Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Preserving Presidential Legacies with Mark Lawrence

Episode Date: January 6, 2023

Today on Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon and guest Mark Atwood Lawrence talk about Presidential Libraries. Mark is the director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum situated in Austin, Texas. Mark answers questions about Presidential Libraries: how are they funded, what kinds of documents and artifacts does a Presidential Library preserve and why does it need preserving? Sharon and Mark also talk about the LBJ Presidency itself, as well as Lady Bird Johnson’s role as the first lady and the public’s expectations of first ladies and vice presidents. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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president? Is it like all the books about that president? Well, I have the answer for you today because I am chatting with the director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library. And in addition to getting into what libraries are, we also have so much to discuss about the legacy and importance of LBJ as an American president. So I think you're going to love this conversation. Let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. Thank you so much for joining me today. I am really excited to chat about this. This is a topic that I find very interesting. I think people are going to find very interesting.

interesting. I think people are going to find very interesting. I want to start off by talking about presidential libraries, because people know they exist, right? Like, yeah, I've heard of that. But people like people think, why would a president need a whole library for some papers? Maybe you can enlighten us. Well, first of all, Sharon, thank you so much for having me. It's really a pleasure to join you. But yeah, I'd love to talk about presidential libraries, one of my favorite subjects. Yeah, it's interesting. The modern presidential libraries go back to FDR.

And the circumstances surrounding the establishment of the Roosevelt Library are really important to bear in mind, I think, in answering your question. Before FDR's presidency, all of the papers and objects, you know, that a president created and collected across his presidency were just the personal property of the president at the end of their term in office. And over time, there was a tendency for this stuff just to scatter, or just to, you know, sit in maybe that president's attic or his children's attic or something like that. But FDR had the brilliant idea, I think, of creating a library that would hold all of this stuff, and it would be made available to the American public in order to look at the historical record and form their own judgments, write books and articles and take a critical view of what

American history had been during the period of the presidency in question. And of course, every president thereafter saw the logic in this, and the system became more and more routinized. So the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library is part of that nationwide system that goes back to FDR. So we hold, we make available the materials, both artifacts and documents from the Johnson presidency. And at the very core of this mission is to make all of that available to the American people so that they can learn about and ask about and be critical of their nation's history. I love that. I love that these documents, these exhibits, these collections belong to the American people because the power of the

government comes from the American people. And I love that that's the mission. This is our history. This is our shared history. This is not just a dear diary of Lyndon Baines Johnson. This belongs to all of us. And Lyndon Johnson was like all of the other presidents, I think it's fair to say, since Roosevelt was totally on board with this mission. He said at the library's dedication in 1971, very famously, you know, it's all here with the bark off was his famous quote. There was no attempt to hide things or manipulate things or shape the history. The basic goal was to make the material available. And I think the modern presidential library system

is very much founded on that idea. How are presidential libraries funded? And who gets to decide where they go? And who oversees the construction and the collections? This is a huge undertaking. This is not like, I got some papers and some boxes. This is a big deal. And so how is it decided how things will be funded and where they go? Well, for the most part, I would say the president and oftentimes the president's family make that decision.

Where would their library be situated? And unsurprisingly, they're mostly situated and they're entirely situated in places that had some meaning to the president in question. So LBJ, of course, represented the district where Austin sits. This was a city of great importance to his whole career. And of course, the University of Texas at Austin is here as well. So LBJ saw the logic of putting the library on a university campus so that scholars and students would come and use it as well as other Americans who might be motivated for different reasons. And the president and their family, as I say, typically makes that decision at some point during their term in office, and then they get to work raising the money and building

the building. And who pays for it is an interesting question. The federal government certainly puts some resources into these facilities. But in each case, there's also a private foundation that raises a good chunk of the money and how much of the money they need to raise in order to establish an institution within the federal system has changed over time. But in every case, there's a private foundation that has done the bulk of the fundraising and then continues to raise money once the library is up and running to support the operations and programming of the library. Can you talk a little bit about the difference between what kind of materials go into a presidential library and what goes to the National Archives or the Library of Congress or other groups that would be the keepers of these kinds of artifacts? How is that decided?

