[This is a series describing the 12 Post-War American
Presidents from a British perspective.]
Lyndon Johnson was internationally rather an underrated
President. He lacked JFK’s charisma and latterly became identified with the
disastrous Vietnam War. But this coarse, rather ugly Texan was an extremely
effective politician, his Great Society
programme improved the lot of the poor and the aged. He was one of the most
successful American Presidents domestically; he actually got things done, a
considerable merit in appraising the contribution of any politician.
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| Lyndon B. Johnson |
Lyndon Baines Johnson
(1908 – 1973), always known as LBJ, was born in a small farmhouse in rural
Stonewall, Texas. He knew poverty in his rather unhappy childhood with his
distant struggling father and piously depressive mother. There was a political
side nonetheless with his father being an agrarian populist member of the Texas
legislature in six elections with many good contacts. Lyndon worked his way
through college and became a school teacher and public speaking tutor;
sympathetic encounters with the poverty-stricken Mexican-American community in
Texas made a deep impression. LBJ’s driven ambition was remarked upon and a
critical biographer wrote "Johnson's
ambition was uncommon - in the degree to which it was unencumbered by even the
slightest excess weight of ideology, of philosophy, of principles, of beliefs.”
Standing at 6ft.4in, gawky but articulate LBJ began to make
political friends, most critically with Sam Rayburn, then a congressman but
later to be House Speaker. He joined the staff of Congressman Richard Kleberg,
as legislative secretary from 1931-35, and was chosen leader of a group of
congressional aides. A New Deal Democrat and admirer of FDR, he was appointed
head of the Texas National Youth Administration in 1935, giving educational and
job opportunities for young people. In 1937 he himself became a US Congressman
for the Texas District covering Austin. LBJ was rapidly advancing.
In 1934 LBJ had married Claudia Taylor, nicknamed “Lady
Bird”, who was a shrewd, commercially-acute political wife who helped him
greatly. She was born in Texas and had strong Alabama connections. Henceforth all his close family, his ranch and
even his pet beagle used the initials “LBJ.”
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| LBJ and Lady Bird |
In 1941 LBJ ran for the Senate but was beaten in an election
by a narrow margin, for the one and only time in his life, by the sitting Governor
of Texas, an erstwhile celebrated hillbilly crooner and evangelist “Pappy”
O’Daniel. When WW2 broke out, LBJ joined the Navy; he was mainly involved in
writing inspection reports on the efficiency or otherwise of US naval shipyards
for James Forrestal, the Navy Secretary. He briefly saw action in the South
Pacific, castigating the under-investment in men and materiel in that crucial
theatre of the war. Later he chaired a committee, similar to the Truman
Committee, trying to eliminate waste and incompetence on naval contracts.
Johnson was growing in political stature.
In 1948, Johnson won the election for a Senate seat; he
defeated former Governor Coke Stevenson in a rough fight where electoral fraud
was evident on both sides. LBJ was much assisted by John Connally, JFK’s
companion on that fateful day in Dallas in November 1963. LBJ just squeaked in
and was for a while known sardonically as “Landslide Lyndon”.
But the US Senate was the ideal hunting ground for LBJ. He
made it his business to know all the personalities there, birthdays, wives and
children’s names, home town and so on. He ingratiated himself with senior
senators, became adept at wheeling and dealing while mastering the complex
procedures of Congress. He was chairman of an Armed Forces sub-committee and
was noted for his efficiency in issuing unanimous reports and for his effective
use of the Press. In recognition he was
elected the Senate Minority Leader for the Democrats, while Eisenhower’s
Republicans were still in the ascendant in 1953. The Senate swung back to the
Democrats and by the start of 1955 LBJ had reached the eminence of Senate
Majority Leader.
He was reckoned to be one of the most effective Majority Leaders
in history. He ensured smooth passage of acceptable parts of the Eisenhower
legislative programme and sensibly amended others. The business of government
was not obstructed. His powers of persuasion, known later as “The Treatment”,
were memorably described by two journalists, Evans and Novak:
The Treatment could last ten minutes or four hours.
It came, enveloping its target, at the Johnson Ranch swimming pool, in one of
Johnson's offices, in the Senate cloakroom, on the floor of the Senate
itself — wherever Johnson might find a fellow Senator within his reach. Its tone could be supplication, accusation,
cajolery, exuberance, scorn, tears, complaint and the hint of threat. It was
all of these together. It ran the gamut of human emotions. Its velocity was
breath-taking, and it was all in one direction. Interjections from the target were
rare. Johnson anticipated them before they could be spoken. He moved in close,
his face a scant millimetre from his target, his eyes widening and narrowing,
his eyebrows rising and falling. From his pockets poured clippings, memos, statistics.
Mimicry, humour, and the genius of analogy made The Treatment an almost
hypnotic experience and rendered the target stunned and helpless.
Strong
men quailed under the onslaught and many of the toughest nuts on Capitol Hill
dreaded being submitted to this moral torture. Johnson was a workaholic, a hard
taskmaster to his staff who either loved or loathed him, or did both. His
merits were warmly appreciated in the rarefied corridors of power; Eastern
sophisticates often misjudged him – the fine journalist Theodore White later
dismissed him as a crude provincial and described his manner as “cornball”-
very far from the mark.
