President Lyndon Johnson
LBJ (Part 1 & 2)(1991) This American Experience four-hour documentary, with David McCullough’s insightful narration and commentary, magnificently captures the gargantuan strengths, weaknesses, and apparent contradictions of, perhaps, America’s crudest and most politically powerful presidents. It’s curious to see a young LBJ as a school teacher to Mexican children, then off by car with friends for a year to ‘find himself.’ Swiftly he focused on a political career. His leadership of a Texan New Deal program caught the attention of FDR, who mentioned to an aide that Johnson had the potential to be president.
Johnson could ingratiate himself to mentors such as Sam Rayburn and mercilessly bully and cajole others. His career as the youngest Senate majority leader in history seemed cut short by a severe heart attack. Instead, Senator Johnson resumed his eighteen-hour days to become the most effective Senate leader ever. The “Johnson treatment” of bully-and-cajole became legendary, as his voting counting depended upon knowing both the strengths and weaknesses of all his Senate colleagues.
His vice presidency under JFK was the nadir of his political career. He was out of the mainstream of power and was scarcely tolerated by the Kennedy clique. The mutual hatred between Johnson and Bobby Kennedy commenced with LBJ’s selection as JFK’s running mate.
Elevated to president by assassination, Johnson sought to dominate, by his personal brute force, the total governmental process. Embarrassed by his lack of a ‘Harvard education,’ he both admired and loathed those who had the benefit of Ivy League credentials. The intention of his Great Society legislation, rammed through Congress during an extraordinarily brief period, was to eliminate poverty in the United States. It’s scope and magnitude exceeded what FDR accomplished during his two New Deals. It was too much for a society to absorb and it never received adequate financing. No one in his imperial presidency had the ability to moderate LBJ’s grandiose ambitions.
While the War on Poverty was a failure, his social legislation, including Medicare and Medicaid, changed the face of America. Most striking, for a southerner, LBJ’s civil rights accomplishments rank even above those of President Lincoln in putting America on the path towards racial equality.
All this and more is compellingly captured on film and in commentaries by Clark Clifford and others who were integral to the Johnson presidency. What I found most compelling, in this excellent documentary, was the coverage of Johnson and Vietnam. LBJ was a Texan who refused to be the first president who ‘lost’ a war. He realized that there was no easy solution to the Vietnam imbroglio that he had inherited from JFK. During his early months he anguished over whether to escalate militarily against the Viet Cong. Ultimately he bought into the military’s request for more and more troops and increased saturation bombing. He failed to realize that Ho Chi Minh, who had bested the French, was content to outwait America. Johnson, on one occasion, offered $1 billion to develop Vietnam. On another occasion, he said that if he could sit down with Ho Chi Minh, they could strike a deal.
Ultimately, as in a Greek tragedy, Johnson in Vietnam was struck down by the impossibility of cutting and running with ‘honor.’ The man who had orchestrated the Vietnam war in his White House Situation Room, post-presidency was reduced to receiving egg and cattle production reports daily from his farm hands. For both college and high school students, portions of this documentary would provide keen insight into both the character and the greatness and weaknesses of an extraordinary human being.
