Abstract
During the Vietnam conflict presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon wielded war powers without congressional declarations of war. The legislature and judiciary more or less deferred to these “Imperial Presidents” rather than check or balance their war policies. This deferment seriously compromised and, in some cases, even nullified representative democracy. Populist democracy, in the form of the Antiwar Movement, fared little better. Millions of citizens repeatedly expressed their opposition to the war in mass demonstrations, especially after 1967. And yet active American combat in Vietnam continued until 1973. The ineffectiveness of the Antiwar Movement is consistent with the Elite Theory of democracy wherein a small minority of powerful people in corporations (including media corporations) and government offset and counteract populism. Ironically, in this case, the Imperial Presidency also overwhelmed legislative and judicial elites. Thus, in the most dramatic subset of a greater post-World War II phenomenon, the Vietnam War featured a monarch-like executive using war powers that circumvented both direct (populist) and indirect (representative) aspects of democracy.