LBJ Architect of American Ambition by Randall B. Woods

What a difference 58 years can make.  Though basically a liberal Southern Democrat who created one federal program after another, Lyndon Johnson defies categorization as either liberal or conservative,  Democrat or Republican by today’s standards.  

And what a book almost 900 pages does make.  Lyndon Baines Johnson’s trajectory from Hill Country Texan to President of the United State is narrated in full detail in this biography with detailed in-depth coverage of his years as a Senate aid, Congressman, Senate deal maker and power broker to the heady days of his presidency, the 60s, the Great Society, the War on Poverty, Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement.  The detail was at times daunting, at other times it filled in the empty spaces in my recollection of the tumultuous Kennedy-Johnson era.  The LBJ years were my formative years. I was 11 in 1963 when JFK was assassinated and the events of the 60s have remained indelibly printed in my memory but they are just that, discrete events. I never could figure out how to connect the dots.

There was the nightly news on TV, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Life magazine that kept constantly in the forefront the names—McNamara, Ky, Khrushchev, Mobutu, Bobby Baker, Bill Moyers; the places—Cuba, Dienbienphu, the Mekong Delta, Dallas, Selma, Watts and Newark; the laws—The Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Voting Rights Act of 1965, The Higher Education Act; the programs-- Medicare, Head Start, HUD, NEA, NEH, CAPs; the events—the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassinations, Bloody Sunday, the Tet Offensive.   My parents had opinions and were involved but there was never sufficient discussion or explanation to provide a framework for understanding everything that was happening and who the various players were.  Reading about LBJ and his life and times provided the framework.  

The author describes Johnson as a “visionary committed to public service.”  Johnson espoused a “modern individualism” and a “pragmatic liberalism.”  He was paternalistic, believing as he did that government exists “mainly to be an agent of social justice."  In Johnson’s own words “Government is the business of deciding what is right and then finding the way to do it.” 

LBJ decided that it was right for Washington, D.C. to create opportunity for all Americans, that it was right to fight for full equality of the races under federal law, that it was right for the federal government to guarantee education, housing and medical care for all citizens.  Though well-intentioned all of this, the way he found to do it was mis-guided.  Like most social justice warriors, Johnson confused the proper roles of government and religion. While it is the proper role of government to reflect the moral law (which I thought stemmed from natural law which will be to the inherent benefit of the common good), it is not the role of government to hatch and legislate morality.  Rather it’s religion and philosophy that shape citizens’ morality.  The government is there to ensure that citizens can exercise their beliefs in a safe and rational society with fair and equal treatment of all.    

Johnson, himself, admitted the failure of his own programs.  By 1968, amidst riots and violence following the assassination of MLKJr and with Ralph Abernathy addressing 50,000 people in June about broken promises and the failure of the administration to end poverty and discrimination, here’s what Lyndon Johnson said (his words): “the very people we are seeking to help in Medicare and education and welfare and Food Stamps are protesting louder and louder and giving no recognition or allowance for what’s been done.  Our efforts seem to have resulted only in anarchy…The women no longer bother to get married, they just keep breeding.  The men go their way and the women get relief---why should they work?” 

Yet Johnson persisted in his “vision.” 

I found it hard to dislike him.  There is a sincerity underlying LBJ’s misguided do-gooder mission. He was for the common man and being from the rural South, he identified with him.  Though dedicated to the poor and disenfranchised, it seems LBJ never intended to help them by creating a welfare state.  Though a champion of civil rights he was careful to keep the white South in mind when advancing the cause of ‘the Negro.’    

Overall, Lyndon Johnson had traditional values and believed in America and love of country. He was decidedly more principled than most politicians of today and his politics were decidedly less partisan. His political style was to bring the ends to meet the middle.  He valued hard work, honesty and loyalty.  He didn’t like communists. He did not identify with intellectuals or coastal elites. 

Though maybe he was a man who craved being the center of attention and sought out more than his fair share of praise and approval, I didn’t find Johnson to be any more of an egotist or ambitious over-achiever than the next career politician or Type A personality.  Too much is made of his domineering personality and his overarching ego in my opinion.  

He had a sometimes-testy relation with the press not all unlike that of President Trump.  He could be crude and boorish as when he displayed his abdominal scar to the world.  While his speeches were loaded up with flowery, idealistic, even preachy language, to his cabinet members and advisors he spoke his mind, talked straight and made no effort to tidy up his grammar or his slang. 

Lyndon Johnson was not a fake, phony or fraud. He at times speaks best for himself as on this occasion in Italy during his presidency.  Johnson was not all that interested in collecting art but an art dealer made available to him a painting of a nude valued at $3,000. Commenting on the possible purchase of the artwork, LBJ told the aide traveling with him: “He [the art dealer] wants $3,000 for it.  I told him I’d give him $l,500, but I also told him that I would give him the whole $3,000 if he’d take about twenty pounds off her ass.” 

You know you have to laugh!    

Whether this book or some other (such as Robert Caro’s volumes on Johnson) is or is not the authoritative work on the life of LBJ, the author certainly covered the waterfront.  I did have the slightest hesitation about continuing with this book when I skimmed the introduction.  There, the author described the hours immediately following the assassination of JFK and the swearing-in of LBJ on the plane.  The author referred to Jackie Kennedy in her “green” suit.  Green!  What an editorial oversight!  Everybody knows her suit was pink!