In the Arena: A Memoir of Love, War, and Politics

national archives flagship building in washington dc which sits on the ancestral lands of the nakacha tank peoples i'm david ferriero archivist of the united states since my pleasure to welcome you to today's conversation between chuck robb and michael bash laws about senator rob's new memoir in the arena before we begin i'd like to tell you about two upcoming programs you can view on our youtube channel on thursday may 27th at noon jim downey will tell us about his new book brainstorms and mind farts a look at the brightest and most innovative american inventions along with the frivolous and utterly useless ones and on wednesday june 2nd at 7 pm pulitzer prize winning historian annette gordon reed presents her latest book on juneteenth she will recount the origins of juneteenth in its integral importance to american history this program is presented in partnership with james madison's montpelier in part one of his new memoir senator chuck robb writes that in becoming a marine i found an identity and an ethos that would remain at my core for the rest of my life the challenges and lessons of the marine corps shaped a life of service both in the military and as an elected official his long career has intersected with many moments of history represented in the national archives and in presidential libraries from marrying linda daughter of president lyndon johnson to commanding marines in vietnam and the civilian service to virginia and the nation as governor and u.s senator as senator rob writes i have lived a life of incredible events and interesting stories i look forward to hearing some of those stories tonight in our conversation with chuck robb and michael beschloss in 1961 chuck robb was commissioned as an officer in the united states marine corps it was while on assignment as a white house military social aid that he met and married linda johnson the daughter of president lyndon johnson soon after their wedding rob deployed to vietnam as a company commander after earning a law degree and practicing as an attorney rob was elected virginia's lieutenant governor in 1978 and governor four years later in 1988 he ran for a seat in the u.s senate where he served for two terms since leaving the senate rob served as co-chairman of the wmd commission and as a member of the iraq study group he's also had roles at the kennedy school at harvard university the marshall white school of law at william and mary george mason university at the u.s naval academy among many others joining senator rob in conversation tonight is michael beschloss an award-winning historian best-selling author and emmy winner his newest book is presidents of war which tells the story of the american presidents who've waged our major wars he's on the board of the directors of the national archives foundation a trustee of the white house historical association and former trustee of the thomas jefferson foundation now let's hear from chuck robb and michael beschloss thank you for joining us tonight thank you so much to david ferrio for that very nice introduction and thank you to governor and senator rob for joining us uh to talk about this wonderful book in the arena uh a memoir of love war and politics and we were just talking a little bit off-camera about the fact that i've now read the book twice loved it i think everyone should buy 10 copies and read it 10 times i'm glad to say you're welcome to the publisher but i feel as if i'm doing a favorite of the reader and one of the best things about it is as i was saying to chuck off air is it sounds just like him it really has his voice which in the case of many memoirs is not true uh and so it's one of the things i love about it and i guess maybe i can begin by asking you know i run into you from time to time and for years we've talked about this and you've been working on it and i've tried not to nag you too much but it's finally done and it's out and it's thunderously here how did you get the original idea to write the book well it's all started i guess i recognized that i was mortal and that i wasn't going to live forever and i remember when my own parents died that i couldn't call back and find out what was i doing at this particular age and i couldn't acquire them any more about their parents and those that preceded them their forebearers and so having a record uh that our our children and our grandchildren and ultimately uh their issue could uh look to and and find out things that have a factual basis uh i just find if you don't have somebody you can come back to uh that you're a little uncertain as to how accurate what you're passing on isn't just family lore uh and it's uh anyway i i wanted to uh put it down on paper uh before i got the call from saint peter wonderful and so glad you did and one of the things i had i've been a little bit aware of but not as much as i am now having read the book twice is how much your family really goes back to the early days of this country yes oh they absolutely i mean i i i'd heard from from my mother and father uh at a younger age about their forebears uh but i i could always rely if i didn't have it absolutely pinned down in my brain as to who was uh at war with whom at that particular time uh or within the family or whatever else and there are some interesting uh pieces of of the uh of my forbearers i didn't just uh come into a complete void uh i was very lucky to be born in the united states and have all of the privileges that have accrued all of us who didn't have to fight for those privileges and i wanted to make sure that i i knew how those from whom i descended uh were in any way involved in some of those activities not every single item is necessarily included in detail in the book uh and matter of fact uh alice who's been helping me for the last four or five years trying to excuse me finish it up and excuse me uh we we cut out a lot of things that that i thought were important little stories but i wanted to have just enough there that it would serve as a reference this is not designed to be a textbook it's designed to be a read for someone that is curious about people that they might have seen their name somewhere along the line and just uh were curious about what what their life was all about and that's all i'm trying to do here i'm not trying to sell a program i don't ever plan to run for any kind of political office again uh and i'm it's in any event it's it's not beyond that it's it's a historical uh document for uh the family to use well the family and also a lot of people who are interested in you and the times the historic times that you've lived through and helped to shape for those who haven't read the book yet tell a little bit about where you came from and where you grew up okay i was actually born in arizona in phoenix arizona uh in 1939 and i lived in