LBJ's America Panel - Johnson's Legacy in the 21st Century

ladies and Gentlemen please join me in welcoming Melody Julian Nikki and Mark to the stage thank you well good evening everyone it's wonderful to be here with you I mean you never expect someone to say oh I'm Mis miserable to be here with you but it is indeed wonderful and I am really really excited about this panel um these are friends but even more than that for tonight's purposes these are experts who have so much to say on our topic and we don't have a lot of time to say it so I'm going to Dive Right In I want to start by just talking about the Great Society and whether you know we know the Great Society has its fans it has its detractors but no matter what you think about the policy whether you love Medicare or you hate Medicaid no matter where you are on that I think people have to admit that Lyndon Baines Johnson got an enormous amount done he is the gold standard when it comes to productivity and Effectiveness and I want to start by talking about that and I think Mark I want to start with you and ask was it his personality and his style that allowed that to happen and to the degree it was or wasn't how how much was that a factor in his Effectiveness yeah first of all uh good evening it's great to be here uh it's his personality and his style and his knowledge of power and his understanding of where power rests uh he was a student of power he knew how to get things done from an early age uh he had gone to Congress in 1931 he had studies its Ways and Means uh he had amassed power uh Through the Ages and by the time that he got to the White House he had known so many of the players certainly who were still in Congress uh but throughout Washington and so the way that he wielded that power and could call on people whenever he needed them uh his his thirst for knowledge was insatiable uh he was smart as a he remembered things he had the White House tapes to remind him of things he didn't remember as well and that uh that that helped him out but he he was relentless in his ability to pursue his goals uh not only the legislative goals but making sure that people did what he wanted them to do and if you listen to the tapes you can hear him for instance berating Sergeant Shriver to get him to become become the director of the war in poverty uh he was a bull and he did not take no for an answer and so this was a guy whose personality I think was extremely important to uh to his Effectiveness but his history of working uh in Washington of knowing its Ways and Means was also indispensable and I I want to build on that because often people talk about the personality and the style the the John and treatment and there's that great picture of him bearing down on on people as the main way that he got things done but it was a factor but Julian I want to come to you and ask you about this moment that was the 1960s and how that factored into his ability to achieve the things that he did yeah I mean uh it's great to be here and thank you and the moment is important uh I think Johnson was an incredibly effective politician and it's part of the reason we look back to him in an age of dysfunction uh he was also very experienced um but there was more than Johnson that explains the Great Society and I think two big things happen in the mid 1960s uh that are very important to propelling the Great Society one uh has to do with the election of 1964 which we cannot underestimate uh it creates huge uh not just Democratic majorities but it shifts the balance to Liberal Democrats as opposed to many of the Southern Democrats and a lot of the Freshman liberal Democrats come in and they are ready to move on issues like Medicare uh and voting rights and that election's also important because of Barry Goldwater and the results discredit uh a kind of right-wing conservatism at the time that helps Johnson uh have what looks like a mandate and the second big factor is the Civil Rights Movement uh and and all the movements connected to civil rights including organized Labor uh but I think we shouldn't underestimate the importance of the pressure they are putting on members of Congress uh including in places like the Midwest uh unions with Medicare are essential uh to driving that legislation and so uh it's not simply a question of how good was Johnson a key question but why then did his skills work and why was he able to use them so effectively and for me those are two big parts of that 1960s moment so we we've got this moment we've got the movement we've got the majorities we've got the personality we've got the style we've got the knowledge and the skill but Nikki all of that we know doesn't necessarily mean that your opposition drops away that's right and yet I want you to help us understand what was going on in the GOP at that time I mean what was the level of push back and why didn't they why weren't they more successful why didn't they push even harder to prevent Johnson at that moment we're going to come back later and talk about the later years but at that moment to try and prevent him from doing things that they thought were anatha to to American democracy well part of the issue was that there were number of Republicans who were on Johnson's side he had relied on Republicans for his margin of Victory on things like the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act because there were a number of moderate and Liberal Republicans who were on board with some of the Great Society programs there were those conservative Republicans who were definitely not on board um but as Julian was just describing they had been defeated so soundly in the 1964 election Johnson was so popular that it it takes them a little while to kind of figure out what do we do next um so you have some conservative Republicans who they're like well if this is what the American people want they want something like the Great Society maybe we can give them like a watered down more conservative version of that like a a kind of good Society um that has a little less government at the wheel um and so they Trot Out programs like elder care which was a form of what would become Medicare but it