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“Judging by his actions so far, what kind of President will he make? It has become obvious that the advisors he inherited will stay on to further undermine the prestige of the United States, while they work behind the scenes for an Alice-in-Wonderland One-Worldism. There is no doubt that conniving leaders of countries around the world will be allowed to take our money with one hand while stabbing us in the back with the other.” (The Inside on LBJ. Frank L. Kluckhohn. Derby, CT: Monarch Books, Inc., 1964). “Lyndon Baines Johnson, the restless man who is now President of the United States, is not so much a product of Texas as of the strangely deranged times that have set the stage for his ambitious desires, his vanity and monumental egotism, his vindictive nature and his evil genius.” (A Texan Looks at Lyndon. J. Evetts Haley. Canyon, TX: Palo Duro Press, 1964.). “Along with his vanity, pride and acute sensitivity is a high and explosive temper and a notoriously intemperate tongue. These sometimes find vicious outlets upon the subordinates around him—which is the certain hallmark, not of nobility and breeding, but of the plebeian nature obsessed with power.” (A Texan Looks at Lyndon. J. Evetts Haley. Canyon, TX: Palo Duro Press, 1964). “As a human being, he was a miserable person—a bully, a sadist, lout, and egoist. He had no sense of loyalty (despite his protestations that it was the quality he valued above all others) and he enjoyed tormenting those who had done the most for him. He seemed to take a special delight in humiliating those who had cast in their lot with him.” (George Reedy. Lyndon B. Johnson: A Memoir. Andrews and McMeel, Inc., New York, 1982, p. 157). “He seemed to function as a Machiavelli in a Stetson, part of which posture was to keep assuring everyone that rugged he-men in Stetsons would never be Maciavellis. So lacking in confidence, so defensive and wary . . . This attitude led to increasing justification for, and ever more extended practice of, his natural bent toward exorbitant secretiveness, labyrinthine maneuverings, a sanctimonious glossing over of reality, the plain withholding of truth which had no need of being withheld and the plain distortion of truth which, as least in part, was much better stated and done with.” (Eric F. Goldman. The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1969, p. 523). “The verbiage was familiar State Department prose garnished with Johnsonian evangelism about ‘men and nations’ having ‘no choice but to live together like brothers.’ There’s nothing like a little old-time religion while Cain bombs the hell out of Abel.” (I.F. Stone, In a Time of Torment: 1961-67. Little, Brown & Company, 1967, Boston, p. 69). “He was only Sam Johnson’s boy, who had grown up poor and early and ambitious in the Hill Country, and spent his lifetime fighting for personal power and wealth. In his unquestionable thirst for both, he failed to acquire any other purpose to guide his decisions, though he developed a remarkable talent for judging those who stood in his path. He learned how to seize authority from the lazy or slow, threaten and storm at the weak, flatter the vain, promise the greedy, buy off the stubborn, and isolate the strong.” (Alfred Steinburg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, The Macmillan Co., New York, 1968, p. 838). Quotes compiled by Sushila Nayak. Thanks to Andy Plenge for his transcription help. Institute for Policy Studies Home Page
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Lyndon
Johnson When Lyndon Johnson was the Democratic majority leader of the Senate in the nineteen fifties, (he was also Democratic minority leader in 1953- 54) he had a favorite tactic with Senators he intended to sway. He would, as the saying goes now, get in their face. Johnson would stand a few inches from them, peer down on his senatorial prey (since he was usually taller than others at six foot three) and proceed to thump his index finger into the chest of a hapless senatorial victim until he convinced him to vote his way, compromise, or hold out depending on Johnson's legislative agenda. Johnson was the acknowledged master and bully of the legislative process who knew the soft spots, secrets and needs of each senator. He was well prepared for these discussions both in terms of the substance of the legislation and the eccentricites of each senator. Indeed, he often role-played with staff people to know what to say to each of the senators on legislation and parliamentary tactics. He had learned to walk the difficult line between conservatives and liberals in his own party, giving liberals in the nineteen fifties rhetoric and conservatives the meat of the policy. At the time he appeared to be no more liberal than President Dwight Eisenhower in his views, and campaigned back home that he and Eisenhower were middle of the roaders standing against the troglodytes of the Republican party. Yet Johnson had had a strong New Deal background and indeed as a young congressman he was a favorite of President Roosevelt. During