CREDIBILITY GAP
Every president has faced opponents who believe that the
commander-in-chief has misrepresented the facts, twisted
the truth, and manipulated the situation to achieve political
advantage. For Lyndon B. Johnson, however, the distrust
became so widespread that the term “credibility gap” came
to characterize his administration. The phrase represented
an accumulation of a wide variety of reporters’ grievances
against the president, some of which had started as minor
irritants when Johnson entered the Oval Office. Journalists came to see these grievances as signs of the president’s
pathological need for secrecy, coalescing around the issue
of Vietnam.
On May 23, 1965, David Wise penned an article for the
New York Herald-Tribune on the differing rationales presented by the White House for American military intervention in the Dominican Republic the month before: was
it to save lives, or to prevent a Communist takeover? The
article’s opening lines suggested that “For the past two days
the Johnson administration has been grappling with what
might best be described as a credibility problem of its own
making. . . . The administration is discovering, . . . as other
administrations have in the past, that when the gap between
a government’s actions and its words becomes discernible,
it is in trouble.” The now-unknown headline writer paired
two words to create the historic phrase by entitling the article
“Dilemma in ‘Credibility Gap.’” According to the historian
Eric Goldman, this was the first use of the term in print.
Wise cites the etymological ancestor of the phrase in
John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign charge that America
faced a “missile gap” against a better-armed, better-prepared Soviet Union. Journalistic lore suggests that during
the Vietnam War, correspondents in Saigon had coined the
term “credibility gap” to characterize the military’s press
briefings, known derisively as the “Five O’Clock Follies.”
The expression worked its way stateside, where it was widely
used among correspondents before hitting print. Although
the New York Herald Tribune’s headline seems to mark its
first published appearance, the term’s “principle popularization” came from Murrey Marder’s news analysis in the
Washington Post on December 5, 1965, which focused on
the “creeping signs of doubt and cynicism about Administration pronouncements, especially in its foreign policy. . . .
The problem could be called a credibility gap. It represents
a perceptibly growing disquiet, misgiving, or skepticism
about the candor or validity of official declarations.”
The phrase gradually found more frequent usage in news
reports and political debates, particularly concerning Vietnam. By November of 1966, for example, the New York
Times concluded an editorial by suggesting that “when it
comes to the war in Vietnam, the most disturbing escalation is in the credibility gap.” In March of 1967, journalistic
opinion-leader Walter Lippmann penned a two-part series
for the Washington Post and giving speeches highlighting
the charges, and the next month a panel on National Educational Television considered the issue. In September of
1967 an article in The Progressive by William McGaffin
and Erwin Knoll traced the origins of “the Gap” to the 1964
presidential campaign, during which “he told the American people, ‘we are not about to send American boys nine
or ten thousand miles to do what Asian boys ought to be
doing for themselves.’” Before the end of that year, media
stories delighted in a Credibility Gap game, complete with
an “Administration pack of lies,” created by “two angry
professors.”
Johnson and his aides bristled at both the term and its
connotations. They insisted that the administration’s policies on Vietnam remained consistent, with only changes
of implementation; redefining the role of American military personnel and committing more troops simply represented steps in discharging the fundamental policy of
combating aggression. They complained that the articles
often used comments, such as the 1964 campaign promise, completely out of context, ignoring the discussion that
framed the remarks. Staff members and supportive journalists pointed to various reasons for inconsistent statements,
including the tensions between remaining Kennedy staffers
and those added by Johnson, the complexity of the issues
involved, “loose talk” among some aides, adaptations to
specific audiences, and a hypercritical press corps. They
redoubled efforts to court favorable journalists, debated
how best to help the public understand what was at stake
in Vietnam, and developed extensive memoranda both
refuting the charges and pointing to the credibility gaps of
others, including Lippmann and Robert F. Kennedy. After
supporters argued that Bill Moyers’ tendencies toward
self-aggrandizement led to media mistrust, the president
replaced him as press secretary with George Christian—a
move leading James Reston to quip that Moyers had been “badly wounded at Credibility Gap.” Sympathetic journalists bemoaned the “vilification—even obscenity” of the
vituperative attacks based on “inconsequential nit-picking
on matters of national security,” resulting in a “’Credibility
Gap’ cliché [that] lacks substance.” A few, such as Philip
Potter of the Baltimore Sun, acknowledged Johnson’s
penchant for secrecy but counseled him on the benefits of
developing a thicker presidential skin.