arizona in different parts of arizona until i've forgotten the year now but at some point my parents moved to ohio for a couple of about three years if i got that correctly uh he had gone in he started out uh my father was a an airplane pilot uh he after he finished prep school in his case uh my both of my parents had much uh father went to choke didn't he he went to choke yep uh that's right and and his parents always expected him to go on to college my father instead went to uh an aeronautical edu aviation school in uh new mexico and got his commercial pilot's license and uh and and then eventually got into the uh the administration side but in between he took a little time out to go into the dude ranching business in arizona down in patagonia and sonoya where anybody happens to be from that area would know where they are the they uh neither of them are terribly big cities uh sonora is a blink and you miss it type uh and in that particular situation the uh uh teacher a a one room schoolhouse uh to taught i guess sixth grade i think they were at that point and her father uh her husband owned the only gas station in town so it was very rural and i i i had not really been exposed to the big city if you will until my parents moved to uh washington area and and uh settle down in uh alexandria at that particular point but and and one thing that comes through in the book is that thanks to their washington experience i think many times many people who did not know as much about you would have thought that your life changed when you came to washington and you went to the white house as a marine aide but your parents had known a lot of the great and famous as you were growing up right you know they had been exposed to a number of people i won't go into that old background that may not be a particular interest but the whatever might be of interest i think is included those those uh relatives from whom you would uh like to be identified and maybe some others that it's more awkward uh every every family has both that's right somebody last night uh was telling me that uh and i've known them for a long time in the in the virginia general assembly and he was telling me that he found out after the fact that he was several of his uh forebearers had been prominent members of the mafia uh and he was never aware of that uh well i i had one one forbearer was uh secretary of the treasury of the confederacy and trying to do what you can to uh eliminate part of the the historical anchor that uh had been tied to virginia both from from both slavery and the whole codification of the uh jim crow uh i i that was not one i've featured very often no that that's for sure uh it one of the things that we believe in america we don't believe in corruption of blood so i think that lets all of us off the hook in terms of certain of all of our relatives how early in life did you think that you wanted to become a marine how did that happen i can't tell you exactly the time but i always knew that i was going to go in the service it never occurred to me that i would not go on the service uh and then when i went i started out at a land-grant institution where it was required that you take rotc i'd have taken it anyhow and but i was gonna what the land-grab institution was institution i'm sorry the land grant institution was in that place it was cornell i was honest exactly at the time right um i understand yes sir i just did an interview with uh with don beyer and he said he's a williams man oh super yeah well i also got to i have to break off and he took great pride in that the fact that you have that droid association very much and in fact i'll interrupt this this interrupts the time sequence but one of the earliest times i met your mother-in-law mrs johnson uh she said where did you go to college and i said williams college and i said uh yes didn't we give you an honorary degree at some point long before i was there and she said yes they almost burned me at the stake it was 1967 anti-war times yeah she had a sense of humor about it in any case you weren't cornell yes i but but i i had a it was critical for me to have a scholarship the uh the uh success that my grandparents had in both sides of the family did not survive the depression uh and they had very little to pass on to my parents and and my parents had not accumulated enough to send me to college so i knew i had to get a a good uh scholarship and i i had scholarship assistance throughout college the very first effort was at cornell engineering i i did well enough but i found out later that you had to be in the top third of your class oh i passed everything but i wasn't eligible to continue with a scholarship i could certainly have continued but i was dependent on the scholarship at that point and so i had two opportunities that i was aware of at that point i had been selected as a competitive appointee to the u.s naval academy and i had been accepted in the nrotc regular program and i chose at that point to switch my at my parents uh suggestion to the university of wisconsin i finished out my undergraduate career there and i got very much involved in the in rotc and rotc activities and in my my final year there i was the uh selected as the brigade commander for all the rotc units but i had already gone to uh down to quantico and to what they called at the time the training and test regimen uh which is now just called ocs that's really what it is uh in any event i had gone there and and i had in the nrotc program in which i was enrolled there was a marine officer instructor each of the units has a marine officer who's part of the team uh and he he recruited me actively it didn't take a whole lot because i had seen all of the war movies in world war ii uh that was a very impressionable time and it wasn't hard to get me to join the marine corps and i and that that has permanently uh entered my dna linda sometimes kid me kids me she said you married the marine corps before we ever got married i'm just your mistress that's it it's a lighthearted uh and i i'm the the the two best decisions i ever made i made four i made the one to join the marine corps uh long before lynn and i were married uh uh and so that that i don't have to prioritize and that's but the most important single decision i ever made was to marry linda absolutely uh and and so before then when you went into the marine corps did you think at some point this might be a lifetime commitment uh and many times i did fortunately i was all that turned out to be a very successful experience for me uh i don't like to go into great detail about it but it was it kind of marked me as a a man to watch i guess uh in any event the marines were good to me i thrived on all of the challenges that the marine corps presented and it had us much more of an sort of an ordered uh hierarchy to it uh one of the reasons that i i