Postmortem of the LBJ Presidency

Monday was the 40th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson’s speech announcing a drastic change in his Vietnam policy and his plan to not run for another term as president. You can hear part of the speech, and the press reaction to it, in this NPR story.

I’m again reminded of the episode of PBS’ American Experience about LBJ that riveted me this past summer. I discussed the period that lead up to this speech in this earlier blog entry. Now I’m turning to the rest of the story – Johnson’s post-White House years.

He retired to his Texas ranch. Doris Kearns Goodwin, LBJ’s biographer, said he tried to run his ranch like the White House – needing to have daily staff meetings with updates on the livestock like they were members of Congress or their problems were as critical as foreign relations issues. He couldn’t let go. He didn’t want to talk about the period before his retirement, only his early years on politics and his parents.

He grew his hair out. Historian Ronnie Dugger said, “He had this long white hair, it was curled in the back, he almost looked like a hippie. I think he chose to look like a hippie, because he contained everything. It looked like he was identifying with the kids who had demonstrated against him. Or maybe he was trying to say to them, hey, I understand. If I had been young, I’d have done the same thing.” Oddly, I’m having trouble finding a photo online of Johnson with his long hair.

In May of 1971, LBJ spoke at the dedication of his Presidential Library. He ended his comments on the occasion by saying, “I do not know how this period will be regarded in years to come. But that is not the point. This Library will show the facts…not just the joy and triumphs, but the sorrow and failures, too.”

The failures seemed to be foremost in his mind. Eliot Janeway, economist and LBJ friend said, “Only he, with all of his remarkable gifts and knowledge, could have had a realistic appreciation of the extent of his of his opportunity and of the extent of both his achievement and his failure.”

He suffered from chest pain related to heart trouble that dated as far back as his first election to the Senate. Janeway said further, “He always said men in the Johnson family didn’t live long. I think he just asked for it, and waited for it to happen.”

In 1972, Johnson spoke in Austin about civil rights – according to Lady Bird, he got out of bed from a bad angina attack. In the video of this speech, you can see him put a nitroglycerin pill (used widely for angina at that time) in his mouth. As he continues to speak, it falls out. Lady Bird describes that day, “His heart was really hurting.”

A line from that speech, the last he will give: “We know how much still needs to be done, and if our efforts continue, and if our will is strong, and if our hearts are right, and if courage remains our constant companion, then my fellow Americans, I am confident we shall overcome.”

Johnson died January 22, 1973 – 64 years old, of heart failure. It was five days before Paris treaty ending the Vietnam war.

“What he wanted was people to love him. What he wanted to do was to solve everyone’s problems himself. For Johnson he had no other vocabulary, no other way of thinking about how to help people but to have involvement of government in a big way: gIve ’em a lot of money, put your arms around ’em and love ’em. He was the last soldier in the New Deal war.”
– Donald Malafronte

“The liberal impulse that went back to the New Deal is challenged, and what you get beginning with the election of Nixon is an era of conservatism. The irony is, Johnson presides over the extraordinary achievement of liberalism, reaching its zenith, reaching its heights, and then within three years time plunges to its depths from which it still hasn’t recovered in the year 1990.”
— Robert Dallek, LBJ biographer

“He was just interesting as hell! You know, compared to most people who kinda just go through life banally making their dreadful moral points or condemning this or hoping for that, or scratching the back of their head, he really moved, he was moving all the time… he was just fun to be around. And you liked him, you liked him.” – Ronnie Dugger, LBJ biographer

“My feelings were so mixed about the man… there was part of me that never stopped loving him, and part of me that hated him.”
– Roger Wilkins, Johnson’s assistant attorney general

“What you have is a man who is a thoroughly American President… this is a man who reflected moods and attitudes and contradictions and trends and when he failed, it was America’s failure.” — Robert Dallek, LBJ biographer