the depression years, Johnson was thought to be something of a populist who felt passionately for people that had no voice in Congress. His father, Sam Johnson, had been a state legislator, rather well connected politically, but not successful financially and who suffered reverses in the 1921 depression from which he never recovered. Johnson's mother, Rebekah, was in the breed of frontier women who were strong-willed, practical and exceedingly competent. In his first run for Congress, at 27, Lyndon presented himself as a total New Dealer supporting as well Roosevelt's attempts to change the power and composition of the Supreme Court. Johnson's populist sentiment did not surface again until he became president, when he successfully pressed Congress for his Great Society programs which centered on anti-poverty, civil rights, community action, Medicare and Medicaid, model cities, and a comprehensive education program. These programs were often a response to conflicts, economic and social justice which had emerged on the streets, the barrios and slums of American society but could no longer be contained there. In one sense he had to respond to the turmoil. But his response was related to the ideas of progressive betterment, which he saw as the natural extension and completion of the work of the New Deal. He believed that through his will he could build a great society. Johnson believed that change had to be managed and that it could be best accomplished by experts and those people who had arrived at positions of power in the nation. This meant that Johnson saw his task as organizing the powerful for reform which might even adversely effect their own power. Perhaps Lyndon Johnson was the most tragic figure to have ever held the White House. A man of enormous energy, a workaholic, frail health, native brilliance, and cunning, he would stoop to petty conniving when necessary. He used his offices, bedroom, walks, pool and car as his place of work. Johnson was probably the nation's most scatological president, inviting members of the cabinet to meet with him in the toilet next to his office as he defecated. He once stated that Americans had two things on their minds. Women, as he put it, were concerned about " cancer of the titty" and men "whether they could get it up at night." He would tell White House correspondents at dinners that he was prepared to match the size of his penis against any of theirs. He was a master of story telling which he used to good effect in every situation often in a searing way against antagonists, staff and friends alike. In the political and social world of the nineteen nineties, he would have been designated a groper sexist with women. His capacity for work and his use of assistants as extensions of his needs, aspirations and policy was legendary. The assistants feared, loved and reviled him, for they knew him to be a man driven. Some thought of him as a force of nature. On the other hand, by 1965, members of the White House press corps saw him as a self serving, petty deceiver, and control freak whose character flaws overwhelmed his legislative prowess and judgment. Yet he did more to shape the responsibilities of government to people than any president except Franklin Roosevelt. With all of his raw talent, frenetic energy and legislative skill, he had a strong streak of personal insecurity which distorted his thinking on international affairs. This insecurity showed itself during the Vietnam war, where President Kennedy's advisors urged him to continue and escalate the war. It was this same group which had wanted to replace him as President Kennedy's vice president had Kennedy lived to campaign in the 1964 election. The Kennedy advisors had never adjusted to Kennedy having chosen Johnson as his running mate in 1960, although the conservative father of Jack Kennedy, Joseph Kennedy, insisted on Lyndon Johnson as did the influential Phil Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post, and the extreme rightist oil billionaire, H.L. Hunt. Johnson feared that with Kennedy's death he would be perceived as the illegitimate president. He was concerned about appearing weak in the eyes of his fellow national security Democrats, especially in Vietnam. And he feared that Robert Kennedy would challenge him for the presidency if he did not continue to escalate the war in Indo China. It was a shock to Johnson that as senator, Robert Kennedy attacked Johnson from the left. The Johnson presidency was devastated by demonstrations of marchers shouting "Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today ?" When he announced he would not run for re-election there was jubilant dancing by protestors across from the White House. The irony about Johnson's presidential Indo-China commitment was that as the Democratic leader in the Senate, he told President Eisenhower's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, that he would not agree to sending American forces to Indo China in order to aid or supplant the French in their colonial war against the Vietnamese. He knew there was no support within