Wartime Presidents

In fairness, Dubya is not the first President... or Texan... to morph himself into a wartime President in the apparent absence of a better idea.
On August 4, 1964, USS Turner Joy and USS Maddox reported that they had been attacked by N. Vietnamese PT boats in the Tonkin Gulf. On August 7, the Tonkin Gulf Resolution was passed and Lyndon Johnson became a wartime President.
There are stories about whether or not the destroyers were attacked or even engaged by the PT boats. There are questions about whether or not the ships were in international waters at the time. Whatever the facts of the incident were, the resulting Tonkin Gulf Resolution and escalation of the war in VietNam took a lot of the wind out of Senator Goldwater's anti-communist sails at the end of his bid to unseat Johnson.
So, what do you think? Is it a Texas thing? Is it an oil thing? What?