charged that the Medical Bill for the Aged under Social Security is an opening wedge to Socialized Medicine. Now if you thought there was a chance that the bill might be an opening wedge to Socialized Medicine, would you still be for it?”

Abraham Ribicoff: “ Well, it’s not an opening wedge to Socialized Medicine, I’m for the bill.

Spivak: “No, I’m asking if you thought that it was an opening wedge . . .

Ribicoff: “I would be against it . . .I would be against the bill if it were Socialized Medicine. . . “

Spivak: “If it opened the door to Socialized Medicine?”

Ribicoff: “It doesn’t open the door to Socialized Medicine”

Spivak: “Would you tell us what makes you so sure that it doesn’t?”

Ribicoff: “Because you and I and every other American, Mister Spivak has the right to choose his own doctor. There is nothing in this bill that has anything to do with doctors. This bill takes care of the health needs to the people of America, our aged over sixty-five, and basically takes care of their hospital bills, their nursing home bills and their visits to the home for home care. The bill specifically provides that each and every American has the right to choose his own doctor and his own hospital.”

The bill wound up being defeated, owing to a Congress recess and an overheated paranoia campaign (sound familiar?). But the Medicare Bill did finally pass in 1965.

The eerie sense of Deja-vu is everywhere.

("The Olive Has Been Talking . . . ")

It seems wiretapping has been a popular subject in legal circles for quite some time, if this special edition of Meet The Press from November 17, 1957 is any indication. This roundtable discussion features New York State Supreme Court Justice Miles McDonald, District Attorney of Richmond County New York John Braisted and the infamous Roy Cohn on the subject of the use or misuse of the Fifth Amendment and the use and misuse of wiretaps.

All interesting stuff, considering it's 1957 and the world seemed much simpler then . . .or not.

Amid fears the Republican Party of 1964 was taking a sharp turn to the right, with the rise in popularity of Barry Goldwater, and all indications pointing to his nomination as the Republican Presidential candidate, much attention was being paid on that election year to the outcome of the Republican Governor's Conference, being held in Cleveland Ohio in June, 1964.

And it was the current state of the Republican Party in 1964 that was the topic of conversation on this episode of Meet The Press, first aired on June 7, 1964.

Interviewed were the Chairman of the Conference, Kansas Governor John Anderson and Host of the Conference, Ohio Governor James Rhodes. A number of subjects were discussed - where candidate William Scranton figured in this picture, the Rockefeller wing of the Party - how other Governor's were feeling about the current climate.

Interesting sets of questions and interesting answers, as was always the case in this early incarnation of Meet The Press.

Here is that entire program.