American History Hit - LBJ's Legacy

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

The Vietnam War or the Great Society? Which event looms larger in the history of the United States? The 36th President of the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson, is often weighed up in these terms - the balance between domestic and foreign policy. But what is his legacy? Could he be called the first President of our modern era?In this episode, Don is joined by Mark Lawrence, Director of the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum in Austin, Texas.Produced and mixed by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer: Charlotte Long.Email us at [e-mail] if you have any areas of history that you would love Don to explore.For more History Hit content, follow our newsletters here.If you’d like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!Complete the survey and you'll be entered into a prize draw to win 5 Historical Non-Fiction Books- including a signed copy of Dan Snow's 'On This Day in History'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Stanley Kubrick's 2001, A Space Odyssey, is set for release next week. The year has begun with news stories of war abroad and civil unrest at home. Just three days ago, sanitation workers on strike for their pay marched in Memphis with thousands of supporters. The march ended in violence, and the city was put under curfew. A month ago, Walter Cronkite wrote of Vietnam that It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy

and did the best they could. And your leader in all of this, Lyndon B. Johnson, is on the TV. He's been on for the past half an hour talking about the war in Vietnam, but now he seems to have switched to a different subject. With America's sons in the field far away, with America's future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world's hopes for peace and the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office,

the presidency of your country. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president. So LBJ isn't going to be president anymore. But you wonder, how will he be remembered? Hi, everyone. This is American History Hit, and I'm Don Wildman. Thanks for listening. Lyndon Baines Johnson, our 36th president, served from 1963 to 1969, five years and two months. First as vice president, assuming office for the remainder of Kennedy's term after the assassination,

then elected by a landslide over Barry Goldwater in 1964. Johnson left the presidency after a single term in January 1969 and retired to his Texas ranch where he would die four years later at the age of 64. Johnson's presidency was an eventful one. It has of late been undergoing a thorough reassessment, especially since his White House Oval Office recordings were made public a few years back. But it's a process that every U.S. presidency goes through at some point as time marches on and historians gain fresh perspective. But in Johnson's case, it seems almost more personal. Americans in the streets, most of the young people protesting the war, had so much to do with Johnson's downfall from 1966 onward. As they've grown older, distanced from those negative, very

emotional times. Johnson's positive presidential accomplishments have taken on more clarity, while his failures and dilemmas have begun to fade. Then again, there's a whole sector of conservative Americans who see him as the bane of American existence. Forgive the lousy pun. LBJ's presidency is a stark duality, profound legislative achievement at home next to conflict overseas leading to domestic turmoil. It's big stuff, and lucky we have an expert. Mark Atwood Lawrence is the director of the Johnson Presidential Library and Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin, author of The End of Ambition, the United States and the Third World in the Vietnam era from Princeton Press, along with numerous books and essays and reviews in so many outlets.

Mark Lawrence, welcome. Let's have it. Thanks. Sounds great to be with you. This will be a conversation about Lyndon Johnson, the president, but we'd be remiss not to mention his quarter century in the U.S. Congress. Twelve years in the House, elected in 1937 when he was only 29, then 12 more as a powerbroker senator. What transpires for him as president, passing multiple landmark legislation, has everything to do with his time in Congress, mastering the craft. talk to me about those early years. Well, I think you're right that those early years are easy to miss because so many things happened during LBJ's vice presidency and presidency. We can forget that this guy had been on the scene in Washington for a long time.

And the skills that he developed during that time in the House and Senate were, I think, really invaluable to him as president. I mean, no presidents other than maybe Franklin Roosevelt had such ambitions for passing transformative domestic legislation. and LBJ, you know, under the banner of the great society, really wanted to get down to work with Congress in a very big way. So he really knew how to make Congress work. And, you know, I think sometimes we forget that historically, Congress has been a pretty difficult institution, really, to put into high gear. Lots of presidents have been deeply frustrated.

Certainly John F. Kennedy was right on the eve of LBJ's time in office. but LBJ brought to bear an expertise and vast experience working within Congress, especially the Senate, and he was able to overcome some of the roadblocks that had really stymied previous presidents. And, you know, this really helps to, it helps. It doesn't explain everything by a long shot, but it helps to explain why he was able to get so much of his agenda passed, especially in 1964 and 1965. He was an FDR acolyte, wasn't he? A straight new dealer.

