Annotations for Lbj: Presidency

One is that Kennedy respected LBJ's unsurpassed skill at maneuvering in Washington, his ability to buttonhole lawmakers and to get them to do what he needed them to do. This is evident even when he's obviously the chieftain in the Senate. And I think Kennedy rightly marvels at this ability and respects Johnson for it. One of the things that one of the appealing aspects of John F. Kennedy is I think he respects people who are really good at what they do, regardless of field and he could see this in Johnson.

On the other hand, you know, it's clear that when he becomes vice president, and arguably has an important role to play in securing this razor thin victory against Nixon in the election in 1960, you know, he and his team, they don't treat Lyndon Johnson very well in terms of his role as vice president, the kinds of duties that they give him, the degree to which they include him on important policy decisions, especially in foreign affairs.

You can see, one can see why LBJ becomes resentful. There's, of course, a special friction with Robert Kennedy, which, of course, I also need to delve into as I get into this research, but I think Kennedy understands Johnson's importance to him. I think he does credit him with helping him win. Arguably, this was one instance in recent U.S. history in which the vice presidential choice actually did matter in the outcome, but then a problematic relationship thereafter.

I think Reagan's election was very significant, but not quite for the reason that people think. There's this kind of assumption that you even hear political historians make, which is that the Republican Party became conservative when Barry Goldwater got that presidential nomination in 1964, and it's remained conservative ever after. And to quote George Will's witticism, Barry Goldwater did win the presidential election in 1964. It's just that they didn't get around to counting the votes until 16 years later. But in fact, the Republican Party did not become conservative after Goldwater's victory. In fact, the conservatives had a real demotion within the party because not only did Goldwater lose in a landslide, but he really took down so many Republicans on the ballot below him, not just in Congress, but also at the levels of state legislatures and governors and even local authorities because his conservatism was simply that unpopular. And that is what gave Lyndon Johnson the ability to pass what amounted to a second New Deal.

You know, I persist in what seems an old-fashioned belief. That Americans still agree on more than what they disagree on. And to some extent, I think those kind of underlying beliefs are shared by most members of both parties in Congress, but the reality is that the kind of cooperation that was once routine under presidents as dissimilar as Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan has now really broken down, and this is largely motivated on the Republican side by fear of the base. If the only thing you have to worry about in terms of retaining your power in the Senate is being outflanked from your right in a primary election, then that motivates you to hew to a conservative or Trumpist line, whatever you perceive the base as wanting, and it's been a long time since I can really think of a lot of Republicans standing up for what they believed in, even if the base did not, and even in some cases fighting with the base. I mean, the last prominent Republican of that sort was John McCain, which is why I think so many Americans miss John McCain right now.

And so what, what were the elements of FDR and Lyndon Johnson's efforts that allowed them to succeed against the opposition that you described so well before? This is one of the things you've written about in such detail, Julian, how did these two men get through what you defined as the traditional opposition to these kinds of programs?

Lyndon Johnson faced a different situation. And I'd say what was most important for him were two factors. One was the civil rights movement, which before he came into office, it just created an atmosphere where a status quo that did nothing on race and on other issues was no longer acceptable. And they put pressure from the bottom up in ways that made the conservatives feel as if they were on the defensive. And after 1964, LBJ is reelected against Barry Goldwater in a landslide election.

Democrats have huge majorities on Capitol Hill with the balance of the Democratic Party shifting from conservatives to liberals. And in 1965, it was just very hard for Republicans to say no anymore and very hard for Southern Democrats to stand in the way of these liberal majorities. So the window opens for Johnson for about a year, year and a half, where he can push through lots of programs.

Resources are pumped into Southeast Asia in a way that makes them much less likely to want to expend resources elsewhere. LBJ becomes quite risk-averse, losing much of that tolerance for taking chances that I think had been part of the American approach in the early part of the decade, because he understood that the war was deeply controversial. And the last thing that he wanted was another controversy or another problem, another headache in the world.

So if there were reliable alternatives to be had out there in the Third World, LBJ was increasingly likely to seize on those and privilege stability above change across the board, I think you could say, by the end of the decade.