the United States for such a venture nor was there support from the British. With his announcement in March 1968 that he would not seek re-election, Lyndon Johnson knew two things about his presidency. The first was that the economic and social programs of the Great Society were destroyed in the rice paddies of Vietnam. And secondly, he also knew that with the Johnson program of comprehensive civil rights legislation the Democratic party would lose its hold over the South in one generation. The Republicans would inherit the states-righters and the segregationists. Young Lyndon Johnson, graduate of Southwest Texas State Teachers College came to Washington when he was twenty two as the private secretary to a new congressman, Richard Kleberg. Kleberg was one of the owners of the King ranch which meant that he was one of the richest land and cattle owners in Texas. Johnson quickly took to the legislative life and organized staff assistants to other congressmen into an influential group. Like so many other young men who worked on Capitol Hill, he looked for mentors among powerful congressmen. Sam Rayburn, later to be Speaker of the House, saw Johnson as a unique political talent and pressed him forward in discussions with other congressional members and, in a few years, with President Roosevelt. Johnson had another advantage. Kleberg was more interested in playing polo than in the nitty-gritty of being a congressman. As a result, the basic work, from legislation to constituent mail, was turned over to the twenty-something Johnson who got the conservative Kleberg to support Roosevelt's New Deal program. At twenty six, Johnson was named to his first administrative post, that of Director of the National Youth Administration in Texas. The NYA was a New Deal program to get jobs to unemployed students and young people who needed work. For Johnson, this not only was an important task, but it gave him the chance to learn the needs of young people his age, and to hone his political skills by showing that he was also a fiscally conservative manager of public money. He did not miss the chance of having people identify the relative success of the program with his energy and political skill. As an indefatigable worker, and with the support of his new wife, Lady Bird Johnson, who disdained politics but financially supported Lyndon Johnson's political ambitions and obsessions, he was ready for his next step up the political ladder. At twenty seven Johnson ran and won a special election for congress which occurred as a result of the incumbent's death. There was little established support for Johnson, but his organizing capacity and zeal was no match for others who had thought to enter the race. As congressman, Johnson's commitment to Roosevelt in a state torn by class and race differences required that he pay specially close attention to constituent concerns. For example, any letter to his office had to be answered within 24 hours. He continued his commitment to public works projects arranging for an expansion of the WPA in his district. He also became friendly with Roosevelt, who sought his help in obtaining support for navy construction. Four years later, in 1941, Lyndon Johnson decided that he should run for the Senate because he felt hemmed in in the House. He ran in a special election again as a result of the death of an incumbent, Senator Morris Sheppard. However, he was defeated in a race against the then governor, "Pappy" O'Daniel. Texas politics was marked by considerable fraud on all sides during that period. Votes were bought and paid for through local county bosses who sold themselves to the highest bidders. The vote counting took a few days and by the end of the counting, Johnson's apparent victory had turned into a narrow defeat of less than 1500 votes. A dejected Lyndon Johnson returned to the House of Representatives, where he served for five more months before being the first Member of Congress to volunteer for service after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He remained in the Navy for 11 months until Roosevelt ordered all members of congress who were on active duty to return to Washington as representatives. It was as a result of the experience of the second world war that Johnson championed the argument for a strong defense and nuclear policy. As a result of their world war two experience, his generation's political leaders believed as a matter of dogma that small wars had to be fought to abort the possibility of large scale wars. They also believed that being first in military strength and power might not necessitate the use of force. And of course there was no self examination of American motives which were taken for granted as unalloyed as compared to other nations. While president Franklin Roosevelt had had a keen sense of the process of decolonization and national independence which would result at the end of the second world war, this reality was not appreciated adequately by Johnson's generation, or President Johnson. In 1948 Lyndon Johnson tried again for the United States Senate. This time he won