He had a passion for the every man American. I think that's right. You know, he came to attention as a candidate for the House of Representatives by hitching himself in the 1930s very strongly to FDR. He sort of out FDR'd all of the other would-be contenders for that Democratic seat from the whole country of Texas. What's interesting about LBJ to me, though, is that, you know, he was also a kind of political chameleon when American politics veered in more conservative directions during the 1940s and for much of the 1950s, and for much of the 1950s, he was able to go there too and to step back a bit from some of his early commitments to the New Deal and to a bold legislative agenda. I suppose in some ways he had to do that in order to

remain viable in a fundamentally conservative state like Texas. But it's easy to see those strong New Deal connections at the beginning of LBJ's career. Then of course, all that he accomplished under the banner of the Great Society as president. In the middle, he was kind of, he was able to tack back and forth in a way that they kept him in the the headlines at the highest echelons of power. Well, certainly with Barry Goldwater, there was plenty of talk about conservative versus liberal back in those days, too. It was very polarized discussion, but there was a much stronger center to the Congress, certainly. And LBJ sat right in the middle there. That's right. What's really striking, I think, about Congress in that era, and frankly,

for much of American history, is that both parties were big tense. There were conservatives and liberals and everything in between in the Democratic Party, and the same went for the Republican Party. So, you know, frankly, one can give LBJ too much credit as this master of Congress because, you know, at the end of the day, it was relatively easy to cobble together coalitions in that era. There were votes to be had on both sides of the aisle.

There were coalitions on almost any issue you could think of. And I think LBJ's real accomplishment as president, and maybe during his years as Senate Majority Leader as well, was in the art of coalition building. Right. But those opportunities were there for someone with LBJ's skills because of the very, very different creature

that Congress was at that time. We can't forget that there's a rising tide, economically speaking, in America that everyone's floating on at this point. I mean, times are good as far as the United States economy and power in the world coming out of World War II, especially. That's exactly right.

And frankly, that's one of the important distinctions I think to be drawn between Franklin Roosevelt, the other great liberal reformer of the 20th century and Lyndon Johnson, right? FDR famously comes into office at a time of real economic crisis in the United States. And so his liberal program of government activism was designed mostly to deal with a crisis, put people back to work, sort of fix the economy in ways that would hopefully, if all went well, put the United States back on a track toward prosperity. LBJ becomes president at a time of almost unprecedented prosperity, booming economy in the United States.

So he saw himself in many ways as completing the work of the New Deal. But it's important to recognize that fundamentally what he was trying to do was to make the booming American economy work for everyone, including those pockets of Americans, especially minorities, the impoverished in Appalachia in the inner cities, to make them part of this larger experience of, you know, prosperity sort of almost unprecedented in all of human history. The level of material splendor in the United States in the 1950s and 60s was so monumental. I feel lucky to be of age that I remember these times well,

but one of the aspects of that time, culturally speaking, was that the federal government was really seen as a solution and not a problem. That whole idea is introduced really under Reagan. where, you know, get the government out of our lives really comes later. Back in the Johnson age, certainly with Kennedy coming in, it was an exciting moment that solutions were being made, perhaps attached to the successes of the New Deal, if you perceive them that way. But this was an era of federalism as a positive element.

I think you're exactly right. And it can be difficult to think ourselves back into that era when so many Americans rallied around the idea that government could really be one of the, if not the, major force for progress in American society. And I think, you know, the story I would tell is that that really maybe has some deep roots in the progressive era at the beginning of the 20th century, but it really accelerates under the New Deal when there's a lot of evidence all over the place that government activism could really help ordinary people to recover from this economic crisis. And that remains a pretty pervasive idea over the next few decades. And of course,

it's powerfully reinforced by the Second World War. I mean, here, think about the Second World War. The federal government puts 16 million Americans into uniform, sends them all over the world to fight on multiple fronts, converts the American economy to a wartime footing, and presides over the beginnings of this vast period of American prosperity. So there was good reason to think at this time that, man, the government could really do a lot and was the, you. agent in American life that could command the resources, the expertise, the political will to make great things happen for the American people. And by the early Cold War, not just for the American people, but for the whole world. You know, there's a lot of carryover, I think, from the way in which Americans were thinking about what the government could accomplish internally within the borders of the

United States and the kind of role that it could have in bringing reform and progress, whether that meant economic advancement or democratization to much of the rest of the world. What a canvas upon which a personality like Glendon Johnson could work. I mean, he was famous for his style. The term the Johnson treatment is in all the books. Tell me about that from Congress right into the White House. What was his personal ability to influence events? That's a really good question. He's given a lot of credit from being this enormously persuasive person. And I think that's right. What's fact is. Fascinating is the enormous range of tools that were, you know, in his persuasive toolkit.

