The Presidency of LBJ

good afternoon I'm Tom Putnam director of the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum and on behalf of atomic knot executive director of the Kennedy Library Foundation and all of my library and foundation colleagues I thank you all for coming and our c-span viewers for tuning in I also acknowledge the generous underwriters of the Kennedy Library forums lead sponsor Bank of America Raytheon Boston Capital the Lowell Institute the Boston foundation and our media partners the Boston Globe and WBUR let me state from the outset as clearly as I can that few individuals did more to help John F Kennedy get elected than his running mate Lyndon Johnson who had an immeasurable impact on JFK's victory in the 1960 election yet it must also be noted that before that inspired partnership the two men were rivals this comes as no surprise has throughout their lives both were fiercely competitive my favorite anecdote about LBJ perhaps apocryphal is the story that after his presidential library opened the former president wanted to ensure that it's visitation numbers topped those of all the other presidential libraries so he came up with a novel strategy as you may know the library is on the campus of the University of Texas and located right next to the football stadium have them announced at halftime LBJ allegedly urged that there are plenty of bathrooms with no lines at my library knowing that each restroom visitor could then be included in the library's overall visitation statistics and don't think when those numbers are periodically released today that the presidential library directors don't immediately look to see how we compare with our peers the only time the Kennedy Johnson rivalry led to a face-to-face exchange was when LBJ invited JFK to a debate before the Texas caucus at the beginning of the 1960 Convention which LBJ hoped would be brokered in order to provide an opportunity for him to be nominated his critique of JFK that it was too young referring to Kennedy is a lightweight who needed a little gray his hair quote the forces of evil will have no mercy for innocents he proclaimed no gallantry for inexperience and in their impromptu debate without mentioning JFK by name LBJ contrasted the absenteeism of some senators with his own dedicated leadership in the United States Senate I assume JFK replied when it was his turn to speak that Senator Johnson was talking about some other candidate not me I want to commend him for a wonderful record and answering quorum calls I was not present on all those occasions I was not majority leader so I come here today full of admiration for Senator Johnson full of affection for him and strongly in support of him as majority leader having deftly defeated LBJ's last minute challenge JFK went on to win the nomination on the first ballot and immediately reached out to Lyndon Johnson to services running me a decision that would change the course of history a portion of which is now retold in compelling fashion by my friend and colleague mark Updegrove in his new book indomitable will LBJ and the presidency as one reviewer has written mark Updegrove offers not another great man biography but rather an innovative illuminating extraordinary portrait of a fascinating contradictory contradictory and enduringly important president this new volume artfully combines LBJ and his own words others observations on what he did and how he did it and transcripts of key LBJ phone conversations leading to a balanced full disclosure depiction of our 36th President our moderator this evening is John Avlon senior common columnist for Newsweek and The Daily Beast as well as a CNN commentator he's the author of independent nation how centrist can change American politics an editor of deadlines artists America's greatest newspaper columns a forum speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani after the attacks of September 11th he and his team were responsible for writing the eulogies of the city's fallen policemen and firefighters and an essay he wrote on the attacks won acclaim as the single best piece written in the wake of the tragedy one commentator has written that mr. Avalon it's about politics the way ESPN anchors wrap up sports highlights captured perfectly by the title of one of his best-selling books wingnuts how the lunatic fringe is hijacking America let me note that John is married to Margaret Hoover who was president Hoover's great-granddaughter and it was here with us this evening Lady Bird Johnson once granted an interview with two students who are researching a National History Day project in which they would write and perform a dramatic dialogue between Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King they told her the stage would be simple with the two students seated side by side with a bit of dry ice to make it look like heaven uh-uh-uh Lady Bird said what makes you think Lyndon made it up there wherever Lyndon Johnson's soul may rest I trust he is looking with favor upon these proceedings proud that we've gathered to discuss his presidency though chagrined that given the choice between our two libraries c-span has chosen Boston over Austin to record a session on this new groundbreaking book which means the Kennedy Library gets to count those millions of yours as part of our outreach statistics but with all sincerity mark I nod my head gray-haired though it may be with respect and admiration for you for this new biography for the Johnson Presidential Library and for the man it's so masterfully honors ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming to the Kennedy Library mark Updegrove and John well I guess the competition between political leaders never really answer but mark I mean this is an extraordinary book you've done indomitable will it is a portrait of a man by those who knew them but it doesn't fall into that trap of so many oral histories because it's thematic and you really get a sense of what Johnson's leadership style was and and it is such a contrasting leadership style with many other presidents and because we're here at the JFK Library the book begins with that awful moment of his ascension to the presidency where Lady Bird Johnson says so memorably people looked at the living and wished for the dead that burden upon which he assumed the presidency and the contrast between those two styles talked a little bit about that relationship and how they were received thanks Johnny and I will answer the question but I do want to respond to my dear friend of my colleague Tom Putnam by saying hey this story is true and B I think we had more visitors last year than the JFK Library but unless the two were completely different John F Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson were fundamentally different human beings and and I think that that LBJ was was keenly aware that he was succeeding somebody who was so graceful and who was an almost set an impossible standard by which to be measured partly because of his martyrdom but but Liz carpenter who worked for mrs. Johnson worked for both of the Johnsons and was kind of the the Dorothy Parker of the political set in the 1960s I think encapsulated the the differences between the two men very eloquently eloquently she said that I think that presidents can be summed up in one word Kennedy inspired which Johnson was incapable of doing and Johnson delivered and I think that's absolutely true if John F Kennedy in my view begs to be judged by his words he's so inspiring he's so eloquent he's so visionary that's not what your country can do for you ich bin ein Berliner we choose the moon and Johnson begs to be judged by his deeds what he accomplished what he did he was intelligent ik he wasn't particularly graceful as a media personality but he delivered he knew how to get things done and if you look at his legislative record this is a formidable president and probably the most important president legislatively in my lifetime and look at the full sweep of the Great Society and how it resonates today it is absolutely remarkable one of the things I do think that that the way Johnson is being remembered going forward that legislative accomplishment is such a clear contrast with not just Kennedy but so many other presidents someone who really knew Washington someone who knew how to get things done and yet someone who even in our sort of demythologized age was such a vivid figure and you quote peer person after person who worked for him talking about the complexity of man