TOM PUTNAM: Good afternoon. I'm Tom Putnam, Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. On behalf of Tom McNaught, Executive Director of the Kennedy Library Foundation, and all of my Library and Foundation colleagues, I thank you 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 as 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 its 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 announce at halftime," LBJ allegedly urged, "that there are plenty of bathrooms with no lines at my Library," [laughter] 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 President 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 was that he was too young, referring to Kennedy as a lightweight who needed a little gray in his hair: "The forces of evil will have no mercy for innocence," he proclaimed, "no gallantry for inexperience." 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 in 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." [laughter]
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 serve as his running mate, 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 in 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 and enduringly important President." This new volume artfully combines LBJ in 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 columnist for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, as well as a CNN commentator. He's the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics, and editor of Deadline Artists: America's Greatest Newspaper
Columns. A former 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. Avlon talks about politics the way ESPN anchors wrap up sports highlights, captured perfectly by the title of one his bestselling books, Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America. Let me note that John is married to Margaret Hoover, who is President Hoover's great-granddaughter and who is here with us this evening.
Lady Bird Johnson once granted an interview with two students who were 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 bag of dry ice to make it look like Heaven. "Ah, ah, ah," Lady Bird said, "what makes you think Lyndon made it up there?" [laughter]
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 chagrinned 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 viewers as part our outreach statistics. [laughter/applause]
Well, 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 so masterfully honors. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming to the Kennedy Library Mark Updegrove and John Avlon. [applause]
JOHN AVLON: I guess the competition between political leaders never really ends. [laughter] But, Mark, this is an extraordinary book you've done, Indomitable Will. It is a portrait of a man by those who knew him, 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. 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, talk a little bit about that relationship and how they were received.
MARK UPDEGROVE: Thanks, John. I will answer the question but I do want to respond to my dear friend and my colleague, Tom Putnam, by saying (a) the story is true; and (b) I think we had more visitors last year than the JFK Library. [laughter]
The two were completely different. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson were fundamentally different human beings. I think that LBJ was keenly aware that he was succeeding somebody who was so graceful and who almost set an impossible standard by which to be measured, partly because of his martyrdom.
But Liz Carpenter, who worked for Mrs. Johnson, worked for both of the Johnsons and was kind of the Dorothy Parker of the political set in the 1960s, encapsulated the differences between the two men very eloquently. She said that, "I think that the Presidents can be summed up in one word. Kennedy inspired, which Johnson was incapable of doing, and Johnson delivered." I think that's absolutely true.
JFK, in my view, begs to be judged by his words. He's so inspiring, he's so eloquent, he's so visionary: "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ich bin ein Berliner. We choose the moon." Johnson begs to be judged by his deeds, what he accomplished, what he did. He wasn't telegenic. He wasn't particularly graceful as a media personality, but he delivered. He knew how to get things done.
If you look at his legislative record, this is a formidable President, probably the most important President legislatively in my lifetime. Look at the full sweep of the Great Society and how it resonates today, it is absolutely remarkable.
JOHN AVLON: I do think 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. Yet, someone who, even in our sort of demythologized age, was such a vivid figure. You quote person after person who worked for him, talking about the complexity of the man, the way that he embodied all these contradictions that were vivid and in-your-face, that he could be profane and patriotic, and inspiring and take you off balance, and intimidating. I wonder: The choice to do this oral biography, is that, in part, a way to capture the different facets of this complex personality?
MARK UPDEGROVE: I think the challenge that a biographer has in capturing Lyndon Johnson is he is so enormously complex. The way that I ensured that this was even-handed and balanced – which I think a lot of the biographies about Lyndon Johnson are not – is to get myriad impressions verbatim. To ensure that those impressions are mixed, because very often people have these intrinsically contradictory views of LBJ and what he meant and how he conducted himself.
But 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 human psychology so brilliantly. So he would treat you differently than he would treat Tom or Margaret or whomever. So your impression is valid, but might completely contradict theirs.
JOHN AVLON: Let's go a little more into that, because there's a famous Johnson treatment where he flatters and he cajoles and he intimidates to get legislators to do what he wants. But beneath that is, you just said, psychology. I was struck by one quote in 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 they would stand up under 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?
MARK UPDEGROVE: I think it was probably a combination of both. Jack Valenti talked about him being fascinating. He looked at him like he would a panther. It's a beautiful animal, but he was ready to pounce. 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 very quickly.
He had a very facile mind. So I think it's a combination of both, John.
JOHN AVLON: That's so key to his effectiveness, the unparalleled -- literally unparalleled -- legislative record that he was able to achieve, bringing those skills as Senate Majority Leader to the Presidency that we may not see again. There are real questions about whether a man like Johnson in our media-saturated age could become President. Then, his very tenuous relationship between who he was in private, so effectively lobbying legislators, and then he kind of stiffened up in front of the cameras a bit. It's that image gap you talk about.
