The authors of NSC-68 had assumed that there could be separate standards of conduct in these two spheres: that American leaders could learn "not to be good" in waging the Cold War while remaining "good" within the framework of their own domestic democratic society. It had been hard enough to maintain that separation during the Eisenhower and Kennedy years: both presidents had been forced to admit that their "denials" in the U-2 and Bay of Pigs incidents had not been "plausible." With the Vietnam War, the line between what was allowed overseas and what was permitted at home disappeared altogether. The Johnson administration found it impossible to plan or prosecute the war without repeatedly concealing its intentions from the American people, and yet the decisions it made profoundly affected the American people. Far from measuring up to "its own best traditions" in fighting the Cold War, as Kennan had hoped it would, the United States in fighting the Vietnam War appeared to be sacrificing its own best traditions of constitutional and moral responsibility.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The authors of NSC-68 had assumed that there could be separate standards of conduct in these two spheres: that American leaders could learn "not to be good" in waging the Cold War while remaining "good" within the framework of their own domestic democratic society. It had been hard enough to maintain that separation during the Eisenhower and Kennedy years: both presidents had been forced to admit that their "denials" in the U-2 and Bay of Pigs incidents had not been "plausible." With the Vietnam War, the line between what was allowed overseas and what was permitted at home disappeared altogether. The Johnson administration found it impossible to plan or prosecute the war without repeatedly concealing its intentions from the American people, and yet the decisions it made profoundly affected the American people. Far from measuring up to "its own best traditions" in fighting the Cold War, as Kennan had hoped it would, the United States in fighting the Vietnam War appeared to be sacrificing its own best traditions of constitutional and moral responsibility." in the context of "John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (2005)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.