liked uh being in in the uh being governor more than i liked being in the senate was because there's at least some structure to it it's not everybody wandering around in the souk wanting to see if you can trade uh co-sponsorship or signing on a particular amendment that may not benefit you one way or another but will make it very difficult for your opponent to vote either for or against it that's just not that was never anything that i was uh particularly thrilled with and you were always a more natural executive yes i'm i'm much more comfortable in the executive role i like to have things that i can initiate that i can be responsible for uh and i get the final vote uh and and i'm i'm responsible for for delivering uh on in this at least i found in the legislative body you you may be either enter legislation or you may be a co-sponsor and by the time it gets through that whole grinder it may look very different and may have entirely different priorities and you you frequently end up uh some part of a campaign explaining why you were possibly either in favor of that way back but it didn't end up that way uh i i took a whole lot more pride in in that part of my experience when i could vote against uh things that had finally uh reached their fruition uh and the final vote on the on the floor and and the votes that most uh and caused me to believe that i was an important part of that machinery at any of the time were the times i could stand up and oppose things that i thought were fundamentally not in the best interests of the country were fundamentally wrong um and and and that that's what energized me about that service not necessarily uh being a co-sponsor of every single piece of legislation that comes down very very telling and very interesting uh and so in the mid-60s you came to the white house uh tell that story how did that happen well i had gotten because things worked out so well at quantico and that i was i was the marine corps was being particularly good to me in terms of the assignments they were giving me what i considered plush assignments at that point i wanted to go and prove that i was as good as the marine corps thought i was by earning my spurs uh on the battlefield as a muddy boots marine and i mean everything up until that point had been very much ceremonial and the reason that i ended up going uh to the marine barracks eight to nine uh which is the uh head where the commandant on the marine corps the marine corps band marine corps drum and bugle corps are all located uh and so everybody thinks of that as being ceremonial and it does but you usually in most cases people have a very good record now they've now they only assign people there after they have been on at least one successful combat tour a while back and i hadn't been on a combat tour at that point and i thought i haven't proven that i'm uh worthy of the honors that they have given to me and and so it was it was very important to me although i was never intent on making it a career that i uh demonstrate that i was as good as as either they thought i was or i thought i was and i and i i couldn't think of leaving active duty before i'd shown that i i could live up to my uh uh fitness reports or whatever well it's a very very modest approach very rare for washington d.c uh do you remember the first time you met lyndon johnson the best thing that happened to me i'm sorry go ahead uh do you remember the first time you were in a room with president johnson uh i don't remember this specifically the first time uh one of the duties of the white house social aids is to make the uh process of state dinners and or major white house functions move smoothly and they there's always one of the white house social aides that stands next to the president and introduces everyone who comes through the line you give the title and there's usually uh one of the aids a little down two or three people and said when you get to the the aid standing next to the president please give them your title if if appropriate and and your name that makes sure that the president who may know somebody well isn't suddenly surprised uh or says runs uh a quick uh senior moment is what i call now i guess but uh so that he he's got a name that he can and use but in almost all the functions to which i was assigned i ended up being assigned to be that person uh and so i got to know uh from a strictly a working relationship i don't think until i met the president in the in this case it was in the uh i think it was the lincoln sitting room as i recall but i had asked after linda and i had uh decided to get married the two of us that was a mutual decision that we entered into i didn't go through all of the the usual uh festivities or whatever of getting down on my knee and having a ring and all that type of thing we made a decision as a matter of fact i then went back to marine barracks uh after spending most of the night uh up in the uh solarium in the white house uh and uh had to get get back to work and i i sent some some flowers which is close thing as i had come to that point to linda and they were intercepted by her mother and and then i think i mentioned this in the book and and i learned it in a sort of a a pained expression those are mine or those whatever those are for me and her mother very politely handed them over uh but in any event i i after that point i estimated a uh appointment through uh one of his secretaries for a very short personal conversation and uh again i think it was the lincoln city room uh in all likelihood probably was but uh he came i i got there first and i was seated he came in and and that's the first time we really had a uh personal man-to-man conversation i i've been part of the furniture up until that point and and he knew why you were there yes i started out that's right i said i assume you know why i'm here and he said yes i think i do in a way that was was not official at all it was a a loving father uh knowing that he's about to give away his eldest daughter and whatnot and i i i made the request to uh him i i said that's like i said i'll start right out i said i'm i'm here uh to uh uh to seek the hand i don't remember exactly how i said it but i would like to request uh your permission to marry linda and i remember his response it surprised me he says you have it and you have my love and i thought wow a man uh in his position putting love into the equation uh i that's tough uh in both cases uh there are our two married daughters uh their husbands came to me before they formally made the presentation it wasn't a great secret uh that we knew that there was some interest uh but went through the whole routine and matter of fact our uh youngest son-in-law actually set it up out of great falls park you'll know where that is nice uh and uh which for anyone who doesn't know is this beautiful park on the potomac in virginia