One thing beneath that, one of the people in the book talks about how he seemed to be trying to impress the Harvard academic crowd with his public persona when he stiffened up. One of the fascinating things you see with Johnson, and maybe is shared with Nixon in terms of their feelings about Jack Kennedy, is that real resentment for Northeast elites, that "We came up the hard way, " -- a real distrust and anger and resentment at these perceived elites. Talk about how that motivated him and was a real contrast between him and Jack Kennedy.
MARK UPDEGROVE: Yeah, I think he had a deep resentment for the Harvards, he would call them, or the Northeastern establishment. The Kennedys in so many ways epitomized that. He would call meetings together in his office and he'd say, "It's very interesting. 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 of the United States from Southwest Texas University Teachers College." It's an amazing thing.
I think he did resent them 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 some way, he wielded his countrified, Texan personality almost self-righteously to kind of show these folks.
But the interesting contradiction -- and again this is a man who is so complex and so rife with contradiction -- is that he almost modeled a Presidential personality, which he only assumed in front of the cameras. It was completely contrived; it had nothing to do with Johnson. It was totally inauthentic. As my friend Hugh Sidey, who was a long-time columnist for Time magazine and knew Johnson, covered Johnson, said, "It was a nervous bow to the Harvard faculty." Because it just wasn't quite Johnson and the way that Johnson was so effective is when he was Johnson; he just let himself be himself. That's how he got things done so effectively.
JOHN AVLON: That's probably a good opportunity to segue into a semi-soft ball, which is your favorite Johnson story, the one that kind of archetypally communicates that earthiness and persuasiveness.
MARK UPDEGROVE: There's a conversation in the book that I recount, and it would be almost impossible to relate it and do it justice; you have to hear it or read it. It's Johnson calling the scion of the founder and president of the Haggar slacks company. He's ordering slacks, custom-made slacks, and it shows his penchant for micromanagement and his tendency toward crudity in his worst moments. Because he gives very specific anatomical detail [laughter] 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 farfetched; come on, that's ridiculous.” But it's true. It really happened.
I will say of the 643 hours of taped telephone conversations, which are featured prominently in the book, there's not one that even comes close to this level of crudity. But those who knew Johnson don't deny it's part of his personality. His personality is so broad and so deep that he was certainly capable of that, but you've got to hear it.
JOHN AVLON: It's pretty remarkable even in transcript, let me tell you. But it does communicate a couple things. One, they talk about he would fixate so intensely on achieving a certain goal – in this case, getting a pair of pants that fit just right –and nothing would stop him from achieving that particular goal. And at the same time, he flatters them and then he'd criticize them and this sort of fascinating yo-yo that you see.
MARK UPDEGROVE: At one point, John, he says, "Now, now, you've got to get the pants here right away. I need them for summerwear down at the ranch. Nothing's more important." Nothing more important than six pairs of customized pants. But at the very end of the conversation, Joe Haggar, who is completely taken by surprise that the President of the United
States is calling him to order pants, said, "Where should I send them?" And he says, "White House." [laughter] It's just a wonderful conversation.
JOHN AVLON: It's a good motivational tool: There's nothing more important than this pair of pants.
MARK UPDEGROVE: If I can relate one more story.
JOHN AVLON: Sure, please.
MARK UPDEGROVE: It's a light story. People will talk about how difficult it was to work for Johnson. We might talk about that later. And he was a really difficult taskmaster, but he expected nobody to work harder than he worked.
But there's a wonderful story from a guy named DeVere Pearson, who was a White House Counsel in the LBJ White House. He talks about the days of the transition from LBJ to Nixon, and Johnson wanted to make sure that everybody on his staff was taken care of, that they had a place to go after working 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. Again, given his penchant for micromanagement, he always knew who was there and who wasn't.
DeVere Pearson goes out to Los Angeles to interview for a white shoe firm, a very good, topnotch law firm in Los Angeles. He's meeting with the partners in this beautiful conference room, and a secretary comes in, very flustered, and says, "Mr. Pearson, the President of the United States is on the line for you. The President's calling." And the partner says to him, the lead partner says to him, "You know what? You need to take this. We'll adjourn from the conference room and let you take as long as you want. We'll come back when you tell us to." So he gets on the phone and says, "Mr. President?" He says, "Yes." He says, "Mr. President, I don't know if you know this, but I signed out of the White House. I'm not there today." He says, "Yes, I know." He says, "Well, what can I do for you, Mr. President?" He says, "Oh, nothing. I just thought the call would help." [laughter] So that contradicts sort of the ruthless Johnson that you hear of in lore. Everybody who worked for him has a story of his great generosity.