He could coax constituents or maybe more importantly fellow members of Congress through promises of future favors of sending money to their district, right? He could also threaten those he was trying to convince by threatened to withhold some of those same things. And he had every tool in between, carrots and sticks and, you know, and everything else you can imagine. He was not above literally grabbing someone by the lapels or, you know, leaning over them and getting inside their personal space, you know, to really make his point. So I think it's this combination of methods and personal style that have led some people to coin this term, the Johnson treatment, to capture just what a sort of strangely persuasive man this could be. I don't think people recognize, you know, the assassination shadows everything, of course, but Kennedy's view of the presidency and what,

What was really happening at the beginning of the 60s was an expansion of the presidency, an expansion of the federal role in American life. It was a very intentional thing. Everyone was seeing these good times and the economy was the engine. And suddenly this federal government could make events and programs and new spending initiatives happen like never before. And that's really where Kennedy's magic comes from, the days of Camelot. We have the answers.

When he's assassinated, of course, all that stops with a screech. that's what Johnson takes up. That's the beginning of his presidency, is to set that really into motion. I think you're right. You know, Kennedy had the aspiration. And he articulated that aspiration more famously, I think, than any president of the era that we're talking about here. You know, the United States could pay any price, bear any burden. You know, he was talking about foreign policy when he made that famous statement. But, you know, I think it's fair to say that that was his vision of an America, especially American federal government empowered by enormous resources and the dynamic energies of a younger population that was entering this new era of global leadership. That's all tied in neatly,

I think, with this aspiration to use power to bring reform and progress internally and abroad. But Kennedy had, as you say, sort of had limited success with that vision. He wasn't particularly effective with Congress. In fact, that might be an understatement. He really wasn't very effective at all in getting Congress to do his bidding. But so LBJ with this different skill sets enters office at a time when the public is pretty attuned to this idea of federal activism when someone with LBJ's skills would be ideally suited to making progress where Kennedy had not been able to accomplish too much. He didn't know really whether he would succeed in that election in 1916. I mean, be honest, he was a very colorful man and he had a lot of insecurities, as has been reported now in the aftermath.

But that election in 1964, especially coming off all the Kennedy magic in all those years, and he had a lot of problems with the Kennedys, as we'll discuss later. He wasn't sure whether he would be approved of by the United States populace. And indeed he is for many different reasons, including some new and modern media that's going to shift the election in his favor. but he just sweeps that election. Who knows? Maybe it's Kennedy Magic coming over to his side, but he wins in a landslide against Barry Goldwater, who wasn't the most appealing guy in the world for a lot of Americans.

LBJ must see this as a mandate, and he embarks on a hugely ambitious agenda to reimagine the nation's political life. He calls it the Great Society. When did that name come about? You know, it came about in the run-up to a speech that LBJ gave at the University of Michigan as a graduation speech in the spring of 1964.

So let's remember this is at a point when he hasn't yet gotten that mandate through the November 1964 election that you just mentioned. So it's striking evidence, I think, that LBJ came into office wanting to do big things, even without that mandate. He, of course, he hoped to get it. As you say, he sort of strangely despaired sometimes of his ability to get it. He was famously insecure. I think you're quite right in suggesting that.

the months leading up to the 64 elections, one of the places where you can really see that. In retrospect, it's a little bit of a head scratcher that he would be so uncertain about his chances when the result was so resounding, one of the biggest landslides in all of American history. But I think to give LBJ his due, he came into office really from the beginning, from the first hours, you know, wanting to go beyond Kennedy's vision of an activist government, not only to be more effective, but, you know, But even to become more ambitious, he had a grander vision of a war on poverty, of civil rights legislation, and in so many other arenas that would together comprise the great society. I suppose a simplistic way of seeing it is they were really seeking to prove that democracy

could work on the level that they saw it historically. I mean, at the same time, of course, we've got the Cold War brewing and this whole other way of life, this sort of more collective communism idea as the fix. But it's Johnson's idea that due to all the success we have and the power we have in the world, we can fix problems that have never been able to be fixed before. I'm going to do something here. It would take so long to discuss all the legislation that was passed in two years, really, 64, 65, into 66, that I'm just going to list it.

