Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism: A Brief Biography with Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)

This was required reading for a graduate course in American history.

From the New Deal of the 1930s to the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s, liberalism was the dominant political philosophy in the America for half a century, believing that active government was the cure for what ailed the nation. During a period when many Americans, in the wake of the Great Depression, believed in the federal government's capacity-indeed, responsibility-to provide prosperity, social justice, relief from economic depression, security in old age, education for their children, homes for their families and safety from foreign menace, Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) was the architect of its most important legislative achievements. He was also a major agent in its eventual enervation and demise. More than any other politician of the past six decades, Johnson not only embodied the contradictions of political liberalism in post World War II America, he also orchestrated its triumphs, and endured its agonies. Johnson and other liberals believed that government could and should improve the lives of citizens; they had little sense of the limits of political action, and the unintended, self-defeating consequences of some well-intentioned policies. Ironically, Johnson's presidency alerted Americans to those dangers and shook their faith in the capacity of their president and their government to meet the challenges of modem life (pages 1 and 2). A friend and one time protégé, Texas Governor John

B. Connally, said "there is no adjective in the dictionary to describe him. He was cruel and kind, generous and greedy, sensitive and insensitive, crafty and, ruthless and thoughtful, simple in many ways yet extremely complex, caring and totally not caring .... As a matter of fact. . .it would take every adjective in the dictionary to describe him" (2).

Johnson was born and raised in the Hill Country in and around Johnson City, Texas to a family of modest to desperate means. His mother, Rebekah, was a woman of refinement who hated anything dirty or shabby; his father, Sam, was a six term member of the state legislature whose passion for liberal politics nearly matched his apathy toward farming and the real estate work he pursued to support his family. Young Lyndon absorbed his father's passion for liberal politics, accompanying Sam on the campaign trail, or on his rounds visiting the isolated homesteads of constituents throughout his district, trading gossip, listening to problems, and helping widows and veterans apply for pensions. Persuasion for Sam Johnson frequently involved getting up really close to someone, virtually nose to nose until they were "convinced"(pages 6 and 7). Unfortunately, for Sam Johnson, the Texas legislature was a fulltime job without a full-time salary and he fought cleanly. Texans distrusted government so much, that their state constitution insured that the legislature would seldom meet, quickly transact their business when they did meet, and just as quickly leave town; e.g., legislators earned five dollars a day for the two month long regular session and if they stayed longer, they received two dollars a day. Although most of Sam's colleagues were having their votes bought by oil, railroad, and big business lobbyists, Sam Johnson himself never accepted a dime from a lobbyist; he paid for his vices with his own money. The collapse of cotton prices financially ruined Sam Johnson: he lost the family farm and was able to keep the home only because his brothers guaranteed the mortgage; eventually Sam Johnson found a menial job on a road crew that helped to build the same highways he had fought for in the Texas legislature pages 7 and 8). The loss of status his father suffered among Hill Country folk affected Lyndon Johnson for the rest of his life; he resolved not to repeat his father's mistakes, and to be guided as much by political savvy as political passion. After several false starts, Johnson attended and graduated from Southwest Texas State Teachers College in San Marcos. Johnson slowly, inexorably worked his way up the political ladder in Texas. After successfully managing the state senate campaign of Wally Hopkins, in 1931, Hopkins recommended Johnson to newly elected congressman Richard Kleberg for the position of congressional secretary (the title for the person who ran the congressman's office in Washington) (page 10 and 11).

As congressional secretary, Johnson immersed himself in the rules of the house, worked himself and his assistants mercilessly, and ingratiated himself with influential older men on Capitol Hill-especially Sam Rayburn-and in the executive branch (a colleague called him a "professional son"), but he was not content. The sudden death of James B. Buchannan in February 1937 provided the Johnson with the opportunity to seek and win elective office. Once in Congress, Johnson worked himself and his staff relentlessly, positioning himself as a Roosevelt man, and fighting successfully for cheap public power, rural electrification, and flood control and relief through the construction of several massive dams on the lower Colorado and Pedernales Rivers (pages 17-20). Johnson also met the acquaintance of Herman Brown, owner and operator of Brown and Root. The firm was the immediate beneficiary of millions of dollars worth of federal construction funds. Their collaboration on the dams' construction had convinced Herman (and his brother George) that the two men could "play ball," and Brown threw in his lot with Lyndon Johnson. Herman Brown bankrolled everyone of Lyndon Johnson's campaigns and greased the wheels for LBJ's rise to power. In 1940, bankrolled with Brown and Root money, Johnson headed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which directed campaign funds and political support to Democratic candidates facing tough congressional races. With war raging in Europe and the New Deal stalled at home, everyone expected the Democrats to lose seats in Congress. Although the party did lose three seats in the Senate, Democrats actually gained several seats in the House of Representatives, and the strong showing made Johnson a force to be reckoned with on Capitol Hill (pages 23-25).