JOHN AVLON: That level loyalty, which you said was the preeminent political virtue. When you're looking and going through, compiling the transcripts – 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 get this sense of Johnson, as it was, in real time, trying to convince someone to go his way?
MARK UPDEGROVE: I think it's just an indomitable will, which led to the title of this book. He wanted things and by god, when he wanted them he found a way to get them done. So you hear the intensity with which he conducts the business of his Presidency. And it's interesting, because while the tapes of Richard Nixon are a blemish on the Nixon record – they sort of condemn Richard Nixon by the light of history – the telephone tapes of Lyndon Johnson vindicate him.
We didn't know these existed. It 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. So when Mrs. Johnson consented to opening them in the 1990s, they had no idea what was on these tapes, absolutely no idea. As you listen to them, I think they shed very positive light on the Johnson legacy.
JOHN AVLON: 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 memory, the legacy of civil rights is ever-clear, ever-more present in our 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 giving the Johnson treatment in person to the Alabama Governor, George Wallace. It's a remarkable interpersonal persuasion at a pivotal moment in history. I don't know if you'd care to maybe read it to the audience. It's on the lefthand side there.
MARK UPDEGROVE: I'll happily do this. Let me set the stage. Wallace resisted the notion of sending federal troops into Alabama when the voting rights issue was at play, and Alabama was almost at a boiling point. Wallace is called to the White House and like JFK, LBJ had a rocking chair in his Oval Office. 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. [laughter] And Johnson would rock the chair up and literally lean over them [laughter] and look down at them. Now, bear in mind as I mentioned, LBJ's six feet-three inches tall, and George Wallace is five feet-four inches tall. So it's like a snake over a mongoose. [laughter] It was ridiculous. But I'll read the passage:
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 the power. That belongs to the country registrars in the State of Alabama." And Wallace insists that, no, he didn't have the legal authority.
Johnson says, "Well, George, why don't you persuade them?"
He says, "Well, I don't think I can do that."
He said, "Now, don't shit me about your persuasive powers, George. You know, I sat down this morning and when I got up, all three of the TV sets" – I'm going to just quote this – "all three of the TV sets in my Oval Office were on and you were talking to the press, George. And you were hammering me, George. I heard you, you were hammering me."
He said, "No, no, Mr. President."
He says, "No, no, no, you were hammering. And you were good." He said, "You were so good, I almost believed it myself." [laughter]
But then at the very end of the conversation he says, "Now, George, you've worked your life in politics. Let'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 and your State of Alabama? Do you want 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.
JOHN AVLON: Definitely not. Let's talk about Johnson's commitment to civil rights, because it confused a lot of people. Here he was, an archetypal Southern Democrat. One quote -- he was referring to the stereotypes about himself before he became President -- he said, "Oh, this old Confederate, people are asking why am I advancing civil rights." He had to rebuke and challenge many of his mentors, Senator Russell in particular. But he formed this cross-aisle coalition to get civil rights done.
Talk about the roots of his commitment to civil rights. Did it have to do with the fact he grew up in poverty? There's one anecdote about one of his personal aides recounting the troubles he had driving through the South, and then the legislative skills it took to pass this with bipartisan support.
MARK UPDEGROVE: I think, to Johnson's psychology, he felt things deeply. Deeply -- whether it be the sting of the judgment of the Eastern establishment or people living in poverty. He declared famously a War on Poverty in this State of the Union speech in 1964. 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 formative experience that he talked about in the most important speech of his political life, 1965, when he's talking about the importance of civil rights. The experience was between his junior and senior year in college when he taught school in the very small town of Cotulla, Texas, which was principally populated by Mexican Americans who were largely forgotten. These kids, the image of these kids in poverty and the victims of bigotry and hatred were just seared in his conscience and his consciousness. He never forgot those kids. When he got to the White House, he would say to his staff, "Don't forget about those kids in Cotulla. Don't forget 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.
There are two stories that really show how the Civil Rights Act of 1964 came about, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which ended the Jim Crow, really legal apartheid in this country. The first is with Richard Russell; you mentioned it, John. Richard Russell was a Democratic Senator from Georgia, who was a friend and mentor to LBJ. He realizes, in order to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, he has to run over to Richard Russell. He invites him to the Oval Office, and they had this very tense conversation. Russell says, "You know, you have the legislative muster to get the Civil Rights Act passed. I don't think Jack Kennedy had it, but you have it. But I'll warn you, if you do it, you'll lose the Southern states to the Republican Party, and you may well lose the election in 1964." Johnson, this great creature of power, hears this and quietly replies, "If that's the price for this bill, I will gladly pay it."