Well, we are in fact part of the National Archive system. So each of the libraries since FDR, really since Herbert Hoover, FDR's predecessor, is part of a system of presidential libraries that sits within the National Archives and Records Administration. So the big headquarters of the National Archives is up in College Park, Maryland, just outside Washington. And they, of course, hold vast amounts of material. But they also administer these 13 or 15, depending on how you count, presidential libraries that hold the materials from the presidency in question. And in terms of what's in these institutions, it is essentially all of the papers that literally sat within the White House on the day the

administration came to an end. A team come with some trucks and box it up and take it away, first, of course, to the headquarters of the National Archives, and then eventually it goes out to the Presidential Library once it's constructed. But it is first and foremost documents, and in the era of Lyndon Johnson, that meant paper. Increasingly, it means emails and digital files, And that's a complexity we can certainly get into. And the libraries also hold artifacts from the presidency in question. So presidents collect an enormous number of artifacts, very often gifts that they receive on ceremonial occasions or from foreign governments and so forth. or from foreign governments and so forth. And so we have hundreds of thousands of artifacts.

I think people sometimes maybe don't expect that a library, I suppose that calls to mind reading, you know, words on paper. We also have a huge array of artifacts in our collection, just as all the other presidential libraries do. I think there's this misconception when you talk about artifacts that they're things that are ancient. That is like a Ming Dynasty vase, you know? Yes, exactly. That is like a Ming Dynasty vase. You know, it's like a Greek marble sculpture. Those are artifacts in people's minds.

But in the broader scope of history, if you think about, you know, like, well, what would eventually become an ancient artifact? Well, it would undoubtedly be the gifts that a foreign country gave to the leader of the United States. Someday, we might not feel like it's an artifact as lay people, but someday, it's going to be the definition of artifact. And that's essentially what they are. I love that. It's not just like,

welcome to our paper repository. Yeah, exactly. I agree. The word artifact somehow conjures up something from ancient times. And that's it. We do have a few very, very old items because sometimes heads of state would give Lyndon Johnson some ancient artifact that would in fact be his gift. So we have some very, very old items. But for the most part, it's really much more mundane items like clothing, like campaign memorabilia, buttons and bumper stickers and posters. LBJ collected an enormous number of political cartoons, which are in our artifact collection. And then just a gigantic array of items that, as I said before, were given to the president at various occasions across LBJ's time in the presidency. Hmm. There are a number of laws that govern what a president is supposed to leave to the National Archives. I wonder if you could talk about how the United States decides, what are you supposed to leave here for us, and we'll come and take it, and it's going to become part of our shared history. How does that work? You know, really, since the 1950s, at least, the laws have changed over time. But certainly, in recent times, the assumption has been that every document, whether digital or on paper, every item that's given to the president, in fact, belongs to the American people.

So there really aren't many exceptions to this. I think there are minor provisions that allow a public official to, you know, purchase an item that they were particularly attached to. But it's actually very difficult to take something that was given to you as a public official, and above all the president, in their capacity as a public official and claim it as one's own possession. And I think, you know, this is something that has changed a lot, let's say, from the 19th century or the early 20th century. And I think the real winners have been the American people who have not just the opportunity, but the right to see these things and to understand them as part of their history and not of some other person who had a life

separate from his public role. I know the LBJ Library has tons of Lady Bird's papers, documents, voice recordings. I know because we've talked about this in a previous episode, we've listened to her voice, listened to her recordings, you know, like her daily voice recordings of her sort of daily diary. Is it standard that presidential libraries include things that belong to the First Lady? It is, yes. Each presidential library certainly has collections that reflect the life and the activities of the First Lady. Now, I think with First Ladies, there is a slightly different standard in terms of what might be considered private correspondence, family documents, and that kind of thing. So there are slightly different sets of rules that govern whether that kind of material is the property of the government and

should be made available at least immediately to the American public. But by and large, the First Ladies' artifacts and documents are subject to the same guidelines I was mentioning before. The default setting is that they are part of the library's collection, and they belong ultimately to the American people. Yeah, I can see what you're saying that there might be a bit more differentiation between the First Lady's public activities on behalf of the presidential administration, and a First Lady as a non elected person who does not hold elected office, they're, you know, like private is a letter to my daughter kind of situation. This is really