yes and and he he'd set up his camera he had the the ring and the whole and he recorded it all on film and he's actually assisting with the uh the technical part of being able to talk to you today ah wonderful i'm glad uh this is maybe not the most important event you've done given the the earlier part but glad to know you're there and thank you for that how well did you know mrs johnson at that point well linda and i had been uh dating we didn't really probably consider it dating at that point but uh linda because she was frequently asked to appear at certain functions particularly at embassies or whatever the case may be and she needed an escort and they assumed that she would have one and she was very kind in asking me on a number of occasions to be that escort so we got to know each other on a much more informal basis and i'm just glad glad that i had all of the i was able to establish my credibility in the marine corps before i uh met linda and or ultimately asked or we i it wasn't really a may i would you would you marry me it was it was a decision i i mentioned this in the book uh but it's uh and we just grew together uh and it's again the best single uh decision or at a decision point that i made the marine corps just evolved naturally uh but this was uh uh a culmination of a relationship that was just right i believe for both of us it was certainly right for me uh and i'm delighted uh to have had this many years in a very good relationship uh with somebody that i love and all of the things that you'd like to say about somebody that you're very very close to and why i wanted that relationship to go on until such time as i depart sure well it sure comes through in a book and it's one of the most lovely things in it and uh and you you had grown up in a republican family uh essentially yes both both elements of my uh my parents uh my father actually was a uh presbyterian and my mother was an episcopalian and when they got married uh they decided they would go to one church and they would be a part of one party so they they picked my mother's church and my father's uh political party at that time so i thought at that point of myself as a nominal republican and uh and was not active in any of those activities i was active in in college in campus politics if you will but it wasn't it wasn't national politics this is a cornell well at uh more in wisconsin more wisconsin what year would that have been at wisconsin i'm sorry what year what would you been wisconsin i would have graduated in 1961 right yeah so it's a before the firm end of the the 1960s so like when you were growing up in arizona was goldwater a name that you heard and knew yes i'm sorry i didn't hear when you were growing up in arizona was goldwater a name you knew yes yes it was i mean i i really don't want to go beyond that and i when i when i went beyond uh when when i went to the white house a couple of times at least uh barry goldwater jr or maybe at other events i ran into him or whatever i don't think i ever met his father but yes i was nominated because i was again from arizona at that point i was born in arizona sure and i most of my roots are deep in in virginia and in this part of the country um any event right yeah which is another thing i did not i i remembered a little bit but how much your ancestry really does come from virginia which which is both helpful and illuminating later on when i was first campaigning both for lieutenant governor and then for governor linda would go with me many of the times but occasionally we would campaign separately and then she got a list of all of the my forebears from virginia and knew exactly where they were buried and and she was she was in that town she could mention that uh so that people that wanted to uh somehow identify me with just parachuting in right i was characterized that way by one of the democrats in virginia at one time uh who was on the same ticket that i was fortunate i prevailed well i think at the time parachuting into virginia would mean that your your family had not been there for four centuries or something like that that's right and and i i linda was able to quote one of my forbearers was speaker of the house of burgesses and that's that's i mean there's better than that had been in various and and actually had fought on both sides in the civil war uh more of the the virginias for the most part have been on the the side but i had uh four bears that came over and fought with a union army one of them ended up in andersonville as a prisoner uh of the confederacy at that particular point so i i had a mixed heritage at least a fascinating something to to hang their hat on if they if they were favorably uh impressed disposed or something it would give them a reason to remember and i i recognize that benefit that so-called uh name identification uh is important but only if you can use it in a positive way yeah no that's absolutely for sure and do you think the knowledge of your family heritage had a lot to do with i know you know for years you've been very interested in history did it have to do with that uh yes i i'm certain that it it's grown i must i spent the first part of my college thinking that i wanted it to be almost entirely stem and i've been a great encourager uh i've offered a lot of encouragement and established uh some educational uh high schools here in virginia that focus on that in particular including the one that has been frequently touted as the number one high school in the country uh and it's it's is jefferson is that jefferson yes it's uh because it was so selective uh unfortunately the demographics didn't look all that good i mean because many of those who were very bright but very well off and had done a very good job in school to that point had an advantage so there was a disproportionate number of those who weren't in particular need at that point of the special uh properties that education could bring to those who don't have it i don't remember where i was going with that that's another senior moment i guess well no it and it leads quite naturally to your decision to go to vietnam how did that happen well i again that's part of the reason that i wanted to prove uh that i was as good as apparently the marine corps thought i was because of the way i finished at quantico and because i thought that i was i was probably too big for my own britches at that point but i it was important to me to demonstrate because there was some identification but some thought that here's somebody who's married the daughter of president he's gonna get kid glove treatment uh but i wanted to go to vietnam well before he came to to the white house that was just really starting up at the time that i graduated from what it was called then and still the basic school all newly commissioned marine officers to spend six months there and it's a competitive