Thus the White House files on the credibility gap grew
as both the articles and the refutations burgeoned. In January of 1968, three aides warned that “unless checked now,
the Credibility Gap will be a major campaign issue”—but
by that point, it was too late. Between Vietnam and the
press, Lyndon Johnson found the credibility gap too wide
a chasm to cross, and he withdrew from the presidential
campaign. Although Johnson retired, the term “credibility gap” did not. It has entered the contemporary American lexicon, haunting every subsequent president as well
as other politicians, business leaders, academics, and, yes,
journalists. From international relations to environmental
issues to sports, the term “credibility gap” has became what
Doris Graber would call a condensation symbol, stirring up
“vivid impressions” that “arouse emotions” and “supply
instant categorizations and evaluations.”
Further Reading
“Confusion on Vietnam.” New York Times, November 7, 1966,
46.
“Credibility and the Press.” Washington Star, January 5, 1967, in
Ex PR 18, box 359, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, University
of Texas, Austin.
“‘Credibility Gap’ Fun for Skeptics.” New York Times, November
26, 1967.
Goldman, Eric F. The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), 409.
Graber, Doris. Verbal Behavior and Politics. Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 1976, 289–293.
Johnson, Lyndon B. Library, University of Texas, Austin. The
LBJ Library includes credibility gap files in Ex FG 1, boxes
14 and 16; George Christian’s files; and Fred Panzer’s files,
box 340 (9).
Lipppman, Walter. “The Credibility Gap—I.” Washington Post,
March 28, 1967, A-17.
Lippmann, Walter “The Credibility Gap—II.” Washington Post,
March 30, 1967, A-21.
Marder, Murrey. “Credibility Gap: Greater Skepticism Greets
Administration Declarations.” Washington Post, December
5, 1965, A21.
McGaffin, William and Erwin Knoll, Anything But the Truth: The
Credibility Gap and How the News is Managed in Washington. New York: Putnam, 1968.
McGaffin, William and Erwin Knoll. “The White House Lies,”
Progressive, September 1967.
Potter, Philip. “Johnson’s Credbility Gap: Public Relations and
Disputed Questions of National Survival,” Baltimore Sun,
January 16, 1967, 1A, 9A.
Reston, James. “Washington: On Disposable Press Secretaries,”
New York Times, December 16, 1966, 46.
Smith, Howard K. in Washington Post, December 19, 1966, in
Ex FG 1, box 13, Lyndon B. Johnston Library, University of
Texas, Austin.
Smith, Smith, remarks at a UPI breakfast, April 24, 1967, transcript in CF FG 1, box 16, Lyndon B. Johnston Library, University of Texas, Austin.
Telephone interview with Henry Trewhitt of the Baltimore Sun by
the author, May 19, 1978. Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
“The President and the News.” NET panel of Ben Bagdikian,
Douglas Kiker, Al Otten, and Philip Potter; see memorandum of April 19, 1966, Ex PR 18, Box 358, Lyndon B. Johnston Library, University of Texas, Austin.
Turner, Kathleen J. Lyndon Johnson’s Dual War: Vietnam and
the Press. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Wise, David. “Dilemma in ‘Credibility Gap.” New York Herald
Tribune, May 23, 1965, 15.
Wise, David. The Politics of Lying: Government Deception,
Secrecy, and Power. New York: Random House, 1973, 22–
23, 290–291.
Kathleen J. Turner