The death of Texas Senator Morris Sheppard in April 1941 offered Johnson an opportunity to set his political sights even higher. Thanks to Brown and Root dollars, Johnson mounted an impressive special election campaign against his opponent, Governor W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel. The initial election returns had Johnson as the winner by five thousand votes, but Johnson blundered and reported the vote totals of his precincts too soon. This enabled 0' Daniel's forces to furnish just enough additional votes for their candidate to win. In many areas of the state, political machines controlled the balloting and delivered large sums of votes to the highest bidder. If your candidate fell behind, the machine could "find" a few more votes. In the 1941 Senate race, both candidates made such arrangements with the political bosses around Texas. It was the first-and last-election Lyndon Johnson ever lost (pages 25 and 26).

For the 1948 Senate primary and campaign, Johnson used his strong support for the war effort and military preparedness-and his opposition to race and labor issues-to win support among conservative Texans. His principal opponent was Governor Coke Stevenson, a conservative who had built his reputation by starving state services, cutting school funding, blocking river management programs, eliminating old age assistance, and aid to the blind. Stevenson garnered the most votes in the primary with 40% of the vote, while Johnson qualified for the runoff with 34%. Johnson had five weeks to close his deficit with Stevenson; he relentlessly attacked the
Governor and slowly eroded Stevenson's lead. Stevenson controlled east Texas, while Johnson depended on the support of the Boss George Parr and the powerful Parr machine in south Texas. Before 1948, Parr had always supported Stevenson until he broke his promise to let Parr hand out patronage appointments in south Texas. Parr was determined to punish Stevenson and demonstrate his political clout. After the runoff, the ballot counting stretched for five days. In the end, Johnson won election to the Senate by 87 votes (pages 30 and 31).

Schulman observes that during the post World War II period, liberalism evolved in three crucial respects: 1) postwar liberals developed a new attitude toward business and the economy, i.e., they wanted to improve the lives of ordinary Americans without requiring the well-off to sacrifice through the use of Keynesian economics in fiscal policy to ensure economic growth; 2) postwar liberals, seeing that individuals could only respond to accomplished facts, rather than influence polices, championed pluralist politics, in the belief that the constant building and rearranging of coalitions on different issues, for the sake of consensus, ensured that representative democracy would flourish, even if individual voices were not heard; and 3) postwar liberals focused their energies on the struggle against international communism (pages 36-38). Burning with national ambitions, Johnson walked this tightrope as a Cold War Senator, establishing anticommunist credentials (by supporting Truman's military buildup) while working tirelessly for the oil and gas industry and accepting their financial support. For LBJ, winning elections, passing bills, and implementing policy were the stuff of government (page 41). Before Johnson assumed the position of Senate Minority Leader in1952, and later Senate Majority Leader in 1955, senate leadership positions required a lot of time and frequently tedious effort.
They were largely ceremonial and procedural posts with little authority and lots of political risks (like being vulnerable to charges that they were neglecting the needs of their home state). Real power in the Senate was vested in the senior members who controlled the congressional committees and decided which bills the full body would consider (page 43). That changed with Lyndon Johnson. Central to Johnson's leadership was his personal style called "The Treatment." It was a combination of according to Evans and Novak, "supplication, accusation, cajolery, exuberance, scorn, tears, complaint, the hint of a threat (page 43)." But the Treatment demanded more calculation than most observers realized. Johnson had mastered policy, parliamentary procedures, and personalities: he had statistics and memos bulging out of his pockets, details of bills and programs on the tip of his tongue, arguments for and against every measure. He also knew the Senate, speeding up votes when he knew he had a majority on the floor and delaying action when the opposition had the upper hand. He expanded the office of majority leader, taking responsibility for doling out ceremonial assignments so senators would be indebted to him (pages 45 and 46).