the way that he embodied all these contradictions that were vivid and in-your-face that he could be profane and patriotic and in inspiring and then take you off balance and intimidating I wonder if the choice to do this oral biography is that in part a way to capture the different facets of this complex personality you know I think that the the the challenge that a biographer has in capturing Lyndon Johnson is he is so enormous Lee complex and the way that I ensure that this was even-handed and balanced which I think a lot of the biographies about Lyndon Johnson or not is to get myriad impressions verbatim and to ensure that those impressions are mixed because very often people had these intrinsically contradictory views of LBJ and what he meant and how he conducted himself and part of the reason is because he treated everybody differently he knew what your hot button was and your hot button was different than the person next to you that's how he got things done so effectively that's how he was such a persuasive and effective legislator because he understood that be stood human psychology so brilliantly yeah so he would treat you differently than he would treat Tom or a Margit whomever and so your impression is valid but might completely contradict their let's go a little more into that because there's the famous Johnson treatment where he flatters and he could jowls and he intimidates to get legislators to do what he wants but beneath that is you just said psychology I was struck by one one quote here from Hubert Humphrey his vice president who said Johnson was a psychiatrist unbelievable man in terms of sizing people up what they would do how would they stand up under prep pressure what their temperament was this was his genius and then talked about how he would analyze every single member how much of it really was this kind of animal understanding of people's weaknesses and how to exploit them and how much was actually a really sophisticated barometer of what people wanted as well as what they didn't want I think was probably a combination of both Jack Valenti talked about him being fascinating he sort of he looked at him like he would a panther you know it's a beautiful animal but he was ready to pounce and and Johnson you know Johnson had that animalistic element to him but he was also incredibly smart and because he sometimes comes across as being crude I don't think we give him credit for this very incisive intellect he was incredibly smart he got things you know he got things very quickly he had a very Fasil mind and so I think it's a combination of both John and I mean that's so key to I think his effectiveness I mean that's unparalleled literally unparalleled legislative record that he was able to achieve bringing those skills as master the Senate Majority you know Senate Majority Leader to the presidency that we may not see again yeah you know the real questions about whether a man like Johnson in our media-saturated age could could could become president and then his very tenuous relationship between who he was in private so effectively lobbying legislators and and then he kind of stiffened up in front of the cameras a bit and it's that image gap you talk about it one thing beneath that one of one of the people in the books talks about how he seemed to be trying to impress the the Harvard the Harvard academic crowd with his public persona when he stiffened up one of the fascinating things you see with Johnson and and maybe is shared with Nixon in terms of their feelings about Jack Kennedy is that real resentment for northeast elites that that you know we came up the hard way and and and and a real distrust and an anger and resentment at at these perceived elites talk about how that motivated him and was a real contrast between him and Jack Kennedy yeah I think he had he had a deep resentment for the Harvard's he would call them or the you know the northeastern establishment and and the Kennedys in so many ways epitomize that and but he would say you know he would call meetings together in his office he say it's very interesting how you know I look at this table and we have three people from Yale and we have two people from Harvard and we have one person from Dartmouth and the president United States from southeastern stuff that's weather in Texas University Teachers College you know it's a it's a it's amazing thing and to eat and one could see him I think he he did resent them in in a certain respect but one can almost see him saying I'll show these Ivy League boys what this country boy can do and in his in some way he wielded his country fine Texan personality almost self-righteously to kind of show these these these folks I think you but but the interesting contradiction again this is a man who is so complex and so rife with contradiction is that he he almost modeled a presidential personality which he only assumed in front of the cameras and it was completely contrived it had nothing to do with Johnson it was it was totally inauthentic and as my friend Hughes side he was a longtime columnist for Time magazine and and knew Johnson covered Johnson said it was a nervous bow to the Harvard faculty because it just wasn't quite Johnson and and the way that Johnson was so effective is when he was Johnson you know he just let himself be himself that's how he got things done so effectively that that's probably a good a good opportunity to segue into a semi softball which is your favorite Johnson's story the one that kind of archetype fully communicates that that earthiness and persuasiveness there's a there's a there's a conversation in the in the in the book that I recount and it would be almost impossible to to relate it with and do it justice you almost you have to hear it or read it and it's Johnson calling the sign of the founder and the president of the Haggar slacks company and he's ordering slacks custom-made slacks and it shows his penchant for micromanagement and his tendency sword crudité in his worst moments because he gives very specific anatomical detail for how he wants these pants to fit and you can't make this stuff up if you saw this on Saturday Night Live you'd say oh that's far-fetched no come on that's ridiculous but it's true it really happened and and I will say of the six hundred and forty three hours of taped telephone conversations which featured which are featured prominently in the book there's not one that even comes close to this level of crudité but those who know Johnson don't deny it when it's part of his personality it's his personality is so broad and so deep that he was certainly capable of of that and you gotta hear yeah it's it's it's pretty remarkable even in transcript let me tell you but but it does it does communicate a couple of things I mean one they talk about how he would fixate so intensely on achieving a certain goal in this case getting a pair of pants that fit just right and and he'd nothing would stop him from achieving that particular goal and and at the same time he'd say you know flattery the flattered ISM and then he'd criticize him and and and this sort of fascinating you know yo-yo that you see he says even at one point Johnny says he says now now you got to get the you got to get the pants here right away you know I need them for summer wear down to the ring nothing's more important nothing more important than six pairs of customized pants and but but there at the very end of the conversation Joe Hager who's completely taken by surprise that the President of the United States is calling him to order pants said where should I send him and he says White House is it it's wonderful it's a it's just a wonderful couple it's a good motivational tool there's nothing more important than this pair of pants but if I can relate one more story it's his life story you know people will talk about how difficult it was to work for Johnson we might talk about that later but and he was he was he was really a difficult task mascar but nobody he expected nobody to work harder than he worked but there's a wonderful story from a guy named de Vere Pearson it was a White House Council in the LBJ White House and he talks about the days of the transition from from LBJ to Nixon and and Johnson wanted to make sure that everybody on his staff was taken care of that they had a place to go after working for at the White House for him it was part of being loyal and he held that up as the most important thing in politics loyalty he said that time and time again so Devere Pearson