 To mobilize the reserves and National Guard would mean having to call up hundreds of thousands of men from civilian life, which would inevitably disrupt the economy, which in turn would require ending the peacetime economy and putting the economy on a war footing.Johnson rejected a wartime economy as imposing too many sacrifices on ordinary Americans that would threaten his chances at reelection.Because the reserves were never called up, the Army had to send much of its manpower to Vietnam, leaving the U.S divisions in Western Europe in a "skeletal" condition as there was a shortage of volunteers.