It's just tremendous political courage. While we think of Johnson, we think about the means of Lyndon Johnson, all his powers of persuasion, how he horded power 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 them over to his side. There's a conversation I recount with the Senate Minority Leader, Everett Dirksen, in which he says – Dirksen's from Illinois -- "I was just at your state fair in Illinois, and I went to an exhibit and it's the Land of Lincoln, and you're worthy of the Land of the Lincoln, and I'll make sure that if you pass this bill, you'll get proper credit." 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. There's a certain civility with the way that Washington behaved in that time we don't see in our current age.
JOHN AVLON: To that end, when the Senate aide Bobby Baker -- there's a quote in here -- which he said was one of Johnson's favorite. He said, "Any idiot can kick a bar down, but it takes a pretty good carpenter to build one." There's that sense of it's not about destroying, it's 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?
MARK UPDEGROVE: His favorite Biblical quote was from Isaiah: "Come, let us reason together." I'm confident that if he saw Washington today, he would think that there is a dearth of reason and a dearth of togetherness. There just isn't the unity. 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 one another. Their kids don't play on the same baseball team or go to the same ballet class. Their wives aren't playing bridge together as they did in that day. I think he would lament the lack of civility that we see in Washington today. I think that would be his greatest disappointment.
JOHN AVLON: In the intervening past several decades – and we're going to get to Vietnam in a second which, no question, cast a huge shadow over his legacy in the '70s and '80s – the sheer amount of legislative accomplishment, in 1965 in particular, the way you could see him acting as both Chief Executive and Senate Majority Leader, that unique set of experiences that very rarely do we have in one man, that enormous amount of legislation that passed that really creates the America we know. Talk about 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 it didn't get at least the credit that it deserved in the eyes of the immediate aftermath of history.
MARK UPDEGROVE: I think he felt that political capital was tantamount to green stamps.
Do you all remember green stamps? You collected these stamps and you put them in a book and if you didn't redeem them, 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 them. That's what he did with 1965. He knew that 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. Maybe 1933 compares when FDR was ushering in his New Deal. Actually, in my office, I have a shadow box. You've seen this.
JOHN AVLON: Yes.
MARK UPDEGROVE: All of the pens that LBJ used to sign legislation throughout the course of that one year. And in one box you have pens that signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Immigration Act of 1965 -- the most 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 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. He knew it wouldn't last. And he was prescient; it didn't last.
JOHN AVLON: So what created that political capital was the landslide win of 1964. We are in a President re-elect year, too. I don't think anyone thinks the current President could hope for a landslide of those proportions, but talk a little bit about the way Johnson approached that re-elect effort against Barry Goldwater. Goldwater defeats Nelson Rockefeller. The map begins to shift. As Johnson -- and Moyers has said, the South begins to vote Republican for the first time in that year. But Johnson really, I think, won 45 states, maybe 44. Talk about Johnson's approach to getting that landslide win.
MARK UPDEGROVE: Well, it was a no-holds-barred campaign, without question. I think the interesting thing is not so much Johnson in '64, it's Goldwater. Goldwater realizes he doesn't have a chance of winning. He really does realize that from the beginning. You hear that in his oral history in the book. He knows that with the martyrdom of John F. Kennedy and the ascension to the Presidency from Lyndon Johnson, and the admirable job that Johnson does in his first year, 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. The two remain friendly throughout the course. They even have a meeting at the Oval Office in which they 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 gain advantage.
JOHN AVLON: That's a remarkable moment …
MARK UPDEGROVE: It is.
JOHN AVLON: … given the amount of history being made and the tensions, that these two nominees come together and say, "We will not try to manipulate race for political purposes," when that's been so much the story of American politics up to that point.
MARK UPDEGROVE: He also had one of the worst taglines: "In your heart, you know he's right." Which is akin to saying,“Take this medicine because it's good for you. Might not taste good, but it's good for you.”
JOHN AVLON: I think one of Johnson's supporters switched that around and said, "In your guts, you know he's nuts." That didn't help. [laughter]
But Goldwater does come across as very gracious and there is a sense of deep disagreement, but civil disagreement, that I think does speak to that bygone era. 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.
MARK UPDEGROVE: Yes, you're right. He was the last President before Bill Clinton in 1998, I believe, to throw money back. I think it was $3.2 billion that he put back into the federal coffers. Now, I will say, John, that there was some political pressure there, that the appetite for legislation among the Republicans in the House and Senate had waned significantly by that time.
To a certain degree, it was dictated by the Republicans.
But Johnson was very fiscally prudent. If you look at how much was accomplished during the course of the Johnson years legislatively, and how many programs went into effect, they weren't particularly expensive by today's standards.