signs out of the White House which you more or less had to do and the president got this log every day to determine who was in the White House and who wasn't there and again given his penchant for micromanagement he always knew who was there and who wasn't and the mere Pearson goes out to Los Angeles to interview for a white shoe from a very you know good top-notch law firm in Los Angeles and he's meeting with the partners in this beautiful conference room and a secretary comes in very flustered and says mr. Pearson the president the United States is on the line for you the president's calling and the partner says to him were the lead partner system you know what you need to take this we'll we'll adjourn from the conference room let you take the take as long as you want we'll come back when you tell us to so he gets on the phone he says mr. president says yes he says said mr. Pres I don't know if you noticed but but I signed out of the White House I'm not there today he says yes I know it's well what can I do for you mr. president he says oh nothing I thought the call would help so that contradicts sir the ruthless Johnson that you hear of in lore everybody who worked for him has a story of his great generosity and and that that love of loyalty which he said was the the preeminent political virtue when you're looking and going through compiling this on the the transcripts these are these are the presidential tapes that didn't get someone impeached right they really are as a friend of mine once told me kind of seminars in political power political leadership what are some of the common traits and we'll talk about one in particular that you see when you you get this sense of Johnson you know as it was in real time trying to convince someone to go his way you know it I think it's it's just an indomitable will which led to the title of this of this book he just he wanted things and and by God when he wanted him he found a way to get him done so you hear the intensity with which he conducts the business of his presidency and it's interesting because while the the the tapes of Richard Nixon are you know our blemish on the Nixon record thanks to condemn Richard Nixon by the light of history the tapes the telephone tapes of Lyndon Johnson vindicate him we we didn't know these existed that was not revealed that they actually existed until after Lyndon Johnson died when his assistant let the then director of the LBJ library Harry Middleton know that they were in a vault somewhere and so when when the Johnson's decide went when mrs. Johnson consented to opening them in the 1990s they had no idea what was on these tapes absolutely no idea and as you listen to them I think they they shed very positive light on the on the Johnson legacy when you look at the Johnson legacy I think at the end of his administration people were preoccupied with Vietnam it was the big fact of our foreign policy and in many ways our domestic policy but clearly I think civil rights is as Vietnam recedes in the memory the legacy of civil rights is ever clearer ever more present in a daily lives and I think will lead to his not only reassessment but vindication as a president in many respects there's one conversation that's in the book where he's given the Johnson treatment in person to George Wallace Alabama governor and and it's a remarkable interpersonal persuasion at a pivotal moment in history I don't know if you'd care to it maybe read it to the the audience it's on the left hand side they're happily do this start here sure he said well let me set the stage Wallace resisted the notion of sending federal troops into Alabama when when this when the Voting Rights issue was at play and and Alabama was it almost at a boiling point and so Wallace is called to the White House and like JFK LBJ had a rocking chair in his Oval Office and he was six feet three inches tall and he would frequently have somebody where John is sitting on a couch that was far lower than the rocking chair and Johnson would rock the chair up and literally lean over them and look down at them and now bear in mind as I mentioned LBJ is 6 feet 3 inches tall and George Wallace is 5 feet 4 inches tall and so it's like a snake over a mongoose it's just but I'll read I read the passage he said so so he's asking George to send federal troops in and Wallace says I don't have the power to do this he says oh yes mr. president there's no point about that Johnson says then why don't you let them vote Wallace says well you know now I don't have that belongs to the country registrar's in the state of Alabama a Wallace insists that no he didn't have a legal authority Johnson says well George why don't you persuade them he says well I don't think I could do that he said now don't me about your persuasive powers George you know I sat down this morning when I got up all three of the TV sets I'm gonna just quote this they're all three of the TV sets a mile oval office we're on and you were talking to the to the press George and and you were having me George I heard you you were hammering me it's no no mrs. Anna you were hammering and you were good he said you were so good I almost believed it myself but then at the very end of the conversation he says now George you've worked your life in politics think about that's not think about 1965 let's think about 1985 George neither of us will be around we'll be dead now what do you want people saying about you in your state of Alabama do you want it people to say George Wallace he built or do you want people to say George Wallace he hated he was good Johnson was that good and sure enough George Wallace relented we got federal troops and we eventually got the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which is the most important legislation in civil rights without the Voting Rights of 1965 you don't have Barack Hussein Obama in the White House in 2012 definitely not let's talk about Johnson's commitment to civil rights because it it confused a lot of people here he was an hour type of southern Democrat one quote I saw him he was referring to the stereotypes about himself before him became president said oh this old Confederate why people are asking why am i advancing civil rights he had to rebuke and challenge many of his mentor's senator Russell in particular but he formed this cross aisle coalition to get civil rights done talk about the the roots of his commitment to civil rights didn't have to do with his the fact he grew up in poverty there's one anecdote about one of his personal aides recounting the trouble he had driving through the south and then the legislative skills it took to pass this with bipartisan support yeah I think that Johnson psychologies he felt things deeply deeply whether it be the sting of the judgment of the eastern establishment or or people living in poverty and he called he declared famously a war on on poverty in his State of the Union speech in 1964 and you know he says this administration herewith declares a war on poverty and you can just see in his eyes he hates the very notion of poverty I think there's a very formative experience that he talked about in a very in the most important speech of his political life 1965 when he's talking about the importance of civil rights and the experience was between his junior and senior year in college he taught school at a in a very small town of Cotulla Texas which was principally populated by Mexican Americans who are largely forgotten and these kids had a just the image of these kids in poverty and the the victims of bigotry and hatred were just seared in his conscience and his his consciousness and he never forgot those kids and when he got to the White House he would say to his staff don't forget about those kids in Cotulla don't forgetting about those mexican-american school kids his fight for civil rights interestingly enough was not just about African Americans it was about the Hispanic kids that he knew but moreover it was an attack on poverty he didn't want to see people poor and disenfranchised in this country and he felt that deeply if I can just talk about one there are two stories that really show how the the Civil Rights Act of 1964 came about what Civil Rights Act of 1964 which ended the Jim Crow but will illegal apartheid in this country and the first is with Richard Russell you mentioned it John and Richard Russell was a democratic senator from Georgia who was a friend and mentor to LBJ and he realizes in order to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed