'Reaching for Glory': The Workings of Lyndon Johnson's Mind

The New York Times (Book Review) ^ | December 29, 2001 | GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS

[sarcasm]

ct. 14, 1964, is a very bad day for Lyndon Johnson. With only three weeks left in his race against Barry Goldwater, his personal lawyer, Abe Fortas, calls to report that the president's longest-serving aide, Walter Jenkins, has been arrested for performing oral sex on another man in the basement pay toilet of a Washington Y.M.C.A. An incredulous Johnson immediately takes charge of damage control. He directs Fortas to force Jenkins's resignation and to spirit damaging files from Jenkins's White House safe; orders the F.B.I. to produce an official report declaring that Jenkins is not a national security threat; asks the Pentagon to scour Jenkins's military reserve file for positive comments from his commanding officer, Barry Goldwater; urges the attorney general to intensify a bribery investigation of Goldwater's running mate, William Miller; coaches the first lady on how to secretly assure the Jenkins family that its financial future will be secure; and commissions a poll on the scandal's impact from his private pollster. Johnson suspects a Republican frame-up and fears the Jenkins arrest will cost him the presidency. ''Every farmer in the country is upset about it,'' he tells Fortas. ''It could mean . . . the ballgame.''

Of course, it didn't. Thanks to the first Chinese nuclear test, the fall of Nikita Khrushchev and Goldwater's reluctance to press the issue, the Jenkins story was only a blip in Johnson's 1964 landslide. Thanks to his penchant for recording his personal conversations and his family's generous wish to preserve the historical record, his tour-de-force display of political skill, ruthlessness and paranoia can now be observed in ''Reaching for Glory,'' the second volume of Johnson's White House tapes, edited by the historian Michael Beschloss. (It can be heard as well: cassette tapes at $26 and CD's at $32 are available from Simon & Schuster.)

Between November 1963 and January 1969, L.B.J. secretly taped 642 hours of conversations and dictation. Volume One, ''Taking Charge,'' begins the day of John F. Kennedy's assassination and ends shortly after the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, passed in August 1964. ''Reaching for Glory'' covers September 1964 through August 1965 -- a period Beschloss calls the ''pivotal'' year of Johnson's presidency, in which he pushed his Great Society programs through Congress and plunged the country into Vietnam.

It is well-plowed ground, most memorably in Robert Dallek's biography ''Flawed Giant'' and Joseph Califano's memoir, ''The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson.'' But even the most polished work of history can't match the thrilling intimacy conveyed by these transcripts (to which Dallek and Califano did not have access). Better yet are the recordings themselves, on which you can hear the voice, roughened by years of Cutty Sark and cigarettes, often hoarse from exhaustion and overuse. His press secretary, George Reedy, once said that when Johnson called, it felt as if he could ''crawl through that wire'' to talk to you. Reading these pages gives you the chance to crawl right up the line with Johnson -- to feel him bully and flirt, lobby and whine. When Nixon needed to think, he picked up a legal pad and wrote outlines. Reagan composed letters. Clinton played solitaire. When Johnson needed to think, he picked up the phone. It was his all-purpose political tool. ''Reaching for Glory'' provides an incomparable portrait of a president at work, and the workings of a president's mind.

They also reveal, as Beschloss puts it, a man of ''ostentatious contradictions.'' The day after the 1964 election, Johnson is complaining to Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago about how the Republicans were running ''kind of a Klan operation'' to keep blacks from voting for him; hours later, he is joking with an old Texas friend about using similar tactics to keep whites from voting against him. Aides are saintly sons one minute, self-serving incompetents the next. But the starkest contradiction is the gulf between his mastery of the home front and his muddling in Vietnam.

Johnson was a cunning political strategist and peerless parliamentary tactician. It is easy to imagine Adam Clayton Powell pulling the phone from his ear as Johnson browbeats him for failing to push an education bill through his committee. Perhaps the Clinton White House fund-raising mess could have been averted had one of us on staff read about Johnson's refusal to hold a fund-raiser for the Kennedy Center at the White House. ''I didn't want to start raising funds at the White House -- even for the Red Cross or United Fund,'' he tells ABC's president, Leonard Goldenson, ''because one person . . . in the room could . . . have something pending in Congress, and they'd say that he was buying his way into the White House.'' Vice President Hubert Humphrey gets strict marching orders on how to pass the president's legislative program: ''I want you to be walking down the halls . . . having the administrative assistants telling you what's happening and getting the gossip.''