By the time of the 1960 presidential campaign, Johnson had not only become a political force to be reckoned with, but also a serious contender for the presidency. That he found himself as the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate was due to the need to try and attract the votes of the white South as a counterpoint to John F. Kennedy, a Roman Catholic from Massachusetts. After winning the presidential election, Johnson frequently felt left out of the loop of trusted Kennedy advisers, although, Kennedy himself treated Johnson cordially. The 22 November 1963 assassination of John Kennedy thrust Johnson into the presidency. Determined to continue Kennedy's legacy, Johnson appealed to citizens and legislators to "let us continue" the domestic legislative agenda of the late president. He simultaneously sought to forge his own presidential legacy through his proposal for a "Great Society" through the passage of legislation that sought to address environmental, health care, senior citizens, education, and civil rights issues, among others. For Johnson the key to success was the passage of law; however, the passage of law frequently involves compromise among national, state, and local institutions. Worse, Johnson's escalation of the Vietnam war without a tax increase (guns and butter) and steadily building opposition to the war, combined with an increased sense of domestic resentment about the cost of funding the Great Society programs, fractured the liberal coalition and muddied the legacy waters of Lyndon Johnson's presidency.

The issue, finally, is not the program but the vision, the angle of the view. A huge constituency may be coming up for grabs, and there is considerable evidence that its political mobility is more sensitive than anyone can imagine, that all the sociological determinants are not as significant as the simple facts of concern and leadership. When Robert Kennedy was killed ... thousands of working-class people who had expected to vote for him-if not hundreds of thousands-shifted to Wallace. A man who can change from a progressive democrat into a bigot overnight deserves attention (page 245),

Recommended reading for anyone interested in American history, foreign policy, Cold War history.

This was required reading for a graduate course in American history.

From the New Deal of the 1930s to the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s, liberalism was the dominant political philosophy in the America for half a century, believing that active government was the cure for what ailed the nation. During a period when many Americans, in the wake of the Great Depression, believed in the federal government's capacity-indeed, responsibility-to provide prosperity, social justice, relief from economic depression, security in old age, education for their children, homes for their families and safety from foreign menace, Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) was the architect of its most important legislative achievements. He was also a major agent in its eventual enervation and demise. More than any other politician of the past six decades, Johnson not only embodied the contradictions of political liberalism in post World War II America, he also orchestrated its triumphs, and endured its agonies. Johnson and other liberals believed that government could and should improve the lives of citizens; they had little sense of the limits of political action, and the unintended, self-defeating consequences of some well-intentioned policies. Ironically, Johnson's presidency alerted Americans to those dangers and shook their faith in the capacity of their president and their government to meet the challenges of modem life (pages 1 and 2). A friend and one time protégé, Texas Governor John

B. Connally, said "there is no adjective in the dictionary to describe him. He was cruel and kind, generous and greedy, sensitive and insensitive, crafty and, ruthless and thoughtful, simple in many ways yet extremely complex, caring and totally not caring .... As a matter of fact. . .it would take every adjective in the dictionary to describe him" (2).

Johnson was born and raised in the Hill Country in and around Johnson City, Texas to a family of modest to desperate means. His mother, Rebekah, was a woman of refinement who hated anything dirty or shabby; his father, Sam, was a six term member of the state legislature whose passion for liberal politics nearly matched his apathy toward farming and the real estate work he pursued to support his family. Young Lyndon absorbed his father's passion for liberal politics, accompanying Sam on the campaign trail, or on his rounds visiting the isolated homesteads of constituents throughout his district, trading gossip, listening to problems, and helping widows and veterans apply for pensions. Persuasion for Sam Johnson frequently involved getting up really close to someone, virtually nose to nose until they were "convinced"(pages 6 and 7). Unfortunately, for Sam Johnson, the Texas legislature was a fulltime job without a full-time salary and he fought cleanly. Texans distrusted government so much, that their state constitution insured that the legislature would seldom meet, quickly transact their business when they did meet, and just as quickly leave town; e.g., legislators earned five dollars a day for the two month long regular session and if they stayed longer, they received two dollars a day. Although most of Sam's colleagues were having their votes bought by oil, railroad, and big business lobbyists, Sam Johnson himself never accepted a dime from a lobbyist; he paid for his vices with his own money. The collapse of cotton prices financially ruined Sam Johnson: he lost the family farm and was able to keep the home only because his brothers guaranteed the mortgage; eventually Sam Johnson found a menial job on a road crew that helped to build the same highways he had fought for in the Texas legislature pages 7 and 8). The loss of status his father suffered among Hill Country folk affected Lyndon Johnson for the rest of his life; he resolved not to repeat his father's mistakes, and to be guided as much by political savvy as political passion. After several false starts, Johnson attended and graduated from Southwest Texas State Teachers College in San Marcos. Johnson slowly, inexorably worked his way up the political ladder in Texas. After successfully managing the state senate campaign of Wally Hopkins, in 1931, Hopkins recommended Johnson to newly elected congressman Richard Kleberg for the position of congressional secretary (the title for the person who ran the congressman's office in Washington) (page 10 and 11).