I mean, this boggles the mind when we consider how hard it is. We see it all the time, how hard it is to get coalitions built. I won't even make it through this list, but here goes nothing. Civil Rights Act 1964, Voting Rights Act, 1965, puts Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American on the Supreme Court, Immigration and Nationality Act 65 doubles immigration numbers, federal funding of education, first time federal spending was available for education in the states, Higher Education Act, 1965, National Endowment of the Arts, National Endowment of Humanities. Okay, I'm halfway through. I'm losing listeners as I speak because it's just amazing to see how much he did

in so short a time when you consider, I mean, we're two-thirds of the way through Biden's administration, and really it's been one or two things that have happened. It's incredible. It is. And I think to explain this extraordinary outpouring of legislative success, you have to factor in a number of explanations. As we've already covered, LBJ's peculiar blend of skills and experience and persuasive talents is part of the story here. The big tense that both parties were at this time and the availability of coalitions, the broad public support for activist government, for problem solving in an era of almost boundless prosperity. All of this, I think, has to be factored together. And frankly, too, I would put into the mix of explanation, something that you just touched on. Barry Goldwater

was, let's face it, a terrible candidate in 1964. And we can see in retrospect that lots of Republicans crossed over and voted for Lyndon Johnson and for Democratic congressional candidates as well. This had the effect of creating the illusion in some ways of even greater support for Johnson and the liberal vision than existed in fact. And of course, 1966 and beyond would show that, you know, there were some problems with the great society vision. And not all Americans were so strongly committed. But it was great for LBJ in some ways to have a problematic rival like Barry Goldwater. It gave him the mandate that was so important to him. but it also arguably got him in a little bit too deeply in ways that came back to cost him politically as time advanced.

One of those political upshots of this agenda was the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, two of which kind of made a huge shift in the political landscape of America and sets him up for, sets the country up, really, for a whole big chapter to come. He was famously not in this camp years before. I mean, he had made speeches that really colored him as a supremacist, even. How did he shift over to this? Where was that evolution for him? That is one of the big mysteries, I think, that remains more than half a century now after

his death about Lyndon Johnson. I think very broadly, there are two theories out there. One is that he was always committed to civil rights. It's just that he had to say the right things. He had to tack back and forth with the political wins in order to preserve his political viability so that when political circumstances became more favorable, he could act on his core beliefs. There's some evidence for that. He was for a man of Texas in the early 20th century, remarkably open to racial progress, remarkably friendly with an accepting of African Americans and Mexican

Americans with whom he came into contact. Another explanation is more has to do with evolution. You know, here's a guy who really was a creature of Texas in their first part of the 20th century, who tacked with the political winds, changed his mind, saw possibilities, saw social change by the late 1950s and early 1960s that caused him to believe that, you know, a new era was at hand and that there were great opportunities here not only for his personal legacy, but for the health of the Democratic Party going forward. And let's face it, too, you know, he was a person of some capacity, I think it's fair to say for compassion, for an understanding of the experiences of ordinary people. You can see this as far back as the New Deal. And it could be that by the late

1950s, he really saw what was going on with the flowering of the civil rights movement and sincerely attached himself to this agenda. I think the truth, frankly, is probably somewhere in the middle. I think there is some evidence that LBJ was an unusual figure for his time and place. He was relatively comfortable with the idea of progress on race. But it's also very important, I think, to factor in the ways in which the country was changing, in ways in which politics were changing in the late 1950s and early 1960s that kind of activated this potential that lay deep within Lyndon Johnson. By the end of 1965, 96% of his great society programs have passed. That's insane. I mean, that's an amazing accomplishment in two years.

Not even, really. I mean, in short order. Eventually, I guess at the end of his term, poverty levels have dropped from 23% to 12%. He has opened doors to education, to new media. I mean, all kinds of subtle changes have happened under his watch that is extraordinary. But Lyndon Johnson's problem was never going to be domestic, or at least getting this legislation passed, wouldn't be. It was going to be foreign policy. It was going to be Vietnam. And that's where really things begin to fall apart. I'll be back with more from Mark Atwood Lawrence after this short break. Hello, I'm James Rogers, and over on the history hit warfare podcast, I bring you cutting-edge military histories from around the world. Why was Sitting Bull such a remarkable leader? What was

Napoleon's greatest ever battle? How did the Cuban missile crisis almost turn the Cold War hot, and who dropped the world's largest nuclear bomb on the Arctic? Through interviews with world-leading historians, policy experts, and the veterans who served, we find the answers to these questions and so much more. So come and join us on the history hit warfare podcast, where we're on the front lines of military history. It seems worthwhile, Mark, comparing Lyndon Johnson with our current President Joe Biden, both longtime creatures of Congress, political animals for decades before they ascend to executive office, more than 20 years in Congress, each of them. Presidents more often come from being governors of states. There's a big difference between your career generating from the halls of Congress.