LBJ
had a monstrous ego, believing himself capable of anything. He decided to run
for President in 1960 and was traumatised when the Democratic nomination went
to the much less experienced Kennedy. JFK had everything LBJ lacked: good
looks, extensive education, a patrician manner, riches, popular appeal and that
elusive quality “charisma”. In an unexpected twist, in retrospect a
masterstroke, JFK asked LBJ to be his vice-presidential running mate. JFK,
knowing he faced a close election, needed to win Electoral College votes in the
South and believed (correctly) LBJ could deliver them. The Democratic liberal
wing was appalled as was Bobby Kennedy, long a bitter enemy.
While
JFK as President did much to placate him, basically LBJ was unhappy as
vice-President. He was sent on foreign tours, headed various committees but
knew he was far from the centre of events. Then Fate struck with the
assassination on 22 November 1963 and LBJ became the 36th President.
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| LBJ takes the oath of office 22.11.63 |
LBJ
managed the tragic transition with a degree of dignity and kept most of the
Kennedy administration in place, Rusk, McNamara, Dillon and Bundy, although
Bobby Kennedy soon moved on. He decided on retaining the Kennedy-era Civil
Rights programme, capitalising on the US horror at the loss of their President,
Soon enough in 1965 LBJ enunciated his own programme – the much vaunted Great Society.
There
was an enormous volume of broadly “Civil Rights” legislation in the mid-1960s.
First LBJ had to ensure his election in his own right. This was relatively easy
as the Republicans chose as their candidate the hard-line conservative Senator
Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Goldwater had sensible things to say about the size
of government, but his time had not yet come – he was an inspiration of Ronald
Reagan’s brand of conservatism 16 years later. LBJ won the 1964 election by a
landslide.
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| LBJ, assisted by Humphrey and the Trumans signs the Medicare Act |
Ending
racial injustice and discrimination was a hard mountain to climb. An Immigration
and Nationality Act ended quota systems for new Americans. Segregation was
outlawed in all public places and obstructive voting qualifications abolished.
Equal opportunity legislation tried to open up the job market to all Americans
regardless of racial origin. The material wealth of black citizens steadily
improved but there soon grew up a radicalised minority (as seen currently in
the Arab world) for whom the Great
Society was never enough. Violence and rioting in black areas became
frustratingly widespread. LBJ’s well-meaning idealism gave way to new polarised
attitudes. Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968. Integrating and
absorbing racial minorities is difficult enough in the UK and Europe; the size
and history of the American complexities are truly daunting.
LBJ’s
Achilles heel was Vietnam. When he took office the US had contributed 16,000
“advisers” to the South Vietnamese Army in the civil war. Many US policymakers,
including LBJ, subscribed to the “domino theory” whereby the loss of one
country to communism would trigger off the loss of neighbouring ones. This
drove LBJ and some of his advisers to seek a decisive military victory in
Vietnam, although the truth was that they were facing a national independence
movement, albeit communist led. The Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964 saw
Congress passing a resolution giving the President wide discretion in pursuing
open war against the North.
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| LBJ with the US Army in Vietnam |
US
involvement escalated rapidly. By the end of 1968, there were 495,000 US troops
in Vietnam and 30,000 had been killed. The Vietcong and the North Vietnamese
Army were tenacious fighters, despite huge quantities of bombs being dropped,
the notorious Agent Orange being deployed to defoliate the jungle and heavy
casualties inflicted. As the war progressed public opinion in the US moved
against LBJ. In time key advisers McNamara and Bundy resigned, Bobby Kennedy
and William Fulbright spoke against further US involvement. Horrible bloodshed
during the Tet Offensive, the My Lai massacre and dozens of other ferocious
engagements was prime-time TV viewing in every US household. International
hostility to the war was almost total with even normally reliable ally Britain declining
to join the crusade. Massive anti-War demonstrations gravely strained US social
cohesion.
LBJ
still wanted another term as President but he only narrowly defeated Eugene
McCarthy in a New Hampshire primary in January 1968 and prudently announced he
would not run in November 1968. Bobby Kennedy became the Democratic front
runner but he was gunned down in Los Angeles in June 1968. The Democrats
settled on respected but predictable incumbent vice-president Hubert Humphrey
but he lost to Richard Nixon, who won in many Southern states embittered by
LBJ’s revolutionary changes to their supremacist traditions. The Nixon era was
to be a stark contrast to the Great
Society.
Opinions
on LBJ differ widely. His former press secretary George Reedy called him “a bully, sadist, lout, and egotist”. Others
thought working for him was a nightmare, but yet the greatest privilege of
their lives. Dean Rusk, his Secretary of State for 5 years claimed he never
heard a cross word from him. His sense of humour was robust; on being obstructed
by a congressional group he said “Now I
know the difference between a caucus and a cactus – in a cactus all the pricks
are outside.” Taking political guests to join him in his Turkish bath, he
would shock them by grabbing their genitals, appraising them critically and to
their disadvantage; he proudly christened his own member “Jumbo”! He could be
scathing about his political opponents; on Gerald Ford, then Senate Minority
Leader he opined: "Gerry Ford is so dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same
time."
A larger-than-life and flawed character, LBJ died of a
heart attack in Texas in January 1973. He was only 64. His Administration’s
misreading and mismanagement of Vietnam almost rent his Nation asunder. History
will judge him more kindly as his enduring legacy is the significant
alleviation of poverty and the bold championing of the civil rights of all
Americans.
SMD
6.09.14
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014
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