environment and uh because everything had worked out well i was uh on a fast track uh of very desirable assignments but that didn't prove to any uh skeptical observer uh that i wasn't uh simply being uh eased along because of a family association i i it was important to me to prove it and and as a as a patriot and not not as a nationalist but as a as a patriot i recognized that i had been born into a society that gave me enormous advantages in life uh because of the the reasons i was born to an idea that wasn't just a uh uh a simple heritage uh and that was important but i hadn't had to fight for any of that and i felt an obligation uh to at least put my time in and i very much wanted to be uh as a commanding uh as a captain at that point the the best office for a captain bar none is to command an infantry company in combat and that's the ultimate ambition of almost every marine officer particularly those that go into the infantry that that that's where you uh show you've got to the stuff and you you you prove yourself and you prove and you you if you put yourself in uh the line of fire uh you've demonstrated that you're you're committed to uh carrying out your constitutional responsibilities and and their own and your own sense of of proving yourself for sure and were you not also in greater danger as the son-in-law of a president uh there was a assumption i was but i i knew that i had marines i knew the kind of training they'd all had before i was i was their commanding officer and i knew that each and every one of us knew that we were responsible for the lives of everybody else particularly the man on our right and the man on our left that's a typical way of phrasing it uh but you i had great confidence uh in them and i and it was important that they have confidence in me that they have respect for me uh and i've always demonstrated that i thought and i found out i realized later on that respect is an important element of the political process and uh if you're going to be an advocate for a particular position or whatever the case may be if they if the people that are going to cast their opinion in an election don't have respect for you uh they they're not going to take it as seriously uh and so the the marines i knew that the marines had my back and and they knew that i had their back uh and so uh there there was a time when we got uh intelligence that was sent to the first marine division headquarters that that the uh one of the uh uh then um not soviet black but the uh uh the the allied the uh why am i forgetting that name they they we always call them the the allies and the uh axis you mean allies and access or during the cold war uh yes okay they in any event the the coalition of the uh uh coal wars mostly uh eastern european oh sure yeah sylvia block or whatever but that they had uh intelligence that the the uh uh the vietnamese to the uh northern virginia nba the northern virginia army and they're going north vietnam yes you're right you're right thank you for that somebody else would have used that if i were going to go back into politics thank you uh in any event they they received intelligence that i was a specific target uh for a group of uh i assumed nba because they were much better organized than the viet cong at that point and they were uh the ones that were in control of many of the activities of the viet cong anybody that they were going to to try to capture me to use the negotiation uh on the in paris or whatever i will tell you that i i had i became a much a very close friend over a number of years with john mccain who knows who knew exactly and i had developed enormous respect for him uh because he was able to withstand what being uh accepting the hospitality of the enemy was was really like uh in any way i didn't have that experience then i had met his father before i ever met john he was over uh in the hanoi hilton is what they called it at the time uh and uh so i didn't meet him to later on he was actually when i didn't mean to digress here but the first thought about john he was actually back here and he was a senate uh military liaison and he was with uh my friend scoop jackson uh and he was making a trip uh to uh where was it i forgot now anybody he he came over on he came on something and and so we struck up a friendship then and it's lasted ever since scoop was sort of my uh first uh real uh idol if you will in the political process and you were thought of very much as a scoop jackson democrat i remember when you came down yes uh he's uh he was able to work across the aisle on on things that mattered but he was good on uh human issues and he was he was supportive of a strong credible national defense and a strong military which is important military and i i i gained moment uh credibility i guess uh coming in particularly for a democrat uh in virginia uh there was certainly concern that i might somehow be one of those anti-war folks but the very fact that i had been a commander in combat in vietnam relieved me of having to make apologies for anything in that area and it was always a benefit i tried to convince some other folks down the line i said having that experience will give you a great deal of credibility in things later on in life and i i know of very few who had the experience of combat in vietnam particularly in the those who went on to uh uh college and some graduate education that don't look upon that as a very positive experience in their life for sure i've sometimes called the marine corps the world's largest fraternity yes know what that as others have and when you came back from vietnam your father-in-law at least briefly wanted you to come back and run the family business in austin how serious was that and i were down busy we went normally went down for uh various holidays and reunions or whatever and uh he took the two of us this was after clearly after we'd decided to get married and i guess it was after we were married it must have been after we're america we didn't be okay i'm getting i'm getting uh a cue from the person who's helping me here and has been helping me on the book for the last five years uh on the professional side in any event uh he he put he got got both of us to jump in the car with him that's back when the secret secret service would let him drive himself they were in a follow-up car right as we had with during most of our marriage or the first part of our marriage while linda still rated sql throws uh protection uh in any event he took us out into a very nice part of austin and pointed out a very attractive had good curb appeal uh home he said that could be yours and i did and i tried to be as respectful as i could i wasn't expecting that but i said thank you mr president but we're not planning to move to texas uh and he that later with a good friend at the ranch uh he related this experience or got back to me uh