They also share a mission for better or worse that the federal government can fix problems. And interestingly, dangerously, they share a major overseas conflict throughout their terms. I mean, in Biden's case, it's several of them, Afghanistan and Ukraine. This is the tension, the foreign policy versus domestic. And in Johnson, it's going to play out in a fateful way. Yeah, you're absolutely right. These are such fascinating figures to compare to one another. And by the way, I think you didn't mention one of my favorite comparisons between the two.

Both of them were the kind of old geysers who were called on to be vice presidents for young charismatic upstarts. Kennedy and Barack Obama, they were sort of the wise old men who could bring their states or regions with them. But it's really fascinating that, of course, they both wind up in the presidency in their own right, even though they were quite a bit older than the man who was most pivotal to propel. their careers. You're absolutely right. I hadn't thought of that. That's amazing how they mirror each other. But you're right. I think you're right, you know, that the nexus between foreign and domestic policy is really interesting to look at in the case of both presidencies. And in LBJ's case, I think there's a kind of good news, bad news thing that's relatively easy to see. You know, LBJ achieves enormous successes

on the home front, but runs into all kinds of problems overseas. With Biden, obviously, he's had more struggles on the home front, though he's had some notable success. as well. But the overseas record for Biden, I think, has also been somewhat more mixed and has a lot more positives, I think, than was the case for Lyndon Johnson. Yes, it's true. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was a bit of a mess. I think even people who believe he did the right thing tend to argue that it wasn't handled particularly well. But Ukraine, and Joe Biden's handling of Ukraine, I think, has been a major plus, at least in the minds of many, many Americans for the administration. So at least these days, as Biden's administration advances, I think you almost have a reverse

LBJ situation where foreign policy is the one thing we can, as Americans, rally behind and see the good news, whereas domestic policy is much more divisive and challenging for the Biden administration. Johnson took office promising not to escalate the military efforts in Vietnam, but he did. So what was the... reason for his reversal? Well, you know, when he first had to start talking about Vietnam, it was before the November of 1964 election, right? He was, as we've established, you know, in office, finishing out JFK's term for a whole year. And during that year, he really didn't want to make a big deal out of Vietnam. He was afraid that a major foreign policy crisis would take

all the energy, all the congressional and public attention away from the domestic agenda that was really central to what he wanted to accomplish as president. So he really downplayed Vietnam. In the minds of some historians, deceptively so, right? He actually covered up the fact that Vietnam was likely to become a major, major problem after the election and that the United States would probably step up its military commitments. So I think what happens, long story short, is that after he is elected in November 1964, suddenly he really has to confront the Vietnam problem.

And he recognizes, probably accurately, that the only way to, prevent a communist victory in South Vietnam was to significantly step up the American military commitment, whether that would be bombing or ground forces or some combination of the two was up for grabs for a little while. But there was no question in LBJ's mind that once he got to the other side of the election, he was really going to have to do things that he denied the intention to do while he was out there running for president. I'm waiting for the evolution of this issue. World War I has now seen as the tease up World War II. And we kind of historically have, that's integrated into the learning nowadays for school kids

that one leads to the next. I'm waiting for Korea to become that for Vietnam. It's not really the discussion, and it should be. Yeah, but, you know, the connections between the two are really fascinating. And, of course, a lot of the same policymakers who made the key decisions in Vietnam had been at somewhat more junior positions in the bureaucracy during Korea. So they applied lessons, I think. One of the lessons that they applied, I think we could say, unfortunately, is that the United States needed to intervene in these places where communism threatened to engulf non-communist territory, South Korea in the earlier case, South Vietnam, in the later case.

