Lyndon Johnson's presidency is really two presidencies - domestic and Vietnam. Unfortunately, of course, it is not possible to separate the two, but in the area of domestic policy, LBJ certainly left a mark for presidential power. Although LBJ's subsequent drive to the Left caught some off guard - and it is common in the historiography to see it as something that took the country by surprise - Leuchtenberg isn't so sure. He writes, "Though [Johnson's] comportment elicited stern criticism, a number of commentators [in 1963] thought that LBJ had precisely the qualities of temperament, as well as the social vision, to break the stranglehold that a bipartisan conservative coalition had imposed for more than a quarter of a century and, with his deeply felt commitment to social justice, to push through a passel of progressive legislation for the first time since 1938." LBJ could do this because, Leuchtenburg notes, Johnson, "brought to his quest for innovative legislation nearly a quarter of a century of experience in the halls of Congress. He had served in both houses, and in the Senate had won renown as a majority leader with exceptional tactical skills."
Johnson's War on Poverty was one of the greatest extensions of
presidential leadership in history. Leuchtenburg writes, "never before had
an American president undertaken to address the persistence of poverty in flush
times." Although he criticizes LBJ for underfunding the programs [it was
estimated that it would take $11 billion to fund all of the programs, LBJ
settled for less than $1 billion], Leuchtenburg notes, "yet, for all their shortcomings, LBJ's
programs, including the economic growth he fostered, lowered the proportion of
the American people living in poverty from 21% in 1959 to 12% in 1969."
And, in the area of Civil Rights, LBJ had no equal. Of his speech announcing his intention to submit
a Voting Rights Act in March 1965 - in
which he used the movement's anthem,
We Shall Overcome,
historian Robert Dallek writes, "A moment of stunned silence
followed, as the audience absorbed the fact that the President of the United
States had embraced the anthem of black protest. And then almost the entire
chamber rose in unison...Tears rolled down the cheeks of senators, congressmen,
and observers in the gallery, moved by joy, elation, a sense that the big
victor, for a change, was human decency, the highest standards by which the
nation was supposed to live."
Indeed, in 1965, LBJ was at the height of his power. That year, James MacGregor Burns wrote,
"The Presidency today is at the peak of its prestige. Journalists describe
it as the toughest job on Earth, the presiding officer of the free world, the
linchpin of the Western alliance, America's greatest contribution to the art of
self-government. Presidential government, far from being a threat to American
democracy, has become the major single institution sustaining it - a bulwark
for individual liberty, an agency of popular representation, and a magnet for
political action and leadership." Leuchtenburg adds, "Yet at the very
moment of his greatest triumph, Johnson made a fateful decision on foreign
policy that foredoomed his presidency and cost him the honored place in history
he so coveted."
Vietnam. The line of demarcation, Leuchtenburg argues, came in a
July 20, 1965, memo from [Robert] McNamara to the
White House, "that, once accepted, locked Johnson into an irreversible
course." McNamara went over two
scenarios, but then presented a
third course, to, 'expand promptly and substantially the U.S. pressure',
though that implied a, 'considerable cost and casualties', the increase of
'U.S. military pressure' should come in stages but by the first half of 1966,
American forces would total the staggering figure of 600,000. Only five
advisers, one of them McGeorge Bundy, saw this memo, and all five approved it. No
one in Congress, not even the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
knew about it." It was a disastrous decision. Leuchtenburg writes, "That summer, Johnson greatly
enlarged U.S. combat forces in Vietnam while deliberately deceiving the
American people about what he was doing. He also hid the truth that U.S. troops had been authorized to go
on the offensive."
As anti-war fervor developed over the following three years, LBJ
reverted to his darker nature.
Leuchtenburg writes that, "The louder the dissent, the more angrily
Johnson shook his fist at protesters. Calling into question the manliness of
his critics, he dismissed them as 'nervous
Nellies' who would 'turn on their leaders and on their country and on
their own fighting men', and he ordered
the FBI to ferret out the 'Communists'
who were 'behind the disturbances' against the war to infiltrate the peace
movement in order to sabotage it. In addition, he assigned the CIA to spy on
demonstrators, though the agency's charter forbade it to engage in domestic
surveillance."
Johnson's decision not to run for reelection in 1968 has often
been viewed - particularly by those in the peace movement - as a result of the
protests. Leuchtenburg disagrees. He writes, "Contrary to the subsequent
claims of the peace movement, political considerations did not determine
Johnson's course. With his control of party machinery, the president figured
that he would prevail over any challenge to his re-nomination.… Johnson had far
greater concern about whether his health would hold up through another term.
Having suffered a heart attack at a very young age, he feared for his
life."
And Leuchtenberg also challenges the conventional wisdom
surrounding Johnson's speech announcing that decision not to run. Leuchtenburg
writes, the speech, "has often been seen as a turning point in the Vietnam
War when, in fact, it changed nothing. Soon after the president's announcement,
Hanoi said it was ready for peace talks, but they dragged on month after month
to no purpose. In truth, the antagonists had nothing to negotiate. The United
States wanted to retain South Vietnam as an independent nation, and Ho Chi Minh
would settle for nothing less than a unified country under communist rule. Nor
did the intensity of the fighting slacken [after the speech]. Forbidden to
operate above the 19th-parallel, the U.S. Air Force accelerated it's bombing of
the area of North Vietnam below that line. American planes dropped more bombs
on that country than they had in all of the Pacific theater in World War II.
More U.S. soldiers died during 1968 than any other year of the war."
Leuchtenburg is openly critical of Johnson, too, in his lack of
help to his Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, in the latter's campaign against
Richard Nixon. First, Johnson put
Humphrey in an impossible position. Leuchtenberg writes, "If the Vice
President moved in the slightest degree away from LBJ's stance [on the war], party regulars would
regard him as disloyal and Johnson would undermine him. But if he did not offer
some path toward ending the bloodletting in Vietnam, he would forfeit any hope
of placating the peace element that was drowning out his speeches....To be sure
that Humphrey did not stray, Johnson
ordered the FBI to tap the vice president's phone."
When Humphrey finally did modify his position away from LBJ's,
the break [with Johnson] was complete. Even though
Humphrey's speech announcing his new aims attracted positive attention in the
press and started to attract supporters from the peace movement, LBJ did nothing.
Leuchtenburg believes that, "If the president had hit the campaign trail
for him and raised cash for a candidate who was broke, Humphrey might well have
overtaken the Republican candidate, Richard Nixon. But Johnson was so annoyed
by Humphrey's address that he refused to talk to the vice president...Johnson
could have made a decisive difference if he had intervened expediently."
While Johnson did end up doing an appearance with Humphrey in the last days of
the campaign, it was too late.
If LBJ's presidencies could be divided in two, he would have a
.500 batting average. Of course, they cannot.
As Leuchtenburg writes, "Over the past decade, scholars who have
been called upon to rank American presidents have been perplexed by where to
place LBJ. In a little more than five years, he put through more legislation to
aid the disadvantaged than any other chief executive save FDR. Johnson, said
the novelist Ralph Ellison, was, 'the greatest American president for the poor
and for the Negroes'. But he also bears a large share of the blame for the devastation
and loss of life caused by the war in Vietnam, which became such an obsession
for the sponsor of the War on Poverty and the Great Society that in 1972 he
helped Nixon defeat the progressive George McGovern."
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