President Lyndon B. Johnson entered 1968 sure that he’d have a second term after getting a massive social welfare package, the Great Society, passed in Congress. But by March, he’d be dropping out of the race. The Tet Offensive in Vietnam (an already unpopular war) shifted public opinion in the U.S., creating massive doubt that the war was worth pursuing.
The North Vietnamese Army, plus Viet Cong guerrillas, in January assaulted various positions across South Vietnam, with a goal of weakening public support for the war in the U.S.; they succeeded, creating a series of reports and images that dispirited many Americans. Politicians, including Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.), began calling for a settlement. Johnson’s popularity took a major hit, as demonstrated when he lost the New Hampshire primary to Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-Minn.). Then, the very-popular Kennedy himself got into the race.
So it was on March 31 that Johnson, during a national address, announced that the war strategy would change. There would be no more bombing raids in North Vietnam and he would call for peace negotiations. Then, surprising everyone, he announced he wouldn’t seek, nor accept, his party’s nomination for president.
The North Vietnamese, though, were uninterested in fully committing to a peace process as they saw how turbulent 1968 was for the U.S., due to a variety of events on the ground like the assassination of both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Kennedy, the tight race to succeed Johnson, and riots across the country. There was little movement on the ground in the war or in the negotiations.
President-to-be Richard Nixon would leverage all of the dysfunction in his campaign and it was under his administration that the war finally ended.
There’s a very in-depth article about Johnson’s speech at NPR. You can read the whole speech at the American Presidency Project from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
