If you're looking for one single name, you’re gonna be disappointed. History is rarely that tidy. Most people think of LBJ or Nixon when they ask who was president of the US during the vietnam war, but the truth is way more bloated. Five men sat in the Oval Office while American boots—or at least American money and "advisors"—were on the ground in Southeast Asia. It started with a trickle under Truman and ended with a frantic helicopter escape under Ford.
It’s a long, grim story.
Basically, the "Vietnam era" is a moving target. If you’re talking about when the US first got involved, you have to go back to 1945. If you mean when the draft started ruining lives and the nightly news turned into a body count ticker, that’s the mid-sixties. Each president passed a ticking time bomb to the next guy, hoping it wouldn't go off on their watch. It eventually did.
Dwight D. Eisenhower and the "Domino" problem
Before the hippies and the Huey helicopters, there was Ike. Dwight D. Eisenhower didn't want a land war in Asia. He’d seen enough of that in Europe and Korea. But he was terrified of Communism spreading.
He’s the guy who coined the "Domino Theory." The idea was simple: if South Vietnam fell to Ho Chi Minh’s communists, the rest of Southeast Asia would go down like a row of blocks. Because of this fear, Eisenhower started sending millions of dollars in aid to the French, who were trying (and failing) to keep their old colony. When the French got hammered at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, Ike didn't send troops, but he did send "military advisors." By the time he left office in 1961, there were about 900 Americans in Vietnam. It was a small spark, but the room was already filled with gas.
Kennedy: The "Advisors" get real
When John F. Kennedy took over, he didn't want to look soft on Communism. The Bay of Pigs had been a disaster. The Berlin Wall was going up. He felt he had to draw a line somewhere. Under JFK, those 900 "advisors" ballooned to over 16,000.
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These weren't just guys sitting in offices with maps. They were Green Berets. They were pilots. They were getting shot at. Kennedy was conflicted, though. Some historians, like Fredrik Logevall in Choosing War, argue JFK might have pulled out if he’d lived. Others say he was just as much of a "cold warrior" as the rest. We’ll never know. What we do know is that three weeks before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, the US-backed a coup that ended in the murder of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. The situation went from "unstable" to "total chaos" overnight.
Lyndon B. Johnson: The war becomes his legacy
If you ask a historian who was president of the US during the vietnam war and they only give you one name, it's usually LBJ. He’s the guy who truly "owned" it. He didn't want the war. He wanted to build the "Great Society"—healthcare for the elderly, civil rights, ending poverty. He famously called Vietnam "that bitch of a war."
But in 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin incident happened. Or rather, a "supposed" incident where North Vietnamese boats allegedly attacked US destroyers. Johnson used it to get a blank check from Congress.
By 1968, he’d shoved over 500,000 Americans into the jungle.
The Tet Offensive in early '68 was the turning point. Even though the US militarily won the fight, the American public realized the government had been lying about the war being almost over. LBJ’s approval ratings fell off a cliff. He was so broken by the conflict that he went on national TV and announced he wouldn't run for re-election. He died just a few years after leaving office, his legacy forever stained by a war he couldn't win and couldn't leave.
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Nixon and the "Peace with Honor" struggle
Richard Nixon campaigned on a "secret plan" to end the war. Spoilers: the plan wasn't that fast. Nixon started "Vietnamization," which basically meant training South Vietnamese troops to do the fighting so Americans could come home. Sounds great on paper. In reality, it took years.
Nixon actually expanded the war before he ended it. He secretly bombed Cambodia. He sent troops into Laos. This set off the biggest protests in American history, including the tragic shootings at Kent State. Eventually, in 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed. The draft ended. American combat troops left. Nixon called it "Peace with Honor," but the war between the North and South didn't stop. It just became a Vietnamese fight again.
Then Watergate happened. Nixon resigned in disgrace, leaving the final mess for the next guy.
Gerald Ford and the final curtain
Most people forget Gerald Ford was even involved. But he was the one holding the bag when the end finally came in April 1975.
The North Vietnamese launched a massive offensive, and the South Vietnamese army collapsed faster than anyone expected. Ford begged Congress for more money to help the South, but they said no. They were done. Everyone was done.
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The world watched on TV as North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon. The iconic photos of people climbing a ladder to a CIA helicopter on a rooftop? That was Ford’s watch. He had to oversee the evacuation of thousands of Americans and Vietnamese refugees. It was a messy, heartbreaking conclusion to a thirty-year involvement.
Why does this timeline still matter today?
Looking back at who was president of the US during the vietnam war isn't just a trivia exercise. It shows how "mission creep" works. It shows how five different men, all with different personalities and parties, got sucked into the same trap because they were afraid of looking weak.
The war changed everything. It changed how we trust the government (we don't as much). It changed how the media covers combat. It even changed the voting age—if you were 18 and old enough to die in a jungle for LBJ, you were old enough to vote him out.
How to dig deeper into Vietnam history
If you really want to understand the nuances of these five presidencies, don't just read a textbook. Textbooks are dry. Try these steps to get a "human" sense of the era:
- Watch the Ken Burns & Lynn Novick documentary: It’s 18 hours long, but it’s the gold standard. It uses archival footage that makes you feel the humidity of the jungle and the tension of the Oval Office.
- Visit a local VFW or American Legion: If you meet a Vietnam vet, just listen. Their perspective on "who was president" is usually a lot more visceral than what you'll find in a history book.
- Read "The Best and the Brightest" by David Halberstam: It explains how incredibly smart people in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations made incredibly stupid decisions.
- Check out the LBJ Library digital archives: You can actually listen to recorded phone calls of Johnson talking to his advisors. Hearing the stress in his voice as he realizes the war is spiraling is haunting.
Understanding Vietnam requires looking at the failures of leadership across decades. It wasn't one man's war; it was a collective American tragedy that spanned five administrations and changed the country forever.