just had a lot less funding a lot less government involvement basically the government was subsidizing premiums from private healthare companies instead of setting up this this big engine of government Aid um yeah look at Medicare light um and eventually conservatives are like that's not what we should be doing we oppose this kind of government involvement um but it takes them several years and it really takes a kind of turn in public opinion against some of the Great Society programs for them to really gain Traction in opposing the Great Society and we're going to come back to that and talk about the rise in a new conservatism in in just a minute but if we we started at the beginning and this bold set of programs that fall under the Great Society header but after 1965 Johnson's starts to lose momentum and I wonder if you can talk about what were the contributing factors in that and I I think I want to start with you mark in specifically thinking about the the role that the war in Vietnam was playing and you know it wasn't Johnson's War to start but the way that he contributed to the escalation and what that meant for his ability to get things done at home very very much so uh I think that one of the great um uh developments in our understanding of Johnson uh RIT large but certainly for Vietnam comes through these White House tapes and you can't say that Lyndon Johnson was a warmonger on Vietnam anymore because you can hear him wrestling with it in 1964 we're not even into 1965 we know that in 1964 he simply wants to get to November without having to escalate in Vietnam and freak the country out um but in 64 he still has his doubts it is Kennedy's War right it is it's a liberal War fought by the democratic presidents initially and uh Johnson is there from the beginning goes over in May 61 uh he's supportive of the effort at stopping communism in Southeast Asia but like Kennedy he is uh he's skeptical about the ability to Prevail in the kind of maximal sense that they had wanted so there's this tension between wondering whether we can win wondering whether it's worth it and at the same time feeling like well we still have to go forward and so once Johnson is able to kind of put Vietnam to the side in 1964 uh which he's able to do because he does respond after the incidents in the tonen Gulf uh in August of 1964 not only not only does he get the tonen Gulf resolution which gives him effectively a blank check to do whatever he needs to do to protect American interests but he launches air strikes on North Vietnam the first time that had happened so then he's able to get to November and at that point the decisions are finally made and there's some arguments to whether or not he was clearly moving in that direction before that he's going to need to take Sterner measures and by 1965 he is doing that and even at the point where they're launching these tit fortat raids against North Vietnamese assets when he lands the Marines as he says to Richard Russell uh oh the Marines are going in we know what that means all the mothers are going to freak out he still feels that he has no choice but to do it and so Johnson recog izes the danger that this is going to put him in particularly with the Republicans because if he continues to have these doubts and pulls back well duren's not going to give him another dollar for the war in poverty so there are domestic political concerns uh relating to uh the Democrats and their standing are they or they not going to be the party that that stands up to Communism but there are personal credibility concerns as well and Johnson has a long history of of of feeling uh insecure even humiliated at times uh particularly at the hands of the kennedies and there is that dimension of personal credibility I'm not going to be the president that ran out on Vietnam that weighs on him as well so try as he might to hold it at Bay he recognizes that he himself needs to go forward but he also understands the impact it's going to have on on the Great Society and and it's it's interesting we you were talking a few minutes ago about the style and this the power and the use of power and the the dominance and also this is a person who you just described as having these insecurities um and and fears um that also helped drive him before we go on with any more questions you've twice referenced the tapes and I just want to make sure that everyone here understands what you're referring to can you just take a second and talk about these tapes sure uh President Johnson taped roughly 650 hours of material uh while he was on the telephone uh he had previously taped uh during his political career but that regimen amped up once he became president uh and we not only have all those hours of telephone tape but there're also roughly 150 hours of meeting tape um and some hours of vice presidential tape uh which we're very interested in in in listening to uh and it's a they provide a window into Johnson's use of power into his use of of people uh into his command of policy uh into the whole Johnson treatment that we can all listen to and when they became available thanks to the Johnson library and particularly Lady Bird Johnson who made sure that that they become public even though LBJ himself was was reluctant for them um to be aired uh within 50 years of of of his death they've changed our understanding of the man you can't call him a warmonger on Vietnam anymore you can't say that he was a a cynical opportunist with respect to civil rights anymore when you hear him speak about those those issues so uh it's an extraordinary window onto onto his uh understanding of policy his use of power and uh and on the presidency itself they are fascinating we have one fellow uh essay who says that she has her family listening to the tapes at Thanksgiving so just everybody keep that in mind holidays are coming um Julian I want to come back to you and talking about uh the loss of momentum and I'm curious when we look at civil rights if you think that the backlash was inevitable that um the focus and attention that Johnson was able to give civil rights rights led to the ultimate backlash that in some ways helped to create the