Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam

The author started graduate school in sociology at the University of Wisconsin in 1969. Like many US campuses at the time, Wisconsin was in turmoil, with near-daily student protests about the war in Vietnam and other issues. He responded with enthusiastic babbling about Maurice Merleau-Ponty or some other obscure European pedant when Hamilton handed the author an offprint from a article he had published in the American Sociological Review about public opinion and the Korean War. The author suggests replicate his analysis and findings with some Survey Research Center data concerning the war in Vietnam. Unquestionably, the public&s;s attitude towards the Vietnam War has changed greatly. Commercial polls, media reports and academic studies bear the same message: the war has lost support. The continuance of the war despite the opposition of the media contains other important lessons, in that it shows the scant power wielded by elites who control mass opinion rather than the major decision-making institutions.