That's what Johnson had been doing since his days as a young Congressional aide in the 1930's. His supreme confidence in domestic politics was built on this bedrock of experience. But when discussing Vietnam with the Senate majority leader, Mike Mansfield, he confesses, ''I'm no military man at all.'' It shows. Dealing with domestic policy, he gives orders; on foreign policy, he seems to take them. In his conversations about Vietnam, he is tentative, full of doubt, wary of his military advisers but unwilling to take them on for fear of looking weak. Early in 1965, he tells Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, ''I don't see any way of winning'' in Vietnam. The next month, he sends two Marine battalions into battle; a year later, he calls up more than 600,000 additional troops.

But if Johnson didn't have the courage to act on his doubts, neither did his closest advisers. In these conversations, McNamara and the national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, offer no convincing alternative to incremental escalation. ''We're drifting from day to day here,'' McNamara admits as he and Johnson discuss the decision to send in the Marines. ''I'm just telling you that the field commanders recommend it and can't think of any other solution.''

Of all the president's counselors, the most prescient turns out to be his old mentor, the conservative chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Richard Russell. He thinks victory is impossible and consistently urges Johnson to find some way to ''get out with good grace,'' like encouraging the installation of a government in South Vietnam that ''didn't want us in there.'' The senator's methods may have been unsavory, but his mind was sharp. Reacting to the passive performance of the South Vietnamese Army, he tells Johnson, ''If they're going to try to fight that kind of war, I'm in favor of getting out of there.''

So was Johnson. But he wasn't willing to risk the personal humiliation, or the possible loss of American power and prestige that he feared would follow a Vietnam pullout. Over and over again, he indicates that he knows the war is unwinnable. Yet he digs in deeper. ''Vietnam is getting worse every day,'' he tells Lady Bird in July 1965. ''It's like being in an airplane and I have to choose between crashing the plane or jumping out. I do not have a parachute.''

''When he is pierced, I bleed,'' she reports to her tape-recorded diary. Mrs. Johnson has given Beschloss permission to supplement her husband's tapes with entries from her diary, and they provide a poignant counterpoint. Early on, she worries that her husband is sleeping too little or eating too much; their exchanges are sweet and light. She grows more tense as Johnson becomes distraught over Vietnam. Aides like Bill Moyers and Richard Goodwin consult with psychiatrists because they're so concerned about the president's wild mood swings.

But Aug. 27, 1965, is a happy day in Lady Bird's diary. It is the president's 57th birthday, and the White House chef has made a cake decorated with symbols of his Great Society programs. ''He was like a man riding on a crest of achievement and success,'' she says. ''He was also a happy and relaxed man.'' Deservedly so. A generation later, the programs Johnson had enacted that frenetic year -- Medicare, Head Start, the Voting Rights Act -- continue to strengthen America. Vietnam, of course, still shadows us. So the judgment that lingers, and stings, is Johnson's self-criticism, as recorded by his wife: ''I'm not temperamentally equipped to be commander in chief.''

George Stephanopoulos, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, is the political analyst for ABC News.

[eno_]

...Abe Fortas, calls to report that the president's longest-serving aide, Walter Jenkins, has been arrested for performing oral sex on another man in the basement pay toilet of a Washington Y.M.C.A....

Speaks volumes about the Democrat party. I don't care what this guy does in his own bed, but the fact he's got to be cocksucking ina YMCA basement bathroom tells me the guy has serious psychological problems irrespective of his orientation. And he wants to have a power position in government, and probably wants to do to the U.S. what numerous anonymous men have done to his butt.

[elbucko]

If, as George Will has written, Bill Clinton is the worst person we've elected as as president, than Lyndon Johnson is the worst president we've elected.

[glorgau]

A generation later, the programs Johnson had enacted that frenetic year -- Medicare, Head Start, the Voting Rights Act -- continue to strengthen America.

Where to start...

This all seems like a set-up for continued bashing of the Republicans.

Johnson was a failed president. He set up the goverment for overspending, charged head-first into a failed war, and practically resigned from office.

