The war clearly wasn’t going well, even though the opponent was much smaller, and appeared to be overmatched. Young men were fleeing the country in droves in order to avoid the draft. The world looked on scornfully.
The president needed to maintain domestic support for the war, so he beefed up the welfare state in addition to ramping up defense spending. The predictable result? A large deficit and inflation, of course.
Is it Putin or LBJ? You decide.