As congressional secretary, Johnson immersed himself in the rules of the house, worked himself and his assistants mercilessly, and ingratiated himself with influential older men on Capitol Hill-especially Sam Rayburn-and in the executive branch (a colleague called him a "professional son"), but he was not content. The sudden death of James B. Buchannan in February 1937 provided the Johnson with the opportunity to seek and win elective office. Once in Congress, Johnson worked himself and his staff relentlessly, positioning himself as a Roosevelt man, and fighting successfully for cheap public power, rural electrification, and flood control and relief through the construction of several massive dams on the lower Colorado and Pedernales Rivers (pages 17-20). Johnson also met the acquaintance of Herman Brown, owner and operator of Brown and Root. The firm was the immediate beneficiary of millions of dollars worth of federal construction funds. Their collaboration on the dams' construction had convinced Herman (and his brother George) that the two men could "play ball," and Brown threw in his lot with Lyndon Johnson. Herman Brown bankrolled everyone of Lyndon Johnson's campaigns and greased the wheels for LBJ's rise to power. In 1940, bankrolled with Brown and Root money, Johnson headed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which directed campaign funds and political support to Democratic candidates facing tough congressional races. With war raging in Europe and the New Deal stalled at home, everyone expected the Democrats to lose seats in Congress. Although the party did lose three seats in the Senate, Democrats actually gained several seats in the House of Representatives, and the strong showing made Johnson a force to be reckoned with on Capitol Hill (pages 23-25).

The death of Texas Senator Morris Sheppard in April 1941 offered Johnson an opportunity to set his political sights even higher. Thanks to Brown and Root dollars, Johnson mounted an impressive special election campaign against his opponent, Governor W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel. The initial election returns had Johnson as the winner by five thousand votes, but Johnson blundered and reported the vote totals of his precincts too soon. This enabled 0' Daniel's forces to furnish just enough additional votes for their candidate to win. In many areas of the state, political machines controlled the balloting and delivered large sums of votes to the highest bidder. If your candidate fell behind, the machine could "find" a few more votes. In the 1941 Senate race, both candidates made such arrangements with the political bosses around Texas. It was the first-and last-election Lyndon Johnson ever lost (pages 25 and 26).

For the 1948 Senate primary and campaign, Johnson used his strong support for the war effort and military preparedness-and his opposition to race and labor issues-to win support among conservative Texans. His principal opponent was Governor Coke Stevenson, a conservative who had built his reputation by starving state services, cutting school funding, blocking river management programs, eliminating old age assistance, and aid to the blind. Stevenson garnered the most votes in the primary with 40% of the vote, while Johnson qualified for the runoff with 34%. Johnson had five weeks to close his deficit with Stevenson; he relentlessly attacked the
Governor and slowly eroded Stevenson's lead. Stevenson controlled east Texas, while Johnson depended on the support of the Boss George Parr and the powerful Parr machine in south Texas. Before 1948, Parr had always supported Stevenson until he broke his promise to let Parr hand out patronage appointments in south Texas. Parr was determined to punish Stevenson and demonstrate his political clout. After the runoff, the ballot counting stretched for five days. In the end, Johnson won election to the Senate by 87 votes (pages 30 and 31).

Schulman observes that during the post World War II period, liberalism evolved in three crucial respects: 1) postwar liberals developed a new attitude toward business and the economy, i.e., they wanted to improve the lives of ordinary Americans without requiring the well-off to sacrifice through the use of Keynesian economics in fiscal policy to ensure economic growth; 2) postwar liberals, seeing that individuals could only respond to accomplished facts, rather than influence polices, championed pluralist politics, in the belief that the constant building and rearranging of coalitions on different issues, for the sake of consensus, ensured that representative democracy would flourish, even if individual voices were not heard; and 3) postwar liberals focused their energies on the struggle against international communism (pages 36-38). Burning with national ambitions, Johnson walked this tightrope as a Cold War Senator, establishing anticommunist credentials (by supporting Truman's military buildup) while working tirelessly for the oil and gas industry and accepting their financial support. For LBJ, winning elections, passing bills, and implementing policy were the stuff of government (page 41). Before Johnson assumed the position of Senate Minority Leader in1952, and later Senate Majority Leader in 1955, senate leadership positions required a lot of time and frequently tedious effort.
They were largely ceremonial and procedural posts with little authority and lots of political risks (like being vulnerable to charges that they were neglecting the needs of their home state). Real power in the Senate was vested in the senior members who controlled the congressional committees and decided which bills the full body would consider (page 43). That changed with Lyndon Johnson. Central to Johnson's leadership was his personal style called "The Treatment." It was a combination of according to Evans and Novak, "supplication, accusation, cajolery, exuberance, scorn, tears, complaint, the hint of a threat (page 43)." But the Treatment demanded more calculation than most observers realized. Johnson had mastered policy, parliamentary procedures, and personalities: he had statistics and memos bulging out of his pockets, details of bills and programs on the tip of his tongue, arguments for and against every measure. He also knew the Senate, speeding up votes when he knew he had a majority on the floor and delaying action when the opposition had the upper hand. He expanded the office of majority leader, taking responsibility for doling out ceremonial assignments so senators would be indebted to him (pages 45 and 46).