slow down in momentum that he had after the Voting Rights Act was passed well I think of it so I'm not going to give an easy yes or no I mean the first thing I think of with that question and and you know this better than anyone is the windows for doing big things for any president uh is very limited and we have a kind of notion that you have all four years maybe eight years that's just not the case it's usually and Johnson knew this he talked about it you have a year and a half two years before Congress gets you as he always said so I think it's important to remember that uh to start and obviously after the 1966 midterms the window literally uh shuts and it turns to the funding of Vietnam I think uh it's not so much a backlash I mean it was always there that opposition to civil rights is fierce uh one of the things I write about in the essay for the book is this is something that was part of liberalism in this period it was built on top of a system of racial segregation uh that was embedded in the institutions of the country it was deep in the public culture and it's not a backlash but in some ways the Civil Rights success is what was the anomaly at the time so uh unless that somehow could be sustained indefinitely I think think it was very likely that that opposition was going to uh be there and be there very strong that opposition is there as he's passing civil rights um you know he gets what he can and the Democratic Congress gets what it can um but it's limited it doesn't deal with policing in the end even the open housing bill is limited in terms of enforcement and in terms of the economy there's so many issues left off the table you can see that at the High Point at the High Point that resistance is there and many Southern Democrats are waiting they're waiting for those midterms uh just so they can reassert their Authority so uh I think it was inevitable not because it's a backlash but because it was so uh deeply rooted in American culture at the time and and still to this day um and that's why in some ways that first question of how did he get through that uh it sets it up I think in a better way but this is really just to conclude an important Challenge and element of American liberalism it it never really got around uh even with those two bills in ' 64 and 65 uh this system of race uh that was uh woven into the country well and you referenced uh the fair housing bill so you know by the time that came along and also the focus on voting and public accommodations had been so centered on the south but by that time fair housing comes along we are now moving to more of the country and into the Midwest you know King is has also moved in terms of his work to other parts of the country and all of a sudden you've got people who were saying oh yeah they shouldn't be doing that down there we're saying hm this is now coming to a neighborhood near me quite literally yeah and it becomes a big part of the politics from 66 to 68 when this bill passes but the bill that passes a it lacks a lot of what was originally in it in terms of enforcement uh and it comes a it only passes after King's assassination uh so once again uh it's not simply The Savvy of the president and the legislature but it's the atmosphere of the moment but that housing bill and the battle over which goes for two years is quite it's pretty brutal it cost legislators like um Paul Douglas one of the liberal Lions of the Senate cost him his seat the tapes are amazing on this there's one tape where Senator asks Johnson kind of why can't he get the legislation through and I don't have the exact quote uh but you they say you're the master of the Senate and he's like I'm not the master of a damn thing uh that Congress isn't going to let me do so so that changes dramatically in that bill which is still an achievement obviously um but it's it's it's less than much less than originally envisioned and a very high political cost as those Southern Democrat rats and conservative Republicans regain their power durksen is no longer on board with this kind of stuff and all the discussion is about cutting funding for domestic programs by the time Kerner Commission publishes its report there is zero chance that lynon Johnson is going to be able to get anything in that very important report uh as legislation and he's even frustrated by by the report um as well Nikki I want to come to you here Julian was just talking about uh liberalism and I want to talk to you about what was happening in terms of the conservative movement and the focus uh their critique on the Great Society and how that kind of put wind in the sails of this conservative movement right because the conservative movement after the cold or during the Cold War had really been focused on trying to roll back the New Deal and they were having some problem s and one of the major problems was that people liked the New Deal um these were popular programs they didn't want to give up Social Security they liked the government was building highways and invested and involved in people's lives and the emergence of the Great Society gives them a new Target and in particular when in the late 1960s there are whole new raft of challenges um with Rising violent crime rates um with with uprisings and protests across the United States um with the the early days of inflation even though those weren't necessarily caused by the Great Society they could point to those and say look what happens when you let government get too big when you let people get too dependent on government this is the result all of these bad things come from this great society and maybe the Great Society didn't mean to do that but that's what it does and that argument has real power um and it has real power for some of the reasons Julian was mentioning the New Deal whiffed on issues of racial equality it cuts black Americans out of some of the most popular programs FDR is not pushing forward on civil rights um and because Lynden Johnson does that it loosens this Coalition of white Democrats um in both the North and the South for conservatives to to send their message to I think that the other big thing that the Johnson Administration does for