neither here nor there. But the role of first spouse, up to this point, First Lady, as an unpaid position, it's, it's a tremendously important role. And it is, especially more recently, a tremendous amount of work, full-time job. I mean, Lady Bird was very involved with Lyndon's campaigns and his life and his administration. But it's so interesting that we have very, very high expectations of the first spouse, and we pay them zero dollars. Exactly, exactly. And, you know, there were some interesting first ladies from across earlier periods of American history who really played important roles in their husbands presidencies. But I think the history that you're talking about really begins with Eleanor Roosevelt,

someone who really played a prominent role in public life, both during FDR's presidency and, of course, after FDR died, she continued to have a very important and high profile on the national, and for that matter, international scene. And each First Lady since then, you know, there's certainly been some exceptions, but I think the assumption has been that First Ladies would play an important role, at least on certain policy issues that were important to the president. Lady Bird was certainly one in that category. Absolutely, she was. No question. It is interesting that we almost expect, as the American public, we almost expect more of the first lady than we do the vice president.

Would you agree? That's a really interesting question. I've never thought about that exact question. I think you're probably right in many ways. I think there's a tendency to look to the First Lady as someone who is very close to the president, probably a close advisor to the president, and also as someone who plays an important role in the civic and almost moral life of the nation. And whether that's fair or not is, I suppose, a different question. But I think you're right that there is a tendency to see first ladies in that way. Whereas vice presidents, there's certainly, there's a lot of variation across time, but many of them have kind of faded into the background in some ways. It's true. Yeah. I mean, I think maybe you can make the case, let's say Dick Cheney,

super important vice president, very powerful, very close advisor to George W. Bush. I think that's probably true. But if I asked you who were FDR's vice presidents, you might be able to come up with Truman if you thought about it. But would you be able to come up, not you personally, but I'm talking like general American public, who are his other vice presidents, plural. Yeah. But yet every single person knows who Eleanor Roosevelt is. And it just speaks to this sort of collective subconscious expectation of what the first lady will do. And I find that fascinating. And you're right that that role has changed so much over time. A lot of early first ladies were like, I don't want you to run for president. That's a bad idea. Don't run for president. It is impossible to imagine a scenario

today in which somebody who is the nominee of a major political party, that their spouse is not out there on a stage doing everything they can do to get them elected. Y'all afraid of ghosts? How about ghost peppers? It's the moment you've been waiting for. The ghost pepper sandwich is back at Popeye's. A buttermilk battered chicken breast served on a brioche bun with barrel cured pickles. And here's the the best part it's topped with a sauce made from ghost peppers and oncho chilies if that doesn't send a chill of anticipation down your spine nothing will get your ghost pepper sandwich today at popeyes before it ghosts you for another year this episode is brought to you by dyson on track dyson on track headphones offer best in class

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With ANC on, performance may vary based on environmental conditions and usage. Accessories sold separately. Visa and OpenTable are dishing up something new. Get access to primetime dining reservations by adding your Visa Infinite Privilege Card to your OpenTable account. From there, you'll unlock first-come, first-served spots at select top restaurants when booking through OpenTable. Learn more at OpenTable.ca forward slash Visa Dining. I have heard, and you could tell me your thoughts on this, that LBJ was a little resentful of this concept of like, why would I be the vice president? You know, like, I have decades more experience than you, buddy. Now, maybe not in a maybe not

in a confrontational mean way. I don't know the specifics of that. But this notion, you know, like is a text in of like, why would I be your vice president? Can you talk more about that? Yeah, absolutely. I think you're exactly right. LBJ was resentful, I think is probably the right word of the fact that this young upstart who really, let's face it, didn't have much of a Senate record to run on, appealed so much to the American people, whereas LBJ, who'd been in this public spotlight and had a position of real authority for years and years and years, really couldn't get traction in the race for the Democratic nomination. So I think, you know, LBJ in the vice presidency was a kind

of sad figure in many ways. This energetic and dynamic and very effective politician had to take a backseat. And Kennedy clearly wanted to keep LBJ out of the limelight and working on kind of minor issues in the background. And I think this was really a very depressing experience for LBJ. And part of that, no doubt, was his sense that, look, I'm the one who actually has achieved things in the last 15 or 20 years of American political life. And here I am, overshadowed by this young upstart who really has just one thing over me, which is that he looks good on TV and speaks well. Yes, he's a good speaker. His wife is beautiful, and he has young, adorable children.