fulfilling harold woods i guess uh he said he's a he's an uh an ordinary sob i think it was into independent independently very that's right uh and i think that's i think you're right in the book independent bastard i'm just quoting from the book that's exactly right that's right i didn't know just want to get this one right there you go you're right i i was i've learned you have been working with the media for a long time and you know that there are certain words but now i've noticed that most of those uh denials are out i mean you'll see them in in incredible publications right you see uh a uh a verbatim transcript of something you know likely to no longer have just certain words identified only by the first letter uh in any event but i i look upon that as grudging uh admiration no i think that i think that was a compliment from him and he had his next to last heart attack in your house in charlottesville if i remember correctly you were in law school at uva yes tell that story a little bit okay he and uh and mrs johnson had come down uh i can't remember i don't see linda's stuck in her head in and out but i can't remember the occasion for it at this point but they had come down to be able to spring at 72 i think that sounds about right and i think at that point he'd already accepted the invitation from the university of virginia to be the commencement speaker if i if i have the uh dates in the right lineup uh any event they came down we offered them our uh dead of in our our bedroom and we went down to sleep in and what was normally our guest bedroom which was not quite as uh uh fancy they weren't either one not a split level house i think in this little house that's right uh in any event uh during the night uh we realized that there was something going on and we got up and fed and there was one of the secret service agent was trying to get aid and get the uh local uh rescue squad to come in and pick him up uh but he and he did have a heart attack on that occasion uh it was not it was the last non-fatal heart attack that he had and and he he was determined to die in texas and he uh uh and it was somewhat apocryphal uh but the uh the story and and so because i didn't have any first-hand knowledge i quoted another author who had confirmed it enough for his uh satisfaction that they arrived to pick him up from the hospital and they found a an abandoned wheelchair uh uh with i remember i may have put something else that was on at the time in any event that that sort of summarized his comfort level he wanted to go was that really true that i've read the story but was it a true story that i i couldn't confirm it i wanted to make sure everything in the book was factual right yeah i know you're very careful about that it's very impressive helping me for the last five years i guess has fact checked every single thing i've got in there to make sure that it is absolutely correct i don't want to have any uh dispute over the accuracy of anything that i say in the book my feelings anybody can dispute those whether they're either good or bad or whether i even had them or not if i didn't share them with anybody else but certain things that could be nailed down tight uh have been and we because we couldn't i didn't have any firsthand i wasn't there the secret service came about i picked him up at that point uh or were coming to pick him up in the hospital and uh it makes a great story i don't want to ruin it by saying that i don't think it was true uh it was very much in spirit uh in in in sync with what we knew to be his first love in terms of where where he was from sure uh i'll ask you a question of the the style of brian lamb your close friend i don't know him as well as you do but i like him very much too and admire him uh what was lbj like in his last months well he'd certainly slowed down uh but we had any number of visits we would normally go down for the holidays we'd go down over the the the christmas holiday and and through new year's for a couple of weeks when we could uh and we went down on other occasions uh but he was clearly slowing down and i think probably the the best answer you could get that from that would be uh doris kearns goodwood who was helping him write his memoir in effect uh at that particular so she was with him all the time we we were uh in in charlottesville uh and i was playing on a a team in the city uh this happened to be a volleyball team and i was just changing into my uh athletic year uh and we got the phone calls and there was a uh marine sergeant major gully in the headquarters uh bill bill gully bill golly okay and and uh any event he called to say uh that uh i guess that was the first notification we got in any event he said president nixon is sending a plane down to pick you up uh and take us down and so we quickly got dressed packed whatever we could and we were off and and you and i explained in the book the scene when i got there for somebody uh the ranch foreman was normally a very gruff uh hard charger this is dale malacha malachi yes you probably knew him or met him at some point any event uh and uh he was just so crushed by the fact that he was actually human in that respect that he was uh he had a limited time like the rest of us uh anyway he was was broken up in ways that i had never seen really any any uh man that i thought was the sort the old characterization of a quote manly man uh he uh he he was just in consulate whatever it was uh it was quite interesting and that was a lot of people certainly felt that way no that that is he'd always been a presence even though he was no longer uh in position of actual authority uh and we wanted him to see his grandchildren grow up uh and he didn't get he did meet uh his first two grandchildren our the daughter of the the uh our our third uh daughter uh from his side he met linda's sister lucy uh had a little boy that was the first grandson and at least one other of their grandchildren he lived to see uh so he got that part of it but we thought with all of the uh turmoil that toward the end of his presidency particularly with the the vietnam situation was certainly not wildly popular back in the country this country uh that he ought to at least have a chance to see his grandchildren grow up and he didn't uh and did you think at the time was it thought that he might not have much time left or did you think it would be possible well no i mean we were aware of the fact that he was not as strong as he had been but we remembered well that he he was always of the view that his his male predecessors uh had not lived as long as as they might normally be expected to live and so at one point he had a formal assessment of how long he would live by an actuary wasn't it yes by an actuary by now yes by an actuary so it was it was scientifically based and and and to the extent they can something like that and uh they