he has to run over to Richard Russell and he invites him to the Oval Office and he had this very tense conversation and and Russell says you know you'll you have the legislative muster to get the Civil Rights Act passed I don't think Jack Kennedy had it but but you have but I'll warn you if you do it you'll lose the the southern states to the Republican Party and you may well lose the election in 1964 and Johnson this great creature of power hears this and quietly replies if that's the price for this bill I will gladly pay it's just tremendous political courage now I think we think of Johnson we think about the means of Lyndon Johnson all his powers of persuasion how he hoarded power and and craved it but we don't think about the ends how he expended the political capital that he garnered and it was on things like that that fundamentally transformed this country the other story relating to this is that in order to get the Civil Rights Act passed he had to engender a relationship with the Republicans he had to get over them over to his side and there's a conversation I recount with the Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen in which he says you know I was just at and Dirksen's from Illinois and he says I was just at your your State Fair in Illinois and I went to an exhibit it's the Land of Lincoln and you're worthy of the land of Lincoln and I'm to make sure that if you pass this bill you get proper credit and sure enough the first pen he gives out after signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is not to Martin Luther King it's to Everett Dirksen so he took that very seriously and I think there's a certain civility with the way that that that Washington behaved in that time that we just we don't see and you know in our current age well to that end you know his one of the Senate aides Bobby Baker there's a quote in here which he said was one of Johnson's favorites said any idiot can kick a bar down but it takes a pretty good carpenter to build one and and there's that sense of you know it's not about destroying its building it's about actually getting the ball down the field working with Dirksen to form a coalition what do you think as the master of the Senate that he was Johnson would think about what the Senate has become and the kind of values that he tried to instill to get legislation accomplished but also keep a sense of national purpose behind policy yeah there was a his favorite quote biblical quote was from Isaiah come let us reason together and I'm confident that if he saw washing today he would think that there was a dearth of reason and a dearth of togetherness there just isn't the unity and I think there are a lot of reasons for that I think one is that lawmakers simply don't know each other any longer they don't live with another their kids don't play on the same baseball team or go to the same ballet class their wives are playing bridge together as they did in that day I think he would lament the the lack of civility that we see in Washington I think that would be his greatest disappointment in the intervening past several decades and we're gonna get to Vietnam in a second which no question cast a huge shadow over his legacy I think in the 70s and 80s the sheer amount of legislative accomplishment in 1965 in particular the way he was actually you could see him acting as both chief executive and Senate Majority Leader you know that that unique set of experiences that very rarely do we have in one man that that enormous amount of legislation that passed that really creates the America we know talked about that that full-court press because he did approach it that way after one win there was not time to rest it was on to the next thing and then maybe why it provoked a backlash or didn't get at least the credit that it deserved in the eyes of the immediate aftermath of history yeah I think that he he felt that political capital was tantamount to Green Stamps do y'all remember Green Stamps so you put you know you collected these stamps and you put them in a book and if you didn't redeem them hope you didn't get anything for those green stamps so he wanted to spend them he wanted to collect his green stamps to continue the analogy and he wanted to buy something meaningful with it and that's what he did with 1965 he knew that he he was at the peak of his political powers and he wanted to spend that in the right way and 1965 I would venture to say may be the most important year legislatively of the 20th century I don't think that maybe 1933 compares when LBJ was ushering in his New Deal but if you look and actually into my office I have in a shadow box you've seen this all the the pens that LBJ used to sign legislation throughout the course of that one year and in one box you have pens that sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965 the Immigration Act of nineteen the most swimming sweeping immigration reform in the history of America you have the pen that creates the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts you have clean air you have elementary and secondary education and higher education which is federal aid to education for the first time which you know is is results in soaring graduation rates from high school and college and on and on and on it is astounding what this man did in one year and he knew it wouldn't last and it was pretty was prescient it didn't last so what created that political capital was the landslide win of 1964 we are in a presidential reelect year - I don't think anyone thinks that the current president could hope for a landslide of those proportions but talk a little bit about the way Johnson approached that reelect effort against Barry Goldwater Goldwater defeats Nelson Rockefeller the map begins to shift as Johnson and and Moyers have said you know the south begins to vote Republican for the first time in that year but Johnson really I think I think one 45 states maybe 44 talk about Johnson's approach to getting that landslide win well you know it was a no-holds-barred campaign without question I think that the issue thing is is not someone Johnson in 64 its Goldwater and Goldwater realizes he doesn't have a chance of winning he really does realize that from the beginning and you hear that in his oral history in the book he knows that with the the martyrdom of John F Kennedy and the ascension to to the presidency from Lyndon Johnson and the admirable job that Johnson does in his first year that the that the country doesn't have an appetite for change this is not his moment and I must say he's quite graceful about it and they're the two remain remained friendly throughout the course and they even have a meeting at the Oval Office in which they to say they will not make race an issue in the campaign knowing that it could be used by either side to divide the country and and and gain you know advantage that's a remarkable moment it is you know where these two given that the amount of history being made and the tensions that these two nominees come together and say we will not you know we will not try to manipulate race for political purposes when that's been so much a story of American politics up to that point he also had one of the worst tag lines in your heart you know he's right which is akin to saying take this medikit medicine because it's good for you might not taste good but it's good for you yeah and then and then I think one of Johnson's supporters switch that around said in you in your guts you know he's nuts I didn't help but but Goldwater does come across just very gracious and and and and there is a sense of deep disagreement but civil disagreement that I think does speak to that bygone era yeah and then Johnson in his one presidential run really gets this unbelievable landslide one detail jumped out at me and then we'll go to Vietnam he left office with the only surplus until Bill Clinton that is so the opposite of what you think about the Great Society yeah if you're right it was it was the last president before Bill Clinton in 1998 I believe yeah to to throw money but I think it was 3.2 billion dollars that he put back into the federal coffers now I will say John that you know there was some political pressure there that the the appetite for legislation among the the Republicans in the House and Senate had waned significantly by that time and to a certain degree it was dictated by the Republicans but but Johnson was very fiscally prudent if you look at how much was accomplished during the course