[backhoe]

Just FTI--

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Early provocation, or early example of "spin..."

[B. A. Conservative]

Lyndon Johnson was sadistic SOB and unquestionably the worst president the United States has ever had to endure. Bill Clinton could never have been elected if Lyndon had not set the stage.

The United States is in the twilight of its decline into disintegration much like the disintegration of the Soviet Union thanks to FDR, LBJ, Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party. The US will not survive another Democrat in the Whitehouse with a Democratically controlled Congress and it may not survive long enough to see that combination of power again anyway.

[elbucko]

''I'm no military man at all.''

That certainly is a fact Lyndon. Made manifest as you sent 58'000 of America's youth to their death. Bill Clinton is the same kind of dirty, no account damn coward that you were, Lyndon.

[jwalsh07]

Johnson is the worst President bar none. The scumbag let untold numbers of American men die in Vietnam without trying to win. Scumbag First Class whereas Clinton was your ordinary run of the mill scumbag who did harm alright but in sheer numbers Johnson wins hands down across the board, from the ghetto to the jungle.

[elbucko]

''I'm no military man at all.''

That certainly is a fact Lyndon. Made manifest as you sent 58'000 of America's youth to their death. Bill Clinton is the same kind of dirty, no account damn coward that you were, Lyndon.

[Donald Stone]

bump

[elbucko]

''I'm not temperamentally equipped to be commander in chief.''

NOW, you tell us, Lyndon.

You were all the time an empty suit, just like your political progeny, Bill Clinton.

[elbucko]

Johnson is the worst President bar none.

I'll drink to that. The mind however reels at the thought of the harm Clinton would have done, had Clinton had Johnson's Democract Congress. (PUKE).

[PJ-Comix]

What happened to the third volume of Robert Caro's biography of LBJ? The first two volumes, "Path To Power" and "Means Of Ascent" were the best biographies I've ever read. The last one was published about 10 years ago so WHERE is the third volume? If you have any info on this, please post it here.

[elbucko]

I think we both hope, for our country's sake, and "the last best hope of man", that we've turned from this direction, however how little.

[elbucko]

I have both books too. I Looked, as you did for the third. I think what Caro found out made him sick and he stopped writing no.3.

[NativeNewYorker]

Beschloss authored a book with Strobe Talbott, Clinton's Oxford roommate and pompous State Dept oaf. Stephanopolous has been playing Goebbels for Clinton for a decade. Having these socialist shills analyze a Democratic president is laughably masterbatory.

[Nightstalker]

Lyndon Johnson may very well be one of the most tragic Presidents in history. While it is easy to damn him for his actions during the war at least three other President's before him and one after him made many of the same mistakes. It is hard to believe that in 1964 any President including Goldwater (then Candidate, Kennedy, Nixon, Truman or Eisenhower would have acted any differently given the threat of the Soviet Union, the Cuban missle crisis, the increasing size of the Soviet nuclear arsenal etc, and Communist activity in China. While it might be easy to view things differently now, given the mindset at the time by both conservatives and liberals on the communist threat in the third world it is hard to imagine any political leader acting differently. Nor did any of the candidates of those days have any better ideas. There were no doves in the 1964 election.

On the plus side Johnson achieved a great many domestic gains. (Unmatched by any subsequent President) These include Medicare, Medicaid, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights. When he left office the country was divided over Vietnam, yet the budget was balanced and unemployment was at historic lows. With time both his supporters and his critics will be taking a more balanced view of his Presidency.

[elbucko]

"Aides like Bill Moyers and...."

One last comment, Bill Moyers should be tried for War Crimes, along with R. Strange McNamara.

HAPPY NEW YEAR FREE REPUBLIC!

[Ditter]

I too have been wondering about Robert Caro's 3rd volume on Johnson. I saw him on some cable show a year or so ago so I guess he is still alive. I wish he would finish it, the first 2 were riveting.

[dougd]

Clinton was your ordinary run of the mill scumbag who did harm alright but in sheer numbers Johnson wins hands down

Unfortunately, we may not have felt all the repercussions of X42's treacheries - letting Saddam get away with his little WMD projects, technology to PRC, to name just 2 we all may have to pay dearly for in years to come. He may yet eclipse Johnson.