That is what we're electing people for. I can see how he would be incensed. And of course, I also understand the American public's fascination with Kennedy, of course. But I can understand from LBJ's perspective, like, why are we going with young and cute instead of experienced? And, you know, maybe I'm not as cute, but I got the stuff. Yeah, it's so true. Look at the people who'd been president, you know, I got the stuff. Yeah, it's so true. Look at the people who'd been president, Truman and Eisenhower, even FDR going back a little bit further. These were maybe not especially telegenic people, but they were people who had really kind of paid their dues through service in very prominent positions and worked their way up. So this was the world that LBJ had risen in and probably expected for at least much of his career that the same rules would apply to him. I want to talk a little bit more about LBJ's

legacy, because he has a complicated legacy, frankly, like all humans do. But of course, it's much more public when you're the president. And he had a number of absolutely incredible achievements under his administration. I'm thinking specifically of Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act, strengthening federal social safety net programs, Great Society. Like there's all of these things that we can look back on now and be like, he really picked up the baton and ran with it as president. And then that gets overshadowed at the end of his presidency with Vietnam, how deeply divisive the Vietnam War was, how unhappy some people were, the level of unhappiness that some people had about US.S. involvement in Vietnam.

I would love to hear your perspective of his legacy as a whole. What do you think that people who are studying him as a president should know about him? How should we judge his legacy? I love this question. It's one of the subjects that I spend a lot of time thinking about. I think you're quite right that for many years, LBJ was really overshadowed by Vietnam. That's what people tended to remember from his administration. And frankly, I think to the extent that people remember the civil rights bills or the war on poverty, there was a tendency to attribute those things to JFK. And not without some reason, because some of those bills actually did have their origins in the Kennedy years. But I think what we've come to

realize as time has passed, and maybe passions around Vietnam have cooled a little bit at least, is that LBJ was a political dynamo who, yes, built on many of the proposals that originated in the Kennedy administration, but took them to levels and achieved political success in a way that would never have happened under John F. Kennedy for a variety of reasons. And really, by 1964, 1965, was very much forging his own legacy, doing his own things that were really near and dear to his own heart, his own political agenda. So, you know, we know this array of domestic policy issues as the great society, and that's a great catch-all, but it can sometimes distract us from the fact that there was so much under that umbrella. There was environment and healthcare and immigration, and of course,

civil rights. There was consumer protection and criminal justice reform and education and on and on. One can go just a staggering, maybe with the exception of FDR, unprecedented degree of success in just getting the legislative agenda through. And of course, many of these bills continue to shape American life to this day. Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, Pell Grants, right? There's a lot of policy initiatives that originated in the Johnson period that continue to shape our lives. I'm not sure how well that's known. Everybody knows Head Start, everybody knows Medicare, but I don't think many people know exactly where that came from and who signed that legislation into law in the 1960s.

So Vietnam will always be part of LBJ's legacy. And I think that's fair. I, myself, in my own writing have been rather critical of LBJ's decision making about Vietnam. I think that is a real part of his decision making. But, you know, as you mentioned, he's a very complicated figure, and there's a lot of different components to his legacy. Ultimately, one of the interesting questions to meditate on is how the same person gave us this incredibly destructive war, and all of these policy breakthroughs that many of us, and I would put myself in this camp, would regard as real steps forward for the United States. That's exactly right. His policies were not just like fluffy, popular things. They were substantive. And they have, by and large, stood the test of time. And as you

mentioned, other policies that have turned out to be really good programs that have benefited millions of people, really is a testament to his political acumen. And I would love to hear you talk a little bit more about why you think he was able to achieve these things, when perhaps, even if they were JFK's ideas, why you think JFK would not have been able to get those across the finish line. Well, this is especially true with respect to civil rights, which are, I think, the two big bills in 1964 and 1965 are LBJ's proudest accomplishments. I think I would certainly say that, and many people would as well. And I think it's correct to say that JFK would not have been able to get those bills through. Perhaps some more watered-down version of that legislation Kennedy might have been successful in pushing had he continued on in office. didn't. And first and foremost was the fact that LBJ was from the South and could make the case to many Americans in a way that was very difficult for someone from Massachusetts. He could speak with greater credibility to people in, not necessarily in the Deep South, where resistance