said you will live uh to the uh be 64 years old and it was right on the top which was right on the dot he died at age 64. linda of course and i when we each passed that part of our lives we thought about the fact that we've outlived her father we haven't outlived uh her mother yet her mother died at 94. right i'm now in in my 80s linda is in her late 70s so we've got a ways to go both of my parents lived into their late 80s and because i stayed in good shape after i left that left actively duty on the marine corps i thought i would just basically live almost forever that wasn't my desire i just wanted to stay healthy but i learned that that was not indeed the case may it be true and also in the early 1970s i think i've spoken to cardiologists who say that the things that lbj suffered from with the medicine of 2021 could be dealt with quite easily and he might have lived for a long time yeah i i don't have any i mean if from from the date that he died he was always popping these little pills nitroglycerin yes nitroglycerin pills uh i don't know whether any of today's medicine uh i haven't heard either willis hirsch who was his heart doctor at the time or anybody else opined on whether they and i guess he's he's probably gone now too uh but i haven't heard i haven't heard anybody uh opined specifically on on what what was ultimately his uh cause of death who treated him certainly he had enough uh heart trouble uh that it wasn't a surprise as such but it was uh it was nonetheless devastating for all the members of the family and people who cared a great deal about him how could it not be and and this was january of 1973 had you decided to go into politics by then january of 1973 when when he passed had you decided no i had not no i i have no idea whether he would have encouraged me or not uh i'm trying to think if i've got the dates right uh because i didn't i certainly was not on any kind of a political track at that point although i was getting active bill spong was the person that i mentioned him in the book uh i thought he was just perfect as a politician right not not all so full of himself not so self-centered so narcissistic uh whatever he was and he never didn't have much charisma at all really senator from virginia senator from junior right very conscientious man and i i i i had later on i got bill spong to be the chairman of a commission that i had put together to try to reconstitute a viable democratic party in virginia now in truth most of the heavy lifting was done by uh stuart or tim sullivan and stewart damage who had been with me in other capacities but he signed off on it and just having him on it was a great benefit and much like having colgate darden who was one of my predecessors as governor and had then been president of the university of virginia uh and i used to meet with him all the time i think it's only because of those meetings that i gained any real credibility with the old guard if you will in virginia i i really learned a great deal about virginia history from many of those folks and his friends but particularly from colgate darden which is yes i would visit him he had an office in the bank building uh in in the uh hampton roads area uh and i would anytime i was down there i would go by and leave time for at least an hour so i could visit with colgate darden and then it was a great uh measure of pride for me to have him come out of retirement he hadn't been in the political process for years to put my name in nomination for governor uh and that just meant a great deal to me uh that because he he was respected by the old guard some of whom might still be a little uncertain about this this guy because we know he was born in arizona and he came from wisconsin or whatever the time and i understand how that comes about and uh and for those of us who study your years as governor what is the most important thing for us to know uh well there's there's two dimensions i think that i was able to help pull virginia and to a maybe lesser extent the rest of the nation towards some uh release from the captivity of jim crow slavery and the whole reconstruction process we were still held back and jim crow had been uh integrated into a number of constitutions at that point by the people who had lost the war but wanted to perpetuate that i think you used the term the the white uh supremacy or whatever right uh at some point but this clearly was not going to be in the long-term interest of virginia or it wasn't wasn't the right thing to do either i mean it's i got involved uh in a number of the so-called human rights issues uh and i was i've been very pleased to help increase the uh awareness and concern that we have for all of our citizens whether they were born in the united states whether they happen to be of a particular religious denomination or party or had various physical or whatever characteristics uh that we ought to treat them as fellow human beings and i think we started that and i was able to appoint a number of uh black or african-american uh men and women and a number of women uh to positions not just in state government when they would work on uh maintenance type activities but to positions which involve policy which involved leadership and and this was i figured that if i did enough of this that it would be very hard for anybody to ever go back on that because you would see that it works the same thing as far as you could have a democrat uh in the governor's office and the so-called democratic administration without having the whole commonwealth of virginia uh read a center sure and of course there's real doubt about that at one point it was a very conservative republican state for a long period of time and i like to think over the long run that i helped make it acceptable to be a democrat in virginia and to accept you had to be compassionate enough to govern compassion enough to care and and tough enough to govern and i i was able to bring both of those pieces of the equation together in ways that i felt very good about and i commend all of those who succeeded me in trying to make sure that we uh maintain that commitment that we've made uh to the the basic principles on which the nation was founded well it's interesting because i i remember once probably 30 years ago i was asking your mother-in-law mrs johnson which political figures she had been impressed by you know during her time and a lot of the names that she mentioned including yours were political leaders who were in formally confederate states who had to do exactly what you're talking about yes she had respect for northern liberals but i think she had more respect for people who had to work with a situation that was a lot more difficult no question that that was uh i consider that the most important long-term challenge and you could you could uh exhibit support for a a progressive move in a number