the conservative movement is that it ushers in um a small group uh but important group called The neocons the neoconservatives and one of the things that the Wright was having a real problem with in 1965 1966 is that a lot of Americans saw them as CS right as people who weren't serious um as people who weren't Tethered to reality and now you have this fresh infusion of people who Elites admired and who's um so these are people like um people like Daniel Bell or Dan Patrick moan um people who were Democrats um who had been good liberals in good standing um who were social scientists and academics and when they start making a common cause with conservatives against the Great Society suddenly Elites are taking that criticism more seriously ly than if it had just been birchers and uh people who had voted for very Goldwater and to what degree could one say that LBJ helped them to drive and to create this new conservative movement because a few minutes ago when we first started you talked about the conservatives or the GOP that was you know people like this and so we're moving along and and Eisenhower's conservativism looked very different than the conservativism that was emerging at at this point um and so how was LBJ to what degree when we look in retrospect was he helping to to create this new movement I think Johnson is absolutely critical because it's the opposition to the Great Society that breathes new life into the right the rightwing in America um and that brings new recruits into the the conservative movement the conservative movement of the 1970s versus the conservative movement of the 1950s it's much more populist in its rhetoric um the Great Society is presented as this elitist project um and now you have this kind of populist Insurgency against it and that really gives shape both to the social movements on the right in the 1970s opposition to busing um opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment um but it also begins to gather the troops who are going to bring Reagan into office in 1980 yeah and I would also say that another way that LBJ contributes to it although he's not necessarily behind it you know the vote against Barry Goldwater is a vote against Barry Goldwater it's not always a vote for Lynden Johnson and so this frontlash that that Johnson's people are helping to manufacture to kind of uh spread the message that that Barry Goldwater is a c uh suggests that in the end you know when people did vote for LBJ in those extraordinary numbers the 61% popular vote and the amazing majority's 295 in the house and it's just it's not necessarily in support of what Johnson wants to do going Whole Hog on a great society it's also a fear of Barry Goldwater so that when you get into 65 and then 66 and the backlash really starts to come although it's it's you know it's there as Julian mentioned prev viously you know there's a reason for that because in some ways Johnson's extraordinary success is a little bit of an anomaly and it's it's his ability to Marshal those forces to say you don't want the other guy and that's also why Johnson is concerned when he does win I mean he he's morose almost that on on Election night he's he's always fearing Bobby Kennedy of course and that's that's out there because Bobby wins too and Bobby's a senator from New York but Johnson to some extent and he wants reaffirmation of this recognizes how fragile his victory is and what It ultimately will mean for him and the party if I could just I mean one of the fascinating things about Johnson for me as I studied him was how cognizant and scared he is of conservatism throughout his presidency throughout his time in the Senate I always say that to really understand him it's the 1952 election that haunts him and uh kind of the power of conservatism to rear its head is something he's always talking about he's telling his advisers and there's a quote I I don't think I can curse on stage but he cursed it's his quote but it's in the 65s they're telling him about the teachings that are taking place I think at Michigan the first teaching about Vietnam and he says I don't give a you know I I don't give a about or I don't care about those little shits on the campus the real beast in this country is the reactionary right and that haunts him I think it shapes a lot of his politics it shapes his desire to be hawkish on the war he's very scared his coalition's going to be undercut by the right he's not as focused on the left maybe that was a mistake but he's always cognizant partly from his time in Texas partly because he's a creature of Congress he saw even in the era of Roosevelt it was the southern Democrats and the midwestern rep Republicans who ruled the roost on Capitol Hill and and so I think uh he would if if if he was here he would not be surprised that his time was limited and that that right was uh kind of going to emerge very quickly and seed and you know be the precursor to the to the right that we have seen evolve and emerge over the last several decades you know we've started to do this but I want to talk about Johnson in the sweep of American politics and and Julian starting with you or coming back to you and what he meant to the shaping of the democratic party well I mean the Democratic Party from the 30s on uh was really built around a very simple idea it was the value of the federal government of government uh to both alleviating the worst elements of our country uh kind of the worst wings of the economy and the idea that government could ultimately help solve these problems and make the most of a country that valued Independence you needed government to create That Base uh and historians like Elizabeth Cohen and Michael cin have written about this idea of moral capitalism they were not Johnson was not anti- capitalist Democrats were for a capitalist system but there had to be a social safety net there had to be limits to how bad it could get and that was an important function of government and and in the 60s Johnson expands that I think he gets on the side of the movement and that it also has to include more people that growing middle class of that era uh you know break some of the racial barriers