But the United States could only go so far for fear of provoking Chinese intervention. And as we'll recall, I think, in the fall of 1950, the Chinese intervened in Korea, transforming a relatively limited war into this major confrontation that carried the risk of a superpower Armageddon, of a major confrontation between the great Cold War powers. So I think what American policymakers, in many cases, took with them was the idea that, look, it was really important to intervene in these faraway places, but you could only do so much. you had to be very wary of the possibility that these relatively small-scale wars could turn into major conflagrations if the United States did too much. So that the story of Vietnam becomes in many ways the Johnson administration and later Nixon trying to thread this needle, right, to find this middle ground to change the metaphor between doing too little so that an important, at least as policymakers saw at the time, an important piece

of global real estate would be lost to the communists, but not doing so much. that it could turn into World War III. And it's a different time. I mean, you've got television, which is the major factor. On the domestic side of this, war is a whole different matter because we're seeing what's happening. The young people are seeing on television the realities of war and our effect on foreign populations,

especially in the bombings, which is really horrific to people. And that's what Johnson steps up, and it immediately turns the tide against him. I think you're right. Right from the earliest phases of American escalations, in 1965, you can see the rumblings of dissent. And of course, that would grow over time, such that by 1967 and certainly 1968, the Johnson administration faced a major movement that was deeply critical of his management of the war. One thing we can easily miss is that

some of that criticism actually came from Lyndon Johnson's right. I think we have a kind of cliched notion of what the anti-war movement was like and what its point was. There's a lot of variation within it. And there were many Americans who believed that LBJ wasn't doing enough or bought into the idea that if you were going to fight it all, you know, you really had to go all out and really use all the force as the critics saw it that would be necessary to achieve victory. So LBJ was increasingly as time passed kind of in this very difficult middle ground where he was being criticized from the right by Hawks, who believed he wasn't doing enough. And increasingly, of course, as we all know much better, from people to his left who argued

that the war had been a big mistake from the outset and needed to be wound down over time. So LBJ was in a real political mess as time passed. And in his own office, he has, you know, the famous best and brightest. A whole kind of statistical thinking, a different kind of way of looking at foreign policy that's very kind of corporate and very numbers driven and divorced from the realities of the battleground, really, the battlefield. He's not served well by the advice he gets from his Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, and his general in charge, Westmoreland. There's a lot stacked against him. Yeah, I think you're right. You know, and there's a lot of continuity here between the domestic

scene and the foreign policy scene. As we've already mentioned, this was an era of great confidence in the ability to use American power and resources and know-how to solve problems. And I think, you know, the McNameras, the Rostas, the Rusks, and other architects of the Vietnam War bought into the same mindset. They believe they could use American power, whether it was economic power or political persuasion or military power in order to achieve American purposes in the world. And, of course, this mentality, though we might tend to celebrate it in connection with the advances on the domestic scene of the great society got the administration into a real mess in

Vietnam because it turned out that the problem in Vietnam really wasn't susceptible to American power and the way that those figures hoped it would be. I have to do the editorializing. I mean, yes, all of those ideas are absolutely, everything I'm saying, all of these big ideas of history are count, but in the end, Johnson comes down to a very personal level for everyone. I remember that as a child. I remember his speaking on TV. He was just not persuasive in the public sphere as he was in his own private world, in the governmental sphere. He just couldn't do it.

And I remember, you know, we were a Democratic household. I was raised by liberals. We didn't like LBJ just because every time he came on the screen, he just kind of bummed you out. Yeah, yeah. He had this sort of drone quality to his speaking. He wasn't very good at connecting. Let's be honest. Yeah.

I think that's right. There's a line that is stuck in my memory by a historian who's written about LBJ, that he was a man of Washington, not of the nation. I think that does capture something important about him. He was totally in his element on the floor of Congress, working the corridors of the House and of the Senate, in the proverbial smoke-filled rooms of Texas politics, you know, going back to the 1930s and 1940s. He was enormously persuasive, as we've discussed, in one-on-one settings. But he was not a great communicator. He was not a great speaker.

There's an interesting contrast here, I think, to be drawn between him and JFK, who I think you can argue was exactly the opposite. He was actually quite aloof. Many, many people who dealt with JFK have commented on the fact that he was reserved, he was cautious, he was aloof, he was hard to read, not terribly persuasive or engaging in a one-to-one level. But, man, you put him in front of a crowd. He really came to life.

And LBJ, not so much, right? Not a very good speaker. And it certainly cost him. We could do an interesting show comparing Kennedy and Obama the same way, famously that kind of personality. Great point, yeah. We're nearing the end here, so I want to understand what goes wrong. When he's in 1968, he's facing his reelection, or at least the potential of the bid.