And just to build on that, Mark, another thing that struck me in your book was how often LBJ, the President of the United States, was willing to work with people he wouldn't work with otherwise if they were willing to support him in Vietnam. So in a strange way, the Vietnam War became a driver of American policy rather than American interests and ideals. Again, is that fair? And what are your thoughts on that?

I do think that's true. I think by certainly, LBJ is so focused on Vietnam that he sees every other policy challenge globally through that prism. And so even in relatively distant and perhaps somewhat unlikely places where you wouldn't think Vietnam was a major issue, LBJ is talking about Vietnam. So when he meets the generals in Brazil, when they come to visit him, I suppose I should say, or when he's talking to the Shah, Vietnam is very much on the agenda and he's looking for support. He's looking for indications that these regimes will support him, even if it's in a relatively symbolic way. That mattered a lot to LBJ as time passed.

So Mark, could you just say a little more about why that happens though? I mean, your book narrates that so well. And I was particularly struck by the Brazilian generals as well, because to me, you couldn't get farther from Vietnam than Brazil, right? But why is, I mean, this is the most powerful person in the world, President Lyndon Johnson. He's got so much experience also dealing with political failure as well as political success. Why does this small, as he says, this small country far away, why does it come to dominate everything this way?

Well, because I think that it came to dominate so thoroughly the American home fronts by 1967-1968. LBJ was nothing if not a political creature who was deeply sensitive to what was going on politically across American society, deeply sensitive to what was being said about him and his leadership. And so over time, I think he came to see Vietnam as the single major issue that confronted his administration.

And for this reason was prone to seeing every other issue through that prism. And I think you see it not only in connection with foreign policy issues, where you might be more likely to see connections among different foreign policy questions. You also see it in the domestic arena, where LBJ's attitudes toward his advisors, toward members of Congress, were deeply informed by his perception of where they stood on Vietnam and how they were likely to support him or not. It's, I think, one of the tragedies of the Johnson presidency that Vietnam becomes so all-consuming for him that every other issue becomes in some ways subordinate to it.

Yeah, I thought, Mark, your book did really a wonderful job of taking that story that some of us have focused on and really connecting it to the story of what was called the third world and how this impacted not simply detente policy, a search for stability between the US and the Soviet Union and a search for law and order at home. Lyndon Johnson's the first to really use that phrase, law and order. But as you show in this book, as I think no one has before, how this really comes to define, again, American policy in Brazil and Indonesia, which to me was, again, startling. I had seen hints of this, but my gosh, the depth of it, I think we have not appreciated until reading your book.

I think that the result of the trends that I write about in the book is that the United States by the early 1970s is drawn very strongly to the notion of stability in the third world. As I've said, most of that ambition that was so characteristic of the early 60s has disappeared. I think it really was Richard Nixon and someone you know, Jeremi, better than anyone, Henry Kissinger, who fully articulated the logic that had become clear to the Johnson administration as the 1960s passed.

He doesn't accomplish a great deal in the presidency, particularly compared to his successor, Lyndon Johnson, who was a legislative genius and promulgated the Great Society, which fundamentally changed America. But those ideas that Kennedy put forth so artfully, so elegantly in the speeches he gave made us believe in ourselves as a nation, and I think made citizens of the world believe in the United States as a leader, as a beacon of freedom. He goes on this rhetorical hitting streak at a last year of his life that is tantamount to Ted Williams in 1941. It's remarkable, all these speeches back to back to back in different areas that fundamentally change who we are in many respects.

I want to dig a little deeper, and you have so many nuggets in your book about this, because every president, of course, tries to be eloquent. Kennedy was in some sense trying to be Franklin Roosevelt, and every president since Kennedy tries to mimic Kennedy or mimic Reagan. Why is it that some presidents are able to do this and others aren't? And why was Kennedy able to do this, and even his successor, who interestingly comes on stage late in your book, Lyndon Johnson, why was he unable to do this?

Those are two fundamentally different skills. On the one hand, you have somebody who needs to convey ideas to the American people, to the press, and on the other hand, somebody who has to work behind the scenes to get his agenda done. Your dad mentioned LBJ earlier and why LBJ was not able to effectively communicate as JFK did.