of the Johnson years legislative and how many programs went into effect they weren't particularly expensive by today's standards yeah at least at first yeah let's uh let's talk Vietnam foreign policy one of the things that that struck me in reading the book is how much Johnson had been influenced by as we all are by the examples in his own lifetime of the weakness at Munich when he's a young congressman why he perceived and was perceived as weakness of FDR in the face of Stalin in Yalta and the aftermath that led to the Cold War even criticizes Ike for not stopping Castro from taking power and that that life experiences this this determination that strength in world leaders matters leads him into Vietnam and down a road that he knows he believes must be done and he believes can be done quickly before the 68 election yeah talk about that that approach to world affairs that maybe didn't doesn't resonate across the generations as clearly that conviction about the importance of resoluteness we think of when we think of the domino theory we think of the Cold War but in fact the domino theory had played out in World War two when Neville Chamberlain went to Munich and struck an agreement appeased Adolf Hitler in 1939 and came back to the UK to infamously proclaim peace in our time well we didn't have peace at all what we got was World War two and so what Johnson says that there's a chapter by this name he says there will be no men with umbrellas and is of course referring to the hapless Chamberlain he is not going to relent to the Communists he truly believed that he had to stave off the communist aggression in Vietnam because if he didn't then the other nations of Southeast Asia Asia would fall and moreover it would embolden the the Chinese and the Soviets to grab land elsewhere in the world so he thought he was preventing World War two and believed that to his dying day that you had to take a stand in Vietnam that there's an interesting conversation though John two conversations that I I relate both happened to be on the same day one is with Richard Russell again his friend and mentor Democratic senator from Georgia and another is with McGeorge Bundy and in the latter conversation and he eat and you can hear in these conversations his profound ambivalence over what's going on in Vietnam and whether he should escalate the war or not and there's one quote that's really haunting from Johnson he says what the hell is Vietnam to me I can't win it and I can't get out and it's so prescient but what what I didn't appreciate until I really delved into this book is how much he anguished over trying to find a peaceful resolution to the war which is ultimately one of the reasons that he didn't run for re-election again in 1968 he desperately wanted to spend his final mint months trying to find a peaceful and honorable way out of Vietnam where by the way both of his sons-in-law were serving at that point in time in that famous picture where he's anguished listening to the tape recorder is he's listening to one of his sons-in-law from the front lines yeah it's exactly and you all may know the photo that John is referring to he is bent over in pure anguish on the conference on the cabinet room table listening to his son Chuck Robb in Vietnam relating his experience in Vietnam and it's interesting we we think of the the in terms of iconography the the Johnson presidency his book ended in tragedy we think of course of the famous photograph of him being sworn in on Air Force One in the wake of the assassination that's one tragedy and at the end of his term with his face down on that cabinet room table dealing with the the anguish in Vietnam and there's that sense that that the the country is slipping away from him so quickly that Johnson's genius at human psychology is one on one but he increasingly in that end of his term had trouble understanding the mass psychology of what was going on in particular with the protest movement and the agony I think his press secretary describes it as Johnson at the end being in a state of unreality there's that White House bubble and not being able to comprehend what was going on with the protests you know it's just I don't think he feared one of the things that's ever late in theirs and Lyndon Linda Johnson Robb relates this he didn't fear the protesters he didn't fear the doves as much as he feared the Hawks he really worried about the other side the conservatives who said that he wasn't fighting the war hard enough it was a limited war he it couldn't be anything but a limited war because he didn't want the Chinese and/or the Russians to enter into it in a way that would create the threat of a hot war that's the bottom line there was a very delicate balance that he had to tread and he thought about that every single day that that that war was waged and when he gets that memo from undersecretary ball saying that you know it's the one dissenting voice up to that point you know the wise men had all been in agreement and and then there's this one dissenting voice in with seventy-five page memo yeah and then and then he's just anguished as that slowly he realizes that maybe the the dissenting voice is their correct one you know there's there's one chapter that I devote to a memo that very few people know about it's at the it's open to the public and it's at the obj library but it's it's a memo from the CIA in which they talk about how what would happen if you pulled troops out of Vietnam what would be the effect on America and the world and they essentially conclude that it can be done and the and it's it's the paradox of Lyndon Johnson that he didn't do anything with that memo I don't I don't know what his reaction to that memo was it's lost to history but I think the the real fear he had that it would have this was it that it would have this tremendous demoralizing effect over the American populace and that we would lose our confidence that we lose ground there's one other incident you recount in the book that wasn't appreciated at the time which is in those waning days of the administration where he's trying to get a peace deal done and we find out it was actually actively being undercut by by one liaison who was in communication with the Nixon campaign talk a little bit about that incident because it's it's fascinating and I haven't heard much about it madam Chennault was the wife of the the man who can and commanded the the Flying Tigers in World War two and she essentially acted as a conduit between the Nixon campaign and the South Vietnamese and she convinces the South Vietnamese that they should wait they should hold off on striking a deal a peace deal with the Johnson administration because they would get a better deal with the Nixon administration and Johnson finds out about this in the waning days of the 1968 campaign when his vice president Hubert Humphrey is out on the hustings trying to to to win the presidency and Johnson doesn't do anything about it but he he tells he just worries about what this revelation would do to America and the world at this very sensitive time and so he goes to Hubert Humphrey and he tells Humphrey about this and Humphrey decides that it would be unpatriotic to reveal this in the last days of the campaign it would be too upsetting it would be too destructive a thing to do it's very courageous on Humphreys part but you wonder what would have happened in history had this revelation been disclosed to the American public one other revelation in the book at least to me regarding Humphrey was who Johnson wanted Humphrey to pick as a vice presidential nominee Daniel in way the Hawaiian senator and he wanted to do it because it was one other barrier I mean this is Johnson who you know passes the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 68 in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 he appoints the first african-american cabinet member and the first african-american Supreme Court member and he wants Hubert Humphrey to do something historic with his choice of a vice president and picking an asian-american to round out the ticket is a way to do that and and and this is a phone conversation by the way and and Humphrey says you know old conservative Hubert I just can't do it and and Humphrey is anything but old and conservative it's just it's such a contradiction let's talk about we're gonna take questions from the audience in a bit but but I think it's I don't think there's any way to round out the reality of the man without talking about his wife