In January, he makes the state of the union. They expect that that will be when he calls the shot as whether he's going to go for it or not. He actually delays that for a few weeks. What are the conditions in his party that make this an impossibility for him? Well, I think three things happen in March of 1968 that really tip LBJ's thinking toward his decision announced on March 31st that he would not run. The Tet Offensive occurs at the very end of January, first days of February 1968 in Vietnam, which reinvigorates all the criticism surrounding Vietnam. And I think really drives home to LBJ that this is not a problem he's going to be able to deal with effectively in the short term. It's going to dog him and his reelection chances in a profound way.

I think that there are lots of rumblings in the domestic and the international economy in March of 1968 that also drive home to LBJ that he can't have both butter and guns in the way he had been hoping he would be able to pull off. He can't fight a major war in Vietnam and continue to expand the great society. I think this is really demoralizing in many ways for LBJ. And then third, he runs into challengers within his own Democratic Party for the nomination. First, Eugene McCarthy, and then nightmare of all nightmares for Lyndon Johnson, Bobby Kennedy, LBJ's nemesis going way back to years before. This was really the nightmare scenario for LBJ because he so feared, Bobby Kennedy, this charismatic young man who could directly harness all of the love and affection for

the slain JFK. The combination of these three trends, I think, drove home to LBJ that he didn't have the ability anymore to govern effectively and maybe even to get the nomination of his own party. Isn't it ironic that a man who was the Senate Majority Leader, who was the whip, who could always organize the votes, et cetera, et cetera, has a party that is factioning right in front of him as president. This must have killed the guy. Absolutely. And I think, you know, there are many accounts of LBJ in that last year or so that describe him as really bitter toward his political adversaries in the Republican Party for sure, but very much toward people in his own party as well, whom he regarded as having betrayed him, right? They were there when the times were good. But when things got rough in

1967 and 1968, they had, according to LBJ, you know, abandoned him. And in many cases, thrown their support to Bobby Kennedy, which was the ultimate insult. Sure. You did not mention a big factor, which was his health. I mean, the man had a very bad heart, a 60 cigarette a day habit back before he quit in 1955. He'd had heart attacks. He knew that he was susceptible.

He worried about whether he would make it through the next term. That's a fair point. And there are many people out there. Biographers, memoirists, old friends and associates of LBJ, some of whom I interact with here the LBJ Library, who increasingly are arguing that it was LBJ's concerns about his health that drove him to announce on March 31st that he would not run. And I respect that. I think that that needs to be factored into an explanation, good explanation for a decision that has almost always, in past years, been explained entirely on the basis of his political problems. But I will be

honest, I think that if I had to rank order the explanations, I would still put this despair over Vietnam and the political fallout from his problems that were linked most directly to Vietnam as the most importance. So in 1968, he makes the famous speech, which I remember vividly. I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president. And it was over. Just his big face on the screen, I remember it. Sadly, he dies. But five years later, a young man at 64. Cigarettes, not good, people. I think it's amazing the circumstances of this era were now in and how it colors LBJ.

We see so much of federal government as the problem. Back then, it was the solution. When the feds showed up, the problem would get fixed, best in the brightest. And Johnson was the apex of this mentality. And his ultimate failures, well, were carrying the legacy of those shortcomings to this day. While some of us still want to believe that the federal government can make a difference, LBJ is still in the air, isn't he? absolutely is. You know, I think that his legacy, his reputation has improved dramatically in

recent years. You touched on this in your opening. As memories and controversies surrounding Vietnam fade a little bit, and as I think, at least for some Americans, there starts to be a new yearning for federal activism, for a stronger government role in American life to address questions of racial discrimination, of problems with immigration, policy of widening disparities of income and opportunity. Many of these problems are eerily reminiscent of the 1960s. And so maybe it's no surprise that some of the solutions that seem so obvious and compelling in the 1960s are, at least for some Americans, very much back in the air as a tradition that we need to dust off and see if it might be able to help us in the 21st century.

I'm sure a visit to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Museum, Presidential Library, would be a good idea. I hope you'll see lots of our listeners down there sometime soon. Mark Adwood Lawrence, thank you very much for joining us on American History Hit. Really appreciate it. Don, it's a pleasure. Thanks so much. Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit. I hope you enjoyed it. Please don't forget to like, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

I'll see you next time.