Lyndon Johnson, on the other hand, while he was incredibly effective behind the scenes, perhaps no one was more effective than him in the 20th century, contrived this ostensibly presidential personality that simply was not authentic. It was disingenuous and it really in effect tamped down the Lyndon Johnson that was so powerful behind the scenes. I think that was part of Kennedy's appeal. He was really the genuine article. He was the real deal and part of that was his authenticism.

The best estimates are 60 to 100,000 members in the mid 1960s, 64, 65, around the time of Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign and shortly thereafter. But it's, you know, it's been hard for historians and contemporaries at the time to get a real handle on the numbers because, you know, the society was quite secretive about its membership. The membership was, I think, constantly in flux. As I said before, they had these small chapters. So it was really hard to track, you know, who was a member, who wasn't.

He got primaried by a guy named Joe Schell, who took about a third of the primary vote, was not a Bircher, but won the support of a lot of Birchers who were powerful in Southern California. And that really damaged Nixon. So Goldwater came along and had some critical things to say about Robert Welch, knew him, he was a problem. But as you said, right, he sort of said, you know, I know a lot of Birchers and they're fine people.

And by 76, Humphrey is so ill with the cancer that'll kill him that he decides not to make one more try. And so he's not on that list of presidents. And I think even to the people who remember him, he suffers in the historical collective consciousness because the recollections of him are about the reviled latter part of his public life, when he's Lyndon Johnson's vice president, and they both support the escalation in Vietnam.

And Humphrey himself said that supporting the Vietnam War was the biggest mistake of his life. But all this completely effaces this valiant part, earlier part of his political career, starting as mayor of Minneapolis, going through the Senate, and really his first one or two years as LBJ's vice president, when he was essential to the passage of these key, and in fact, landmark civil rights laws in 64 through 66.

Well, Truman blows hot and cold in a way that reminds me a lot of Lyndon Johnson. People compare LBJ to Franklin Roosevelt, and I think that's an apt comparison on the domestic agenda of the Great Society legislation, but on civil rights, Johnson reminds me a lot more of Truman. They're both from border states. They both, in their public life, had been perfectly fine with segregation for a long period of time, but they both had some kind of deep reservoir of personal decency that was offended. As we know from Robert Carroll's magisterial work and also people like Robert Dallek and Nick Kotz, when young Lyndon Johnson teaches at a Mexican-American school in the Rio Grande Valley, he's appalled at just a primordial level by the poverty and the racism he sees.

Peniel, at the end of your wonderful book, you connect, of course, the moment you've just described to the rise of Lyndon Johnson and how in this terrible, violent, chaotic moment, Lyndon Johnson, who was a largely ignored vice president by the Kennedys, comes into office and is able to create, as you say, a more powerful bully pulpit than any president had really had before, at least not in recent memory. And is the progress that's made, particularly in 64 and 65, the Civil Rights Act of 64, the Voting Rights Act of 65, where so many of us focus our attention, was that a necessary outcome of Kennedy's death? Would another vice president ascending to the presidency have done the same thing, or was there something particular about Lyndon Johnson?

Oh, I think that Lyndon Johnson is really the right person who steps into history at that moment. I don't know if another vice president would have been able to take command in the same way. I think that trying to make Kennedy's assassination and his death, trying to leverage that for the passage of legislation, I think most people would have tried to do.

And I think it's important for us to remember in the context of the time of 63, 64, 65, LBJ needs Black votes where he can get them. And we're thinking about states like New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and of course, not the South. And he needs to hold on to a coalition that now has venerated the slain President Kennedy, and who's now this very, very iconic figure.

And people want to see people want to listen to Kennedy. So there's a kind of underestimation of what he's capable of doing through the bully pulpit in a way that LBJ really embraces in the immediate aftermath of the assassination.

Yeah. A lot of this has to do with the authorizations of force from the early 2000s, that the president points to and says, "This allows us to do this and you'll have to give us the money." Now, Johnson made a similar argument during the Vietnam War where he said, "You guys keep giving us the money. If you wanted the war to end, you could just stop giving us the money." The appropriations issue is difficult because as I said before, you have troops in the field. You have people who need this money. I think that the only thing that Congress can really do is plan ahead with scheduled decreases.