President Lyndon Johnson suffered a credibility gap over
Vietnam because the American people came to disbelieve what his administration said
about the way the war was going. The public came to believe that Johnson was
overstating the progress that was being made towards winning the war. This credibility
gap became a real crisis after the Tet Offensive in 1968, becoming big enough that
Johnson chose not to run for reelection.
As president,
Johnson had to try to convince the people the war was going well so they would support
it. However, this involved giving highly slanted accounts of how things were going.
When events (particularly the Tet Offensive) made clear that things were not going as
well as Johnson claimed, the credibility gap came into
existence.
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