by eighty seven votes. He was known as "Landslide Lyndon" and the vote was challenged in the courts by his opponent, Coke Stevenson. The Supreme Court refused to take jurisdiction over the case and his election stood. In this election it was possible to pinpoint Johnson's political insecurity. At first he was thought to be illegitimate as a senator just as he was thought to be illegitimate after he became President in the wake of Kennedy's assassination. His response was the same in both cases. He threw himself into the process and personal work of being a senator in such a way that he became the acknowledged leader of the Democratic senators. When Ernest McFarland, the Senate Democratic majority leader lost his seat in the Eisenhower undertow, Lyndon Johnson, after only four years in the Senate, saw his chance to begin to become a national political figure, or at least one who the President of the United States would have to deal with directly. As the leader of the Senate, first as minority and then majority leader, Lyndon Johnson worked in tandem with Dwight Eisenhower, although Johnson sought to ride the issue of national security, space and defense as the means of ensuring American preeminence although Eisenhower believed that much of the spending for space was excessive. Johnson had a parliamentary interest which even took precedence over substance. Historically, the Senate was even more individualistic than the House of Representatives with each member being a law and political party onto himself. Johnson successfully welded the Democratic senators into a cohesive and unified body finding within them a common purpose. On civil rights, Johnson worked with Eisenhower to pass a weak civil rights law in 1957. Nevertheless, it was the first such law passed by Congress since the reconstruction period. While still genuflecting to the South, and his mentor, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, he began to move away from the politics of the old white South calling forth feelings and ideas which had been with him since the depression. He retained part of his financial base with the oil operators of Texas and carried water for them on the protection of their oil depletion allowance, but he expected support for himself which they grudgingly gave. In 1960, he made his move for national recognition by accepting the vice presidential nomination with Kennedy. The assumption of the Kennedy's father was that Johnson would carry Texas for Kennedy, and that without LBJ on the ticket Kennedy was not electable. Johnson's mentor, Sam Rayburn, had advised against taking the vice presidency for several reasons. Historically, the vice presidency had been a place of impotence once the twelfth amendment to the Constitution was passed. Furthermore, Rayburn was concerned that Johnson, who had been Kennedy's senior colleague in the senate, and who Johnson had expressed contempt for because of his playboy ways, would not be comfortable as "standby equipment." In fact Johnson was miserable as vice-president. Whereas he had made others the butt of his humor as Senate majority leader it was now Kennedy's White House staff which made fun of him. There were rumors that he was drinking too much and there was talk on his part of wanting to leave after the term was over to go into business. But on November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas, and all of this changed. In the few days after Kennedy's death, Johnson saw to the appointment of the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination and the other immediate deaths surrounding the assassination. He reassured the nation, allies and adversaries. And he successfully completed an agenda which Kennedy had difficulty in passing through Congress. He kept many of the Kennedy advisors in place, which meant that there was a built-in struggle for loyalty to Johnson among senior members of the government with Kennedy holdovers constantly comparing Johnson to the "Age of Camelot." Having won an overwhelming victory over his Republican opponent, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, in 1964, Johnson may have thought himself politically invincible. He began to set the tone for what he wanted, and what was to become the Great Society programs. His commitment to the eradication of poverty was not greeted to loud cheers either in the nation or among his staff; nor for that matter was his insistence that apartheid and voting intimidation had to end. Nevertheless, he was most proud of the Voting Rights Act which he hoped would correct the iniquities of slavery and apartheid. His own commitments on these matters most assuredly grew out of his own experiences. The Democratic party was split on these matters and this split grew even more pronounced after Johnson left the White House. Using the reports of his Council of Economic Advisors Johnson claimed that 20% of the American population was in poverty and it was his intention to change that condition. He intended, as well, to give equal education for poor and minority children through title one