'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.

[leadpenny]

I am wondering if this new material are those hundreds of hours of conversations that LBJ secretly taped?

C-SPAN Radio has been playing those tapes on weekends for months and I listen to them when I get a chance. Beschloss (sp?) has already done one book on them and is still listening to them as the National Archives releases more batches.

Much of what I have listened to in the 64 timeframe gives me the distinct feeling that LBJ used the taping system, knowing full well that they would be discovered and analyzed. IMO, in the tapes, he barely conceals his complicity in the assassination just a few months before. I hope that someday the extent of his involvement will truly be revealed.

[M.K. Borders]

On the plus side Johnson achieved a great many domestic gains. (Unmatched by any subsequent President) These include Medicare, Medicaid,...

Excuss me if I don't fully appreciate socializm becoming part of the American political landscape. This is particularly true when I consider the damage Social Security has done to the country.

Live Free or Die

[TEXICAN II]

Ditto your reaction to Caro's first book. That was more than enough.

My greatest fear today, is that those who worship Mr. Bush ( he has restored common decency to the office ) will allow him to do virtually ANYTHING unchallenged. The White House has been very good at making us 'see' Renaldus Magnus, when we look at the staged & costumed affairs de la Crawford. I caused extreme offense on FR by violating the Church of the Good & Pure Politician ( the picture threads praising his every wrinkle in his newly found ranch costumes ). They simply ignore ANY question of his dealings with Fox & China, or anyone else!

"Sure are lookin' handsome today, Mr President!"

This REALLY SCARES me-& I hope a few others. A democRAT will not be necessary to finish off the Constitution-the RepublocRATS can do it with impunity. George Corely Wallace said it, decades ago ( a backward soul indeed, but he got this right )-"There's not a dimes worth of difference between the Republicans & the Democrats!".

[PJ-Comix]

And I bet your favorite dwarf is GRUMPY.

[MissAmericanPie]

They all bear watching, your right.

[TEXICAN II]

Actually, kind sir, I dislike fairy-tales & most non-fiction. You see, my point is that a vast majority of our wonderful 'voters' see a land of make-believe when they swallow the propaganda from our leaders-yes Mr. Bush does look great, would seem to have the keenest moral conciensce, and the corrupt "Goron" would have been instant death for this nation. I am grateful every waking moment for the wonderful crew of people who have left comfortable, quiet, personal lives to actually put some of themselves at risk & all of themselves on a vicious tread-mill. I ponder what moral fiber there is in the likes of Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfield, et al by the hundreds, by the thousands! Especially those unknown & un-acknowledged.

HOWEVER, the worshipful praise of a politician is what the pave-stones for the road to you-know-where are made from. We have that problem! Our government consumes, perhaps ten times what it did in the mid-20th century, and it does so by virtue of our agreement via our REPRESENTATIVES.

The 'PATRIOT ACT' was already written, long before 9/11-& by some doubtful odd-balls, too ( Gary Hart, Andrew Young, etc were the authors of this monstrous document ). Some folks wondered at the ready tool that was already to use!!

When the good & decent ( Mr. Ashcroft for example ) go away, our very own evil ones may very well return to use the tools we so willingly employ against the seditious, the traitors, the criminal alien. These things are as dangerous as the objects of the tool. Our conservative voters instantly resemble the infamous 42% who would still vote for Bubba, & did vote for the Goron. The Administration has said that 4 million of the 'base' sat out the election. Perhaps they were at least thinking!

I am 'Grumpy' personified-my wife must work so we may make up what the government TAKES by FORCE, for it's ill intended & UN-Constitutional actions!! We are TAX SLAVES for the likes of Citizen Fox, Tyson chicken, et al.

[TEXICAN II]

They are ALL BEARS, and we are their dinner!

[TEXICAN II]

Folks say, Brown & Root was the primary source of money for the Johnson family, from that enterprise we refer to as 'Vietnam'. Maybe the Tonkin Gulf resolution should be re-named; perhaps the Brown&Root Construction resolution? The blood of our very finest souls was the mortor of their brick.

[Nightstalker]

Please that election was in 1964 and Barry Goldwater would have lost against any Democrat. Goldwater's political skills made McGovern look like a genius. Goldwater's defeat spawned Ronald Reagan. Following the defeat of Goldwater the rightwing decided they needed a more television-friendly candidate. It was at that point that a number of wealthy business approached Reagan to be the spokesman for emerging conservative movement. The rest is history.

[Nightstalker]

If you thought Johnson was a hawk you should have seen Goldwater. There simply were very few doves in that period. There were two who voted against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (not unlike Barbara Lee) and they were not very popular. The Vietnam War was the work of a flawed foreign policy that predated Johnson. It was maily Henry Lodge's pushing for the coup against Diem that forced American's hand in Vietnam. Don't tell me you considered Lodge a Democrat.

[PJ-Comix]

Actually, kind sir, I dislike fairy-tales & most non-fiction.

Too bad. You can learn a lot by reading fiction. In particular historical novels. Read "From Here To Eternity" and you will have a better feel for the pre-war Army and the general pre-war mood of Hawaii than you will from most non-fiction books. Limiting your reading sources is, well, limiting.

[TEXICAN II]

Well, thanks. Maybe that's why I spent all that time in Western Lit classes & Shakespeare too. As for hist perspectives, I find the longer, more scholarly bio's of important people more informative, along with outright historical analysis. You might try P.A. Sarokin, Crisis of Our Age, 1949, for some grasp on the real world, and why some people are displeased with the mob-rule... Also, Ortega Gassett's classic work, Revolt of the Masses might help you there. I'm actually in the middle of a Christmas gift from my wife, Patton, A Genius for War & therein I'm learning a great deal about the Army, as the late General experienced it ( including a period during which he was rather involved in the chain of command in Hawaii, late 20'-early 30's ). I shall also check a guide on etiquette ( more non-fiction ) to learn how to properly & inoffensively address people with limited manners-'I think he doth protest too much'.

[PJ-Comix]

Maybe that's why I spent all that time in Western Lit classes & Shakespeare too.

I highly recommend Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare. Yeah, yeah, I know. Asimov was a liberal but his Guide To Shakespeare was incredible. Maybe Asimov was better at analying the past and future than the present.

[jackbill]

Don't tell me you considered Lodge a Democrat.

No. Henry Cabot Lodge was an Eastern Establishment Moderate Republican. But then, he wasn't President. Kennedy and Johnson were running the country during that period - not Lodge.

Are you trying to say that the Ambassador to a country has more power than the President? BS.

Face it. Johnson was a SCUMBAG and he will forever go down in history as a SCUMBAG.

[Doctor Stochastic]

The 'PATRIOT ACT' was already written, long before 9/11-& by some doubtful odd-balls, too ( Gary Hart, Andrew Young, etc were the authors of this monstrous document ).

And it's amusing to see the Conservatives support the Young-Hart spawn and attack Paul, Keyes, and others who don't convert to Tories.

[TEXICAN II]

I would say it is more than amusing-frightening was my first thought when I found & read the nasty thing via a rather doubtful radio host ( Jeff Rense ). Just because they are after me, does it mean I'm paranoid?

[billhilly]

Our government consumes, perhaps ten times what it did in the mid-20th century,.................................................You are on the right track, but slightly low on your estimate. It is hard to imagine, but true, that the first $100 billion annual federal budget came during the presidency of LBJ. That makes the mid-century figure about twenty times smaller than our current spending. 2000% over half a century.