not all as I said but he was trying to break some down and so I think that's a Heyday of liberalism and and what the Democratic party was ultimately about um and it was rooted in social movement it really was it was a party that was very connected uh to movements from labor to civil rights that were buttressing uh this idea of what the Democratic party could be on the negative it was also a party haunted in My Mind by two things one is this uh kind of still racial system uh that uh was put into place after reconstruction ended uh and B this uh Cold War mentality where many liberals many Democrats were scared of making any decision that would make them vulnerable to being weak on defense and that drove Johnson it drove the Democrats it drove the country deep into the jungles of Vietnam yeah and Julian you you referred to the the Heyday of liberalism but Mark I want to come to you because you know after Johnson you've got this long stret with the exception of of Carter where Republicans were winning the White House but the liberal agenda that Johnson set still continued still had momentum in life I mean it taking hits and taking you know there were the definite shots and efforts to to cut it back to to rear it in re it in but it still continued and I'm wondering if you can speak to that and what that means for today yeah I think it was transformed as well I mean Bill Clinton famously says the era of big government is over and so that's an acknowledgement that while we still have an interest in doing big things health care of course and it came after the failure of that um there is still an understanding that the government uh is to provide some sense of a social safety net for people that the government certainly during the Johnson erors was also involved in social justice movements and and a lot of that was simply baked into the fabric of American life after a long time I mean if to to think about an America without Medicare Medicaid um the immigration reform doing away with the National Origins uh on and on education the the dollars I mean that's just part of life these days and so it's really hard to understand what we would be like without out those those liberal reforms uh and of course liberalism itself becomes a four-letter word during during that era so it's tough to to claim the liberal mantle but uh LBJ lives right lbj's America the the the the title of the book and I think in some ways not necessarily now more than ever but because of a variety of developments we we're seeing Johnson and his liberal ethos um in a new light um the passage of time matters uh the Republican party has changed the critique of liberalism has changed uh Johnson's failure in Vietnam uh doesn't look so much like a personal failure perhaps as much as an Institutional or a national failure after Afghanistan and Iraq and then uh as we all know over the last three years with the pandemic uh the Val value of having the government do big things is really really important it in many ways alone can Marshal the resources certainly working with the private sector but to coordinate it's essential and so a lot of that story does go back to Lyndon Johnson and it goes back to an activist uh presidency uh and there's a long history to activist presidencies but the 1960s was really The Crucible for that uh Kennedy had called the presidency the Vital Center of the whole scheme of government and Johnson took that idea and he ran with it and he brought policy in into the White House as as you would know as as well as anybody but he made the president himself and one day herself so crucial the president was all things to many people uh including as Johnson would show uh start I think a a trend of the president pres being the consoler and chief I mean he is the one we look to after the the earthquake in Alaska in ' 64 Hurricane Betsy down in New Orleans in ' 65 the federal government is there in a way that previously had been local and state officials um the presidency the president is going to be the one who's on site uh making sure that people know that the government cares about them and that's uh that's Lyndon Johnson our sense today that the government has a constructive role to play in the life of the nation yes of course uh a lot of that is FDR and Johnson trying to out FDR FDR but it's LBJ himself and that battle that we talk about with the conservative movement that you've described that is uh contesting you know those those very points and it it is that push and pull and the wrestling that's that's taking place around that and you you know Nikki I'm wondering if you can pick up on some of the things that Mark was just talking about you know this the low stock of Johnson when he dies 50 years ago in 1973 and this new moment that seems to be happening for for Lyndon Johnson right now and why you think you think that's occurring particularly because there was such an eort eort to use him as the uh the target the the poster child for all that is wrong with government for for many of the reasons that you describe I think that conservatives have a big role to play in why Lyndon Johnson is so popular these days or why he's gained in reputation in part because of the increasingly novel forms of obstruction that the right has used over the past 30 years or so government shutdowns fiscal cliff debt ceing crises sequestration all of these ways that the right has grounded government to a halt and you have people looking around and saying actually we want government to be able to do things and wasn't it great back 50 years ago when we had a president who could get things done um and so they look at Johnson and they look at how much legislation he helped shepher through in those early days of uh his first full term and they say why can't we have someone like him it's a little bit of magical thinking right it suggests that if we just have the right person in the job they'll be able to break that Log Jam and tough and knows how to and has giant majorities um and so I think that's part of it but I also think that the right has helped out Johnson's reputation by being very effective recently in trying to dismantle the Great Society the