of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Perhaps under the influence of Ladybird Johnson, he spoke about beauty and beautification in speeches including a State of the Union Address. Throughout his career the president's wife played an important supporting role with Lyndon Johnson's brother, Sam Houston Johnson. Ladybird repaired relations with people Lyndon wanted to cultivate or had alienated, and his younger brother worked on political tactics. With his wife's support, President Johnson reached back to ideas of the New Deal. He had pressed for an endowment of the arts even as he insisted on greater social security coverage. Government was to be there, as enabler to community action, as an aid to families, and as a guardian against bad times for the society and individuals. But there was something wrong with the picture and one has to return to the realities of the federal budget of the time. The programs which were started were often demonstration projects with short lives, others were under funded. Laws were passed which were under funded, thereby causing resentment among groups of poor who had few ways of organizing powerful lobbies for their interests. As president, he was giving laws to the liberals, but the conservatives held tight the purse strings which the frugal side of Johnson did not mind. Nevertheless, the fact was that millions of people were helped. Community colleges were built and staffed with federal aid thereby giving students who were older or poor a continuing chance. Poverty declined. With his rhetoric Johnson had opened the door of the closet of the unseen and millions of Americans emerged. Within the nation as a whole, there was continuing resentment which like a volcano erupted over issues of civil rights and war. Johnson believed that he was one of the very few presidents in American history who addressed fundamental economic and social problems, but he was not receiving credit for it. He became more manic and suspicious. He hated the media and sought to manipulate and manage the news in ways which caused enormous irritation and exacerbated the tensions between them. The nation was caught in a culture of violence from which there seemed to be few answers. From Vietnam to Detroit to Watts and Washington D.C., cities became like pieces of paper to be burned as people felt themselves abused, underserved and oppressed. Even more than these terrifying moments, coming as they did at different intervals during the sixties and culminating in the death of Martin Luther King Jr., there was the war in Vietnam. It became Johnson's consuming passion leading to his own political destruction. By 1968, there were 550 thousand American troops in South Vietnam. American bombings in Vietnam were on a par in number and intensity with those carried out by the allies in the second world war. Johnson did not know a way out of the quagmire. He had never come up against an opponent like Ho Chi Minh; that is, someone who could not be bought off with a dam or a promise as he attempted to do with the Vietnamese by advancing the idea of the Mekong Delta project as if it were a modified TVA project. The Kennedy advisors deserted him. McGeorge Bundy went off to the Ford Foundation after having encouraged American military engagement. Robert McNamara talked privately against the war even as he insisted on larger numbers of troops to be sent there. Administration officials were no longer welcome at universities to debate or get honorary degrees. Within his own party, Gene McCarthy of Minnesota and Robert Kennedy were insisting on a coalition government in the South, or any face saving device. Johnson's own vice president, the liberal Hubert Humphrey, while loyal to the end, privately urged a different course. It was not until after the 1968 New Hampshire primary against McCarthy, coming as it did two months after the brutal and costly Tet offensive, that Johnson threw in the proverbial towel. Johnson won the primary, but not by much, and his energy seemed to ebb. His new Secretary of Defense and an old friend, Clark Clifford, told him that if he continued the war he would have only the support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the hawk national security advisor, Walt Rostow. This was hardly the base of a political consensus. There were those who believed that the Johnson withdrawal from the nominating process in 1968 was a ploy and that he fully expected to be nominated at the Democratic convention in Chicago. The convention was tumultuous and no such possibility existed. Instead, Johnson supported Humphrey who then ran against Richard Nixon, for whom Johnson had great contempt, in the general election. Humphrey lost to Nixon in a close election. Johnson returned to Texas in January 1969, another casualty of the presidency, and an American original who died of a broken heart on January 23,1973. Johnson was survived by his wife, and two daughters, Luci, and Linda, who married Senator Charles Robb of Virginia when he was a marine officer during the Vietnam war. |
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