Bundy advised Johnson that the best way to "sell" the Vietnam War to the American people was as an extension of the Great Society. Bundy told the president he should create a multi-billion dollar Southeast Asia Development Corporation that would build an enormous dam on the Mekong River which he wrote would be "bigger and more imaginative than the TVA and a lot tougher to do". Bundy suggested the proposed Southeast Asia Development Corporation and its dam on the Mekong would be able to bring electricity to all of Southeast Asia and thereby industrialize the entire region within the next 20 or so years. In a speech on 7 April 1965 at Johns Hopkins University, Johnson proposed the Southeast Asia Development Corporation and the dam on the Mekong that would electrify all of Southeast Asia, saying that the Vietnam war was a struggle for economic development, which he accused North Vietnam of seeking to prevent. As the war continued, Johnson berated Bundy, saying he wanted "more ideas and more horsepower and more imagination".