JOHN AVLON: Yeah, at least at first.
MARK UPDEGROVE: Rright.
JOHN AVLON: Let's talk Vietnam. Foreign policy. One of the things that struck me in reading the book is how much Johnson had been influenced by, as we all are, the examples in his own lifetime, of the weakness at Munich when he was a young Congressman. What 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. He even criticizes Ike for not stopping Castro from taking power. That life experience, this determination that strength in world leaders matters, leads him into Vietnam, down a road that he believes must be done, and he believes can be done quickly before the '68 election.
Talk about that approach to world affairs. Maybe it doesn't resonate across the generations as clearly, that conviction about the importance of resoluteness, indomitable will.
MARK UPDEGROVE: 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 II. When Neville Chamberlain went to Munich and struck an agreement, appeased Adolph 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 II.
There's a chapter by this name, he says, "There will be no men with umbrellas." He's of course referring to the hapless Chamberlain. He's 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 would fall. Moreover, it would embolden the Chinese and the Soviets to grab land elsewhere in the world. So he thought he was preventing World War III and believed that to his dying day that you had to take a stand in Vietnam.
There's an interesting conversation though, John, two conversations that I relay. Both happen to be on the same day. One is with Richard Russell, again, his friend and mentor, Democratic Senator from Georgia. Another is with McGeorge Bundy. 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. 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." It's so prescient.
But 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 in 1968. He desperately wanted to spend his final 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.
JOHN AVLON: And that famous picture where he's anguished, listening to the tape recorder as he's listening to one of his sons-in-law from the front lines. It's personal.
MARK UPDEGROVE: Exactly. You all may know the photo that John is referring to. He is bent over in pure anguish on the Cabinet Room table listening to his son, Chuck Robb, in Vietnam relating his experience in Vietnam.
And it's interesting in terms of iconography, the Johnson Presidency is 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 anguish of Vietnam.
JOHN AVLON: There's that sense that 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 was that White House bubble and not being able to comprehend what was going on with the protests.
MARK UPDEGROVE: It's interesting. One of the things I relate in there -- Lynda 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. It couldn't be anything but a limited war, because he didn't want the Chinese 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 war was waged.
JOHN AVLON: When he gets the memo from Under Secretary Ball, it's the one dissenting voice. Up to that point, the wise men had all been in agreement. Then, there's this one dissenting voice, a 75-page memo. Then, he's just anguished as slowly he realizes that maybe the dissenting voice is the correct one.
MARK UPDEGROVE: There's one chapter that I devote to a memo that very few people know about. It's open to the public and it's at the LBJ Library, but it's a memo from the CIA in which they talk about what would happen if you pulled troops out of Vietnam, what would be the effect on America and the world. They essentially conclude that it could be done. It's the paradox of Lyndon Johnson that he didn't do anything with that memo. I don't know what his reaction to that memo was; it's lost to history. But I think the real fear he had is that it would
have this tremendous demoralizing effect over the American populace, and that we would lose our confidence and we would lose ground.
JOHN AVLON: There's one other incident that 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 one liaison who was in communication with the Nixon campaign. Talk a little bit about that incident because it's fascinating, and I hadn't heard much about it.
MARK UPDEGROVE: Madame Chennault was the wife of the man who commanded the Flying Tigers in World War II. She essentially acted as a conduit between the Nixon campaign and the South Vietnamese. 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 with the Nixon Administration.
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 win the Presidency. Johnson doesn't do anything about it; he just worries about what this revelation would do to America and the world at this very sensitive time. So he goes to Hubert Humphrey and he tells Humphrey about this. Humphrey decides that it would be unpatriotic to reveal this in last days of the campaign. It would be too upsetting. It would be too destructive a thing to do. It's very courageous on Humphrey's part, but you wonder what would have happened in history, had this revelation been disclosed to the American public.
JOHN AVLON: One other revelation in the book, at least to me, regarding Humphrey was who Johnson wanted Humphrey to pick as a Vice Presidential nominee.
MARK UPDEGROVE: Daniel Inouye, the Hawaiian Senator. He wanted to do it because it was one other barrier. This is Johnson who passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and '68, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He appoints the first African American Cabinet member and the first African American Supreme Court member. 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. This is a phone conversation, by the way, and Humphrey says, "Old conservative Hubert, I just can't do it." Humphrey is anything but old and conservative. It's such a contradiction.
JOHN AVLON: We're going to take questions from the audience in a bit, but I don't think there's any way to round out the reality of the man without talking about his wife, 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 – besides 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 correlations.
So when you're doing an intense courtship, the book that it wouldn't occur to me to give out entirely is Nazism: An Assault on Civilization. [laughter] 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 some of the principles which she believes and which she has been taught to revere and respect. LBJ. September 1, 1934."
