Here Reagan was expressing the same attitudes that the Establishment had taken in World War II, Korea and the early years of our involvement in Vietnam. Implicit was the assumption that the cause of the United States was just. Kennedy, in the manner of much of the Establishment starting in 1967, questioned this. "I don't think that we're automatically correct or automatically right and [that] morality is on our side, or God is automatically on our side because we are involved in a war. I don't think that the mere fact that the United States is involved in the use of force with an adversary makes everything that the United States then does absolutely correct."
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They disagreed also on whether the South Vietnamese guerrillas should be included in negotiations. "I don't think we can have negotiations that are really going to be very productive unless the National Liberation Front is represented," Kennedy said. Reagan flatly disagreed. "I believe if there is any negotiation involving the Viet Cong, that is between the Viet Cong and the South Vietnamese government in a negotiation of their own, because the Viet Cong is in a position of being a rebellious force, an illegal force, fighting against the duly authorized government of its own nation." Relativism versus moralism: We should make concessions to get an agreement versus we should not recognize illegal insurrections.
When one student questioned the legitimacy and behavior of the South Vietnamese government, Reagan bristled, and responded with facts and figures—the 1954 referendum which Ngo Dinh Diem won and two later elections, 6 million could not have been put in concentration camps in a country with 16 million people, a U.N. report exonerating the South Vietnamese government. I have not fact-checked Reagan's responses, but they were impressive coming from a state governor in his first year in office. In contrast, Kennedy spoke in generalities and oscillated between apologies and criticism of North Vietnam. He started off, "I think that there were mistakes made over the period of the last 10 years. There were mistakes in which I was involved." And he said mistakes had been made by both North and South Vietnam. Later, he went back to what likely would have been his sole argument a year or two before. "If you want to criticize President Diem, I think that at the same time, I would suggest that perhaps you would also criticize North Vietnam. When did they last have a free election? When did they last have a free election in any of the countries who are our adversaries?" And then he segued into saying that we had done bad things "in our relationships with some of the countries of Latin America, Asia, and Africa."
In looking ahead, Kennedy and Reagan saw different futures. Kennedy looked forward to détente. "I don't think that the Communist system wishes us well, but I think that it's recognized that—that it's a different system than it was 20 years ago, that we're going to make every effort to try to reach an accommodation, particularly with the Soviet Union, that we recognize the danger from China, but that as President Johnson has said, that we're going to make every effort to try to reach an accommodation also with Communist China, if that's possible." Reagan a few minutes later looked forward to something else. "I think when we signed the Consular Treaty with the Soviet Union, I think that there were things that we could have asked in return. I think it would be very admirable if the Berlin Wall, which was built in direct contravention to a treaty, that the Berlin Wall should disappear, I think this would be a step toward peace and toward self-determination for all the peoples if it were." Kennedy was looking forward to the foreign policies of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter. Reagan was looking forward to the foreign policy he would conduct between 1981 and 1989.
At the time of this broadcast, it was generally considered that, of the two politicians, Kennedy was more likely to be president some day, and he did run the next year and was murdered in June. But Kennedy evidently felt he was outdebated that day, and reportedly asked his aide Frank Mankiewicz, "Who the f*** got me into this?" He did run for president in 1968 and was assassinated the night he won the California primary; he was only 42. Ronald Reagan ran for president four times: at the Republican National Convention in 1968, in the Republican primaries in 1976, and in the general elections of 1980 and 1984, at ages 57, 65, 69, and 73. Who believed in 1967 that he would win 93 out of a possible 100 states in those two general elections, that he would bring about the end of Communism's evil empire and that he would be buried as a revered president on a hillside near a piece of the Berlin Wall? Perhaps he did: So much of what he stood for is in this television debate taped 37 years ago, in that year when the Establishment, but not Ronald Reagan, seemed to be losing its faith in America as a force for good in the world.
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