and Lady Bird Johnson the way that she is always steadfast in support of him this mercurial personality and that she's always looking out for him one of the things I was struck by in the beginning days of their courtship beside the fact that her nickname was Lady Bird before she met Johnson which I didn't adequately appreciate I thought he was just trying to set up initial you know right correlations so when you're in doing an intense courtship the book that wouldn't occur to me to give out entirely is Nazism an assault on civilization with this inscription this is remarkable to bird in the hopes that within these pages she may realize some little entertainment and find reiterated here reiterated here some of the principles which she believes and to which she has been taught to revere and respect LBJ September 1st 1934 so this is it this is a book about Nazism yeah in 1934 you know well before they've reared their ugly heads to the world to enter the lesson and it shows the worldview of this you know ostensibly provincial couple from Texas and they had a great view of the of the world but you know you can't assess LBJ and of himself the Johnsons were a package deal and I think most people saw them nest that way and one of the things she talks about it as hard as it was to work for Lyndon Johnson you had Lady Bird Johnson sort of has a buffer one of the things she said is I always made sure I walked behind him and said thank you and and I really do believe that they came as a package deal there's one aide in there to the Johnsons who says you know most aged presidents never have a meal with with the President or and first lady it was hard to get out of a meal with Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson they really treated you as family when you were at the ranch and Johnson spent a fifth of his presidency at the LBJ Ranch where he could really relax and still conduct the business of his presidency everybody ate with the Johnsons everybody ate around a large table so they were truly a package deal and I think it's easier to understand LBJ when you understand Lady Bird and I thought about this and it took me about two hours to construct the sentence that I think sums up their relationship to a certain extent and that is one wonders whether Johnson allowed his demons to graze knowing that she would ward them off by quietly summoning his better angels I think she had that effect on him her equanimity her she allowed him to pass the heat of the moment and and think more deliberately about something think of the long term because this is a very mercurial guy in that mercurial nasai mean so many highs and lows in such a comparatively short period of time yeah and and we were talking earlier just about the bracketing of his presidency from Tom cover of Time magazine when he's named Man of the Year after his landslide and it's the Statesman shot and he's in a business suit and there's the small sort of you know little Hut he grew up in you know the rural farm and it's this he's got a visionary stare going forward of determination indomitable will and then three years later he's depicted as King Lear and it's this great tragedy going on in public that very much fits in some ways that manic-depressive quality of his his intensity and his achievement and his aspiration and the way he left the White House as a Johnson scholar as someone who feels empathy for him do you get the sense that he was able to see beyond the horizon of that tumultuous painful last year and see vindication do you think that it was a case where imagery overtakes accomplishment that that perception the public perception of Johnson didn't keep pace with his actual repartee accomplishment up until now yes sir Mart you talk about that there's two covers I'll just talk a little more about them the first is 1965 he's named the man of the year of time and as John mentions you see this picture of him and says oil painting when you look strong and styling it would be the envy of any politician Man of the Year oh yeah and then that that one three years later is it's a cartoon by David Levine of LBJ as King Lear and he's being kicked by Bobby Kennedy and ignored by Everett Dirksen and it says it's it's awful and he's turned into a cartoon to a certain degree but I do believe that Johnson had the long view of history in mind I really do and if you look at his accomplishments I think you see that now I don't think it was easy to see in 1973 when he died four years and two days after he left the White House when the the long cold shadow of Vietnam was still very much in evidence but in 2012 I think that shadow is beginning to recede and again we're beginning to see how the accomplishments of the Great Society continue to resound I think he would be delighted that he saw in his just in his tenure poverty being reduced from twenty percent one out of every five Americans to twelve percent you know he saw that in his presidency there were some things that he took from that he saw African Americans being recognized as legal equals to Caucasians he saw those things those things I think sustained him in the darkest days of his presidency I was struck on one final note his parting gift other world leaders was a photograph of Earth from space and and that did seem to sum up his his longer view and the great pride he took about that mission that would ultimately reach the moon there's one great triumph and and that is that you know at the end of his presidency and that's the Apollo 8 mission which in some ways as significant as the Neil Armstrong Buzz Aldrin mission Apollo 11 mission which were their landing on the moon Powell late they did a circumlunar trip to the moon it was the first time a spacecraft had left Earth's atmosphere and gone to the moon it was at hovered 60 miles from the Earth's surface and it happened to be on Christmas Eve when the astronauts Frank Borman Jim Lovell and and Bill Anders our circuit and they've been they relate passages from Genesis on that night it's incredibly inspiring and someone wires them a telegram when they land saying you saved 1968 which is probably the most tumultuous year in American history save some of the years of the of the the Civil War so that that that's his parting gift I'll say one one anecdote if I can go back to ladybird Johnson really quickly John before we take questions and that is that when LBJ got married it was after a six-week whirlwind courtship which in which he was plying the Johnson treatment at every turn this was a very reluctant bride and he sort of beat her into submission or romance turns into submission and they get married and he has to hurriedly buy a ring and he does so from Sears & Roebuck it's a $2 $0.50 ring which Lucy Johnson still wears to this day and well after he leaves the White House several years later he's on a vacation in Acapulco I believe and and he's sort of been raiding her for it was why did it take you so long to trade in that ring and buy a new ring I told you shortly after we got married go buy a beautiful ring why'd it take you three years to do that and she said why darling I was just waiting to see if the marriage would last with that we'll take some questions we've got mics in either aisle and we really look forward to having a dialogue just come on up you can line up behind the mics they're young and they're ones on either side I would like to ask you to comment a little bit more on Bobby Kennedy and LBJ well that was a there's no way to sugarcoat it that was a tough relationship the two just were were bitter rivals and enemies and it's interesting my predecessor at the LBJ library was a gentleman named or predecessors president was a gentleman named Harry Middleton and Harry talks about having a very candid conversation with LBJ LBJ about that relationship and and Harry characterises LBJ as kind of like Will Rogers he never met a man he didn't like and I would revise that somewhat although Harry knew the man and I didn't I don't think he never met a person he didn't want the approbation he desperately wanted people's approval and he would never get it from Bobby Kennedy and he said we could have spent a lifetime trying to be close but there was just too much dividing us and I'm not sure it could be summed up better than that they were just very different people and I think that after John F Kennedy was assassinated it was very difficult for Bobby Kennedy to see this man in the role that his brother had filled so elegant elegantly and so gracefully yeah I