was still pretty strong, but perhaps in the border states and in the West. I think it probably counted for something that LBJ spoke with an accent that sounded something like theirs and came from experiences that people in those parts of the country could relate to. very profound and broad sympathy for JFK to call on Americans to basically take seriously an agenda that probably wouldn't have gotten as far as fast under Kennedy, and really to make a big push. And so I think that's one of the major reasons why in 1964, LBJ was able to achieve great success with the Civil Rights Bill. It's never lost on me that when he assumed the presidency, that the nation was so distraught over Kennedy's wildly public assassination. And those images of JFK Jr. saluting his, the riderless horse, you know, like the images truly were gripping they had just lost a baby america's hearts were really with the kennedys he could have been a do-nothing president

who was still popular because he could have just ridden those kennedy coattails and been like, I'm so sad too. I share your mourning. Let's just get through this. He could have literally done very little, done next to nothing, and still had great popularity because of the assassination, at least from my vantage point, maybe of a different one. But instead, he chose to not squander the opportunity. He did not squander the opportunity to do all that he could in the know, he had first come to political prominence as a new dealer in the 1930s, very much dedicated to this idea that government can be a force for good in American life, that governmental activism was a good thing. And, you know, LBJ backs away from that a little bit in the 1940s and 1950s as the political winds change in the United States.

But I think it's fair to say that he had always been dedicated in his heart to that activist notion of government. So when Kennedy called on Americans to pass the torch to a new generation, we'll pay any price, bear any burden, all of that really activist rhetoric that's so famous surrounding Kennedy, I think that probably spoke to LBJ. And this was something that the two men really shared in common. So I think it's perhaps no surprise that when LBJ suddenly rises into the presidency, he's ready to go on an agenda that was at least as active, an activist, as JFK's had been. I would love to hear you talk a little bit more about Vietnam as well. You are a well known Vietnam historian. You've written multiple books about Vietnam. It is something that my community tells me frequently, like, what I know about it is Forrest Gump.

Right. Forrest Gump. What I know about it is not good. A lot of people today have a grandpa or a dad or a relative who fought and then proceeded to zip their mouth shut and not say a word about it. I hear that so often. Yes, I bet you do. It was not a war that people came home from where they were like, you do? It was not a war that people came home from where they were like, let me tell you all about it. But I would love to hear more about why. Why was LBJ so invested in our commitment to fighting in Vietnam? What were his core motivations? Yeah. Again, a question that I have thought a lot about. And I think at the end of the day, have thought a lot about. And I think at the end of the day, we can understand LBJ's decision making if we consider two sets of ideas that swam in LBJ's head. First, I think LBJ, for all of his

innovation, his creativity, his risk-taking in the arena of domestic policy, was pretty conventional when it came to foreign policy. And he had risen to high office in the arena of domestic policy was pretty conventional when it came to foreign policy. And he had risen to high office in the early years of the Cold War when Americans by and large bought into the idea that the United States needed to be strong everywhere around the world and push back against communist expansion wherever it threatened to occur. So in escalating American involvement in Vietnam, really LBJ was just kind of enacting a script that was very familiar to him. We now know that there were a lot of problems in Vietnam that would come back to bite Americans who chose that path. But I think he was acting on a set of assumptions and well-established routines that he simply

did not question. And again, here is someone who asked a lot of really important questions in the domestic arena, but didn't seem to have it in him to really ask the difficult questions when it came to foreign policy. The other explanation for LBJ's behavior that I think is very important to bear in mind is that he was dreaming big in the domestic arena. And he worried that if he did not defend the American position in South Vietnam, he would come under fierce political attack from the American public, but also from critics in Congress

in a way that would imperil his domestic ambitions. So he chose to escalate in Vietnam in part to protect his domestic agenda and to avoid what he expected would be a really ruinous debate over whether the United States was soft in Vietnam and was conceding ground to the communists. Being that figure in American political life who was weak when the communists were in the business of expanding was a very dangerous place to be in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, precisely the years when LBJ was learning basic political lessons. precisely the years when LBJ was learning basic political lessons. And I think by the 60s, when he thought about Vietnam, he was also thinking about Medicare and voting rights and his education bills. This connection, I think, ultimately poses one of the real

kind of moral complexities about LBJ. If he made the decisions to fight this incredibly destructive war that he knew going in would be very difficult for the United States, in the interest of protecting legislation that many of us would regard as transformative and essential to modern American life, where do we ultimately come down? Did he make an understandable set of decisions, or should he have perhaps risked some of his domestic agenda in the interest of not fighting a war that he knew would be very difficult for the United States to win? That's a fantastic question. Is it worth having the Voting Rights Act and being involved