MARK UPDEGROVE: So this is a book about Nazism, in 1934, well before they reared their ugly heads to the world. And it shows the world view of this ostensibly provincial couple from Texas, and they had a great view of the world.
But you can't assess LBJ in and of himself. The Johnsons were a package deal. I think most people saw them that way. One of the things she talks about – as hard as it was to work for Lyndon Johnson, you had Lady Bird Johnson sort of as a buffer – one of the things she said is, "I always made sure I walked behind him and said thank you." [laughter] I really do believe they came as a package deal. There's one aide to the Johnsons who says … Most aides to Presidents never have a meal with the President 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.
I think it's easier to understand LBJ when you understand Lady Bird. I thought about this, and it took me about two hours to construct this 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 calm, she allowed him to pass the heat of the moment and think more deliberately about something, think of the long term, because he's a very mercurial guy.
JOHN AVLON: In that mercurialness, so many highs and lows in such a comparatively short period of time and we were talking earlier just about the bracketing of his Presidency from the 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 little "He grew up in the rural farm.” He's got a visionary stare going forward of determination, indomitable will.
Then, three years later, he's depicted as King Lear. 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 it was a case where imagery overtakes accomplishment, that that perception, the public perception of Johnson didn't keep pace with his actual reparative accomplishment up until now?
MARK UPDEGROVE: You talk about those 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. As John mentions, you see this picture of him. It's this oil painting. He looks strong and stolid. It would be the envy of any politician, Man of the Year. Then, that one three years later; 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. 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 long, cold shadow of Vietnam was still very much in evidence. But in 2012, I think that shadow is beginning to recede.
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, just in his tenure, poverty being reduced from 20% – one out of every five Americans – to 12%. 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.
JOHN AVLON: I was struck, on one final note, his parting gift to other world leaders was a photograph of earth from space. That did seem to sum up his longer view and the great pride he took about that mission that would ultimately reach the moon.
MARK UPDEGROVE: There's one great triumph at the end of his Presidency and that's the Apollo 8 mission, which in some ways is as significant as the Neil Armstrong/Buzz Aldrin mission, Apollo 11 mission, where they land on the moon. Apollo 8, 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 hovered 60 miles from the earth's surface. It happened to be on Christmas Eve when the astronauts, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders 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 was probably the most tumultuous year in American history, save some of the years of the Civil War. So that's his parting gift.
One anecdote if I can go back to Lady Bird Johnson really quickly, John, before we take questions. When LBJ got married, it was after a six-week whirlwind courtship 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.
JOHN AVLON: So to speak.
MARK UPDEGROVE: Or romanced her into submission. They get married and he has to hurriedly buy a ring, and he does so from Sears and Roebuck. It's a $2.50 ring, which Luci Johnson still wears to this day. Well, after he leaves the White House several years later, he's on vacation in Acapulco, I believe, and he's sort of berating her, "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 did it take you three years to do that?" And she said, "Why, darling, I was just waiting to see if the marriage would last." [laughter]
JOHN AVLON: 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 there, and there are ones on either side.
QUESTION: I would like to ask you to comment a little bit more on Bobby Kennedy and LBJ.
MARK UPDEGROVE: Well, there's no way to sugarcoat it: that was a tough relationship. The two just were bitter rivals and enemies. And it's interesting, my predecessor's predecessor at the LBJ Library was a gentleman named Harry Middleton. Harry talks about having a very candid conversation with LBJ about that relationship. Harry characterizes LBJ as kind of like Will Rogers; he never met a man he didn't like. I would revise that somewhat, although Harry knew the man and I didn't, he never met a person he didn't want the approbation of. He desperately wanted people's approval, and he would never get it from Bobby Kennedy. He said, "We could have spent a lifetime trying to be close, but there was just too much dividing us." 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 elegantly and so gracefully.
JOHN AVLON: The Kennedys are so cool and Johnson is hot. We'll flip over to the other side, we'll toggle between.
QUESTION: Hi, I was wondering why Johnson accepted the Vice Presidential nomination when he, I think, had a lot more power in the Senate. He couldn't foresee, obviously, that he would become President.
Then, second part of that is as Vice President was he kind of relegated to the side by the Kennedys? You talked about how Kennedy was inspirational and Johnson was able to get things done. I was wondering if there was ever a time when they could work as a team, and if Kennedy had had a longer term in office, whether Johnson and he could have worked as a team to accomplish Kennedy's agenda.