mean the Kennedys are so cool and Johnson is hot will flip over to the other side will toggle between I was wondering why Johnson accepted the vice presidential nomination when he I think had a lot more power in the Senate and he couldn't foresee obviously that he would become president and then the second part of that is as vice president was he kind of relegated to the side by the Kennedys you know you talked about how Kennedy was inspirational and Johnson was able to get things done and I was wondering if there was ever a time when they could work as a team and that whether if Kennedy had had a longer term in office whether Johnson inand he could have worked as a team to accomplish Kennedy's agenda well let me ask answer your latter question first in your former question second I think that there's a great example of their partnership with NASA and and it's a it's a it illustrates the personalities and the strengths of the two men LBJ was an early advocate of a robust American space program when it was when our space program was feeble at best and so he one of the pens that Eisenhower gives out when he signs the the law making creating NASA is to Lyndon Johnson was just such a proponent of it but JFK appoints him to head up the space Commission when he becomes president and he asks LBJ whether it's possible for to send a man to the moon by the end of the decade and LBJ looks into it and concludes yes that we probably can do that and he does so by and and and LBJ helps that by really trying to help build NASA into the strong institution that it became and so Johnson writes him this this memo saying yes it's possible and JFK goes out and he gives that very memorable speech we choose the moon you know there's the visionary and he captured the imagination of all Americans when he said that I think it's inspired us all let me ask you answer your former question now about why he chose the vice presidency yes he was the all-powerful Senate Majority Leader but he knew that if if Kennedy became president he would still be carrying water for Jack Kennedy moreover though and this is related in the book Sam Rayburn comes to him and tells him after telling him he shouldn't accept the vice presidency tells him he should and and LBJ asks very pointedly why do you say today that I should accept the vice presidency when yesterday you said I shouldn't and he says because if you don't accept it just as God made little green apples Richard Nixon's gonna become president United States and that's something that that that Rayburn who just despised Nixon couldn't abide by and and I think that LBJ does it for the party he does it for the country in large measure did he play any significant role though in I don't believe that Kennedy ever introduced any civil rights legislation is that right but did he help I know there was a lot of negotiation with Wallace during Kennedy's administration about letting the students into the university and I'm wondering if Johnson played a role as a southerner in any of that stuff well Johnson uses JFK's martyrdom in part to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through he says very pointedly too often lawmakers this is what you know our president would have wanted this is what John F Kennedy you our fallen president would have wanted you owe it to him and to this country he exploited that that the death of John F Kennedy to get past I don't know if Kennedy couldn't have done I think it would've been very difficult for a lot of people to accept a Northeastern a Democrat getting Civil Rights passed and I think just as it took Nixon to go to China Nixon the staunch anti-communist to open China it took in some ways Lyndon Johnson to give this country civil rights this southern Democrat who had to the large extent resisted civil rights partly had a political viability earlier in his career I'm sorry was he quiet during gennadiy administrative civil rights I think he was relegated to the vice presidential spot so he didn't really have the spotlight where he could do a lot with civil rights thanks for waiting patient apocryphal or not I've always enjoyed the story of LBJ calling on Bill Moyers for prayer at a prayer breakfast and he wasn't speaking loudly enough and he said Speak Up bill and bill responded I wasn't talking to you mr. president it's a true story story but beyond that both warriors of course has a very deep spirituality and sophisticated social ethic and I wonder what kind of influence are not that had on LBJ as far as policies were concerned it's hard to say I think that that the two had a very close relationship I think Bill and it was sort of like a surrogate son for LBJ he had he had a couple of them Tom Johnson was another Walter Jenkins another aide was sort of a part brother and part son to LBJ so they had a very very close relationship and by my bills telling he's the prodigal son you know and he leaves the administration I think there's some bitter there were some bitterness between them I don't know how the relationship ended but I think he was influenced by all his aides and I think that to some degree bill and that late Harry McPherson were consciousness of the the Johnson administration what about I'm just interject here dick Goodwin was a former speechwriter I can't resist but so talented such an iconic part with the we shall overcome and the Great Society speech what was what was their relationship like and the contributions he made well I think the good one was ultimately a Kennedy guy you know I think his loyalties lied with Jack Kennedy but his great contribution to Lyndon Johnson John is you just pointed out was the we shall overcome speech and that's the speech that that LBJ gives on March 15th 1965 after the bloody events in Selma Alabama he you know with the the fire hoses and the police dogs and all those sort of and that's that's seen on national television by all of America and we see really for the first time vividly how virulent racism is in the deep south and LBJ goes before Congress and he talks about all the obstacles that people of color in this country face as an everyday fact of life and he invokes the phrase from the Negro spiritual that becomes the anthem in the civil rights movement we shall overcome he says very point and we shall overcome and John Lewis talks about seeing that speech with Martin Luther King and it was the only time that Lewis saw Martin Luther King weep and King looks at Lewis and says we shall overcome we will get this voting rights bill passed and we shall overcome a very pointed moment so if dick Goodwin did nothing else for Lyndon Johnson then penned that speech he did more than enough yes sir you know the the military management of the wall obviously was a big failure and I've heard it mentioned that there was a three-legged stool there there was Secretary of Defense McNamara LBJ and also the four-star general who who was transferred out in my district st. disgrace we had got up well over 500,000 troops he was asking for a couple hundred thousand more but he didn't he claimed that McNamara I told him to ask for that many more what is your comment about this three-legged stool concept and was they were in fact three people they were really one on the show over there thank you if there were three people I think you missed the one that was probably most influential and that's Dean Rusk Dean Rusk Dean Rusk who was President Kennedy's Secretary of State and and remained on not in the military management now I understand what you mentioned McNamara it was a Secretary of Defense and I think the moat the person who was most influential on Lyndon Johnson in terms of the operation of the war was Dean Rusk I can't come a comment on the how the war was run militarily but ideologic the reasons that we were there were most clearly articulated to LBJ by by Dean Rusk and Dean Rusk it reinforced the notion that if you don't keep the Communists said BAE we're gonna get World War three and I think that was the guiding principle that kept Johnson in the fight in Vietnam but I can't comment unfortunately about how the the war was run militarily thank you yes sir there are several slightly contradictory or different views that you've had here one was of Johnson really resisting civil rights in the in the Senate you then have him using Kennedy's legacy and inspiration to say do this for our former president and then there's also the sense of his being moved by these events and so I have to ask to what extent was he interested in the civil