in Vietnam? Or should we have foregone getting that legislation passed and staying out of the war. Is it your estimation that he was, you know, maybe it wasn't quite as, you know, tit for tat as I'm portraying it, but is it your estimation that that was really the tension in his mind of, I have to do this Vietnam thing because I cannot risk these other things that are super important to me. I think that was a connection that was very important in LBJ's mind. But you raise exactly the right question, I think, which is, was that an accurate assessment of the problems that he would confront if he chose not to escalate in Vietnam. And I think with the benefit of hindsight, there's a strong argument to be made that really he might have been okay. Because let's face it, at the end of the day, the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, many components of the Great

Society passed with enormous majorities. I think sometimes we may have this idea that these were, you know, squeakers, and that it was only LBJ's legislative mastery that got these bills through Congress. But most of the big bills were passed by huge margins. And that's even true of the civil rights bills. There were procedural problems that LBJ had to sort out to get those bills through, especially the Senate because of the filibuster rules and all of that. So those are significant accomplishments. But nevertheless, these were quite popular on at least on a nationwide basis. So it does raise the question of whether LBJ felt more vulnerable to criticism from the hawks than was actually warranted. It's a really fascinating question, I think, about the LBJ presidency. historian. What do you maybe wish Americans knew about him? Or what do you think Americans should

take away from maybe this conversation and be like, I didn't know that about him? I think that in fact, if we look carefully, we can see that Lyndon Johnson was one of the most, honestly, if not the most important president of recent decades in American history. And I say that in part because of these transformative bills that he signed, Medicare, civil rights, immigration, and so many others that really shaped the country that we lived in. But also because Lyndon Johnson was the embodiment of a style of politics that is very much still part of the political debate at a very fundamental level in the United States.

Lyndon Johnson was the quintessence of liberalism, which is to say he believed in the capability of government, especially the federal government, to work effectively on behalf of the American people to bring constructive reform and benefits. And I think that our society has become very skeptical in recent decades of that view, the view associated with Ronald Reagan, right? Government isn't the solution, government is the problem, has been the dominant flavor, I'd say, in American politics since the 1980s. But Lyndon Johnson still stands out to me as the embodiment of this alternative that still, of course, has a lot of appeal to a lot of Americans, even if it's in the minority. I think a kind of helpful way to think about the last, say, 40 years or so of American politics is to think of Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson, who believed that anything was possible if government marshaled the resources and the expertise and the know-how to get things done. These are the two figures around whom our political debate has in some ways

swirled. They're the best embodiments of these two brands of politics that if we think about it, I think are still underpinning the core political debates that we continue to have down to the present. That's a really good point. That is such a great long view of history that these two men are still their beliefs, rhetoric, actions, still represent what we're deciding about, arguing about, basing our policies on today, the role of government in the everyday citizen's life. day, the role of government in the everyday citizen's life? To what extent is government improving your life, making it better for you? How much should they do to make your life better? How much is your responsibility? You know, even down to things that are happening in the news right now. Should we forgive student loans? Should lunch at school be free forever like it was during

the pandemic? We could give literally hundreds of examples of how this debate continues. But that's a very, very interesting point to think about. These are the two men who have shaped the modern American viewpoint of conservative viewpoints and a lot more liberal viewpoints than Reagan embodied. I love that. Thank you so much. This is absolutely fantastic. I've learned a lot. I really think people are going to enjoy hearing from you. Thanks for being here today. Yeah, of course.

Thank you so much for having me. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you so much for being here today. Professor Mark Lawrence is the director of the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum in Austin, Texas. You can visit the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum in Austin, Texas. You can visit the LBJ Library in person. You can also see it online at lbjlibrary.org. Mark Lawrence has also written a fantastic book about the Vietnam War called The Vietnam War, A Concise International History. And

if you want to understand the Vietnam War better, this might be the ticket. I'll see you again soon. Thank you so much for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. If you enjoyed this episode, would you consider sharing it on social media or leaving us a rating or review on your favorite podcast platform? All those things help podcasters out so much. The show is written and researched by executive producer Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, much. The show is written and researched by executive producer Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, and Sharon McMahon. Our audio engineer is Jenny Snyder, and it's hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. We'll see you again soon.