MARK UPDEGROVE: Well, let me answer your latter question first and your former question second. I think that there's a great example of their partnership with NASA. It illustrates the personalities and the strengths of the two men. LBJ was an early advocate of a robust American space program when our space program was feeble at best. One of the pens that Eisenhower gives out when he signs the law creating NASA is to Lyndon Johnson. He was just such a proponent of it.
JFK appoints him to head up the space commission when he becomes President, and he asks LBJ whether it's possible to send a man to the moon by the end of the decade. LBJ looks into it and concludes, yes, we probably can do that. LBJ helps that by really trying to help build NASA into this strong institution that it became. Johnson writes this memo saying, “Yes, it's possible.” And JFK goes out and he gives that very memorable speech, "We choose the moon." There's the visionary and he captured the imagination of all Americans when he said that. I think it inspired us all.
Let me 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 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. LBJ asks very pointedly, "Well, 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 going to become President of the United States." And that's something that Rayburn, who just despised Nixon, couldn't abide. I think that LBJ does it for the party. He does it for the country, in large measure.
QUESTION: Did he play any significant role 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.
MARK UPDEGROVE: Johnson uses JFK's martyrdom, in part, to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through. He says very pointedly to lawmakers, "This is what our President would have wanted. This is what John F. Kennedy, our fallen President, would have wanted. You owe it to him and to this country." He exploited the death of John F. Kennedy to get it passed. I don't know if Kennedy could have done it. I think it would have been very difficult for a lot of people to accept a Northeastern Democrat getting civil rights passed. Just as it took Nixon to go to China -- Nixon, a 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 a large extent resisted civil rights, partly out of political viability earlier in his career.
QUESTION: I'm sorry, but was he quiet during Kennedy's Administration about civil rights?
MARK UPDEGROVE: 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.
QUESTION: Apocryphal or not, I've always enjoyed the story of LBJ calling on Bill Moyers at a prayer breakfast, that he wasn't speaking loudly enough and he said, "Speak up, Bill." And Bill responded, "I wasn't talking to you, Mr. President." [laughter]
MARK UPDEGROVE: It's a true story.
QUESTION: But beyond that, Moyers, of course, has a very deep spirituality and sophisticated social ethic, and I wonder what kind of influence, or not, that had on LBJ as far as policies were concerned.
MARK UPDEGROVE: It's hard to say. I think that the two had a very close relationship. I think it was sort of like a surrogate son for LBJ. 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 Bill's telling, he's the prodigal son. He leaves the Administration; I think there was some bitterness between them; I don't know how the relationship ended. But I think he was influenced by all his aides. I think to some degree Bill and the late Harry McPherson were consciences of the Johnson Administration.
JOHN AVLON: I'm going to just interject here. Dick Goodwin -- as a former speechwriter I can't resist -- but so talented, such an iconic part with the "We Shall Overcome" speech and the Great Society speech. What was their relationship like and the contributions that he made?
MARK UPDEGROVE: Well, I think Goodwin was ultimately a Kennedy guy. I think his loyalties lay with Jack Kennedy. But his great contribution to Lyndon Johnson, John, as you just pointed out, was the "We Shall Overcome" speech. That's the speech that LBJ gives on March 15, 1965, after the bloody events in Selma, Alabama with the fire hoses and the police dogs, and all those sorts of things. 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.
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. He invokes the phrase from the Negro spiritual that becomes the anthem in the civil rights movement, "We shall overcome." He says very poignantly, "And we shall overcome." John Lewis talks about seeing that speech with Martin Luther King, and it was the only time that Lewis saw Martin Luther King weep. King looks at Lewis and says, "We shall overcome. We will get this voting rights bill pass, and we shall overcome." A very poignant moment. So if Dick Goodwin did nothing else for Lyndon Johnson than pen that speech, he did more than enough.
QUESTION: The military management of the war, obviously, was a big failure. 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 was transferred out in, I guess they say, disgrace. We had got up all of our 500,000 troops. He was asking for a couple hundred thousand more. But he claimed that McNamara told him to ask for that many more. What is your comment about this three-legged stool concept? And was there, in fact, three people that were really running the show over there? Thank you.
MARK UPDEGROVE: If there were three people, I think you missed the one that was probably most influential and that's Dean Rusk. Dean Rusk, who was President Kennedy's Secretary of State, and remained on …
QUESTION: I'm talking the military management now.
MARK UPDEGROVE: I understand. You mentioned McNamara, who was the Secretary of Defense. I think the person who was most influential to Lyndon Johnson in terms of the operation of the war was Dean Rusk. I can't comment on how the war was run militarily. But ideologically, the reasons that we were there were most clearly articulated to LBJ by Dean Rusk. Dean Rusk reinforced the notion that if you don't keep the Communists at bay, we're going to get World War III. I think that was the guiding principle that kept Johnson in the fight in Vietnam.