rights would he have pushed it in the absence or was there part of Kennedy legacy that then then tipped him over in that direction and obviously it's a complicated you're right it does sound contradictory you're absolutely right let me just say that this man when he was in the Senate was from Texas he was representing Texas Texans were fundamentally opposed to civil rights at that time Johnson on the other hand was an advocate for civil rights for early on his father was an advocate for civil rights he he stood up against the Ku Klux Klan his own life in order to do so when he was in the Texas Legislature this is a man who believed fundamentally that all men are created equal and was determined to see it through in this country but while he advocated the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Civil Rights Acts Act of 1960 he also allowed them to be watered down in order to get them passed knowing full well that if they weren't watered down and toothless they wouldn't be passed so they were largely important only because of their symbolism but when the end that when he had the chance to do something for civil rights to push it through in 1964 when the time was right his pushing it had little to do with Jack Kennedy except using Jack Kennedy as a tactic to get it through using the martyrdom of John F Kennedy the Fallen President to get this through a reluctant Congress that's what he needed exploited it essentially but I'm confident that given given Lyndon Johnson's heart that he would have wanted civil rights regardless does that answer your question good thank you yes sir yeah thank you very much this is another question we got to Vietnam I've been thinking about this for a while and I keep thinking about all the tortured photographs I saw of LBJ you guys to what to do what not to do and whatever and I just was wondering whether in fact you gleaned from in the tapes that he kind of felt boxed in meaning that I'm thinking about many of us went to the Cuban Missile Crisis and that was very key as to how we perceived what was what could have happened and we came so close to nuclear war so what we saw is a president who said I'm not going to allow the military directly run over me right based upon what happened at the Bay of Pigs and I wonder if there was any influence on Lyndon Johnson who was part of the National Security Council during that period of Cuban Missile Crisis that build over but then the other part that I see especially today although it's kind of changed a bit that the Joint Chiefs in particular and the field commanders always seemed to have this one-upmanship going on against the civilian control of the military so I just wondered if you gleaned any of that in his thinking at all because that's I wondered that for a long long time yeah well I think you hit on something I think both JFK and LBJ learned a lot through the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis experiences and one was not to trust the military at face value mean to question to constantly question their recommendations and one of the things that LBJ knows from the very beginning is that the military is going to ask for more and more and more troops one of the things he says early on in 1964 again illustrating the paradox that he had with the war is he says no matter what I do over there there will be killing if I put troops in there will be killing if I don't do anything there will be killing and you just see he's wrestling with this and he doesn't know what to do about he really doesn't know what to do it that said he does continue to escalate troop involvement but I will tell you without question that his greatest disappointment upon leaving office is that he did not strike an honorable peace with Ho Chi Minh and I think you think about the Johnson treatment you know you think about how effective he was one-on-one with somebody and now he could influence somebody so effectively if he had gotten Ho Chi Minh in a room it would have been interesting to see what would have happened in that in that conversation and that's really what he wanted and he was giving and at one point he offers these pork-barrel promises to Ho Chi Minh he says if you pull out of South Vietnam I'm gonna create farms for you not only in South Vietnam but in North Vietnam now how can you turn that down your people are going to benefit will pour money into your country and he couldn't believe that ho Chi Minh would resist it because there's no congressman from Arkansas or from my dad it would resist that yeah we bring money just a comment first on your answer to the woman's question from the other microphone you've got to remember I'm sure you really know and that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was based upon President Kennedy's Civil Rights Act of 1963 which was promulgated the night that Medgar Evers was assassinated in June of 1963 and I think those it was an incomplete answer that you gave and it's certainly there are problems with the 1957 Civil Rights Act and that's why we needed eight years later the Civil Rights Act of 1965 but and it's important to remember that that legislation created the Civil Rights Division in justice and created the Commission on civil rights with all of the great important reports it did and so it may have been toothless but it had a bite well let me clarify one thing I you're absolutely right I didn't deny that that the there was a Civil Rights Act before Johnson got involved with it I was only saying that he used Kennedy's death in order to persuade those reluctant to pass it to do so but no it was John F Kennedy who proposed what became the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and what what Johnson said when he took over the reins of power after fashioning his statement after a Kennedy's famous statement let us begin is let us continue he wanted to continue on the legacy of laws and there's this great conversation between Martin Luther King and LBJ on the second full day of of Johnson's tenure as president he calls Martin Luther King as he did business leaders and political leaders and civil rights leaders he calls everybody does a remarkable job in keeping the country stable in the aftermath assassination and he says to Martin Luther King I'm gonna support them all I'm gonna support all those policies and I want you to bring in your ideas come visit me next next time you're in Washington Martin come see me and let's talk about how we do these things right he forms this coalition his partnership with with Martin Luther King that's very effective but one of the things that that Johnson said King says to Johnson is it you know there's no better way that you can honor the late president then than by pursuing his his policies he says again and Johnson says I'm gonna I'm going to support them all thank you a final final question for ya this books about Johnson in the presidency and it does present a remarkably multifaceted portrait of a man in full what lessons or what primary lesson do you think future presidents can take from Johnson's style of presidential leadership well I think it's a bygone era in washing his Washington is long gone in Washington but I think again I would I would have to go back to civility and one of the things that you hear is that Johnson is ruthless I think that that's a misconception I don't think John says ruthless at all because Johnson was aware of how business was conducted in the halls of Congress and that is through collegiality compromise and civility he knew that and he didn't vilify or demonize his opponents generally because he knew that if they resisted them effectively on one thing that he would have to work with them on another he took the long view and I I think I was at a conference a couple weeks ago in which Barbara Bush said that the compromise in Washington has become a dirty word and and that's again that's something I think that would would disappoint Lyndon Johnson profoundly and I think he would probably reach out to lawmakers to anyone who had influence in Washington Grover Nordquist Rush Limbaugh all the lawmakers all the livers Michael Moore and he would grab him by the lapels and he would say come let us reason together thank you all very much this was very good John thanks so much it's really good yeah

Channel: JFK Library

Views: 22,028

Rating: 4.4645667 out of 5

Keywords: Mark Updegrove, Daily Beast, John Avlon

Id: 3pBP-Jht-Z8

Length: 78min 18sec (4698 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 11 2012