gutting of the Voting Rights Act um the efforts at the state level to reject Medicaid expansion to potentially reject Elementary and secondary school funding um efforts to revise or even throw out uh the 1965 Immigration Act to shrink immigration back into a quota system um that we saw in an earlier era um and as those attacks have mounted and as things like the Voting Rights Act have been effectively killed um people have recognized the value of them the the kinds of protections that the Great Society has offered for 50 years that maybe they had taken for granted um and now they have to reckon with what they'd actually done and why we want them to stay in effect so much Don't Know What You've Got Till It's Gone yep um I'm curious from each of you you know given the conversation we've had the impact on American political life um the impact on all of Our Lives literally every day um the shaping of liberalism what you think lynon Johnson's real Legacy is Julian start with there's every president positive and negative and and the positive is obviously remaking the relationship between government and American society in ways that have endured and anyone who is 65 or older and has their health care cover and doesn't have to worry even with problems that still exist that the bottom is literally going to fall out uh can look back at the legacy of Lyndon Johnson and uh although we're far far from fixed I mean a dismantling legal segregation um unfortunately the Voting Rights bill did not last it lasted for a long time um but but all those policies federal education policy after policy that that's his legacy in my opinion that's where he burned all his political capital and today those are considered normal parts of American life even Medicaid which in ' 65 wasn't paid attention to wasn't a big program it's turned into a huge part of red States and blue States but I do think we'd be remiss to say Vietnam is not part of his legacy it was an utterly disastrous war that also set up some of the tensions we're talking about in terms of distrusting the very government he helped build and one of the legacies we have another author Fred logal he's written a lot about this it's the consequences of presidential choices and decisions that elected officials make have huge impacts and when you get it wrong and when you get it really wrong um that becomes part of your legacy and I always say you can't say there's the Great Society but there's also it's the same person it's often the same political logic and so I think both uh remain uh part of his legacy but because of the tapes he also remains someone that brings us back to studying the presidency and thinking about it whether you loved him or hated him but that is a value uh he is one of the most captivating people American culture is loves like thinking about him all the way uh is a great example Robert Caro's books there's just something there that allows us to think about government and governing uh which is important in an age when both of those are treated uh as secondary or something that's bad yeah I mean Uber didn't get a play on Broadway right it Mark yeah I think Legacy um Julian nailed it um both the positive and the negative and we were talking about who you would put on a uh on Mount Rushmore or if you had to build a new Mount Rushmore uh uh who would you want on there and I'd want Lyndon Johnson on there but I'd want him in profile right I'd want half his head kind of buried in the Rock and uh and we we know what what that half would be and it would be Vietnam for all the reasons that that Julian highlighted uh because of uh the the distrust in government uh because of the credibility gap that he engendered and and when we're talking about that keep in mind what people's relationship was with their government prior to Vietnam you had just extraordinary numbers believing that the government did the right thing you know most of the time uh and that's just not the case by the end of the 1960s and it's under Johnson that the term credibility gap grows and the more that we found out at the time because there were hearings on the tonen gulf 1968 it became clear that you know the first attack uh happened but the second attack in August of 64 probably did not happen and did we go to war on this false pretext you know and then you fast forward to maybe 2003 and think about that and you know there are all kinds of concerns about the way that the government can play fast and loose with the truth and it creates this sense of disbelief and alienation and distrust and that's corrosive and that's part of Johnson's Legacy too so uh yes we have Richard Nixon to thank as well for Watergate but the ball really starts to get going kind of in a contemporaneous way we would find out about JFK later on but in a contemporaneous way with LBJ and of course the lives lost and of course the 58,000 yeah and not only the 58,000 but the 3 million in Indochina as well yeah right Nikki give you a last word on this Lyndon Johnson was the first president to govern when the US had the infrastructure for an inclusive multi-racial democracy that that democracy is only 60 years old and he helped to create the infrastructure for that inclusive democracy and at a moment when a lot of Americans are worried about the future of democracy and trying to figure out what we have what we lost and what we want I think that story has to start in many ways with Lyndon Johnson and his legacy is shaping those debates to this day um the folks who are are arguing that we need to have that kind of democracy um have to trace it back to Johnson and that's a that's a pretty powerful Legacy it wasn't his idea he wasn't the only person responsible for it but he was he was president and he helped put that infrastructure in place and I think that's a a pretty powerful Legacy well we will leave it at that um remember when we started and I told you all I was thrilled and excited to be here I think you now know why please join me in thanking this wonderful panel thank [Applause] you

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Length: 44min 31sec (2671 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 09 2023