But I can't comment, unfortunately, about how the war was run militarily.
QUESTION: There are several slightly contradictory or different views that you've had here.
One was of Johnson really resisting civil rights in the Senate. You then have him using
Kennedy's legacy and inspiration to say "Do this for our former President." Then, there's also the sense of his being moved by these events. I have to ask, to what extent was he interested in civil rights? Would he have pushed it in the absence? Or was there part of Kennedy's legacy that then tipped him over in that direction? Obviously, it's a complicated dynamic.
MARK UPDEGROVE: 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 Texans. Texans were fundamentally opposed to civil rights at that time.
Johnson, on the other hand, was an advocate for civil rights early on. His father was an advocate for civil rights. He stood up against the Ku Klux Klan, risked 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 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 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, a fallen President, to get this through a reluctant Congress. That's what he did, he exploited it essentially. But I'm confident that given Lyndon Johnson's heart that he would have wanted civil rights, regardless. Does that answer your question?
QUESTION: Yes, thank you.
QUESTION: Thank you very much. This is another question in regard to Vietnam. I've been thinking about this for a while, and I keep thinking about all the tortured photographs I saw of LBJ in regards to what to do, what not to do, and whatever. I just was wondering whether, in fact, you gleaned from any of the tapes that he felt boxed in. Meaning that, many of us went through the Cuban Missile Crisis and that was very key as to how we perceive what could have happened when we came so close to nuclear war. So what we saw is a President who said, "I'm not going to allow the military to run over me based upon what happened at the Bay of Pigs."
I wonder if there was any influence on Lyndon Johnson, who was part of the National Security Council during that period of the Cuban Missile Crisis, that spilled over? But 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 wonder if you gleaned any of that in his thinking at all, because I've wondered that for a long, long time.
MARK UPDEGROVE: 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. One was not to trust the military at face value; to question, to constantly question their recommendations.
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 "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." You just see he's wrestling with this and he doesn't know what to do about it. He really doesn't know what to do about 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. If you think about the Johnson treatment, if you think about how effective he was one-on-one with somebody and how he could influence somebody so effectively, if he had gotten Ho Chi Minh in a room, wouldn't it have been interesting to see what would have happened in that conversation? That's really what he wanted.
At one point, he offers these pork barrel promises to Ho Chi Minh. He says, "If you pull out of South Vietnam, I'm going to 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. We'll pour money into your country." He couldn't believe that Ho Chi Minh would resist that because there's no Congressman from Arkansas or Montana who would resist that. [laughter] It'd bring money in.
QUESTION: 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 -- 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. I think it was an incomplete answer that you gave. Certainly, there were problems with the 1957 Civil Rights Act, and that's why we needed eight years later, the Civil Rights Act of 1965. But 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. So it may have been toothless, but it had a bite.
MARK UPDEGROVE: Let me clarify one thing. You're absolutely right. I didn't deny that it was the 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. What Johnson said when he took over the reins of power, after fashioning his statement after Kennedy's famous statement, "Let us begin," is, "Let us continue." He wanted to continue on the legacy.
There's this great conversation between Martin Luther King and LBJ on his second full day of Johnson's tenure as President. He calls Martin Luther King, as he did business leaders and political leaders and civil rights leader, he calls everybody, does a remarkable job in keeping the country stable in the aftermath of the assassination. He says to Martin Luther King, "I'm going to support them all. I'm going to support all those policies. And I want you to bring in your ideas. Come visit me. Next time you're in Washington, Martin, come see me. Let's talk about how we do these things right." He forms this coalition, this partnership with Martin Luther King that's very effective. One of the things that King says to Johnson is that, "There's no better way that you can honor the late President than by pursuing his policies." And Johnson says, "I'm going to support them all."
QUESTION: Thank you.
JOHN AVLON: Final question.
QUESTION: This book's about Johnson and 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?
MARK UPDEGROVE: Well, I think it's a bygone era. His Washington is long gone in Washington. But I think, again, I would go back to civility. One of the things you hear is that Johnson is ruthless. I think that that's a misconception. I don't think Johnson's 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. He didn't vilify or demonize his opponents, generally, because he knew that if they resisted him effectively on one thing, that he would have to work with them on another. He took the long view.
I was at a conference a couple weeks ago in which Barbara Bush said that compromise in Washington has become a dirty word. That's something that I think would disappoint Lyndon Johnson profoundly. I think he would probably reach out to lawmakers, to anyone who had influence in Washington – Grover Norquist, Rush Limbaugh, all the lawmakers, all the liberals, Michael Moore – and he would grab them by the lapels and he would say, "Come, let us reason together."
Thank you all very much. This has been great. John, thanks so much. I really enjoyed this. [applause]
THE END