of areas the the easiest to to be able to calculate would be support for education right and increasing teacher salaries uh and i'm very proud at this point that our youngest daughter uh decided that she got a a a regular undergraduate degree and then got a a teaching certificate so when she came back up this area she uh was offered not only a position uh in the math department of the high school but she was offered to be the coach of the team which had been one of the mortal enemies you're familiar with the mclean area there's langley and mclean high schools right our middle daughter graduated from bangla high school our youngest daughter graduated from mclean high school and they they were always that they had a a bull i can't remember the name of it now but that they fought for and then after this daughter uh was quoted on something i remember seeing someone in the paper they used the word traitor the fact that she'd played for mclean and she was now coaching their archenemy she had done well in both of those assignments and and all three of our daughters have done very well uh in their own professional lives and lynn and i are very proud of them i i can vouch for that knowing at least two of them fairly well uh we've got about five more minutes i want to be respectful of your time final question i've got is you talk about this in the book but you've been out of politics now for about 20 years if someone were to ask you what was the difference between serving in the senate in your time and the way politics has gotten in 2021 how is the culture different well it hasn't gotten in my judgment any better uh it it's there has been a long decline from the time where where the uh the senate and the house were both all respected institutions they have now become almost tribal uh and i i have been very and i do speak about this in the book that that is uh a concern uh that it's you gain certain credibility with very narrow groups who have a passionate feeling for whatever they're doing uh that you can enrage them and sometimes the the activities are designed to enrage that small group uh and they're sufficient to get you through certain legislative hurdles whatever the case may be and to get reelected if you uh appeal to enough of those who really want to basically stick their finger in the eye or poke somebody in the nose that they think somehow are on the other side of the equation did you ever think in your lifetime that virginia would be called a a purple or a blue state no but i'm i'm very pleased it has it certainly wasn't in that era and i i like to think that if there's anything in a strictly political sense uh that uh where we're now regarded as a purple state and and and we're we're regarded as as a uh now a good chance for presidential candidates to uh carry virginia uh i'm trying to think uh who was the last uh carter didn't carry it uh virginia uh no uh did clinton um no i don't think so i don't think so i tried lbj did in 63. i got i got him yeah that's what i thought he was he was the last democrat you carry virginia yeah yep that's still the case okay okay uh i was thinking that somebody else had uh not virginia not until obama not okay obama okay yes in recent times i were going back into the history i mean i i think it became uh respectable if you will and a lot of the folks that we see at church or at the grocery store or whatever the case may be to be a democrat again uh and uh and and figure that again we're not gonna be uh reduced to ruin uh if if democrats are in charge of something that will affect our lives he didn't strike people as a very revolutionary scary figure i i have never been really considered a revolutionary and as i as i get uh on in in years i recognize that i want to know more about a lot of history that i didn't take when i was in college and i got to be careful at this point i don't want to advertise too much but we have a daughter who started off uh with a as a principal recruiter for the teaching company it's now called the great courses right i've signed up for lots of their courses wonderful i really started to take all of them yet but they're the courses that i would love to have taken if i weren't thinking i was wanted to be an engineer at that point and i had i'd shine away from those kinds of courses now i'm going to take them and i'm going to really end up if if say peter don't call too soon uh as what i would consider a reasonably educated human being wonderful uh i think that's a part of my life and a lot more uh caring of the details of of the suffering of the human uh spirit uh and others who are either without or deprived of certain advantages that i was born with um and well i think as the book shows those values have been pretty consistent throughout your life i'd like to have to comment on that i'm just saying that as a reader yeah no i appreciate it that that that is who i think i am now and one of the things about writing a book is that you if you haven't been writing in the first person you sort of find out ultimately who you are right i mean it took me uh i started this uh about 20 some years ago and only in the last few years this pandemic has been terrible for everybody but for those of us who had unfinished business that they could do at home it proved a blessing in disguise but i don't want to trade give any kind of a trade-off between it was it was good for me but it was bad for you of course it was terrible but it did have certain odd effects like this yes okay that that was a benefit and i i want to continue to take advantage of the opportunity to learn more and learn more about the individuals and the the the the real challenges they had and that's reason my my position on a couple of uh of issues have changed because i i know more about it now i make a passing reference to a couple of them in the book but i'm seeing more and more that i'm going to look beyond uh the law if you will or the constitution alone in determining what i think is the right thing to do and what what is the uh what do you feel good about you you know the man upstairs knows everything you've done but uh not not everybody uh else knows that you're actually a a fairly decent human being and if if you want to escape with anything uh having people think that at least he he tried and he he tried to be a good man and his word was his bond that's that's absolutely true and evolution and learning are hallmarks of a great leader and a great leader has written this wonderful book we've had the pleasure of having him for an hour chuck robb in the arena a memoir of love war and politics thank you so much chuck for spending the time thank you michael i very much appreciate it you

Channel: US National Archives

Views: 1,511

Keywords: US National Archives, NARA

Id: 9any6Oo6I14

Length: 66min 2sec (3962 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021