By the time of the 1960 presidential campaign, Johnson had not only become a political force to be reckoned with, but also a serious contender for the presidency. That he found himself as the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate was due to the need to try and attract the votes of the white South as a counterpoint to John F. Kennedy, a Roman Catholic from Massachusetts. After winning the presidential election, Johnson frequently felt left out of the loop of trusted Kennedy advisers, although, Kennedy himself treated Johnson cordially. The 22 November 1963 assassination of John Kennedy thrust Johnson into the presidency. Determined to continue Kennedy's legacy, Johnson appealed to citizens and legislators to "let us continue" the domestic legislative agenda of the late president. He simultaneously sought to forge his own presidential legacy through his proposal for a "Great Society" through the passage of legislation that sought to address environmental, health care, senior citizens, education, and civil rights issues, among others. For Johnson the key to success was the passage of law; however, the passage of law frequently involves compromise among national, state, and local institutions. Worse, Johnson's escalation of the Vietnam war without a tax increase (guns and butter) and steadily building opposition to the war, combined with an increased sense of domestic resentment about the cost of funding the Great Society programs, fractured the liberal coalition and muddied the legacy waters of Lyndon Johnson's presidency.

The issue, finally, is not the program but the vision, the angle of the view. A huge constituency may be coming up for grabs, and there is considerable evidence that its political mobility is more sensitive than anyone can imagine, that all the sociological determinants are not as significant as the simple facts of concern and leadership. When Robert Kennedy was killed ... thousands of working-class people who had expected to vote for him-if not hundreds of thousands-shifted to Wallace. A man who can change from a progressive democrat into a bigot overnight deserves attention (page 245),

Recommended reading for anyone interested in American history, foreign policy, Cold War history.

The writings that Schulman has gathered together in this book take on new piognancy in these years, as the US is bogged down in Iraq. Roaming through the various essays that deal with the Vietnam War, an American reader might be unable to avoid gleaming unsettling parallels from 40 years ago. The alternatives confronting Johnson, of escalating or de-escalating the war, were both unpleasant. Especially as a withdrawl was feared to lead to the fall of other dominoes in south east Asia. Just as some suggest that a withdrawl from Iraq would destabilise its neighbours; an argument put forth most recently in Bush's 2007 State of the Union address.

To be sure, not all the documents are about Vietnam. Many pertain to American society, and to the so-called Great Society that Kennedy and Johnson sought to build. There are still pertinant discussions on civil rights, including the Watts riot.

I've had the honor of taking two courses with Professor Schulman at Boston University and, as an American History major, I find him to be one of the most astute commentators of post-World War Two American society. Though Professor Schulman never assigns his own works in his courses, many of his students often read his books at their leisure and are never disappointed. His concise biography of President Johnson is an impressive feat and is my personal favorite of his works. Schulman's critique of Johnson's presidency, and it's role in America liberalism, is pleasantly surprising relative to its moderate length; it is enourmously informative and offers a refreshing perspective on a topic that historians have spilled much ink evaluating. Professor Schulman is a renowned professor, closing out his classes of over four hundred students, and is an equally engaging author. Those who read this book will undoubtably hold similar sentiments.

This is a fine and targeted work on LBJ. For anyone who is looking to find a quick read on LBJ, this one is a winner. Also, for anyone looking for a quick read on LBJ who already has a great deal of knowledge about him, this one is still a winner.

The text itself by the author is great. Yet, what really shines are the essays and documents which come later. They provide for a truly non-partisan insight into the career and Presidency of LBJ. They show a flawed man who gave us Medicare, Medicaid, 3 civil rights laws, Head Start, labor law reform, environmental protection and other renewal programs, but also gave us the Vietnam War. What comes out is a great paradox of power and a strange view on political compassion.