On March 31, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced over national television that he would not seek reelection and would instead devote the remainder of his tenure in the White House to finding a peaceful settlement in Vietnam. At home, the President faced a rising crescendo of protests against the war, mounting economic difficulties brought on by war-induced inflation, and challenges to his political leadership from Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, recent heavy fighting—the Communist Tet offensive and the ongoing battle for Khe Sanh—had shattered administration predictions that the United States was winning and that the war would soon be over. With an American-imposed solution appearing less and less feasible, the President ordered a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam above the twentieth parallel. Henceforth, the United States would concentrate on strengthening the South Vietnamese armed forces to resist Communist aggression on their own. Since committing U.S. combat forces to Vietnam 3 years earlier, the United States had yet to suffer a major defeat. But it had also been unable to score a decisive victory. As a practical matter, President Johnson’s announcement was the first step toward U.S. disengagement from Vietnam, a process that would still take 5 more years to yield what his successor, Richard M. Nixon, termed "peace with honor.”