Trying to make sense of the US election? Spare a thought for our diplomats

Those Australian journalists present in the White House press room never forgot the force with which the door was flung open that day in November 1968. Behind it, the towering hulk of president Lyndon Baines Johnson: shirt sleeves rolled up, tie askew. Johnson was furious with Australian prime minister John Gorton for publicly criticising the administration’s Vietnam policies.

Gorton, for his part, was still smarting from Johnson’s decision earlier in the year to order a temporary halt in the bombing of North Vietnam without consulting Canberra: this when the Australian government had been offering full-throated public support for the policy. As one of the journalists recalled, it was clear LBJ had “not taken to Gorton one little bit”.

Loading…